Child of Fire

Chapter 1: This is How it Began

On the night that it started, I had no idea that in only a few months, my life would change forever.

Looking back, I can't believe how easily I dismissed the signs, because the truth is, people will see what they want to see, and I created for myself a perfect world that would never be. I saw what I wanted to see.

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A wind whispering of the end of spring hissed through the clearing. Grandma whipped around, and I followed her eyes just in time to glimpse a bushy tail dart through the undergrowth.

"How much depends on a feral cat?" Grandma murmured.

"Hmm?" I wondered if I'd heard her right. Maybe she was talking about the cat's kittens hidden away somewhere. But Grandma didn't reply, and so we fell back into silence.

"You'll start the fire, won't you, Amita?"

My grandmother gave me my middle name. Amita—it means loyal.

"Mhm." I nodded as I struck the match. I'd never shied away from the flames, no matter how close they leapt to my copper-brown skin. I stoked the fire as if I were stroking a cat—waiting infinitely to see if it would bite. In the dusk, the twirling cinders looked almost eerie.

"Don't get too close," she warned. As she swept by, a gust of wind barraged my face. The fire flared taller, brighter, as if the cat had suddenly grown fangs it was about to sink into my flesh.

I rolled my eyes. "Yes, Grandma."

She whipped around, her skirt lashing the ground, and the golden flames leapt towards me. "See?" she smiled. "Best be careful." She teased.

I giggled and the cat laid feather-soft paws on my skin. The fire whispered across my abdomen, leaving laughing embers in its wake. I felt their summer warmth like a raging furnace, but the flames didn't burn me. I felt them like laughter dragging along my bones—yet they hadn't touched me. That was strange.

I brought my hands closer to the leaping fire. Someone was watching me. I looked up through my heavy eyelashes to see Grandma frowning pointedly at me. "What did I say, child?"

I sighed. "Sorry, Grandma."

I didn't mention how my fingers smarted in pain as I yanked them away. I guess I mistook the tiger for the cat. It kind of hurt when it decided to crunch its jaws down on my hand.

But I could swear that the first time, the fire truly hadn't touched me. It had glanced off my skin, completely harmless. Unless that pesky big cat also knew how to spin visions.

I tossed another log into the fire, which gobbled it up; I poked at it once or twice. Then I retreated to the shadows.

-----

My grandma's voice flowed mellow and smooth, like the infinite thickness of honey paired with the calm, steady rippling of still water in a forest pond.

"As legend would have it, he and his unearthly servants were never seen again," she finished her gripping tale, oblivious to the fascinated faces of the assembled children.

"Those creatures should belong in hell!" squeaked an excitable young boy. Grandma shook her head at him, admonishing him for the careless use of the name of the dark god—Varyx's—realm. The realm that had no true name, the realm of darkness and death. I remembered her closing her eyes, a mask of calm settling on her previously animated face. I remembered smiling blandly, exhaustion tugging on my eyelids, as she got up. Her long skirts swept behind her as she picked her way back to the Chief's Villa nearby, though she walked as gracefully as if her eyes were open.