CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I hadn't done any real dancing since the winter show. I knew I should have wanted to, but there was something comforting about wearing my necklace. I was pretty sure that I had neutralized the demon. After all, I hadn't felt any desire to go out and wreak havoc or take over the world or anything, but I still had this tiny bit of doubt in the back of my mind that maybe it was just because I had been wearing my necklace non-stop around my wrist and that if I took it off something bad would happen.
I didn't want to admit it, but there was also a fear in the back of my mind that I would only do more harm than good by dancing. After all, I was directly responsible for the death of so many people because of my performance. Even though Jack had told me that it wasn't really my fault, that there was no way I could have known that I was a pawn in their sick plan to summon a demon, there was no denying that they couldn't have done it without me.
But I told myself that it was either face my fears and dance or live with a constant reminder around my neck that I would rather artificially keep myself balanced than live my life to the fullest. Besides, I reminded myself, the first time I realized that dancing was the key to balance in my life was after getting bit by a vampire, and dancing had cleansed myself of the nightmares I had that were associated with that experience. Maybe dancing would help cleanse myself of these doubts, too. I'm sure that that's what the me in the fiery dress would say.
I slipped my makeshift bracelet off my wrist and made little, hesitant steps to the beat of the music. The steps became bolder as I got into the music, and soon I was able to fall into the deep trance I found myself in any time I danced. I reached out to the inner me, the one with the brightly-colored dress.
I'm here, I said. I'm trying to heal.
You came to the right place, I heard her voice say.
I was thrown for a loop. Her voice was different. It was still mine, but just a tiny bit deeper.
Brace yourself for something really awesome, she said.
I kept dancing, just me in the dark for a few seconds, when suddenly I was almost blinded by a pillar of fire that spontaneously flared up in front of me. The pillar of fire disappeared, and left the inner me there.
She was wearing a fire dress. I mean, I had described her dress as fiery before, but just because it was shorter than constantly thinking of it as 'the red and orange and yellow dress sewn to look like a flickering candle when dancing'. Now her dress was fire. She wasn't on fire, it was that it looked like someone had found a way to make fire into a cloth and had cut out a pattern to sew into the dress she was now wearing.
She looked different, too. Taller, a bit more toned, longer hair, and slightly sharper facial features. Still like me, but... older, maybe?
Pretty neat, huh? She asked me.
Wow. Wow, was all I could muster out.
It happened after you defeated the demon. Before you ask, no, I don't think that this is any of the demon's power. I mean, I'm not going to rule out the possibility, but it just doesn't feel like it. It feels more like... that maybe... hmm. I'm not sure how to describe it, really. Um. Okay. I did my best to help you channel that fire demon's power, and as he did have to inhabit us in order for us to guide him to the wards, there was a certain amount of interaction between me and him involved. I got to pick his brain, if you will. And seeing some of the things he knew helped me gain this knowledge of how to control fire. Except I didn't get it from him. It was more like it reminded me of something I already knew but had forgotten. I still have a feeling like I'm not remembering something, but this is definitely a start.
So... who are you, then? You dodged the question last time I asked, but now you're talking as though you're not a part of me. You look and sound different, too.
Honestly, it's because I didn't know the answer last time. I still don't know who I am, but I'm pretty sure that I am a part of you. I'm still me, but I'm also you. Yikes. This is also difficult to describe. My theory is that I am my own being, but I couldn't be myself if it weren't for you, and I think that the same goes for you, too. I don't know anything you don't know, and you know everything I know, but a lot of it is buried deep in your subconscious.
So... you are a part of me and you wouldn't exist if it weren't for me, but you have your own sense of self beyond that?
Yeah. And don't forget, you wouldn't be you without me.
Do you have a name?
Of course. You have a name, so I have a name.
Your name is Makenna?
Yep!
Can we agree on a nickname so we don't get confused?
Sure. You can call me Lady Brightfire, Goddess of the Burning Sun and Ruler of All.
Umm...
I'm kidding. Brightfire does sound good, though. Kind of like a superhero name. HEY you should become a vigilante and use that as your super identity! Ha ha. Seriously, though, I'm good with anything. Azar, Fiametta, Nina, Hreghen, Urit, Huo, Adena - they all mean fire. Adena's good, I think. By the way, you're totally on fire.
What?
Nobuko's freaking out. Just thought you'd like to know.
Leaving it at that, she danced off into the dark, leaving glowing footprints behind her. I shrugged it off and kept dancing, but after a few seconds I heard a screaming in the distance. I opened my eyes and realized that the screaming was coming from someone in the room with me. I stopped dancing and looked towards the source. Nobuko was in the studio next to the door. She had stopped screaming, but was staring at me, open-mouthed in shock.
"Are you okay?" I asked.
"You... were on fire. Your feet! But... are they burned?"
I looked down at my bare feet. They looked normal. I lifted one up to look at the bottom and see if maybe the heel looked burned. It was a nice, normal pink color, but the wood under where I had been standing was most definitely not okay. There was a foot-shaped spot that had charred through the varnish and into the wooden floor. I looked around the rest of the studio. Sure enough, there were black footprints all around the studio.
Oh. I see. Adena and Nobuko weren't complimenting me. My feet were actually on fire. Well, this was an interesting development.
"WHAT IS GOING ON?!" Nobuko shouted.
"That... is a very, very long story. Very long. It ends with me apparently unlocking some sort of ability to spontaneously produce fire that doesn't actually burn me, though the dance floor doesn't take too kindly to it. Yikes. I hope I can fix that. So what brings you here?"
"I was trying to look for you, wanted to know if you needed a ride home. I couldn’t find you, I even started driving to your house. I came here, thinking maybe you’d be just crazy enough to stay after school at the start of winter break... before we change the subject too much, what the hell do you mean you can spontaneously produce fire?"
"Ah. Ha ha," I chuckled nervously. Was there any way of getting around the truth? I doubted it. "Long story short, my parents can do magic, they named me and my siblings after the elements, I was named after fire and have had an affinity for it, so during the winter show I summoned a fire demon - TOTALLY didn't mean to, but there you go - and then I had to defeat it and when I did I unlocked some sort of subconscious knowledge on how to summon fire I THINK but who really knows."
She looked at me blankly for several moments, then angrily said, "Did you set the stage on fire after the show? Is that what you're trying to do now? You know, I thought you were a good person. Maybe a bit mean from time to time, but for the most part really nice and honest. I guess I was wrong." She turned around to leave and put her hand on the door handle.
"Nobuko, wait! I know it sounds crazy, but really, I can explain!" She ignored me and pushed on the door handle. In the split second that I heard the handle click open, my heart stopped beating in panic. In the very next moment - maybe even the same moment? - Nobuko let out a little shriek and jumped away from the door, waving her hands around in pain. The h
andle was a deep, glowing red color, though was quickly fading back to its silver color.
"Sorry! Sorrysorrysorrysorrysorry!" I said quickly as I ran to her side to help. She was blowing on her palm, which was already a deep red color and had small blisters forming on the pressure points of her palm. I didn't know for certain that I was the one that caused the door handle to burn her, but I wasn't going to start ruling out the possibility that I had, no matter how unintentional.
I gently but firmly grabbed her hands to inspect them. She tried pulling away at first, but I gave her a disapproving look and she let me take them. They were really red and already developing blisters.
"Oh crap. Oh crap oh crap oh crap," I said over and over. I was panicking - maybe dancing wasn't going to work for me anymore. Maybe I was going to start spontaneously setting things on fire if I wasn't wearing my necklace. I felt terrible that I had hurt poor, sweet Nobuko.
I could hear a whispering inside my head. It was Adena, who apparently didn't need me to ask for help any more for her to volunteer her expertise. Try healing her, she said.
How? I don't have any medicine. I'll have to take her to Doctor Morrison.
Take away the fire from her hands.
They aren't on fire, I replied, irritated.
That doesn't mean they don't feel like they're on fire.
Fine. Fine.
I dropped one of Nobuko's hands and took the other one in both of mine. I closed my eyes, and felt how hot the skin of her palm felt under mine. I focused on taking the heat from her hand into mine, like a scaled-down version of what I did with the demon. It didn't do anything at first, and Nobuko tried pulling her hand away, but I caught her wrist and said, "No. Just gimme a minute."
She relaxed enough that I didn't have to restrain her, but I could still feel the tension in her hands. I gently cradled it palm side up in one hand, and I laid my other palm on hers and focused again on trying to take away the heat in her palm. This time I could slowly feel my palm growing warm, and hers growing cool beneath mine.
When I was pretty sure I was done, I opened my eyes and looked at her palm again. There were still blisters, but they were smaller and her skin was no longer red. Nobuko stared at her hand in disbelief. While she was distracted with that, I took her other hand and did the same thing.
My hands felt like they were burning, but the burning feeling was gradually going away. At the rate they were healing themselves, they'd feel back to normal within a half hour. They didn't even look bad.
"What... what?" Was the only thing Nobuko could manage to say.
"Your guess is as good as mine. How do your hands feel?"
"Fine - It doesn't even feel like they were burned. The blisters don't even hurt that much!"
"Great! I'm just finding out all sorts of cool stuff about myself today. Hey, I wonder if I can fix the floor..." I walked over to a charred spot on the floor and put my hand on top of it. I tried taking away the burn, but it was harder to get the process started than it had with Nobuko's hand, and after a few seconds the heat was too much for me to bear. I drew my hand back with a sharp breath in and shook it out. My hand was definitely red, and it was probably going to take a full hour instead of a half hour for the hotness to fade away. The scorch mark had only barely faded away, too. I was disappointed.
I turned back to Nobuko. "So. Since there's really no making up a logical explanation for this, and since I've already given you the Cliffs notes version of all this anyway, would you like to hear the unabridged version?"
She looked at me as though I was a monster (I didn't blame her), then nodded slowly. We grabbed some fast food on the way to my house and ate up in my room.
I explained as much as I felt was reasonable, from how long I’d been aware of my connection to fire to what happened after the dance show. It required me to leave out a lot of stuff that perhaps would have provided clarification to my past behavior, but Jack’s parentage was not my secret to tell, and without explaining his paternity his role in my adventures didn’t make any sense, so in the end I had to glaze over much of my story. I felt bad, but I remembered what Jack said about people going mad once they learned about the magic world, so I tried to lead her to believe that maybe it was just a weird coincidence that my wardcarver parents moved into a town where some kids were able to find a way to practice real magic and that it was almost unreal that an actual demon materialized. I also left out the part where Dane was missing, since she took it hard enough that almost half of the dance club were killed by something she wouldn’t have even believed in if she hadn’t seen what I was able to do.
She left my house after asking only a few questions, claiming that she was starting to feel sick. I didn’t blame her, and let her know that she was welcome to talk to me at any time. Not that she wanted to have anything to do with me for a while, I was sure, but I tried to give her the impression that I was still me, just able to manipulate fire in a way I hadn’t been able to before. She gave me a halfhearted smile and said, “Yeah, okay. Thanks.”
The weekend went just as badly as the previous couple of afternoons. The most I could do was just make sure that mom and dad were led to the dining area three times a day for food and water. They didn’t spend all their time on the living room couch; sometimes they would go to the workroom, presumably to try and come up with something new to carve, or maybe even something they were familiar with, just to get back in the normal flow of life, but they were never there for more than a half hour at a time, and mom usually came back with really red eyes as though she had been crying, and dad came back looking exhausted.
I ended up calling Nobuko on Saturday in hopes that maybe she would still be willing to be my friend. She seemed to have recovered a bit, and I ended up hanging out with her for most of Saturday afternoon. We went back to the consignment shop and tried to goof off, trying on the ugliest dresses we could find, but we couldn’t maintain a lighthearted mood at all. We settled on going to her house and watching a depressing romance movie. I didn’t like romances at all, normally, but there was something so ridiculously tragic about the movie that I was able to lose myself in the story and tolerate it for a couple of hours.
I had to go home earlier than I would have liked to, but her family was taking the winter break as an opportunity to go back to Japan and visit some family there, so she needed to take time to pack her bags.
When Monday rolled around I found myself growing more and more depressed about my situation. All of my closest friends were – or had been – in the dance club. Nobuko was out of the country; the girls that were still alive were preparing for the swiftly coming Christmas day with family traditions or shopping for last minute gifts.
My family did normally celebrate Christmas, but to me this year the idea of celebrating felt forced. Besides, we hadn't received any word from Ammon as to whether he would be joining us or not, so there wasn't much motivation to even try to pretend. Arvin seemed really upset, especially when he realized that we wouldn't even have presents to open, so Christmas Eve we set out early in the day to buy a couple of presents for everyone as well as food for a traditional Christmas dinner. We "borrowed" mom's bank card and were actually able to pull together a decent haul for Christmas day. We got a bunch of nice scarves for mom, a bunch of CDs and DVDs for dad, and a jewelry box for Terra, who broke away from her new apartment long enough to actually spend the day with us. I got Arvin a ten gallon fish tank and equipment, plus some water frogs and a couple of fancy gold fish to go with it. He was really surprised by it - we never kept pets, but now that I knew about our elemental connections I figured that he'd be more than capable of taking care of some small water animals on his own. He found some really fantastic origami paper for me as well as a book on some of the more difficult folds, and I was fairly touched by the thoughtfulness of the gift.
Mom and dad were healing enough that they weren't just sitting on the couch all
day any more, and having a traditional Christmas morning seemed to help quite a bit. They still didn't talk a lot, and they had yet to leave the house, but mom helped me out with making Christmas dinner, so I was starting to feel hope that all was not lost. It ended up a disaster, by the way - I had never roast a turkey before, and I somehow managed to get it burnt and dry on the outside and undercooked in the middle. Everyone was really nice about it, though, and ate at least one piece of the burnt and dry parts. The rapidity we went through the gravy may or may not have directly correlated to the dryness of each piece.
We stayed up late to drink hot chocolate and watch a Christmas movie, and by the time Terra bid us goodbye it was nearly midnight. I went to my room feeling content once everyone turned in, and while "content" isn't necessarily "good", it was certainly better than the "worried that child services is going to take me and Arvin away" mood I'd been in for almost two weeks.
While I was pretty tired, I was also feeling curious as to whether or not ghosts celebrated Christmas, so I pulled my chair up to my window and sat patiently, hoping it wouldn't be in vain. One o'clock rolled around and ghoulishly green figures started appearing on the far side of the cemetery. Within a half hour the cemetery was fairly full - there weren't as many ghosts there as there had been at the party I had attended a couple months previous, but there was still a fair turnout.
I almost dozed off, but a thunk against my window startled me awake. I sat up quickly, scared that someone was trying to break in. No one was directly in front of my window, so I looked out and around. Jack was perched on the fence, another pebble in hand.
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