Autumn for Black Tree

Chapter 10 Helming the Flame (2/3)

Barley looked down from her and frowned. He thought for a moment. "Are you aware, when you light up?"

"Yeah," said Paxiss, plucking a berry she had just reached, "mostly anyway. I guess I'm as aware as I can be while being angry. You know that feeling of blindness you get when you get really really mad?"

Barley nodded.

"Well it's like that but I just can't turn it off. Also I'm covered in flames so I can literally see red. It's bright and hot and I feel like that all adds to it somehow."

Barley wondered aloud. "Hmm..."

Something about this didn't seem right to him. In fact it all felt very wrong. Paxiss slid down the rope fastened to the tree, her berry bag full enough that she could barely tie it off.

"You have to learn how to stop lighting up," Barley said as her feet touched the ground.

"What?"

"I mean it's a part of you, but you can't let it control you," he said.

Paxiss had a considered expression on her face. "But I'm trying to fight them. I don't know what else to do. I don't have any other defense."

"Your power is a tool," he said, "and you can either make it work for them or for you."

Paxiss turned the thought over in her mind.

"You lose control when you turn. Your parents know that. So they use that to their advantage. You can't let them do that to you anymore."

Barley held out his hand. The bark from the backs of his hands grew forward and coated his fingers. It grew until the tips of his outstretched fingers were points. Then the bark from his forearm grew a branch that was razor sharp and came to point that rivaled any blade. It hardened and was so smooth it almost reflected. Paxiss' eyes were bulging with shock.

"I knew I could either sit and let this thing I was born with take me over or I could put it to good use. I chose to see if I could help someone with it."

The wood gradually started to look dead and Barley struck his forearm and hand against a tree. The now brittle weapon broke into pieces leaving his arm back to normal.

"You already saw what it looks like when I loose control," he said, "when I let this stuff get away from me I become someone else. I was trapped."

He looked into her eyes, "And so are you."

Paxiss' chewed her bottom lip.

"We are going to get down to the bottom of this," he said, "But to do that, we need to take that control back. I'll help you."

Barley gave her a gentle hug. Paxiss loved his smell. It reminded her of pine and somehow oranges. He put his arms on her shoulders.

"I know you need to get back," he said, "But I want you to meet me every evening at sundown. We will work on this. I'll teach you how to use this so you have the advantage. Watch your parents closely. See if you can gather any clues on the inside. I'll keep searching out here. Together, we are going to dig this town up."

She smiled up at him and gave him a kiss on the cheek. He gazed into her eyes and smiled back. They were green and hazel like a coral reef. She left, berries in hand. She went some distance and turned around and saw him watching her. She put her fist up.

"Control!" She called out.

"Control!" He said back, reflecting the gesture.

So that was how it went for the next little while. Every day Paxiss would spend the day serving her family while Barley continued his search. And every evening Barley would meet her by the tip-top trees and they would train. Barley taught Paxiss first how to do breathing exercises if she got riled up and how to escape to peaceful happy thoughts when she grew anxious. Then they moved on to being able to alternate between her two forms. At first Paxiss used raw anger, but gradually she learned how to channel it into righteous indignation. She learned that it wasn't anger that was wrong but what you did with it. This gave her surprising clarity when she was in her fire-cat state.

Paxiss revealed to Barley that she had indiscriminately burned everything during her episodes in the past, but over time she had realized she was contributing to starving the people like they accused her of. Her parents would never let her forget that. She didn't want to hurt them so she chose to try and burn only the paleotus shrooms. This, as an allegory, helped her think about her anger the same way. She had to learn how to choose what she was angry with in her mind and not burn the good with the bad.