I See Fire | Wattys 2021/22 Shortlist | ✔

Chapter Twenty-Six

Nobody ever teaches you how to respond when a Mexica goddess tells you you're at risk of going the same way as her and her siblings' worst enemy.

Chal didn't explain negative groundings to me. She didn't need to. I had seen the anger and pain behind Coyol's sparking silver magic when she blew up her mother's house. I could taste Cihua's unhinged desire to test the limits of her own power. She was a woman who had once abandoned a child at a crossroads so he wouldn't slow her pursuit of another opportunity. She had returned to find him gone. Rather than search for him, she attempted to make a demon from the magic he would have left behind had he died.

He hadn't died, though, and she found no magic soaked into the ground from it. This did not stop her from returning year after year, hoping to find and sacrifice her own missing offspring so she could try again.

I lay in bed with the covers pulled over my head. If Emma thought I was asleep when she got up for breakfast, she didn't try to wake me. Grifo shifted his chin on my side. I didn't touch him. I understood now why Chal wanted me to activate and use my magic, rather than seal it away and ignore it forever. Even if we sealed it, that wouldn't stop it from activating itself. My only way to control it was a grounding.

I stayed immobile until hunger drove its vicious suction through my insides and made me sit up. I tried to conjure something for what must have been the hundredth time, but all I got was a tingle in my fingertips. There was a soft knock on the door. I dropped back and hid beneath my pillow. "Go away."

Jem opened the door and slipped inside in a waft of bean and tortilla smells. Of course he had brought me breakfast. My throat tightened, and I kept the pillow over my head to hide my glistening eyes.

Jem sat on the edge of the mattress and rubbed my back. "You alright?"

"No." A tear slid down my nose into the furs. Grifo whined and thrust his muzzle next to my face.

"Want to talk about it?"

"I want to leave."

"Isn't that what you're not supposed to be doing?"

"Diez Madres, what am I supposed to do, then?" I flung my pillow at the wall and rolled over, hands over my face. Tears drew warm lines down my cheeks. "I don't know what to do. I'm scared of myself. How messed up is that?"

"Sit up."

I did, and scooched to the floor to let his healer's hands find the knots in my back. I was more tense than I'd anticipated. "Ow."

"You've been lying in bed all day. Did you at least stretch last night?"

"No."

"Well, that's why you're sore, then."

I let our banter sooth the twisted-up cord strung down the core of my being. Jem poked sore spots and made me eat like I was a kid, though admittedly I was acting like one.

"If it makes any difference," he said after a while, "I know a bit of how it feels. It's terrifying... not knowing what you could do."

"How do you know? You know plants. That's hardly intimidating."

"I know poisons."

That was a slap across the face. I spun around. "Wait, like when you look at them? Like that whatever-it-was you identified the first time?"

He nodded.

"Cool."

"About as cool as knowing you could burn things."

"You can choose to poison things. I'm not choosing this." I thrust my burned fingers in his face. "Who knows when I'll burn something else? You, or Emma? Or myself, but worse? At least yours will only cause damage if you want it to."

He looked at his hands. "You're right," he said at last. "Sorry."

"I just want it sealed so I can go places." I tipped over with a groan and lay on the floor. "I'm sick of worrying. I'm sick of being scared."

"Where are you wanting to go? I thought we were staying."

"You said we were staying. I said nothing at all."

"But what would you go looking for?"

A positive grounding—something to be proud of. Other people. A village or town that hadn't lost its connection to the world before. I had even considered returning to La Cueva to find clues to how they'd lived, but I had since scrapped that idea. When the gods needed to set a memory spell for us, they had chosen that cave for its magical energy, left behind when the people there had died and soaked the walls with their blood. I was trying to avoid magic. And the Centzon Huītznāuhtin knew where that cave was.

"Something better."

"Than this?" Jem looked at me like he couldn't quite believe I was serious. "What's better than this? I mean, aside from home, but I'm assuming you're not going there."

"I mean, I'll stay here for now." I lifted my hands and spread my fingers. I had started to like the tattoos around my wrists, once. Now they mocked me. "It's not like I can go anywhere yet, anyway. Do you still want to stay?"

"I want to learn more from Xipe." Jem had the cutest smile when he was trying to hide it. He looked embarrassed. "And Xochi. Do you know she made all the wall hangings around here? They're so beautiful."

"You want to learn weaving?"

"Why not? She said the men and women both did it back in the Mexica days."

I snickered. "Remember when you were the one who was iffy about coming here, and I was the keener?"

"Well, they've gotten a message to the village now, and said we'll be staying for a while. And you're not safe to leave yet. So I might as well make the most of it."

I had decided it wasn't Grillo Negro I was missing, but the people in it. That helped me justify the twisting knife of homesickness when it arrived. "Did... they say how people reacted?"

"Mostly relieved. Some people had trouble with the multiple-gods thing, but they're working at it? I think tío Hernando said something about One God, different forms, and my dad was of the opinion that we were never wrong, just weren't seeing the full picture. Ōmeteōtl exists, so that helps. They trusted us a lot, though. Most people figured we just hadn't found what we were after yet, and apparently Liliana was telling Miguel and Rosa that we had gone on an adventure and would be back with lots of good stories."

The pang intensified. "Well, they're not wrong." I could make use of this, though. "What did the gods say about how long we'd be gone?"

"Indefinitely. And I'm pretty sure nobody's complaining so long as the two of us are together."

I rolled my eyes. There it was. Not that I was complaining either, but still.

"Ad, you have to stay. There's a war going on; it's not safe out there. You can't run off alone."

"And you wouldn't come with me?" I said dryly.

"No." That was unusually direct for him. "I wouldn't."

"Fine. I'll stay."

Lies had a different flavour based on how you told them, and to whom. This one burned all the way down my throat.