The layers of flames between me and the very back of the storage room were visible to me now - like set pieces making up a landscape. Red flames consumed wood in front, spurts of blue flames consumed gas in back. Chemiluminescence - atoms rearranging, glowing with light. Why did I know that? Physics and chemistry were my worst subjects.
These flames were dirty. Particles glowed red and yellow - simply incandescent soot and smoke. Radiation swam in my vision like a mirage wavers in the desert. There was heat in here, intense heat. But it stroked across my skin like silk. I had changed at the atomic level. The atoms in my skin didn’t vibrate in the presence of heat like a normal persons anymore. I sucked smoke into my lungs, but it didn’t choke me. I exhaled. The smoke jetted from my mouth and nose. My body extracted the oxygen it needed and I breathed out the rest. Isaia’s eyes had glowed from the intense heat inside him, the brighter the light the hotter the heat. It all made sense to me now… except for the fact that it had been there in the first place. And now it was in me. I should be dead, but I wasn’t.
The shutter screeched, but it was a distant sound. I raised my hands to the flames. They flickered toward me in response. The fire outside of me was a frolicking puppy, a bucking horse. The fire inside of me was pure energy. It was nuclear, and it had consciousness.
Using the power of the fire inside me and simple will to kill the flames, I pushed them toward the back room, wringing the oxygen out, stealing it from them. Whatever magic Isaia had given me, I could see it in the wavering from my fingertips. The flames had been fed by oxygen through the window in the back of the shop. But though there was plenty of air to feed this fire, it was now dying instead. Because of me.
As the fire dwindled, blackened shelves and smouldering boxes were revealed in its wake. The flames licked through the doorway. They curled like fingertips clawing for purchase on the smoking doorjamb. The fingers disappeared and I followed them, suffocating them.
I stepped through the doorway. Shadows of shelving and boxes appeared and disappeared in my vision, all of it lined with glowing embers. The sound of crackling flames had become a kind of music in my ears. The curling smoke made a stream in the air as it was sucked out the rear window.
The last of the flames flickered and went out. I lowered my hands. I felt as though I'd just woken from a dream. Goosebumps swept across my skin at the power I held. The burning sensation inside me had increased and licked at me sharply from the inside. I put a hand over my stomach. I needed a drink, I felt parched.
I watched currents of smoke curl and drift. Dying embers highlighted the edges of the ruined contents of the room. Charred boxes lined the shelves like rows of lumpy headstones. Unrecognizable items smouldered and jutted from holes in boxes like broken bones poking up through blackened skin.
Voices called and I turned. Light streamed in through the front door of the shop. It lit up the mess on the floor and illuminated the smoke. The shutter juddered and jarred as it was shoved upward the rest of the way, filling the air with a horrible sound. I winced and covered my ears.
I squeezed my eyes shut as vertigo swept over me. Had it all been a dream? As though in answer, the fire inside me flickered and danced underneath my ribcage. There was nothing dreamy about the heat residing in me now. I opened my eyes, thinking of Isaia.
He looked back at me, his little chest heaving with coughs, but his eyes void of pain for the first time since I'd met him. He actually smiled, coughed again, and then beckoned me with his hand.
"I'm coming," I croaked.
The man looked over his shoulder. He took Isaia's hand and gestured to me with a jerk of his head. He cradled his injured hand against his chest.
I crossed the shop in a few quick strides, my feet crunching on broken glass. The stinging of my left palm and my knee reminded me that I was still human. My ankles ached from having been twisted earlier.
I took Isaia's other hand, and as hands reached to steady us, we ducked under the shutter and stepped out into the sunlight.
Twelve
Less than an hour later, I sat on a park bench under the trees with Isaia cuddled on my lap. Isaia and I had both guzzled as much water as we wanted. The pain in my gut was manageable. Isaia coughed occasionally, but seemed otherwise relaxed. The emergency personnel hadn't allowed us to leave in spite of my pleas to take Isaia home. Caution tape had sprung up in a wide berth around the tabacchi, and a crowd had gathered to watch the uniformed police and firemen going in and out of the shop and talking with each other, taking notes.
My phone chirped and I pulled it out and blinked at it, feeling dazed.
Fed: Ciao Bella. I'm off tomorrow eve. Meet me?
I stared at the message, not comprehending it. I couldn't even bring Federica's face to my mind right now. I tucked my phone away without responding.
When we'd finally escaped the shop, a medic had pulled the man aside to where a gurney had been erected. Isaia and I had been taken into an ambulance boat in a nearby canal. Medics fussed over us, checked our vitals, and listened to our lungs. They cleaned and bandaged my hand and knee. My ankles had been twisted, but not sprained. They'd iced and wrapped them.
Isaia showed more fascination for the ambulance boat than distress from the ordeal. He had suffered some smoke inhalation but the medics said that otherwise, he was unharmed. He was to rest, and he would cough for a few days but it should clear up on its own. If anything else arose, I was to bring him to the hospital.
While my hand was bandaged, I had numbly given an account of what happened to an English-speaking police officer. I told them about the man in the green sweater. I left out everything about Isaia passing his fire to me. I thought the officer had bought my story that the flames had gone out on their own. Isaia and I had been released from the ambulance and told to wait until we were dismissed to go home.
I watched from the park bench, moths fluttering in my stomach, as the man told his version of the story to another officer. His cheek had been bandaged. He gestured toward me, and his voice rose and fell with emphasis.
The officer shot several glances in my direction. When he was finished taking the man's statement, he made a beeline for me. I shrank down against the bench, holding Isaia tighter. The fluttering moths morphed into panicked bats flapping against my ribcage.
The officer looked down at me, his dark eyes serious. "I'm Officer Zambelli. I am told you are a hero," he said with a thick accent.
I shook my head emphatically. "No, no, definitely not."
"If what Signor Fantelli told me is true, you are. You were the first person on the scene after the break-in and assault, and you called for help. After the shutter collapsed, you put out the fire. Is all that true?"
I shook my head. "The fire went out on its own." Maybe the old guy hadn't said anything about the white light that passed from Isaia to me. I shot him a grateful look. He was just staring at me, watching while the officer and I talked.
"You didn't put it out? He seems to think you did."
"No. The flames just went out," I croaked weakly.
"Signor Fantelli says the storage room had fireworks inventory and benzene lighters. All three of you are very lucky to have survived. It's very strange. A small window in the rear was wide open. That fire should not have gone out on its own." He studied my face, his gaze unwavering.
"Thank God it did," I rasped. "May I take Isaia home now? He's been awfully frightened. We both have."
We looked down at Isaia, sitting on the bench beside me. He dangled his legs and watched the action. He looked up at us. He was covered in soot and looked like a street urchin, but he was happier than I'd ever seen him.