The Fire Children (6 page)

When her fall finally stopped, Yulla lay on the ground, breathing hard. Her whole backside hurt from all the jutting edges she’d caught on her way. Her palms were scraped. Blood trickled down the back of her leg from a cut. She could feel grit in her hair.

Nothing was broken, as far as she could tell. She’d have a rainbow of bruises, but those would fade soon enough.

Yulla picked herself up gingerly and side-shuffled to her right until her fingers brushed the tunnel wall. The rope guide on this side was still attached, its length taut where it disappeared back into the rocks. She made a circle with her thumb and forefinger, closing them around the rope. That way she could follow where it led without its coarse length brushing against her still-stinging palms.

No more voices came from up ahead, but the breeze remained, carrying odd scents to her: cinnamon, she knew, and maybe sage, but they were overwhelmed by something else—metallic and earthy and...
hot
. Like clay being fired in a kiln.

Yulla lifted her nose for a sniff. Up ahead (
quick-there-and-gone
), a light flickered.

A
T FIRST, SHE
wasn’t even sure it was real. When they were little, Kell had shown her how closing her eyes and pressing the heels of her palms against her closed lids created starry patterns. They’d done it only briefly, until Amma happened upon them and declared they’d ruin their sight if they kept it up. She remembered the flashes that had come the longer she kept her palms pressed. Was that what she’d seen? Some reaction to the extended darkness?

It came again, though, the first thing she’d seen—truly
seen
—since the flames had fled: a sliver-slash of brightness on the floor of the cavern ahead. It hurt to look at, so much that she threw her hands up to shield her eyes and was startled at the silhouettes of her own fingers. The light disappeared again, leaving its afterimage floating in the air before her. Yulla pressed forward carefully, narrowing her eyelids to slits in case it came again.

Another twenty steps on, and the rope guide ended. The walls widened away from her, and she was at the entrance of the room where the light had come from. There she waited, hardly daring to breathe, straining as hard as she could to hear the murmur of conversation or the tinkle of bells once more.

For a long time, nothing happened.

She couldn’t hear anyone there with her in the dark. No one had spoken up asking her to identify herself. She’d woken at one point this morning and noticed that, even when the cellar was quiet and everyone slept, you could hear sounds that told you you weren’t alone: Aunt Mouse’s slow, deep, breaths; the whisper of sheets as Kell turned over in her bed; sometimes even the insistent grinding of Amma’s teeth as her daytime worries carried over into her dreams.

Or there might be faint echoes travelling along the tunnels, as someone still awake stifled a laugh, or the tail end of a curse as someone got up to make water and barked their shin on a table in another house.

In
this
cavern, though, all was silent. She might have been the only person left in the tunnels.

She might have been the only person left in the world.

Remembering her manners kept her from pursuing
that
bit of nonsense. “Hello?” she called out. “It’s Yulla, Zara’s daughter. Is anyone here?” Her voice came back to her, echoing but oddly muffled.

No answer but the wind.

The wind!

The breeze still blew, warm against her exposed skin. She turned to face it, following it to its source with her arms outstretched. There didn’t seem to be any furniture down here. No couches and low tables like her own family had for comfort, nor the pews and benches she might have expected in a below-ground version of the Worship Hall. She did find a set of steps, though, leading up towards whatever building she was currently beneath.

Her sense of direction was all jumbled. She
thought
she was somewhere in the northern part of Kaladim, but that was assuming she’d been headed toward the Worship Hall. Now, she wasn’t so sure. Maybe one of the tunnels had curved slightly east or west—a light enough curve could feel like a straight line, especially when you couldn’t see. Still, she had to be on the outskirts somewhere, otherwise she’d had to have encountered other families. If she’d been heading west, say, she might have found Old Moll and his whole clan.

Thinking of Old Moll summoned the memory of his miniature city. She tried to remember where everything had been, even with some of its houses unfinished. Her family’s house was in the southeastern part of town; the Worship Hall to the north. The market was dead center. She thought of other buildings: the school, the cobbler’s, Jaik’s butchery and the livestock penned up nearby.

The easiest way...

... but it was forbidden.

Yulla squinted up the stairway, though the darkness remained as thick as ever. If she could open the cellar door up there though, and see where she was...

Just a quick peek. To see what street I’m on.

No.

She made herself back away. The temptation sang within her, urging her to make the climb, to turn the knob and press against the door, to see what it was like up above during the Darktimes. Had the flashes she’d seen come from the Fire Children? Were they in the house above her right now, burning the occupant’s offerings to taste what life was like on the world beneath their sky?

She wanted to know. She wanted to know
so badly,
to glimpse Mother Sun’s children and run back to her family—even Kell—and tell them she’d seen them, seen the Fire Children, and describe what they looked like, here among their houses.

They’d burn me alive. They wouldn’t know any better. It’s why we hide in the dark.

She kept backing up, trying to encourage that tiny, reasonable voice before she gave in to her clamoring curiosity. It was so easy to imagine herself going up above to explore, tucking herself into the hiding spots that had always stumped Kell and her friends when they used to play hide-and-seek—Yulla was good at finding places where she could see the people looking for her, but they couldn’t see her. Did the Fire Children even know
how
to play hide-and-seek? Would human games interest them at all?

Stop it stop it stop it.

Back, and back, and back, until she bumped against the far wall. Her hands reached out for something to anchor her, to keep her from plunging straight across to the stairs, darting up them and throwing wide the door.

Her fingers closed over a lever.

All the resisting she’d been doing against going up the stairway meant she had no reserve against this new discovery. She pushed on the lever. It didn’t budge. She grabbed at it with both hands and threw all her weight against it, until her feet nearly left the ground.

Slowly, slowly, as though no one had thrown it in a hundred years, the lever inched downward. It let out a
screeeech
as it did, one that they’d surely heard in far-off cellars. The sound was old and sluggish and rusty, but the lever moved inexorably, down and down until it stopped with a
clack
.

The ground rumbled beneath her feet, and when she reached out to steady herself on the wall, she felt the vibrations of a great machine working within. Wildly, she thought of the pulleys Abba and his friends had set up when they’d raised a new roof onto Jaik’s butchery last year.

Anything else her spinning mind kicked up disappeared in the scraping of stone on stone above her. Yulla covered her head, afraid she’d started another cave-in. She dropped into a crouch and sent up a prayer to Mother Sun:
Save me, spare me, I’ll never fight with Kell again, I’ll do all my chores, I won’t complain when Aunt Mouse serves beans, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll...

It wasn’t Mother Sun who answered her.

It wasn’t Sister Moon, either, though the light that bathed Yulla when she finally dared look up was nearly as gentle. A shaft of pale blue fell on her from high above, beaming down through thick, rune-carved glass.

Mystified, Yulla rose to her feet and squinted into the brightness. It took her eyes a few minutes to adjust, but when they did she realized the cavern wasn’t as bare as she’d thought. Heaped against one wall, across from where she’d entered, were the rotted remains of benches. Tattered tapestries hung on the walls, which explained why the echoes had been so muffled when she’d called out earlier. They were similar to the ones in the Worship Hall, but instead of showing Mother Sun and the bounties of the desert—camels, palms, dates—Yulla saw blue waves stitched into the cloth, gulls and fish, and ships like the merchants spoke of when they brought their wares from the far-away sea.

It made no sense. None at all, unless—

A shadow flickered across the cavern. Yulla glanced up.

A face peered down at her, distorted by the thick glass. Yulla recognized that wide slash of a mouth from the last night of the feast: not one of the Fire Children, but the witch-woman who’d smiled at her while her sisters argued.

They stared at each other. Yulla willed her feet to move, to
run,
to
get away,
but her feet refused to obey. She stood there until the witch-woman turned away, maybe to say something to someone nearby, and Yulla got hold of her panic. The spell broken, she fled back into the tunnels, running as fast as she could for the cave-in. For home.

T
HE BLUE LIGHT
coming down through the Seaglass illuminated her path, making her long, thin shadow race ahead of her. Then came the rumble of machinery within the walls, and the light dimmed, dimmed... and was gone.

Yulla thought she’d grown used to the dark over the last day, but those few minutes she’d spent in that strangely lit cellar—was it the witch-women’s crumbling tower of a house, or somewhere different?—seemed to have made her forget how to move in it. She staggered to a stop, trying desperately to see again. Anything—a shadow on a shadow, the tiniest hint of movement—
anything
would have been better than the uninterrupted black.

She forced herself to get moving again, her arms flung out before her the way she’d walked that morning. She found the rope guide and clung to it. If anyone was following her, she couldn’t hear them over her panicked breath. Once or twice, she thought she heard a stealthy footfall, or the skitter-spray of pebbles kicked along the corridor, but when she paused and strained her ears, no further sounds came back to her.

When she reached the rockfall, she didn’t hesitate. Up she went, scrabbling for handholds and footholds, squeezing through the opening at the top, scuttling down the other, steeper slope. Debris tumbled in her wake on both sides, but Yulla reached the ground unscathed. She whispered a prayer of thanks to Mother Sun, found the rope guide, and left the cave-in, the Seaglass, and the witch-women behind.

T
HIS TIME, WHEN
Yulla heard voices she announced herself. Their worried, buzzy tone had just registered with her when one of the grown-ups came swooping out of the darkness to take her by the shoulders.

“Yulla!” The rumble of his voice and the smell of flour told her it was Hatal, the baker. “Are you all right? Where have you been? We’ve all been looking for you.”

Her thoughts felt sluggish, as though she’d woken in the middle of the night and couldn’t figure whether she were truly awake or still dreaming. “All of you?” Now she heard the echoes travelling from other tunnels: people calling her name over and over. “Yulla! Yuuuuulla!”

How had she not heard them while she was running away from the Seaglass? Could the witch-woman have cast a spell on her, so she couldn’t hear the shouts and follow them back to where the people were?
I’m here now, safe.
She swayed as relief washed over her.

Hatal turned to someone else in the room. “Tell them we’ve found her. I’ll bring her home.” Bare feet slapped away in the other direction, and at what Yulla assumed was the entrance to the cellar, a child paused to shout the news. Someone farther along picked it up, using the echoes to propel the announcement faster than they could run.

Cloth rustled as Hatal bent to pick Yulla up like she were a girl of five, not fifteen. She was too flushed with relief and exhaustion to protest. His belly was bigger than Aunt Mouse’s, but his arms were ropy and strong from all the dough he kneaded. She patted his shoulders, feeling for apron strings. It didn’t make sense for him to wear one down below, but neither could she picture him
without
it. “Your Amma’s been worried sick,” he said, and though he peppered her with questions, he didn’t seem to expect an answer.

Hatal carried her through the tunnels. They passed other people on the way, most of whom were headed back to their own homes now she’d been found. Many of them found her hands and gave them a squeeze, or found her cheek and gave it a kindly pinch. A few chided her in hoarse voices, though none actually seemed
angry
.

The late evening bells rang through the tunnels, and Yulla realized how late it was, how long she’d been gone. Her belly growled—those sweetcakes in Sera’s cellar were the last thing she’d eaten, and that must have been hours ago. Hatal’s laugh boomed as he came to a stop. “It seems we got you home just in time. Zara! Essar! I have your hungry daughter here with me.”

Amma and Abba came hurrying to the doorway. Hatal set Yulla down and pushed her gently toward Amma, who showered her in kisses. Abba held them both for a moment, then ruffled Yulla’s hair before he stepped away and drew Hatal aside to thank him.

Amma’s cheeks were wet, which almost made Yulla start to cry, too. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” She wanted to tell Amma about where she’d been, what she’d seen in the tunnels, but she couldn’t choke out any other words without collapsing into sobs herself.

It wasn’t long before Aunt Mouse was there, called back from wherever she’d been searching. Someone was with her, but it wasn’t Kell. “I’ve brought Vedra,” Aunt Mouse said through her own sniffles. “I thought, in case Yulla was hurt...”