I See Fire | Wattys 2021/22 Shortlist | ✔

Chapter Forty-One

How far ahead were the gods now? I sank down with a long breath when I returned to the bushes. The branch I had dropped had withered away to ashes, leaving a powdery circle on the rock-hard ground. The last coals clicked and popped softly. I doused them with blood-water and could not even bring myself to feel satisfaction as they hissed out. Having this one thing against Fuego felt like going up against a coywolf pack armed with nothing but a sharpened twig.

Soaking the whole patch took a quarter of the gourd, but I wasn't taking chances. I showered the nearest living bush next. When I touched it this time, my magic leaped again, but the blood-water steamed first. That spared the branch, buying me enough time to wrestle Fuego away without losing the cutting. I trimmed as many branches as I thought I'd need, dropped them on the wet ground, and soaked them again. With intermittent dousings, I wove a branch circle and added a lattice through it. There were probably faster ways, but I doubted they would mean much to an inexperienced, half-dead human with a fire disease.

Even woven as tightly as I could make it, my makeshift shield would not block the arrows. I hefted it, gauging how much weight I could add before it became too unwieldy to handle. I needed a harder coating on it. More solid wood seemed a bad idea; I had nowhere to find it, and wood and I were a bad mix right now.

"Diez madres!" I hissed as the handle beneath my hand began to smoke. I dropped the shield and slung blood-water on the smouldering bark, not even caring that I would have to touch it again. What could I use that was fireproof? Stone? I didn't have time or strength to work with that. A memory of the gods making sling-shot popped into my head unbidden. What about clay? Did I have clay?

I punted the shield aside with my foot and scratched the wet ground under it. It was sticky. Not true clay, but it was a fine enough dirt that it would cake onto the shield and solidify if I baked it. The ground steamed gently as I dug in my fingers and scraped off the thin, soft upper layer. All I could gather barely filled my palm. I rolled to my feet with a groan.

I brought my shield—slung over my walking stick—and the dogs with me to the river this time. Just as I hoped, its banks were soft beneath the bloodstains. There was more than enough mud to lay a thick layer on my shield without even stepping too close to the water. Fuego twisted and spat as I directed it at the goopy coat. I promised it the sticks under the clay instead, and it took the bait. My whole shield hissed. I grinned as the fire magic fizzled out before it reached the fuel, firing the mud into a thick shell in the process. I stopped it before it hardened all the way through. A half-baked layer underneath would prevent shattering and stop the arrows better. It would also buy me more time.

The wet clay I layered over the shield handle coughed up steam the moment I grabbed it. Unwilling to risk too many magic-slips before I used it for real, I slung it onto my walking stick again and jogged back to the rocks. The path snaked away before me. Tochtli pointed her nose at my bag again, so I set it down. My fingers left scorch marks on the soft leather. My bedfur was the only thing besides my walking stick that I seemed incapable of burning; it remained resolutely smokeless as I pulled it out. On Tochtli's instruction, I tied it over Grifo. He would have been funny in a cape had he not looked so terrified.  

The path was still waiting. When the dogs stood ready, I transferred the shield to my arm and sprinted down it.

The first time I heard an arrow as a small child, I likened it to the hiss of wind through stiff grass. I later learned it only made that sound if the fletching was tousled, or the arrowhead chipped less than smooth.

These arrows were silent.

Ahead of me, Tochtli kept ahead of the shooters. Behind me, Grifo flinched and yelped as whatever magic soaked my bedfur deflected their shots. I told Fuego to find the arrows, and it rushed out of me like the release of a pressure-stricken pigskin. Detecting the projectiles as they came, it lunged from side to side. I quickly grew attuned to the tug. Now my feet traced a dance of their own accord. From the rocks or the arrows, visions like swirls of dye rose around me. I could see Mexica who had passed here before. Souls were buried with a blanket to keep them safe. Many were buried with dogs as well. The vaguest twitch of a memory brought me Abraham's voice, speaking of dogs who passed away with their masters and accompanied them through the underworld. Was I just the newest iteration of some ancient, inexplicable pattern?

The rain of arrows thickened, and the visions thickened, too. Each flashed by quicker than the last. I followed them; they meant I was still on the trail. Around and around they spun, and I spun with them. In a spiral, in a snake, in a curl. I moved like the wind and like eddies in the water; like a whirlpool and a spinning storm and a spiral shell.

My shield grew heavier. I could feel now what Emma had meant when she told me I was burning. She had seen something I could not when I touched my Grillo Negro pendant, but I could feel the heat that crackled over my skin. My magic strained outwards, trying to reach the things I had told it it could burn. The air rippled with it, and my shield smoked. There was a hairline crack along its edge. Arrows that missed me found their mark in the shadows, their fletching burnt to stubs.

The path went still the moment I tumbled out its other end. I lowered my shield. Gods, it was heavy as a rock. I tipped it to find its shell eroded almost to the frame by a forest of arrows. They clattered loudly as I threw the shield into the boulders. I turned my back on it before the magic cloaking my body slipped and made the leap to this landscape, too. I was so close to letting it. I had to force each step as I walked away.

The view ahead swayed through lingering visions, but these weren't the same as the ones from the path. There were no stories, no pictures of souls. All that was subsumed by rich views of letting loose and bringing this whole place down myself. What was I here for? Was Mictlantecuhtli a friend, or an enemy? If he was a friend, why did he keep his home so full of lovely things to burn?

There were souls here. Souls that had burned once already. I could burn them a second time. They were part of my original instructions, after all: people and all their things. I cleared them from the world above, but now they were here and I was here, and—

The string of things and people reeling through my mind caught on one face that stopped me dead. For a moment, I struggled to recognize it. Heat blurred its edges and left nothing but a dark blur where its features should be. My magic curled up in annoyance. Why didn't I want to burn it?

Who was—