My heart soared when he answered in English. "Are you okay? Who else is inside?"
"A small boy and an elderly man with a broken hand. The boy isn’t doing well. They both need medical attention, right away. Can you lift this shutter? I can't move it from the inside. There’s a fire in the back. Something in the storage room exploded. I'm worried something else will go off."
The man yelled at someone I couldn't see, and I heard the words 'vigile del fuoco.' The metal began to rattle and the man grunted as he strained at the shutter.
I looked down at Isaia and my heart stopped. His belly was glowing through his t-shirt. I dropped to my knees beside him. I took his hand but snatched it back, gasping as his heat burned me again. His black eyes were huge and filled with pain. "Isaia..." I fought to keep the panic from my voice and failed miserably.
The glow brightened and expanded. It spread wide across his abdomen, easily seen through his t-shirt.
Behind me, the old man babbled in Italian but then he paused and choked, "Madonna."
Isaia squeezed his eyes shut. Panic flapped wickedly like a bird in my heart. I forgot the growing fire in the back room as I watched the glow in his stomach move. It travelled into his chest and he made a choking sound. Helplessness and panic crashed like fighting rams inside me. I grabbed a bottle of water from a pile on the floor, fumbled the cap off and held it to his lips. His eyes opened, two glowing red embers.
Water spilled down the sides of chis face and into his ears, sizzling as it went. He spluttered and choked, unable to swallow. He coughed violently, and the glow in his chest split in two and began to crawl. One half moved out to his right shoulder and the other to his left. My fingers clenched and unclenched helplessly. My hand flew to my mouth in horror and I fought not to hyperventilate. The crackle of flames, the stench of burning plastic, and the yelling voices had all faded into the background.
The two glows in Isaia's shoulders traveled down each arm, flickering as they went. He wheezed heavily.
"Why can't you drink?" I cried. I poured a little water over his lips but it just ran down his face and evaporated into steam. His eyes rolled up in his head and back at me.
I squinted against the light. The white-hot glow traveled into his hands and stopped in his palms. His body began to shake. He turned his palms up, each as bright as a star and every finger glowing red. The light in his eyes faded slowly, and that scared me as much as seeing the glow appear in the first place. It looked like he was dying.
"Isaia," I whimpered. I had never felt so utterly helpless. "What's happening to you?"
He is dying. I could see death creeping up on him as surely I could hear my own heartbeat pounding in my ears.
Before I could register anything, he slammed his bright white palms flat against my stomach. The movement was so fast and so full of strength and intention that his body seemed controlled by someone or something else, like a puppet. A scream caught in my throat when he hit me. All that escaped was a wisp of breath, like a sigh. I did not feel heat against my stomach, but a sharp cold feeling instead, like dry ice. I coughed, and a wisp of smoke drifted from my mouth. Isaia's eyes closed, his head flopped back, but his hands were still locked on my abdomen.
There was a white-hot flash of light and it was then that I felt the heat. The scream that had been trapped in my throat ripped out of me.
Isaia’s eyes opened again and he blinked as though waking. He looked down at his hands, still against my belly. He looked up at me and there was a flash of apology in his expression. His hands fell away and he lay back against the floor.
I collapsed with my forehead to the ground. Nausea clutched my stomach and I gagged. First, only smoke and bile came up, and then I retched and lost my breakfast. I spat and struggled for breath. I retched again and flaming embers spewed out. I sucked in air and coughed hard. An ember the size of a pebble came up to my tongue. I spat it sideways, away from Isaia, and watched with horror as it skipped across the floor like it had been shot from a gun, leaving a smoking black gouge. It lodged in the stone wall. I blinked, unable to understand what I was seeing. The ember flickered and cooled to black. Surely, it hadn't come from me? Not possible.
My stomach and throat burned like I had swallowed a cupful of magma. Recovering the power of my limbs, I fumbled for water and found the bottle on the ground. My insides screamed for something cold and wet. I opened my throat and downed the whole bottle. The liquid sizzled as I swallowed it down, soothing my seared guts.
I dropped the bottle, panting. My eyes felt hot and hard. I looked down at Isaia. He coughed, but he actually looked much better. He pushed himself up into sitting. He reached for a bottle of water. I watched, dazed, as he got the cap off and drank the entire thing. Dropping the empty bottle, his eyes traveled from my eyes to my belly and back up again, blinking and wide.
I looked down. There was no glow, but the fire was there—I could feel it. It was banked and waiting. "Isaia!" I croaked. I didn’t recognize my own voice. It was rough. Scratchy. Burnt. "Isaia." I put a hand on his forehead. He was damp and much cooler. It was the first time I had ever seen him sweat. "What have you done to me, Isaia?" I whispered.
He tried to get up. He coughed again. A violent cough from the man behind me brought me to myself. We were still in danger.
Another screaming firecracker went off behind us and I pushed Isaia down. Smoke rolled across the ceiling. It filled the space over our heads and slowly drifted down. Voices yelled outside and the shutter rattled. The metal screamed and the shutter moved a half inch. Light streamed in through the crack at the bottom.
Isaia coughed and then pointed repeatedly and urgently at the flames. I knew instantly what he was trying to tell me. It was plain on his face and plain in the knowledge that I had only moments ago acquired.
The knowledge of fire.
It was sitting in my guts and talking to me. The pain of it was there, sharp and hot. I had been inducted. I understood now why it had been making him sick—he was far too frail for what I now carried. What he had wasn't an illness, it was a barely containable power. It strained at me, like a huge hungry dog pulling on leash. No wonder it was killing him.
Isaia coughed harder. The elderly man moved toward the shutter, coughing all the while. He and Isaia put their faces down low - close to the holes in the shutter to inhale clean air. They both had their backs to me now.
"Fuoco! Fuoco!" Shouts could be heard outside.
But I was in here, and I could do something. I looked at the flames and felt... affection. I wasn’t afraid of it. It was just the combustion of oxygen and organic materials - simple pyrolysis. I was more afraid of the fire sitting inside me than the fire consuming the back room. Except that I knew this fire could hurt or kill Isaia. It had to be stopped.