Into the Fire

It was very cold out. It was very cold in, too, since the power was out, so my heater was useless. I was staying in a cabin in the mountains, and I’d never used the fireplace—the bookshelf was above it, and I didn’t want them to be hurt by the smoke—but I had to have some heat source. The roads were iced over, so I wasn’t going to go all the way to town to buy wood or a battery operated heater or anything, so I bundled up, went outside, and gathered as much firewood as I could. I didn’t chop down trees or anything, just picked up whatever branches were on the ground.

They were mostly a bit wet, so it was hard to start a fire, but I eventually managed to get the wood to burn. Pretty soon, the room was comfortably warm, and I sat on the couch in front of the fire with a nice warm cup of cocoa. The wind was howling outside, by I was warm and cozy.

Suddenly, a gust of wind shook the cabin. My sketchbook, every page but the last filled with my drawings, tumbled off the shelf and straight into the fire. “No!” I cried, leaping for it. I reached into the fire and managed to grab the sketchbook.

I realized what I’d done and jerked my hands out of the fire. I dropped the book on the hearth, but my left hand felt as if something in the fire was grabbing it. It must be caught on something, I thought, terrified at the prospect of such major burns. I didn’t feel any pain, or even any more heat than was comfortable. It must be a really bad burn, the kind where it’s so numb you can’t even feel it, I panicked as I tried with all my strength to break free. Slowly, difficultly I managed to draw my hand out of the fire.

Something else, or someone else, came with it.

It, or rather, he, was a man, about my age. He was well dressed and had rumpled black hair. I will admit he was rather handsome, but not as quickly as he would. I felt rather faint. Not, I quickly add, at his looks, but at the fact that I had just pulled him out of my fire. I had no idea how to react. I was scared, and curious, and disbelieving, and I couldn’t even begin to know what to say. I’m afraid I merely stared at him, openmouthed.

He looked around the room, giving me as much attention as the furnishings, then started for the door.

“Wait,” I called after him. “Where are you going?”

“Elizhebinbab.”

“Where?” I asked incredulously.

He looked at me scornfully. “Even a backwoods peasant knows of the capital city of the great empire.”

“You’re insane,” I started to tell him. Then I remembered I’d pulled him through my fire, and after that, him being from some unknown empire was almost to be expected. “You do know you’re in America?”

He looked at me with puzzlement. “And where is America, in relationship to Elizhebinbab?”

“Um, I don’t think there is any relation. America’s a country, and I’ve never heard of Eizh… that place. But I pulled you out of my fire, are you sure you’re in the same…” I hesitated, because it sounded like something out of a fantasy book, but then, so did the rest, so I finished, “world?”

He shook his head slowly. “I should have known he wouldn’t make it that easy.”

“Who? What happened?”

He sighed, and fiddled with his hair. “I’m in the business of acquisitions. Unpaid acquisitions. My name is Aleoz of Phiqueom, you may have heard of me, except that seeing as you’re from another world you probably haven’t. I tried to, erm, acquire—”

“Steal,” I interrupted.

“If you want to put it that way, yes. I tried to steal something from a certain sorcerer. I’m very good at what I do, you know. It’s not as if I can’t detect wards; I disarmed or avoided plenty of them, but this one was subtler than the rest. Just as I was fiddling with the lock on his treasury, there was a blinding flash of light, and I was a log. Though I admit my father often said I was a log, when I was a boy, but I never thought to be a literal piece of wood. Next thing I knew, you were pulling me out of the fire.”

“How do you get back?”

“I suppose I’d have to go through a portal.”

“A portal?”

“That’s not so complicated to do. Normally you’d put one in a clump of very thick magic, but I suppose a fire would do.

We built up the fire as high as possible. Aleoz stood in front of it, waved his arms in complex patterns, and said a strange word, and suddenly a shimmery rectangle stood in the middle of the fire.

“It will only stay open for a few seconds, so I must leave immediately. It was a pleasure to meet you, miss,” he said with a small bow, then stepped through the rectangle was vanished.

It began to close, the two edges of the rectangle drawing in towards the center, and before I could think what I was doing, I grabbed my sketchbook and dashed through as if I were getting on a subway at the last moment.

I don’t know why I did it. I guess it was mostly that this was the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me, and I didn’t want it to be over so soon. And maybe I somehow knew that I belonged in that world.

I was standing in the middle of a beautiful green meadow, full of wildflowers. Butterflies flew around, and I saw a faery riding on one. The air was warm, and I thought it was probably late summer here. Aleoz was standing a few feet in front of me.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I… I guess I just wanted to see this place.”

“Well, I’d be happy to show you around.”

I stayed in that world. I don’t mean I’ve never been back, because as Aleoz said, portals are easy to make. I could travel between the worlds as easily as going from one room to the next, and I took full advantage of it. But I loved living in a world of magic, and eventually, I realized that I loved Aleoz as well. So I made that world my permanent home, and though I still go back to the land I was born in often, this is my home now.

Crumbling

My arms ache from holding the metal pole into the pit of fire. I look around at the others each at their own pit of fire around the small area beneath the cliff. None of them seem to be having trouble. We were taught how to do this, to make these new weapons, but I must not have been paying as much attention as I should have, because mine is falling apart, bits of burning metal crumbling onto the stone at my feet.

“Turn it!” Dagnem yells, running over to me. I do, or try to. “Lift it higher in the flames and turn it!” I try, but it's heavy and it just seems to collapse faster. “Just don’t let the handle drop away!” But just then it does, and the whole thing is ruined.

“Can’t you do anything right?” he scolds. I try to defend myself, but he ignores it. “You’re going to burn the whole place down.”

I know he’s right, but the way he’s scolding me pisses me off, so I say “I’m not the one who did that.” Because Dagnem’s wife has a little magic, but she didn’t know it at first, and burnt down the last place we stayed.

He starts to scream at me, so I turn and walk away and start to walk up the trail into the cliffs. I know better, it’s dangerous, but I really, really need to get away. The trail is steep and rocky, and with each step I take a tiny rockslide falls on me, pouring dust in my face and pebbles in my shoes. Though at first I’d been walking fast, to burn off my anger and get as far away as I could as quickly as possible, the terrain slowed me to a crawl.

Finally I sit and rest for a little. I’m far enough up to have a good view, but it’s suddenly lost on me as I see two figures coming up the cliff. I assume it’s Dagnem and one of the others, to bring me back down, but as they come a little closer I realize it’s Thone and Adark. Thone is two years younger than me, and I’ve known him since childhood; we’re friends, and I’m not really surprised to see him. Adark is a year older than me, and I don’t know him as well as I’d like. He’s a good fighter and respected by everyone in our company, and I’m, well, not. I’m rather embarrassed for him to see me running away from the camp, soaked in sweat and dust, and my humiliation is compounded when I realize they were probably sent to bring me back.

But once they reach me, Thone smiles and says, “We got permission for all three of us to go on up ahead and scout the cave at the top.”

“What cave?” I ask.

Adark replies, “There’s rumored to be a cave up there, and a portal in it that the enemy is coming through.”

“And so he wants the three of us to go up there and confront them on our own?” And now I sound like a coward as well.

“Better for only three of us to be killed than everyone,” Adark says, but he smiles comfortingly and adds, “But he doesn’t actually believe it. And they mean to catch up soon.”

“Do you believe it?”

He shrugs. “If it isn’t, I get a nice walk in better company than the people below; if it is we should be able to find out without being seen and sneak back down to raise the alarm.”

I hope I’m not blushing at being called better company than the people below—considering what they’re like, that really doesn’t mean much. The trail grows steeper as we continue up the cliff. By the time we’re near the top, I’m too exhausted to even climb over a few largish rocks blocking the steep path. To my surprise, Adark and Thone are equally worn out, though they didn’t get the chance to rest as I had. I push the largest rock over and it rolls down the edge of the cliff. Thone casts a spell to hold the rest of the disintegrating stone in place; it barely works, but we do manage to get over it, and we’re at the top of the path.

The rest of the walk to the cave is easy, a wide path curving gently around the side of the mountain. We’re almost at the cave when we see them—two large men in the uniform of the Stetenthian army. Adark steps forward to challenge them. I want to do something, to fight them or speak to them or run back down the mountain, but my legs are frozen in place. It doesn’t matter. As soon as they see us, they turn and run back the way they came. Adark grabs my arm and the three of us give chase. We enter the cave just in time to see the two men disappear through a shimmery surface on the wall of the cave—the portal.

I’ve never seen anything like it before. I approach it to take a closer look, but Adark puts a hand on my arm. “Those were just scouts. The rest of their army could come through any moment,” he says gravely.

“What should we do?” Thone addresses the question generally, but he’s really asking Adark, who’s even better at planning our strategy than he is at fighting.

“We’ll go back and warn everyone, and then decide what to do,” he responds.

“Should one of us wait here?” I ask. “So we’ll have a warning if the whole army does start pouring out of the portal?”

Thone nods. “I could do it,” he volunteers, though he seems decidedly unhappy with the prospect.

“No, I should do it, I’m the most dispensable,” I argue. “It’s not like I’m any use anywhere else.”

“Don’t say that,” Adark tells me. “You’re one of the best with magic; and to have any hope of winning this war we’ll need to make more use of it.” Anyway, all three of us will go. If the army comes through, anyone who stays wouldn’t live long enough to give warning.”

By the time we get to the top of the cliff, the rest of the company is just reaching the top of the trail. “You might not want to come any further,” I warn, and we explain about the truth of the rumor.

Dagnem shakes his head. “We’ve made arrangements; we need to get to the top of the mountain.” So we take the path going in the opposite direction of the cave. It’s not a difficult path, but it does grow so narrow we have to walk single file. Thone and Adark have moved up to the front of the group, but I somehow (of course) got caught at the very end. It doesn’t take long to reach the peak of the mountain. We stand there for a bit, wondering what we are waiting for, until suddenly a boat, propelled by magic, floats through the air to hover a few feet above us. Dagnem, who is closest to it, takes hold of a short metal ladder hanging from the edge and climbs into the boat. He’s just made it into the boat when the ladder and the railing it is attached to break halfway off the boat. They speak in worried voices, but I can’t hear what they’re saying, and then Adark spells the ladder back into place. It is very broken, and I can see that he’s having to concentrate intensely. People slowly, too slowly, climb on.

About half of them are on the boat when I first see Stetenthian warriors making their way up the path. I yell for them to hurry, and they do, and soon everyone is on board but me and Adark. “Go!” I tell him. “I’ll hold the spell.”

He shakes his head. “I can’t abandon you; I won’t.”

“Don’t be stupid!” The Stetenthians are nearly upon us. “You have to much information to be captured. You might want to help me but you swore an oath to protect our country!”

He knows I’m right, but I can see he doesn’t like it. I cast the spell, and he reluctantly makes his way up the ladder. It’s a difficult spell, not one I could do while climbing the ladder, or that anyone could do from on the boat, so I know I’m doomed.

A tear rolls down my face as the ladder and railing crash to the ground. I don’t regret what I’ve done, but I don’t want to be captured and tortured or killed.

And then a handle is in front of my face, the handle of the weapon I couldn’t manage to forge. I grab it, but I know that if I wasn’t even strong enough to hold it up into the fire, I won’t be able to pull myself into the boat.

But I have a greater desperation now, and I do manage to hang on as I’m pulled up onto the deck. It was Adark who had pulled me up, and I saw that the weapon had been sharpened and he’d been holding onto the blade; his hands were bleeding.

“Your hands,” I say stupidly.

“They’ll heal. You saved my life.”

Someone hands him a rag and he tries clumsily to bandage his hands. I take it and do it for him. “You saved mine.” I think about how agonizing it must have been to pull me up by the sharp edge of a blade, and then, without thinking, I kiss him. He kisses me back, and I’m glad to have survived.