4 – 4

It all hits me in that moment. The scourging heat strikes like a horse's kick, driving the clean air from my chest in a single gasp. I breathe in hot, ash-choked air. It burns as it goes down, sticking to my throat and mouth. The fire's roar, where inside it had been a deafening, head-filling thing, was now the single loudest thing I have ever heard. I clap my hands over my ears as this ongoing explosion of forceful sound drives needles of pain into them. Ash and embers rain down and blanket in gray everything it touches: the buildings, the ground, and the people. A steady stream of sweat-soaked people come from the waterfront, bringing their empty buckets to the well in the center of the square. They cough mouthfuls of smoky phlem onto the ground as they go, reddened eyes streaming tears, but they don't stop. The farrier from yesterday works the well, tirelessly bringing bucket after bucket of the town's only hope from the well's depths.

All of this, just from being near the blaze. How much worse it must be, to stand directly in front of those licking tongues of gluttonous burn and defy it. It's madness, of a kind possessed by every person I can see. They don't stop. If the coughing overcomes them, to the point they double over from it and blood flecks their mouths, another will take the affected's bucket and their place in the fight. They don't stop. It's beautiful.

A coarse, scratching yell gets my attention. One of the firefighters has seen me, standing on the stoop of the Rest Luxuriant, and is coming towards me. He's young, of a height with me, and broad in his shoulders. His face and hair are painted gray by ash and streaked with sweat and tears. “What are you doing?!” he demands.

“I–”

He interrupts me, or maybe he can't hear me. The roar is beyond deafening. I don't know how I heard him before. I barely can, now. “If you're not gonna help, quit standin' 'round and get the hell outta here!” So, he implies, which will it be? Helping, or running?

I don't know, is the answer. I'm out here because I saw Harlan. He's here somewhere. Deciding to help him had been easy, up there removed from the heat and most of the noise. What kind of help can I give, anyway? Another bucket, maybe, but what good is that? What can one more bucket do in the face of that? Nothing, is what. It already isn't working. One more won't help.

Or is that just me being afraid? No, it can't be, I'm not afraid; I'm terrified. Say I help. Say I pick up a bucket, fill it with what paltry water it can carry, and join the line. I'd carry that little thimbleful in front of me like it can protect me, like it would shield me from the fire's hunger. I'd get closer and closer, the fire's tower growing higher and its roar louder, and then what? Throw the water on, watch it turn to steam? Run away, back to the well, to do it all over until the fire gets me?

No.

I can't.

I just can't.

There's ash and ember in my mouth, foully acrid on my tongue, and I swallow it down. Whoever this young man is, he sees my answer. Whoever he is, he's braver than me. He nods, once, and in that short gesture is all the understanding and acceptance that I don't deserve. He points, hand blistered and trembling, and shouts, “Follow that road south! We're gathering outside town, you'll see them!” His hand lands on my shoulder like a brand. Shame burns hotter than any fire in my heart, churns in my belly. It seems I am a coward. Not a week on my road and already I've learned something about myself I didn't know before.

With a push he starts me forward. As I stumble down the steps and away from the Rest, from the corner of my eye I see him returning to the bucket line. That bravery will see him dead before long. See Harlan dead, before long. How great a friend I am, to leave them to that. My eyes, long stung by smoke and now by shame, spill over with burning tears. I turn and I run away. Down the road to the south, past homes and shops yet to be consumed by the blaze. Past the people walking, shoulders bent under packs filled with what they need to survive. Past the people with arms full of what finery they possess, jealously clutched to their chests. Past the people who bring only their children, leaving behind all else.

I run until I feel the air begin to cool, until the ash and embers don't fall quite so thickly, and the roar of the fire has quieted enough that it leaves enough space in my mind for rational thought to begin its return. I slow to a walk and a cough scratches its way up and out my throat. It's followed by another, and another, and one again until I'm bowed over at the roadside coughing my lungs out. I hack and splutter and spit until it feels like my throat is scored by dozens of cuts and my chest hurts, and then, mercifully, it stops. I can taste blood on my tongue and in the hollows of my teeth.

The thick wad of phlegm that I spit onto the ground is an awful mix of ash and blood. It gleams wetly in the light of the lamps held by those who stream past me. They speak to each other, to themselves, in tones of quiet, tense hurry. They ignore the girl stained in ash, with shame in her heart and tears on her face. She who turned her back on a road-friend and wasn't even brave enough to tell him to run. She who was stupid enough to leave her belongings in a room that was probably ablaze. They ignore me. They're right to.

Until they don't. A cool hand touches my shoulder.

I look up.

“Zira?” Clarke asks.

- - -

I say nothing, because I can only say nothing. The simple act of breathing sprouts aches in my chest and drags handfuls of coarse sand across the open cuts in my throat. Blood, on my tongue, and in the hollows of my teeth. She looks at me first in confusion, then in surprise. I don't know why. Did she think I would be back there, fighting and failing alongside the brave? There's ash in her inkpot spill of hair, grayed well before her time. The ice gleams in the hollow of her throat, caged in silver and hanging from a ribbon of silk. I manage to rasp a greeting, a simple “'Lo,” and it's hateful.

Her blue, blue eyes are clear. Until I spoke, they'd been narrow, perhaps against the light of the fire behind us. When she hears the wet, croaking rasp that is currently my voice, they go wide. Her hand slides up from its place on my shoulder, brushing my neck, to cup my cheek in her palm. It's cool against my heated skin. Her fingers in my hair are gentle. “Breathe for me,” she murmurs, and I try. A stinging cough stops me. She nods, grimly, as if expecting as much. With her free hand she touches the ice at the hollow of her throat. Icy light blooms as she gathers magic in her hand. When she touches my skin and the cool, soothing wave of her magic travels from her to my, I close my eyes.

For the second time in as many days, I lose myself to the feeling of her. To the cool, fresh-blanket drape over the burning, cutting pain in my throat. To its snowmelt-stream taste on my tongue, and its chilly flow down into my chest, where it soothes and spreads until it fills every inch. Until it touches my heart. Then, just as swiftly as it came, it leaves, and leaves me healthy and whole once more. I open my eyes and there she is; eyes nearly aglow in reflection to her power, so very close to my own. “Breathe for me,” she says again, and I do. My face is in her hands, her fingers in my hair, and my chest swells painlessly as I breathe deep. I do it again, and once more, before the look of strong intent leaves her eyes. “Good,” she says, and just for a moment touches her brow to mine. “You worried me. You mustn't do that.”

“I...” I stop, trailing away. I'm sorry, is what I mean to say, but I can't. Not with my head full of how her palms cover my cheeks, or how the edges of her hand trace my jaw, or how her fingers are buried in my hair. That moment ends with a band of red flaring across her cheekbones and the bridge of her nose. She pulls away, and I must imagine the way her fingertips drag before she lets me go. “I'm sorry,” I finish, when I can think again. I step further away from her, and into the space between us comes crashing all of that I'd lost when she touched me.

It's a wretched brew.

An absolutely thunderous crash splits the air. It draws shouts and cries of surprised horror from the people nearby. Clarke spins around, back towards Valdenwood, and where the sound came from. A thick, billowing cloud of something rises into the air. More smoke, I think, to add to the soaring column, but I'm wrong. It's not the right color, and it more spreads than rises. Dust, I realize. It's dust. Clarke says, “I think...a building just collapsed.”

It sounds like a guess to my ears, but those around us take it as fact. It spreads quickly, the rising buzz of conversation filling the silence left in the wake of the crash. “Please, Miss!” A woman's voice from within the crowd. “Help them! Save them! Please!”

Her cry, her plea, is taken up by everyone. The weight of their collective hope, fear, and worry crashes into Clarke with a staggering blow. She takes a step back, away from them, and then another. The air, already clogged, fills even further with a strange and unpleasant tension that I can only name desperation. “I...” Clarke says, and there's regret in her voice as clear as the fear in her eyes. I need to do something, to either get the crowd away from her or her away from them. What, though? What can I alone do?

The crowd advances on Clarke, and she retreats. If I stay put, I'll be swallowed. Whatever I can do, it won't be from the depths of the desperate. It'll be from her side. I go to her and the sheer relief on her face when I do is something I'll keep close for a very long time. “What do you want to do?” I ask her. Too quiet to overhear, yet loud enough to be heard.

She doesn't answer, eyes flicking from the pillar of smoke rising from Valdenwood to the crowd of the fearful and desperate surrounding us. If she refuses them, I fear what will happen. I fear what they'll do. She has every right to do so, but I'm not sure they care. So I, and they, wait.