Mark of the Fool

“—and so heat rises, travelling as high as it can go,” Shiani was saying, pointing to the flame. It was a tiny, controlled flicker caged within an oil lamp in the table’s centre. Glass walls surrounded the small fire, caging it in, giving it no opportunity to grow and spread to the books and papers sprawled around the lamp’s brass base.

The fire was harmless, Selina told herself, though she was still having a hard time keeping her eyes on it.

She could barely hear Shiani’s calming voice, her mind warring with the flickering dance of flame. With every bob and quiver, the fire drew more of her attention, its beauty held her gaze…yet also stoked a spark of guilt that made her want to turn away.

She forced herself to watch and to listen.

If she wanted this…affinity of hers to become something good, she’d have to do just that.

“Are you okay?” Shiani asked, pausing the lesson. “We can take a break if you need one.”

“No! No, I’m okay,” the young girl insisted, clenching her jaw. This was the third time Shiani had asked her that, and each time it made Selina just a little more irritated.

But her annoyance wasn’t directed at the fire mage; it was at herself.

‘If I keep acting like a little kid that everyone’s got to treat like glass, I’ll never do anything good with this fire affinity,’ she thought, forcing herself to listen and watch the flame. ‘I’ll just keep being that scared, stupid little girl who always runs away from fire and monsters.’

Her hand clenched beneath the table. ‘Stupid little girl, stupid! Focus!’

She looked up at Shiani, noticing the worry on the young woman’s face, and faked a smile. “You were saying heat rises?”

There was a pause.

“Yes…” Shiani said slowly, carefully watching the young girl. “Heat radiates off of any fire, but the heat will travel up. It’s why you can put your hand close to the side of the lamp and have it be fine, but your fingers will burn if you hold them over the flame. Ah, careful—”

To test it for herself, Selina waved a hand over the fire while the other one hovered near the glass. It was definitely hotter above the lamp, she frowned, a familiar thought in her mind.

Fire was a cruel thing. It really was.

If a fire started at the bottom of a building, the heat would rise, reaching anyone upstairs and stopping them from getting away because they couldn’t get downstairs to run out the door to safety. They’d be trapped. If heat travelled down instead of up, then people would have a better chance of getting out of the building and not dying from the smoke and flames.

She said as much to Shiani, who frowned.

“Fire is not a cruel thing, to my people,” Shiani said. “It’s no crueller than water or wind or sunlight. Think about it this way: if heat travelled down, then we’d have a harder time cooking our food. We’d need to put our pots under the flame, and just think about how hard that would be to do.”

“Wind and sunlight don’t burn people alive,” Selina said darkly, wondering if there was something wrong within her mind. How could she think that something so awful was beautiful?

“Wind can sweep away crops,” Shiani said sadly. “If it’s strong enough, it can blow houses down, tear a mother’s baby from her arms and blow them into the sea to drown. Wind can uproot trees and blow away good soil. Water can drown animals or people. The sea can flood and wash away homes. Sunlight can burn peoples’ skin or make them die of thirst if it’s strong enough. These things are just as cruel.”

Selina frowned, trying to compare those things to the hunger of flame.

Shiani kept talking. “And besides, in your example…if the roof burned first, then—if heat travelled down—it’d burn every living thing below and they still wouldn’t get away.”

“...that’s true, I guess,” Selina said. “Which means that fire can do good and bad, just like the sun, water and wind.”

“Exactly.” Shiani smiled brilliantly. “And…many people here feel that fire is a thing of death. But to my people, it’s life.”

“How can it be life?” Selina asked.

“When a forest burns down, the ash feeds the soil and makes the new trees grow healthier,” the fire mage said. “Fire helped my people fight the monsters on our island back before we knew the power of metal or blade. And fire can even bring life...have you ever heard of the phoenix?”

“Feeee nicks,” Selina sounded the word out. “No?”

“Okay, well,”Shiani began. “A phoenix is a sacred creature to my people. They live on the elemental plane of fire, in the celestial planes, and even here in the material world in deserts and volcanoes. They’re birds with the most brilliant and beautifully coloured feathers of crimson and gold, and they can command fire better than any dragon can. Fire isactually life to them, and so they can never truly die.”

“They’re immortal?” Selina asked the fire mage. “We learned about immortals in class: so these phoenixes never die?”

“They do and they don’t,” Shiani said.

Selina frowned, about to point out the contradiction when she remembered where she was now living. This wasn’t Thameland. There were so many strange and impossible things that were commonplace in Generasi that she’d just learned to accept them with few or no questions. It was a sentiment shared by many of her classmates, and—as a private joke—they’d started answering all of their teachers’ questions about magical andnatural phenomena with a simple phrase:

A wizard probably did it.

Their teachers were less than amused.

And she didn’t want to do that to Shiani.

“Do they…come back to life?” Selina asked. “Everyone says that’s impossible. My teachers say that. Alex told me that Baelin said so too.”

“That’s true, as far as I know.” Shiani pointed to the fire. “But what happens if I blow this fire out?”

“Um…it would go out?” Selina proposed.

“That’s right, it would.” Shiani leaned over the lamp and gave a quick puff through pursed lips. The flame snuffed out, fading into nothing more than a single ember, and a trailing line of white smoke. “But what happens if we reignite it?”

She uttered a single word of power.

There was a…shift in the air, one that felt warm; Selina wondered if she was starting to feel mana, like Alex could. Or maybe it was just fire mana, since she only felt it when flame magic was being conjured.

The power flowed from Shiani, settling into the glowing ember and setting it alight again. Selina’s eyes widened; watching the flame return made her feel like when she’d seen Claygon take his first steps.

She tamped down the guilt that came with that thought.

“And, the flame is back,” Shiani said. “We have an expression among my people: As long as there is fuel, the fire never dies. And that is the way for phoenixes. They are birds of fire, and when they die, it’s like a candle being snuffed out. But, with a little fuel, they can come to life in great explosions of fire. To them, fire is life. And with the glory of flame, they can live for millenia, burning from one life to the next.”

“But wait,” Selina said. “Fire can only come back if there’s fuel, you said. So what’s their fuel?”

Shiani shrugged. “I asked my fire magic professor that very question. And…we don’t really know for certain. For a few centuries we thought it was mana, but phoenixes burn back to life even in places where there’s little to no mana. And the mana in their bodies dissipates when they die, so there’s nothing left to rekindle their life. So mana can’t be the fuel source.”

She tapped the side of her head. “Then my teacher said that wizards used to think that phoenixes burned their own memories as fuel: so they would come back to life, but with each life, they would forget their old memories and begin anew. But, around two hundred years ago or so, some other wizards went straight to the source and asked the phoenixes themselves to see if they could finally get an answer to that question; and what they learned was that they remember their past lives perfectly! So memories weren’t the answer to them returning to life. Then we wizards guessed that it was the soul that was the fuel—and a little burned away each time they resurrected—but they soon realised that phoenix souls grow more powerful, not less powerful over time. That’s why ancient phoenixes look like miniature suns when they come back to life.”

That image caught hold of Selina’s imagination, refusing to let go; a great, powerful bird like Najyah, rising from ash in a glorious flower of flame.

“But, then what is their fuel?” Selina frowned, more puzzled than before.

“As far as we know, they might not need fuel.” Shiani spread her hands helplessly. “Fire elementals burn forever without fuel; maybe phoenixes are the same. As much as we know about magic, we still don’t understand everything. Our professors don’t, at least.”

“Hmmmm.” Selina looked back at the flame. “Fire that burns forever…scary. How would you put it out?”

“Maybe some flames aren’t always meant to be put out,” Shiani said. “Maybe that’s what makes some fire so wonderful. Like the sun, burning forever to warm our world.”

Selina glanced at the sun through the window for a moment, squinting against the light. “So if the sun was gone…it’d be cold here.”

“Well, you would be cold if someone moved a campfire away from you on a cold night, wouldn’t you?” Shiani offered.

The young girl frowned, turning this over in her mind. “So…can you move fire with magic? Do you know any spells like that?”

“Hmmm, there’s a spell called Control Flame,” Shiani said. “But, it’s mostly used for stifling fires or keeping them burning longer. Wizards who get very good with it can even make fire walk around like it has legs.”

Selina held her hand over the oil lamp, feeling the heat. “Can you move heat with that spell?”

“What do you mean?” Shiani asked.

“I mean, could you make the heat just…go away from somewhere, like making a fire walk away? Then with the heat gone, it’d be cold?”

“I’ve…never heard of anything like that,” Shiani said, pondering the question. “Maybe…I don’t know, I’ve never thought of that before. Or heard of anyone trying anything like it. Controlling fire itself is different, I think.”

“Why is it different?” Selina frowned. “Fire’s just a lot of heat and light, isn’t it?”

“No, it’s…I mean, that’s one way of looking at it,” Shiani said. “But…I don’t know, I’ve never heard of such a spell being used that way. Malcolm, have you?”

Shiani turned to the other occupant of the table—the ice wizard Malcolm—who was…slumped over in his chair, fast asleep with his head hanging over his chest.

“Malcolm!” Shiani snapped.

“Uh, wha—?” The young man dragged himself awake. “What? What’s wrong? We under attack?” His eyes were bleary and his words slurred.

“Malcom, how long have you been asleep?”

“Around the time you started talking about fire?”

“Oh by the mountain’s flame,” Shiani swore, “Nevermind. Have you ever heard of a Control Fire spell being used to move heat without the flame? To make things cold?”

“Uh,” he scratched his stubble. “...no? Why would anyone do that? Sounds like it’d be hard. By the way, you’re still going to help me with that assignment, right?”

“Yes,” Shiani grunted. “You could pretend that’s not the only reason you’re here.”

“Meh, why lie to children?” He shrugged, looking at Selina. “You’ve got a fire affinity, right?”

“Yeah,” Selina said.

“And you still want to do ice stuff?”

“Yeah,” she said a little more forcefully.

“Well, uh…I dunno.” He looked up at the sky again. “When the sun moves away from the north—where I’m from—then that’s when winter comes hard. Maybe study the seasons or something? I dunno, I’m just some third year student, so what do I know? I’m not some fire and ice genius.”

With that, he rose, sauntering to the balcony while stifling a loud yawn.

Shiani shook her head. “Why don’t we take a break,” she suggested. “I’m going to grab a glass of water.”

Selina was left alone with her thoughts. And the flame.

“Hmmm, the seasons…” she wondered aloud, thinking about winters back in Thameland.

She remembered waking up in the Lu Family Inn on winter mornings when it was still dark and icy cold. The days would be short and frigid; those were days for staying inside with hot drinks and hotter soup, doing work indoors, and spending time with family.

But if those days were short and cold because the sun was away…then maybe she could make mini winters by moving heat around. The question was…how?

She looked back at the flame, watching the heat rise.

Her eyes narrowed in thought.

Heat already moved, didn’t it?

It travelled up, like Shiani said. The sun travelled, taking its heat with it and making the weather in her homeland turn into winter.

Maybe—

“Oh hey, your brother and everybody else is back,” Malcolm said from the balcony. “And there’s…whoa, what the hell happened to Claygon?”

“Is something wrong with him?” Selina asked, her voice filled with fear. She scrambled out of her chair and onto the balcony, staring into the courtyard.

A squeal of delight suddenly escaped her gaping mouth when she saw Claygon. Clapping her hands, her face beaming with joy, she rushed toward the apartment door.

“He’s evolved!” she cried. “He’s evolved!”