1st 5 Pages September Workshop - French Revision 1

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. My eyes burn; smoke strangles my screams. A crockery jar explodes, sending jagged shards to slit my cheek. The canvas cover is in tatters, burning to bright ash, revealing the night sky.

I wrap the blanket around myself and launch over the side of the wagon to the ground. Someone screams, and I hear running feet. I'm rolled over and over inside my cover. I struggle out, coughing and disoriented, a circle of indistinct faces staring down at me. Then I scramble up and lurch toward the wagon in panic. Mama hasn’t been able to walk by herself for a year. I have to get to her.

“Cate! No!” Hands clutch at me, but I break free.

“I have to get Mama!”

“Cate!” The new voice stops me. It’s Nerissa. My best friend plants her feet, 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 blink. Try to wake up.

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

I let Nerissa pull me back toward the others, who gather me in. The rest of my caravan stands 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: a host of well-worn statues, some lovingly preserved, some mysterious with age. Among them stands the Lady of Mist, goddess of the dead, at whose feet I personally vomited earlier tonight.

Nerissa says, "Are you all right?”

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

Because I can’t control the magic.

This fire burned too fast for nature. It must have come from me.

Someone tugs at my skirt. It's Boggle, the goblin who rides with our caravan. The top of his head only comes to my knees, but I see his knobby black body plainly in the light from the wagon. He butts his head against my legs and winds 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. The other members of the caravan tiptoe around us. They know I don't want to talk but can't help smothering me in concerned glances. Everyone has been worried that I’d lose control of the magic with my mother gone, and 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.

Last night showed me one thing: everyone should stay as far from me as possible.

I pick at the dressing on my burns and wish the world would stop smelling of smoke and ash. The others have cleared away the detritus of last night’s funeral celebration, 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 up, still strapping on her knives, and heaves down next to us. She came here last night for the funeral, and 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 from a hip flask right now. I’d join her, but I can’t afford anything that might make me lose control.

“You look like you’ve been wadded up in a pocket,” Nerissa tells Carolaine, smoothing her own pretty blue dress. “Don’t Kern girls learn how to drink?”

Carolaine doesn’t answer. Instead, she palms a knife and whips it into the dirt between Nerissa’s feet. It shocks me out of my self pity, and I let out a startled laugh. Nerissa sticks her tongue out at both of us.

“Kern girls learn other skills,” I snicker, picking up the knife, feeling its heft.

“You should let me teach you,” says Carolaine, her frown making it clear I’m not holding the blade right.

“I could use knife tricks in my act,” chirps Nerissa. Carolaine lowers at her.

“Not tricks. Self-defense.”

“Oh, no,” I laugh. “We don't fight with knives. We're caravan girls! We entertain! When that doesn’t work, we lie. And when that doesn’t work, we run away.”

“Is that your plan for the magic?” Carolaine says. "It's getting worse, Cate."

Carolaine doesn’t pull punches. That’s more fun sometimes than others, and this one lands hard. I hand the knife back. "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’m lost. I press my eyes closed, 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 half-rises, then shakes her head and sits again. It seems like she wants to comfort me but 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.