“Again,” he said as he stepped back and released my hands.
A circle of fire grew in front of me where our hands had been. It was blocking my view of Chevelle, I tried to see through it and then it was gone. He was further back now; he raised his right hand and a stream of fire followed it and then curved in my direction. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to extinguish it before it was to me but my feet were frozen in place. What was the old saying? Fight fire with fire. I flung my arm toward the incoming stream of flames and a tongue of fire akin to a dragon’s shot out and collided with it. I was shocked. I'd only used my fire to light candles and lanterns, I had no idea I could produce such a vicious plume of flames. I looked at Chevelle. “Yes,” he exalted.
He raised his arms above his head to produce a massive circle of fire. When his eyes returned to mine, he smiled. He liked playing with fire. And then he shoved the fireball toward me with frightening speed. I threw both hands in front of me palms out and forced the largest mass of flame I could toward the ball of fire. Chevelle twisted his hands and it dodged up and then angled back toward me. I shook my hands frantically, spitting small bullets of heat at it, hoping to break it up. He pulled his hands apart and it split, each side curving back toward me; there were suddenly two now, closing in fast.
I leapt forward just as they collided where I'd been standing and lost my footing while I watched the fireworks behind me. I spun into a tumble to keep from landing flat on my face and was still thrilling from the fire play as I rolled to my feet. Magic. I let out a breathless laugh and Chevelle joined in, though he may have merely been amused by my fall.
We spent the next several hours there in the meadow, sculpting my craft. The exercises grew increasingly more difficult but it seemed Chevelle was only toying with me. He must have had much experience with fire magic; the flames he produced behaved like an obedient dog. Mine acted more like a wet cat.
Exhausted by the day’s work, I began to sway a bit. Chevelle led me to the base of an old willow and I slumped against the trunk and then slid down to lie on my back. Chevelle reclined against the tree, his legs coming to rest just above my head on the ground.
I gazed through the immense mass of leaves and branches overhead and breathed deeply. I felt I needed to explain. I rolled my eyes up to look at him as I lightly touched my cheek. “I was searching for my mother’s things…”
He didn’t respond, he merely continued as he had been, staring straight out into the meadow, so I returned to watching the canopy of leaves.
“… I can’t remember her…” I hadn’t really discussed this with anyone before but now I was talking and I didn’t know where to stop without a response from him. I kept on, explaining my dreams (leaving out the part I had read about the northern clans) and closed my eyes in an attempt to see them clearer. I was recalling the details, her dark hair blowing in the wind, the feeling of being trapped, when my thoughts faded into the blackness of sleep.
I woke in my own bed, lit by the dim light of a single flame suspended above my table. A flash of embarrassment hit as it dawned on me Chevelle must have placed me there; he must have seen my home, my room. And then I smiled, because he had left me a flame. I stretched my entire body, rejuvenated from the rest. I was unsure how long I'd slept but it looked like the sun was rising again and I wanted to be out of the house before I ran into Fannie.
It was probably too early to hope to see Chevelle. I'd spent the last two days with him but he hadn’t revealed anything of himself and that had only made me more curious. I retrieved the documents I'd hidden after my second trip to the library to find out whether they'd add anything to the terrible report from the council’s recorder. There wasn’t much new there, more names, but I did notice a watermark on one of the pages. I held it up to the light to better see. It was a council marking and something else.
I dug out the first pages from under my mattress and examined them closer. The pages directly from the recorder’s report all included the same council mark plus a string of characters. I tried to decode them, it seemed one of the symbols might have simply been page numbers. And the others, could they be locators? They did remind me of the codes used in the library, though more elaborate. No one really used the codes, you didn’t need them with magic, but they were added to many of the pages when the fairies had started tracking clan histories.
Then it hit me I might have had what I needed to find the northern clans in the council library. I suddenly found myself getting up and heading toward the village, regardless of the consequence.
I was back and forth the entire way to town.
I couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t keep myself from doing it.
What if I got caught?