Before doing that, though, Kindred reached into the hearthfire, now crackling in a merry blaze, and lifted the cross of bones at its center, just enough so the bones were off the bed of ash. She sang an old song, its rhythms and melodies rough, tangled things, a technical song with little spirit, little music, no soul.
To sail was to explore, to push on, ever on; going backward was unnatural for a ship. The hearthfire was a force and it, too, longed for more, for what lay ahead.
Kindred left the bones hanging in the fire, floating, held up by her magic, her song—as unnatural as The Errant going backward. The toll on her, though, was massive; her tongue and teeth felt thick, the words of the song harder and harder to enunciate. The cross of bones hung heavy in the air.
This should have been a job for two keepers: one to stay with the hearthfire and another to bring the flames to the casting fires. Kindred cast a wild look around for Rhabdus, but the senior keeper, her presence so hated every other moment but this one, was absent.
With a flick of her wrist, Kindred spun the cross widdershins, and The Errant began sloughing backward, sullen and bitter. Kindred could feel the prairie grasses beneath them pulling at the hull with long, whispering fingers.
“Casting fire!” the captain yelled as another blast from the mages struck the ship, sending everyone not steadied or holding on to something tumbling to the deck.
Kindred picked herself up again, checked to make sure the bones were still spinning, wrenching the ship back, away from Arcadia. She leaned in and scooped some of the fire, the actual, flickering, ephemeral fire, feeling its warmth on her skin, closer to heat now that the exhaustion of pushing them backward had begun to set in.
She rushed along the deck, running with abandon, still singing her uncomfortable song, feeling herself split into two just as she was doing with the fire.
The captain was waiting with the other crew members when she got there, and the plants—their meager stores of defensive plants not bolstered or refilled by their time at port—were already in place as well.
Kindred dropped the flames, which had begun to bite at her hands. They trickled onto the dried plants.
And vanished with only a sizzle and a spot of smoke.
“Shit,” the captain hissed.
Ragged Sarah shouted from her nest above, warning of another incoming volley. It crashed into the hull, and though Kindred couldn’t see the damage, the jolt that threw her to the deck suggested it would be massive.
Kindred had begun to sweat, the effort required to keep the hearthfire burning, to keep the bones hovering, to keep them spinning—all of it too much, too much after running through Arcadia, after watching the devastation of Legate’s, after her grandmother’s death, her disappearance, her departure. She was thirsty. And tired. And scared.
She tried to rise from the deck but found she could not. Her legs were ghost-things not meant to hold.
The captain and the gathered crew stared at her, confused, but Kindred could not stop the song, not without stopping The Errant dead in the grass. Once a ship was sailing in the open Sea and all had been set right within a fire, a keeper could take time away—a few hours sleeping or eating or reading. But for a situation as this, tenuous as pressure on a knife point, she could not stop singing.
She slapped a weak hand against her chest and then mimed picking something up. It took a few times, but eventually, Little Wing understood. She scooped Kindred up and ran, somehow staying upright and moving even as another spell slammed into the side of the ship, rocking them sickeningly. In all of the chaos, Kindred focused on her song, on the spinning bones, on their retreat.
At the hearthfire again—the blaze was a jerky, stuttering thing; flames flared and died on the lengths of crossed bone—Little Wing lowered her, and Kindred reached out a shaking hand to scoop up more of the flames.
And nearly shouted at the heat of them. She was pushing herself too hard, too far—she was losing her connection to the hearthfire.
Another blast from the mages, though, reminded Kindred of her other options, and she steeled herself, singing juddering melodies through clenched teeth. She reached into the flames and scooped out a handful of fiery pain.
She watched the skin beneath the swaying flames begin to heat and bubble, her palm turning into a moving landscape, lit by a burning sun, transforming too quickly. Kindred might have been running or staying still—the world, the ship, Rhabdus, the crew, Little Wing, the mages, her grandmother, Ragged Sarah’s kiss, Mick’s treachery, Cantrev and his Collective: all of it disappeared and Kindred stared, lost in body and time, at the slow immolation of her hand.
The world returned as Little Wing set her down—roughly, with enough force to jar her teeth and make her realize she’d begun to slow in her singing, winding down toward the inevitable rest. She corrected with a massive effort of will, feeling as though she were being pressed between two boulders rolling slowly closer and closer, crushing her bit by bit.
“The flame, Kindred!” Captain Caraway said. “Light the flame so we can get some defenses up!”
She dropped her hand to the bundles of plants and released the flames, which filtered down through stems and leaves, leaving only smoky trellises reaching up until finally, finally a hungry flicker spread, and then several stems were burning, and then. And then.
Kindred lay back, holding her burned, raging hand to her chest, singing, singing, until she blacked out from pain, from exhaustion, from keeping the fire.
“Time for more wood on the fire?” the storyteller says, sensing the need to stand and stretch among those listening. Some children have fallen asleep, while others are coiled springs, barely containing their excitement.
A murmur of assent ripples through the listeners, and then they are alive, stretching limbs and asking their questions in quiet tones.
He can hear it all, for he has heard it all countless times before.
“A land bathed in light? Can you imagine?”
“So much and they fought over so little?”
“How have we never heard this tale before?”
The storyteller quirks a smile at these questions, thinking of his last time in Twist, the same questions, the same story. The darkness takes much—and the storyteller certainly will do his part in the taking before his visit is up—but this is perhaps the greatest theft. Memories, even the ones the storyteller will leave, have a way of disappearing without the daylight to give them substance and shine.
When he began so long ago, the storyteller spoke to a sea of nods and communal remembering.
Now he tells the world its history as if it’s a myth meant to frighten children and tickle the imagination.
The questions continue spreading, growing in scope and reach with each passing moment. But it’s the quiet ones the storyteller pays most attention to, their careful calculated looks, their silence. It’s these few who see him not as an object of curiosity, not just as a temporary reprieve from the horrors of the darkness.