I See Fire | Wattys 2021/22 Shortlist | ✔

Chapter Fifty-Five

Coyol or Cihua must have cast the spell protecting my village before the real fight began. The bucking ground stilled as I stumbled within a stone's throw of Grillo Negro's tents, straight into Jem's arms.

"You're exhausted," he said. I could hardly hear his voice over the deafening rumble of the ground.

I pushed past him. "Bring everyone to the fire pits!"

He nodded wordlessly and ran off. I thrust my hands groundwards. A ring of fire roared to life around my village, singeing the dust from the air and cutting off all view of the world falling apart around us. Oh, gods, I had forgotten how taxing fire-walls were. It was going to take all my strength just to hold this one.

Jem had gathered everyone at the village center by the time I joined them. My parents caught me up in such a tight embrace, I thought they would never let go. I didn't want them to let go. I hugged them back. Even that momentary lapse sent dust creeping over my fire-walls. I released my parents and forced more energy into the flames, though my hands trembled from the effort. Jem's arms circled me from behind and held me tight. His closeness warmed me. Steadied me. I reached out and found the mental space between us. Don't let go.

I won't. You can do this.

A hand touched my shoulder. My mother squeezed it gently and smiled at me, then closed her eyes, her lips whispering through a prayer. Another hand found my other shoulder. My father.

You can do this.

Abraham's hand landed on Jem's back, his mother's on his shoulder, Elías's on hers. Like the links of magic, the web formed from the crowd. Some eyes were open, others closed. They were afraid, but they were here for me. For all of us. This was my village, and I would protect them until the day I died. Even if that day was today.

The shaking had spread up my arms now, but the fire-wall grew in spite of it. I couldn't hold on forever, but I could hold on for now.

Don't let go.

I won't.

He kissed the back of my head, his breath warm in my hair. You can do this. I believe in you.

Two more stars fell. The sky was a roiling mass of grey now, the normally flat clouds thick and stormy. Incessant flashes streaked them, but the only thunder was the thunder in the earth.

Another star. Were they fleeing to the ground? Or were they dying? At the next star, a collective breath caught in my family's throats.

Something moved in the clouds.

The world swam between dream and reality as a swamp-green snake as long as a mountain was tall dipped from the clouds, encased in silver lightning. Was that Cihua? I knew some of the gods had spirit forms, but I had only once seen a god with the strength to fight in one. This snake outstripped Quet's by miles. It swam like it looped through water, not air, then writhed as though bitten. The lightning shot down its body and plunged at the glow at its tail. If Coyol was backing Cihua now, the Centzon Huītznāuhtin must have dwindled too far to be of any use. Coyol was losing her armor.

The green snake writhed again. The glow had not relented, and as Cihua twisted, the clouds broke around a second snake, its teeth sunk in the first one's tail. For a heartbeat I could have believed it was Coyol. But the gleam of its ice-white body was colder than the moon, and the lightning that wreathed it was not silver. Emma's spirit form—or Cōātlīcue's, perhaps—wrapped around the green snake's lower half. Where it struck, frost made a rash of Cihua's scales.

I was standing in Xochi's vision. In the painting she had once made, curled on the couch in Tlalocan as we talked late into the night. Lightning lit the sky again, and firelight painted the ground. Even the flames were not enough to cover a rain of falling stars.