The Fire Children by Lauren Roy Page B

instinctively.
    Below the crackling flame, she heard the scrape of wood on stone. When she lowered her hands, Ember was sitting in the burning chair a few feet away from the table. She couldn’t tell where the flames of his body stopped and the ones on the chair began, but she could see the outline of the legs and arm rests, dark against the oranges and golds of the fire.
    “It’s not collapsing,” she said.
    “I can control it, at least for a little while. Come look, if you’d like. I can keep from singeing you.”
    She took a pastry with her to nibble on as she circled around Ember in his chair. The fire shifted in places, letting her see the form it surrounded. In some places, the wood and paint seemed untouched. In others, they smoldered. Here and there chunks of ash dropped to the floor, but for the most part the chair remained a chair. Yulla bent closer, the heat enough to make her eyeballs feel dry. She came back around to the front, and found herself looking into Ember’s eyes.
    He did have a body beneath the flames; she could make it out better close up. His blue eyes had no irises, no pupils, but instead twinkled like the stars. He smiled as their gazes met, and she was glad for the heat as she smiled back—he wouldn’t be able to tell she was blushing when she was already red-faced from the temperature.
    “Hold out your hand,” he said.
    “Why?”
    “Trust me.”
    She held hers out, palm up. Ember did the same, the tips of his fingers only inches from her own. Still, she didn’t burn.
    One of the flames licking up from his palm separated from the others, separated from him, and danced its way toward Yulla. When it reached the end of Ember’s fingers, it paused like a cat gauging the distance between two countertops. Then it leapt and landed square in the middle of her palm.
    It was warm but not painful, as though she held a coin that had been left out in the sun awhile. It weighed nothing, though as it began to trace the outline of her hand, its path was like a feather against her skin.
    “How are you doing this?” She bent her fingers upward, not closing the flame in, but giving it something to climb. It moved dutifully. When she spread her fingers apart, it spiraled around the one it had been traversing until it reached the tip, then hopped to the next and spiraled back down.
    “All fires are ours to command while we’re here. I gave this one to you.”
    She looked away from the tongue of flame to find him smiling at her. Shyly, she returned it.
    A breeze fluttered past, offering a moment’s coolness on the back of her neck. It ruffled the flames of Ember’s hair.
    Wait.
    A breeze.
    None of the windows were open, and she’d made sure to close the front door behind her as they came in.
    “We have to go,” said Yulla, as fear sent a bolt of cold down her spine. “They’ve found us.”
    The flame in her hand puffed out.

 
    F OR A MOMENT , the air was still. Maybe the Wind was still there, waiting, watching. Or maybe it was gone momentarily, off to report its find to the witch-women. Yulla and Ember didn’t have the time to learn which it was.
    “The back door,” Yulla whispered, her lips barely moving. “Into the alley.”
    The chair collapsed as Ember stood, sending up a fan of sparks and smoldering bits. One landed on Aunt Mouse’s quilt, but Yulla patted it out before the cotton could catch. Ember darted into the house’s back hallway, heading for the exit Yulla hoped was there; as long as this house was laid out like her own, it would be. She followed along behind him, holding the quilt over her head like a sail to block as much of Ember’s light as she could from anyone who peered down the hall after them.
    The hallway was narrow and claustrophobic. Yulla wasn’t very tall, but her outstretched hands nearly brushed the ceiling above and the walls to either side. The space closed in on her in a way the total darkness below never had. Ember’s light should have been a comfort,