I See Fire | Wattys 2021/22 Shortlist | ✔

Chapter Forty-Five

I willed the fire out and it vanished. A single thought lit it again. I stood slowly. This was so different from before. I wasn't blocking fuels against a fire that would burn anyway. I was offering them, and the fire obeyed. It came from the same place in my chest, but rather than burning, its heat churned around and around like a snake in a jar until I lifted the lid and let it out. I could cap it again just as easily.

I pointed my hand pointed to the next fire pit and asked for fire. The throaty rush of an inferno consumed all three pits. Diez madres. I put it out again, overshooting once more and extinguishing all three. The clearing went dark. I didn't even need a finger flick. How was it this sensitive?

I tried again, and again, until I could mostly control where the fire was going. It was still capable of the disease's spread, but more of it vented off now as heat and light—the flames I had so long been unable to make. This was fire for use and protection, not destruction. Not that it couldn't destroy. I hissed as sparks leaped from the pit I was maintaining, singeing the grass. I had not cleared the ground around the cooking area. I could direct this magic now, but that would not stop it from doing fire things once released.

I called it off and examined the coals left behind on the conjured firewood. Then I stepped back and lifted my hands. I wavered for a moment. Would the angry fire from before return if I used this too much? I still needed—

No. No, I didn't need it. Not anymore.

Grillo Negro was my grounding. Grillo Negro and more: its people, and my family, and Jem, and kids, and parties and food and stories and all the other things that made my village home. My grounding was home. And my home was Grillo Negro.

I rooted my feet in that thought and closed my eyes. I drew in a long breath and imagined what the village smelled and sounded like. Good food and tortillas, the sweet smoke and merry crackle of fires made with desert brush. People laughing and calling and chattering. I imagined what I would do if I was standing in it right now, waiting for Miguel to run headlong into me, asking for stories, or for my mother to call me to the cooking circle to plan recipes over the day's hunted and gathered food. Waiting for Jem to appear, so I could—

My face flushed hot. I pinned it on the fire inside me, which filled the space in my chest and pressed out against me like that space had quadrupled in size. I opened my eyes and released it on the fire pits. Fire roared. It consumed the wood like it was tinder, swallowed the pot-frames, and blackened the soil. Rocks split. Grifo and Tochtli spooked and hopped back among the tents as I stood an arm's span from the flames, the only thing unaffected by them. The grass across half the clearing melted into ash.

I could still do more. That would risk the tents, though, so I planted my feet again and called off the fire. It fell with a whoosh. The pits reappeared, reduced to charred and misshapen troughs in the half-eaten soil, their sooty bottoms lined with coals.

I lifted a shaking hand and cupped it in front of me. Would Fuego still strain towards things I directed it to? It took targets, after all. I called a small fire in my palm like I had once seen Xolotl do on the bank of the first Mictlan river. "Quet?" I said, channeling the instruction into the harmless flame.

It didn't move. I should probably test this first. "Grifo?"

He perked up, and scrambled to his feet. I looked down at the flame to find that it had scooted to one side of my palm, leaning towards my dog. This worked. It actually worked. I tried Tochtli next, then Mictlantecuhtli. The flame found the Xolo, then tilted back towards the underworld god's house. Good.

"Mictēcacihuātl?"

Same direction. He and his wife were both inside.

I tried all the other gods with no more success than Quet, then closed my fist. Mictlantecuhtli had only said there was one of us here, still free, and that by the feel, that "one" would be the second strongest among the gods on my side. He had never said it was a god.

It wasn't a god.

It was me.

The thought was the most frightening and exhilarating thing I had ever experienced. If I was the second strongest among the gods, I could do something. But if I was the one who had escaped, I was alone.

I took a deep breath. No, not quite alone.

Both dogs trotted to meet me as I left the burned-out village center, and neither flinched as I stroked their heads. Tochtli pressed close to me like she finally trusted me to hold her. I crouched down and did. She had lost her master and seen her friends killed. The memory of losing sight of Xolotl in a swarm of Centzon Huītznāuhtin overwhelmed the stream I could see when I touched her head, together with the arrow in Chimalli's chest. I refused to cry again. This was not the time for crying.

Could I get Xolotl back? My stomach inverted into an over-stirred soup pot at the thought. Could I? Burning an imaginary firepit and invading the territory of the world's strongest god were two very different things. But I was here and somewhere here was a way to the sky-world. Somewhere here, too, were the supplies the gods had come to ask Mictlantecuhtli for.

"Grifo, stop me before I do something stupid," I said, but he just gave me sad eyes. Tochtli came back for another hug.

The tinkle of shell skirts made me spin, hand out. Fire engulfed the Tzitzimitl. I concentrated it, drawing on every memory of the village around me. Her bones hissed into smoke. Tougher than the rest, a handful of teeth fell and scattered on the scorch mark when I shut off the flame. I quickly turned my back. My recreated village was a comfort, soothing my overwrought nerves and layering steel onto my resolve to our enemies from setting foot among these tents. Coyol would not have the original, and Mictlantecuhtli would not have the replica. I lowered my head in half a prayer, then snapped my fingers. Tents became bare ground.

I pulled a piece of string from my pocket to tie up my hair, which still ran wild as it had when I had rolled out of bed in Tepepia. I was tempted for a moment to try the horned hairstyle of the Mexica women from my fire-cave visions. Cōātlīcue had worn it too, though, and Tezcat had frozen when Emma pulled apart his magical cage, the snake around her head twisted into the same shape. I settled for a tight braid around my scalp instead.

I had my bag, my knife, and my sling. I touched a hand to each to calm myself, then rested it on my chest. I could feel my heart pounding. "You can do this, Adriana."

I smiled suddenly. Adriana Atenco Mendoza. Atenco wasn't Spanish. It was Nahuatl. I stretched out my arms and let licks of fire dance between my fingers. Then I lit my seeking-flame again. "Mictlantecuhtli." I wasn't taking chances. The death god, thankfully, was still in his house. I tested his wife, then Coyol. Nothing happened. That couldn't be right.

"Coyol?" I said again. Still nothing. Was it something with her, or with the name? "Coyolxāuhqui?"

This time, the light in my hand reared upwards. I shivered. Either the sky-world was closer than I thought it was, or Coyol had gone easy on Mictlantecuhtli when their powers crossed by the fire.

When I called on Tzitzimime, the flame split into four and spread to different sides of my palm. I could not hear shell skirts yet, but I was still glad of the bloodstains that darkened my clothing. Even if I had had to swim a river of blood to get them. I sought for Centzon Huītznāuhtin last, and got a similar—though fainter—response. They must be farther away. I was, for now, alone.

"Matzin," I said.

The flame made for my fingers. Mictlantecuhtli and his wife had storage areas separate from their house? They must have a lot to store. I tapped my leg for the dogs and drifted into the shadows like I was stalking a coywolf. Tochtli blended into the darkness behind me, and Grifo followed her lead.