1st 5 Pages September Workshop - French

Name: Christa French
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Title: Union

When I wake, the wagon is ablaze.

It's already spread beyond saving anything but my own skin. Crockery jars explode at the far end. The canvas cover is in tatters, burning to bright ash, revealing the night sky beyond. Outside, people have started to scream.

I'm in bed, choking on smoke. I pull my blanket tight around me and launch over the side of the wagon to the ground. There are more screams, and the sound of running feet, and I'm rolled over and over inside my cover. I struggle out, coughing and disoriented. Then I scramble up and lurch back toward the wagon in panic. Mama hasn’t been able to walk by herself for a year. I have to get her out.

Hands clutch at me. “Cate! No!”

“I have to get Mama!”

“Cate!” It’s Nerissa. My best friend plants herself in front of me, palms digging into my shoulders. Her dark hair rises behind her like flame, caught in the updraft. “Stop it! She’s not in there! Catey! Look at me!”

I look at her. Blink. Try to wake up.

My mother is not in the wagon, I remember, because she is already dead.

I stumble backward, look around. The rest of the caravan has moved a safe distance from the flames, contortionists, fortune tellers, animal trainers, and musicians all staring at the blaze that used to be my wagon. Behind them, just visible in the pre-dawn light, rise the great stone faces of what we on the island call the Gathering of the Gods: Old Stephen. Alanna. Saraya. The Deep God. A host of other faces, some well-preserved and some mysterious with age. And the veiled face of the Lady of Mist, goddess of the dead, at whose feet I personally vomited last night.

Nerissa says, "Are you all right?”

I am not all right. I’m still wearing my green dress, still slightly drunk on the wine of my mother’s funeral. I have burns I can barely feel. And everything I had left of my mother is burning to cinders.

Because of the magic.

I burned it.

Someone tugs at the hem of my skirt, and I look down. It's Boggle, the goblin who rides with our caravan. The top of his head only comes up to my knee, but I can see his knobby black body plainly in the light of the burning wagon. He butts his head against my legs and winds himself around them, humming and hopping a cheerful dance.

At least someone likes my magic.

***

In the morning I sit a fair distance from the cook fire, wrapped in one of Nerissa’s blankets, and let her brew raspberry tea for both of us. I’ve had too much of fire, myself.

Boggle sits close by, eyeing Nerissa’s proceedings and smacking his lips. A flash of black fur in the corner of my eye tells me the trainers are running the weirlings through their act, though my mother’s pack of tamed wildcats performed perfectly last night, as if in tribute to her. The other members of the caravan tiptoe around us. They’re avoiding me. Everyone has been worried that I’d lose control of my magic with my mother gone, and it turns out they were right.

Minor fire magic is normal. I’ve met a fair few people who could heat a pot or kindle a cookfire, and our sword-swallower lines his blades with magic flame for his act. But the only wild magician I ever knew was my mother; and by the time my own wild magic showed up, she was too sick to train me. So I’m dangerous to be around. I understand this.

But the others’ avoiding me still hurts.

At least they’ve done all the cleaning up. The detritus of last night’s funeral celebration has been cleared away, though my mother’s pyre still stands not far from the charred skeleton of our wagon. My known world has, quite literally, gone up in flames.  The world is a tinderbox, and I am the spark.

No, I remind myself. Mama’s death wasn’t my fault. She was sick long before magic happened to me.

My friend Carolaine stumbles over, bleary eyed, and heaves down next to us. She's not used to the caravan's famous white liquor. Nerissa has been at the stuff since she was ten, and she's sipping more of it from a hip flask right now. I’d join her, but I can’t afford anything that might make me lose control.

Though Carolaine is rumpled like an old sheet, I'm willing to bet she's still lethal. She's only a year older than Nerissa and me at eighteen, but she's from Kern, which means she's been trained as a fighter practically since birth. Nerissa and I are just caravan girls, which means we've been trained to tell fortunes and dance and entertain, and when danger comes, to run the other way.

"So," Carolaine says, "it's getting worse. Your magic."

Carolaine doesn’t pull punches. That’s more fun sometimes than others, and this one lands hard. "It’s never happened in my sleep before."

"She was upset last night," Nerissa says, and scoots closer to me. She glares at Carolaine. This is like a starling glaring at a hawk. "It was her mother's funeral. That doesn't happen all the time."

"No," I say. "Carolaine's right. It's getting worse."

Nerissa bites her lip. After a moment, she offers Carolaine some tea, but the bigger girl waves it away. Nerissa gives a little cup to Boggle and drinks the rest herself, adding a generous splash from her flask.

Carolaine asks, "What are you going to do?"

"I don't know,” I say, and that is the truest sentiment I’ve uttered in weeks. I’ve been trying to be strong and sometimes succeeding, but right now I just feel lost. I close my eyes again, trying to clear them. They burn from the smoke. “Mama was so sure she could teach me to control it, but at the end . . . well, Nerissa knows. At the end she couldn't remember my name."

Carolaine frowns. She half-rises, then shakes her head and sits back down again. It looks as though she wants to comfort me, but she doesn't know how. I smile at her, putting my caravan-girl charm to good effect. Carolaine calls this “lying with your face,” but right now I don’t care. I can’t handle her sympathy on top of everything else.

"It's okay. I said goodbye to Mama before last night." At least that much is true. My mother was a shadow for the last year, a mumbling skeleton who had to be protected from herself. I’m glad, for her sake, that she’s gone to the Other Land. But for myself . . . I could use a little help.

"Cate’s mama remembered lots of things, though," says Nerissa. "Only it was things from a long time ago. People she knew when she was little. She called me -" she laughs a little, shrugging. "She kept calling me Irina."

"Irina was her best friend when she was a girl," I tell Carolaine. "The only other person from her village who survived." I speak the next part softly. No need to remind everyone. “She had wild magic, too.”