The Flame in the Mist (31 page)

She looked at the people seated around the firelight: her parents; Marsh; Pedrus and his wife, Tess; Bethany—who kept avoiding her gaze—and Moll, and their younger twin brothers, Ollie and Will; Freddie and Maddie; and a handful of her parents’ friends. At her feet, Noodle and Pie sat cleaning their muzzles. Every face glowed with the contentment of good company and a full belly. Jemma had never eaten such tasty soup—she’d even liked the parsnips in it—and the pig had been delicious.

Outside the courtyard walls, the town clock chimed once. Eight-thirty.

“Well, my girl,” Lumo put his arm around her. “What a night it’s been, eh?”

“Mmm.” Jemma leaned into him. “It’s more wonderful than I could have imagined.”
If only you could be here too, Jamem
, she added silently, glad she’d said nothing about him to mar her parents’ joy.

“A penny for your thoughts, Jemma?” Lumo whispered.

Jemma smiled and shook her head.

“Ah, secrets already!” He laughed, then started humming Freddie and Maddie’s song.

Jemma hummed along with him, pulling Majem’s cloak around her knees—it had been carefully washed by her mother, and had quickly dried itself. Despite its ragged state, and the shadow of Majem’s story, it felt right to be wearing it tonight. It had helped save her life.

She gazed into the fire, her vision fuzzing. The flames were mesmerizing, taking on the form of mountains, rocks, animals, faces, which separated into multicolored dots, then joined together again. Then three names began weaving through her mind, jumbled together, then dividing, and she sang them under her breath:
Majem. Jemma. Jamem …

Jamem, Jemma
. His birthday, hers. Six days apart. With how many years between?
Jemma, Jamem
. What had happened to him? Another song pressed up from her memory, one she’d buried days ago:
Rue, rue, rue the day they took me bonny babe away.…
Jemma tried to push it down, but it pushed back louder.
They took me babe, so fair and red, I loved me laddie but now he’s dead.…
She stood, her blood swimming, and slowly walked toward the fire.

“Jemma?” Her mother, a blur to her left, stood, and stepped up beside her.

His sea-green eyes will see no more, like so many babes before.… Majem, Jemma, Jamem …
The songs interwove. The ground seemed to tilt, throwing her off-balance. And there it was again, her face, in the flames. It split into two faces. Side by side. Two baby faces.

Jemma fell to her knees.
Jemma, Jamem. Marked, unmarked
.

“Jemma!” Sapphire knelt at her side, with Lumo behind her. “What is it?”

“Rue, rue, rue the day …” Jemma sang softly. Rue’s bonny boy, the boy in her care, taken, then dead and gone.
Your fault! It was you they wanted—not him!
Majem’s brother, her twin, slain, to make her stronger. And her own brother …? She thought of the flame-shot shadow she’d dreamed about earlier, and in the forest, with its chubby fingers reaching toward her.…

The faces in the fire merged again, then separated, then merged.
Jem-Jem
, an infant’s voice surged up, insistant, from her memory,
Jem-Jem!

Older? No. Jamem was younger than she—younger!

Another whoosh of flame. Her face, his. Two shocks of red hair, then one. Tiny fingers, reaching; two tiny hands, clasping a stuffed rabbit … She remembered him! She remembered being with him at the castle, remembered them playing together, laughing, crying—for months, until the day she was taken with him into the Ceremony Chamber … blackness all around … two screams, then one. Jamem gone. But how could it be? Kralyd’s curse made it impossible! And yet the
truth shrieked at her, searing under her skin. She stood, and turned to her parents.

“Jamem,” she said. “He wasn’t just my brother—he was my twin! Born six days after me.… And he was murdered—murdered by the Agromonds, to increase my Powers!”

Silence gripped the gathering.

“Yes,” said Lumo, “it is as you say. We were going to tell you, of course, in time. But today, we wished only to celebrate you—”

“Celebrate me? But it’s my fault he died!” Jemma shook from head to toe. “If I hadn’t been Marked, they might have chosen him!”

“If you hadn’t been Marked, Jemma,” Sapphire said, rising to her feet, “the Agromonds would have killed you as well. But they undoubtedly saw the Mark as a chance that you might become one of them—an opportunity for them to gain more Power. More so with you alive, than if …” Her voice trailed off, and she wrapped her arms tightly around Jemma.

Then Lumo’s arms were around her too. “It was not your fault, child,” he said. “Don’t think it, not for one second! And thank goodness you bear the Mark, for because of it, we still have you. And it bonds you and I, for I too bear it, handed down from Majem. That Jamem was born without it was mere chance.”

“Mere chance … Poor Jamem!” Jemma buried her head in her mother’s shoulder as more memories poured through her—Jamem’s laugh, his sea-green eyes, the emptiness of missing him. She heard herself sobbing, heard the mumbled
goodbyes of the gathering, and Marsh bustling toward the kitchen, then the rustle of Noodle and Pie at her feet, the cry of a single nightjar, and the steady breath of her parents. Finally, as the town clock chimed its last strike of nine, she pulled away from their embrace. “But how?” she said. “How could we have been twins? What about Kralyd’s curse?”

Her mother wiped away Jemma’s tears. “Are you sure you want to hear this now?”

Jemma nodded. “Yes! Please …”

“Come, then, let us sit,” her father said. He rolled a log over to the fire and sat Jemma down on it, then he and Sapphire seated themselves on either side of her. “It is all part of the Prophecy,” he said, “that stated that when twins were born once more to the Solvay line, Kralyd’s curse would be broken. This was to be a sign, for one of these twins would be the Fire One, destined to bring an end to the Agromond dynasty. Which one, the Prophecy doesn’t say. So the Agromonds took you both, not knowing which of you was the danger to them, and no doubt planned to kill you both. But then they found the Mark on you …”

“And thought I couldn’t be the Fire One. Because the Mark meant I would be evil, like them.” Shards of memory shot through Jemma: the circle of black candles … Shade and Feo, holding hands and toddling toward the altar … Jamem, dropping his stuffed rabbit as Nocturna wrenched him away from her—she clamped the images down. “How did they find out about us?”

Lumo heaved a sigh. “Spies. One of the baker’s apprentices and his sister. After Jamem was taken, they acted so distraught that nobody saw through them—and their evil was
well disguised, no doubt, by some kind of Agromond sorcery. Then, when the message from Yarville came, begging for our help, we thought it safest to take you, but …” He looked at the ground.

“Father, the Agromonds tricked you! I read about it in the articles. If you’d left me behind, they’d have found some other way to get me. That baker’s apprentice and his sister, for example.”

“Jemma is right,” said Sapphire, leaning over and squeezing Lumo’s hand. “Now it is you, my dear, who must not give in to self-blame. There’s no doubt those two would have acted, had the Agromonds’ ambush failed.” She looked at Jemma. “They disappeared shortly after you were taken, and we soon discovered they were from Blackwater—their father an Inquisitor, no less. It taught us a bitter lesson, and thanks to our supporters’ vigilance, no enemy has been able to enter Oakstead since. But alas, it came too late to protect you.”

Jemma ground her teeth. “So they had it all planned. Nothing could have changed it.”

The three of them sat and gazed at the embers. A gust blew across the courtyard. The fire flared. Somewhere outside Oakstead’s walls, an owl hooted.

“There’s one thing I still don’t understand,” Jemma said. “How could Jamem have been born so much later than me? Six whole days!”

“It is rare, Jemma,” said her mother, “but it happens. For years, I wondered if he was reluctant to come into the world, knowing, somehow, what his fate would be. But in these past few days I have found comfort in the possiblility of another purpose: a gift from Jamem to you and your destiny.”

“A
gift
?”

“Yes. You see, the time for Initiation is always between the older and younger twins’ births. Normally, this is only minutes, or an hour. But Jamem being born six days after you …”

“Gave me more time to get home.”

“I know, it sounds farfetched,” Sapphire said, “but whether by accident or design, it is a gift nonetheless, and I shall always honor him for giving it.”

Jemma clenched her jaw, unable to bring herself to say it: she had been too late. Jamem’s gift was for nothing. An ember cracked, and leapt out of the fire. She ground it with her heel, then gazed up at the sky. Tiny points of light laced the darkness. So that was what stars looked like. Dots of white fire. They were pretty, she supposed, but her heart was too hollow to feel it.

“You were wrong, Mother, when you said last night that the Agromonds haven’t won. They have. Without me being Initiated and fulfilling the Prophecy, how can it be otherwise?”

Her parents exchanged glances.

“The Agromonds have not won,” her father said, “because the Prophecy can still come to pass. We were going to wait before talking of this, Jemma, but … you have in fact been Initiated.”

“What! By whom?”

Her mother smiled. “You Initiated yourself.”

“When? How?”

“The night before last, by healing your friend’s mother. The same was true for Majem, who, if you recall, ran away from the castle before her Initiation. Do you remember
reading in her book that she healed a young boy on her way to Oakstead?”

“Vaguely … yes.”

Sapphire put her arm around Jemma’s shoulders. “It happened between the hours of her twin’s birth and hers, and the way she describes it, later in the book, is exactly what I glimpsed when you were working on Alyss: Light pouring through you. And this is exactly what occurs during an Initiation into Light. That Light brings seeds of knowledge from all our lineage who have gone before, and plants them in your very cells. Though of course, for those who choose to be Initiated into Darkness, it is darkness that comes.”

“And Majem had chosen the Light,” Jemma murmured, remembering Bryn’s words:
Magic is what men make it. Ask for bad, get bad. Ask for good, get good
. “So I
am
Initiated, after all.”

“Yes. The force of the Light you created yesterday, and your clearing of the Mist last night, proves it,” Lumo said. “There is no doubt, Jemma. You are the Fire One, as foreseen by the Prophecy almost three hundred years ago.”

Jemma looked at the embers, the eerie feeling she’d had when reading Majem’s dedication to her creeping through her again. The parallels between her story and her ancestor’s—their escape, their self-Initiation, and the murder of each of their brothers—were uncanny. Majem had even had two
rats
, for goodness’ sake.

A lot to take in
. Noodle and Pie licked her fingers.
We know
.

A lot. It was. She had known nothing of these things a week ago, yet now they were part of who she was. The Fire One.

“So … was it Majem’s Prophecy?”

“No,” said Lumo, stoking the fire with a branch. “It was Gudred’s. Her brother-in-law.”

“The Visionary.” Jemma breathed in the smoke-tinged air, and pulled Majem’s cloak around her. As if reading a dedication to her written three hundred years ago wasn’t enough, the idea of actually being
seen
by the supposedly great Gudred made her head swim. It felt spooky.

No. It felt special.

Inevitable.

A spark ignited in her. “So I can avenge Jamem’s death,” she said, “and everything they did to me. To us.” The spark flared into a small flame. “And to Marsh … Talon and her mother … Caleb and Rue … the ghost children in the forest … Everyone I saw on the way here … all that misery, murder, and Mist—” She leapt to her feet, tumbling Noodle and Pie to the ground. Determination blazed through her. “I can—I will! I hate them,
hate
them!”

Quite so
. The rats shook themselves.
But please don’t toss us around like that
.

“Oh, sorry, Rattusses—”

“Jemma.” Lumo stood, his voice firm. “I understand how you feel. But your Powers, though great, are still raw. They need schooling, focusing. You must learn to master and intend their every nuance. Hatred should never be your guiding force; it only creates more of itself. And besides, if you were to move against the Agromonds while blazing with such vengeance, the Mist would read you and strike you down as fast as thought can travel. Outwitting it is no easy task. Only Ida has ever succeeded—”

“Then I shall learn!”

“Indeed. But it took Ida many years. You will require time. And patience.”

Jemma gritted her teeth; patience was not one of her gifts, she knew. “I shall learn,” she repeated. “Starting tomorrow!”

“Wait!” Sapphire stood. “Let us not get ahead of ourselves! Lumo, training is all very well, but we must also think of Jemma’s safety. We cannot talk of such ventures while Majem’s other book is still missing! You know she said it was vital for the Fire One to have it—”

“Majem wrote another book?” said Jemma.

“Yes.” Sapphire started pacing by the fire. “A single small volume, written by hand. She talked of it to her son, Ruddeg, on her death-bed. She was frantic, telling him it was lost, and must be found, for it contained the key to overcoming the Agromonds and fulfilling the Prophecy. Lumo, I would be loathe to give my blessing to any of this until
The Forgotten Song
is found.…”

“The Forgotten Song,”
Jemma murmured, the words nibbling her memory.

“Sapphire,” said Lumo, “Majem was old when she died, and as you know, becoming addle-headed. Ruddeg never knew whether she was telling the truth about the book or hallucinating. How many generation of Solvays have searched for it high and low? Yet none have found it. We cannot hold Jemma back for something that may not even exist—”