I See Fire | Wattys 2021/22 Shortlist | ✔

Chapter Twenty-Eight

We stopped at last at the edge of flat swath of lakeshore. I struggled at first to make sense of what I was seeing. Imprinted on the ground was a border between two differently marked patches of grass, which faded outwards in a circle as broad as the gods' house twice over. The near half was made visible by a white crusting. I thought it might be frost until I stepped on a patch scattered farther from the rest. It crunched like sand underfoot. Salt? The grass on the far side, meanwhile, was clearly burnt, the dirt beneath it black with soot.

Two of our sisters faded here, said Xochi in my head. She was no longer smiling, and her eyes had glazed in a distant look. Chantico and Huixtocihuatl. It was less than a year ago.

Is that... I scanned the pattern ahead of us. From their magic?

Yes. Hearth-fire and salt. When I didn't understand, she said, Magic goes back to the earth when its user dies or fades. When they fade, it lingers a little longer. We think it remembers better, then, and that makes it more reluctant to return to the broader cycle. It still hopes to be there if or when that person wakes up again.

How many gods had faded or died over the course of the siblings' lives? How much of their magic was seeped into the earth and the wind and the water, waiting for the return of its owners? Or already dissipated, waiting to be taken up by someone else? Just thinking of regathering that felt like robbing a grave.

Xochi murmured something that sounded like a question, then dipped her head and stepped into the salt-and-ash ring. Her footsteps crunched as she made her way to the line down the center, where dead plants bore signs of fire damage and salt poisoning both. Xochi cut a pair of spines from a withered maguey and walked back. "I'm good. Let's go."

"Wait," said Emma unexpectedly. When our eyes turned to her, she fidgeted. "Can I... walk on that?"

"As long as you're careful," said Xochi.

Emma nodded and crept into the circle, following Xochi's footsteps. When she reached the border between the two halves, she crouched down and put her hands on the ground. For a long time, nothing happened. Then some of the dead plants along the border began to green. A small shrub put out buds, and a stalk rose from the maguey as the youngest of its leaves straightened their backs. 

Was she helping them recover, or fully bringing them back to life? I knew Emma had practiced near-constantly ever since Chal had identified her earth magic, but seeing Chal's words play out on a scale larger than a bean sprout was a whole different feeling. Grower's earth magic gives life, and it takes life away. I found myself gripping my wrists tightly enough to make my fingers tingle. Emma was a goddess, but she was barely fifteen. Was it right to put the power of life and death in the hands of someone so young? What if she killed by accident? How would that affect her?

I looked down at my hands, cloaked in their mittens. Not that I was one to talk. I was walking around with the disease that had cut down humanity locked in my body, raring to get out. If anyone killed by accident first, it would be me.

When I looked back at the plants again, the newly growing ones—as well as several low plants and a groundcover—were in bloom. A part of me wilted in relief. Nothing else had greened. The maguey's older leaves remained shriveled, and many plants between the growing ones still stood dead as sticks, unchanged by the intervention. Emma could not bring things back to life. Just revive them from the brink of it. 

Emma removed her hands and ran back to us, blushing, like she hadn't wanted us to see that. She flinched as Xochi put a hand on her shoulder.

"Thank you," said the goddess quietly. Her smile meant it. She returned her gaze to the flowers, where it lingered. "They would appreciate that."