Lifesinger

Fire.

The whole world was smoke, heat, and flame, and Kalis was at the center of it.

The whole village burned as Kalis watched. She’d done it. In one fell swoop, she’d spoken to the blaze, and it’d answered her. She was the first Aespa-singer in hundreds of generations who’d managed to beseech the flame. Who’d managed to make it listen. Who’d managed, for a split second, to tame it, before it burst from the bonds of her words and consumed the first hut. Better yet, she was the youngest. Six years old, and the woman who’d birthed her would be proud, the father who’d given her seed would. They’d make themselves known as her parents. They’d claim her, take her away from the elderwomen, and sing the praises of her name.

Kalissin. Kalis.

The fire-formed.

They’d love her.

Oh, finally, she’d be more than a prized hargoat. She’d be more than their pet. More than the Aespa-Mother’s drudge.

They’d look at her and see her, not just the Aespa Mother’s newest little servant-acolyte, not the elders’ achievement.

They’d see her, Kalis, and they’d finally love her for her own sake.

The fire licked up the wall of the hut beside her. Kalis wrinkled her nose as the smell of smoke entered her nostrils. Acrid, biting, the smoke burned in the back of her throat. She spat out the taste, but it filled her mouth again a moment later. Kalis took a step back, then another. The fire was... growing. Kalis had to tilt her head now to look up at it and-

Something was wrong.

Kalis should not have felt the fire that she’d spoken into existence, that she’d coaxed out into the world, but she did. The flames lapped at her toes, heat rising to her face, her chest.

Kalis tried to move her hands up to her face to shield herself. Her eyes squeezed shut, but when the next wave of heat struck, she moaned in pain.

From a distant way off, through the roaring of the inferno, she heard a voice.

“What by the Damned Old Gods have you given her?”

Elder Zesna. A moment ago, she’d loathed the woman, but now, her mute senses screamed out. Elder Zesna! I’m here! Hold me. Save me! The fire was never supposed to come to me.

“Is she trying to say something?” Another voice, male, quiet, over the din of females.

Alibini.

The Hermit, he was titled, the only man allowed in the elders’ confidence.

“Oh, never you mind, Alibini,” snapped Zesna.

Yeah, that’s right, never you mind, Alibini, you old codger, thought Kalis vindictively, but she couldn’t keep her baleful thoughts straight when his face swam into view. Pale, wrinkled, his skin was so many shades lighter than hers that she often thought he had no colour at all. He was ugly too, like all the men she knew, weak and sickly creatures that relied on women, the village’s alms, and walking sticks when their frail bodies aged.

Kalis wanted to spit at him, and yet, another part of her feebly wondered.

Why did he care about her? He wasn’t her father. Only her father was supposed to care about her, like the village men cared for the girls and women of the village, father for daughter, father for son, until the sons were taken away to learn the path of life somewhere else.

Fuzzy. Her vision swam and stung with the aftermath of the smoke. She lifted a hand to see if she could catch their faces, Zesna’s or Alibini’s, it didn’t matter, but she couldn’t reach up far enough to touch either.

“Don’t exert yourself,” said Alibini.

“Don’t coddle her,” said Zesna, and though Kalis wanted to agree with the elderwoman, she was too weak to keep her eyes open much longer.

There was a towel in front of her face, the sound of water sloshing in a bucket.

“Here,” said Zesna sharply.

A moment later, Alibini’s hands swam into view, wet cloth in his hands. It approached her face, the other Aespa Mother apprentices blurry in the background. Kalis tried to protest that she was fine, that she didn’t need to be coddled, but Alibini whispered like the shushing wind and she had no more energy to bat his hands away or refuse his ministrations. She lay back and closed her eyes.“Stupid girl,” said Zesna, from somewhere far away.

You’re stupid, she wanted to respond, but when she opened her mouth, Alibini dropped cool water onto her heat-cracked lips and she couldn’t speak.

“You’ll be fine, Kalissin,” he said, his voice exceedingly soft, like she was an animal that could be calmed by such portrayals of weakness. “You’ll be just fine.”

The cold cloth came down on her forehead. Alibini wiped off her skin there, her cheeks, her closed eyelids. He dabbed at her mouth, and Kalis imagined him drawing in the soot that must be there, then wondered what he’d paint if he did.

Her consciousness drifted, content in the coolness, her eyes closed but her senses away of Alibini’s gentle hands. He was so weak, she should hate him for it, but at that moment, she couldn’t summon the will to do anything but lay still.

“She was stupid, to play with the fire. The Aespa Mother will punish her,” said Zesna, and the spell of calmness was broken.

The Aespa Mother.

Gragil Raal.

Punish her? Punish me?

Kalis tried to sit up, and when that didn’t work, grabbed for Alibini’s wrist. Her finger slid off easily, as if she’d grown weak like him, so she tried again, until he put the towel down and helped her sit.“What do you mean... punish me?” Her voice came out as a rasp.

“It’s all right, Kalis, you’re a child. The Aespa Mother will understa-” began Alibini.

“The Aespa Mother expects obedience in her students. Do you think that was obedience?” interrupted Zesna.

“I didn’t mean...” Kalis started, but her raw throat blocked the rest of the words. She had to swallow hard to get rid of the dry pain, the scorching agony that had scalded her, then she had to cough when she could no longer hold it in. After, she tried again, but Zesna interrupted her. The elderwoman spread her hands to surround the village before them. A lot of it had burned. So much of it, in fact, that it was easy to see the many outlines appearing from the black soot.

They were here, all of them.

The other girls, the other Aespa-speakers who’d made it to Tabur and the Aespa Mother. They were: Reve, the dreamer, Nibi, the rabbit trapper, Isurim of the High Forest, Forshee the Sandless, Yor Apir, Kalmahat, and Urudin the Reaver. Meredie the Whisperer, and Sirvain, who told everyone who’d listen she was the princess of a far-away land. They were all the girls who fit into the village, where Kalis didn’t. Haughty, proud, shy, quietly resolute. Powerful, enchanting, confident and not, they all fit, and Kalis had learned to know it from the moment she’d arrived.

Half-delirious, her fists clenched, her teeth grit. She felt, suddenly, degraded by their looks, Nibi’s pale green gaze, and Reve’s sharp burning orbs of focus.

Who were they, to look at her like that? Who were they, to sneer at her like that?

Sirvain might be telling everyone she was a princess, but Kalis was so much more than that. Kalis was an Aespa-singer, the most powerful the village had to offer, and didn’t the fire prove it? She’d not intended to burn the village, and yet, her power was so immense that she had reduced most of it to ash. Could Meredie do that when she whispered to the dead old gods? Could Yor Apir, who cared for little but the spirits of the Ancestors? Or Urudin the Reaver, who protected Tabur’s border from the territories around it?

Kalis bared her teeth at them and Isurim’s eyebrows rose on her high brow. She looked down on Kalis – They looked down on Kalis.

It was all Kalis could do not to scream, and that, because her throat was so raw she felt it would bleed.

“What has she done now?” asked Forshee, her gaze fixing on Zesna as the old woman turned to face them.

“We were able to kill the source of the fire, with Gragil Raal’s help,” said Urudin, the periphery of her gaze on Kalis while she spoke, even though her words were directed at Zesna. “But the damage is severe.”

The elderwoman gave a nod. Kalis knew there were words on her tongue, things she wanted to say to the other girls, but before she could, an opening divided the group like lightning striking slowly into a vast plain. The girls parted, and in between them, a new figure appeared.

Kalis whimpered, unable to help herself, and hugged her knees to her chest. The figure walked towards her, seemingly the only intact thing in the terrible mess of falling ash and soot.

Short, compact, her form as solid as a wall of wind, the Aespa Mother, Gragil Raal, stood in the center of the village with her arms outstretched. Her back was to them, but Kalis didn’t need to see her face to know her eyes were closed. She was speaking, the wind howling around her with her forming the eye of the storm. Where it went, so did the fire, the dead zone in the center sucking the air from it. Kalis watched her, her eyes growing wide, her jaw dropping as the fire receded before the Aespa Mother’s might.

“I want to be her,” she said, to Zesna, to Alibini, to she didn’t know who, and mostly, to herself.

There was a noise of contempt from Zesna and the girls. Alibini gave a sigh. The strength that’d gotten into her left Kalis as quickly as it’d come, and she fell back onto her back, her breathing quick and ragged, her eyes open though she didn’t see the sky.

How could she have gone so wrong? The Aespa Mother would punish her, there was no doubt about it. She had been in Tabur longer than the others, her tribe razed before she could remember, but she’d never fit in with the rest. They hated her, the Tabukin and the acolyte girls alike, even though none of them shared skin, eye, or origin with one another either.

Kalis had been singled out. They hated her because she was different. Her skin was black as night and her hair white. Her eyes pale and grey where theirs were every shade of the rainbow and earth. And they hated her for her power, too, she knew that too well. She’d spoken to the Aespa before any of them. She’d asked of it more things than the rest of them combined. She’d bribed it, commanded it, bent it to her will.

And they hated her because she could.

Kalis let her head droop back, a furious heat suddenly building in the corners of her eyes. She’d punish them. She wanted to punish them. If it wasn’t for them, she wouldn’t have tried to speak to the fire, and Tabur would still stand. If it wasn’t for them, she needn’t have proved herself, needn’t have chased the fire, and she’d not be now facing the Aespa Mother’s punishment herself.

How dare they?

And yet, a part of Kalis knew that it wasn’t the full truth.

Yes, she needn’t have hurried into this if it wasn’t for them.

Yes, she needn’t have spoken to the fire right here if the girls didn’t look through her as they did.

But, on the other hand, Kalis would have stood before this bridge eventually either way. Because it was in a her nature to strive, and she could as little stop chasing greater skill than a hargoat could stop headbutting its kind in the pens.

And she’d done it, Kalis told herself defiantly. She’d done it, regardless of what the Aespa Mother would say to her. She’d done it, and she could do it again. She’d made it. She’d spoken to the fire after the Aespa Mother had preached for so many long months that it wasn’t possible. She’d done it, and surely, the Aespa Mother wouldn’t punish her for it. Because she’d done something no one else could. She’d done something real. Her powers, unlike those of the others, could be used. Her connection to the Aespa was strong, and soon, she’d outgrow the other girls and the elderwomen, and, in the future, the Aespa Mother herself. Kalis licked her lips as Gragil Raal stopped before her, looking down at her across her misshapen nose.

“Oh, Kalissin, was this really necessary?” she asked.

“I can do the impossible,” said Kalis in response, her tone still defiant.

The Aespa Mother looked at her for a long moment. Then, she shook her head.

“You beseeched a power you should not have gotten close to,” she said.

“I tamed it,” said Kalis, in return.

The Aespa Mother looked at her almost with pity. A hand went over her back to indicate the village behind her. “Is that what you call taming it?”

“I called it, and it came. I commanded it,” said Kalis.

“Fool child,” said the Aespa Mother.

“I’m not a child. I’m- I’m-” But she wasn’t anything, Kalis realized, looking at the angry faces around her. She knew where she came from, vaguely, and yet, whatever she had been there, she wasn’t the same here. The Jackal had her taken to the Aespa Mother, before she could speak, and Gragil Raal had taken her on as an acolyte when she’d recently come of age. A drudge.

“Was I not clear when I told you the old gods’ powers were not to be used?” asked the Aespa Mother.

Kalis scowled. “The territories around Tabur grow stronger by the day,” she said.

The Aespa Mother frowned. “Where did you hear that?”

Kalis shrugged.

“Have you been speaking to the boys?”

Kalis didn’t know it until after, but when she flinched, looking away quickly, it gave her away.

“Oh, Kalissin, you fool child,” said the Aespa Mother.

“I spoke to the flame to defend us,” said Kalis stiffly.

The Aespa Mother sighed.

“I can do it again,” said Kalis. “I can fight, if anyone comes to kill us.”

“At this rate, we won’t need any other nation to make was against us,” said Urudin, her hooded gaze sardonic with a lifted eyebrow.

Kalis glared at her.

“You do understand that I will have to punish you, Kalis,” said the Aespa Mother.

I’d like to see you try, Kalis wanted to spit, but didn’t. The Aespa Mother couldn’t do anything to hurt her. The Aespa Mother couldn’t make her bend. The Aespa Mother could barely keep the people of Aderi away, or the soldiers of Kimisland, or the rest of the Ashmeranian continent.

“First, you will no longer have access to the scrollwork,” said Gragil Raal.

Kalis’s jaw dropped. “Wha-”

“Second, you will spend two days a week in the men’s village, learning their trades and skills, and you will support them wherever they need.”

Indignation surged. Kalis bared her teeth. “I won’t do that.”

“Then, would you rather stop being my student?” asked Gragil Raal.

The fire beckoned, once again. In the back of her mind, she knew its voice, and knew how to call it. It wouldn’t be easy to speak to it now, under the scrutiny of the Aespa Mother and the elders, but she could do it. She could find a way to-

“Third, you will wear a tattoo, to dampen the Aespa you can call.”

“No,” said Kalis, suddenly and violently, her thoughts of speaking vanished in an instant.

“I am afraid it is necessary, Kalis,” said the Aespa Mother. “You have done a great wrong, after all the time we spent trying to explain to you how dangerous the old gods’ Aespa is. You chose not to listen, and you have destroyed most of our world.”

“I can fix it,” said Kalis, her voice suddenly high and harsh.

The Aespa Mother shook her head. “The tattoo will help you forget about how you called the fire, and the other ancient Aespa words. It will help you remain in the present, where earth, wind, and plant-life are your primary concern.”

“But-”

“Kalis, this is necessary,” said the Aespa Mother, her voice not unkind.

“I won’t wear a tattoo,” growled Kalis, but she knew, the Aespa Mother had won. So many hours of studying scrolls. So much time spent re-tracing the old gods’ steps on her world. And then, she’d reached into the Aespa, and called to the fire that consumed all. And now? Now, she’d been caught, and her power would be dampened. Now, she could no longer chase the power she so craved.

Kalis let out a howl, but the other girls closed in on her on the Aespa Mother’s command. They held her down amidst the dirt, the smoke, the acrid smell of burned metal and wood, for Gragil Raal to put her finger on Kalis, and draw an Aespa seal’s shape.