Fourth Thursday of Spring (very early)

Mother did not let me burn the candle, or rather I did not ask her. Our older guest asked for me. It is bad manners to refuse a guest, and doubly bad when the request is so commonplace, so she did not dare say no. Now I am writing by candlelight in my corner of the loft and watching our guests sleep.

This has not been an ordinary night at all.

The fires at the boundary of Renth are only lit when greatcats have been seen, to frighten them away. Older children like me, who can stay awake all night and know how to tend the flames without letting them either go out or escape onto the grasslands, are chosen to watch over the fires. This is the reason we are told, but we all know there is another reason we are the ones who keep the fires and not adults. We are less of a loss to the village if we die. If I died, I am not sure it would be a loss to anyone, except maybe Mother.

But I am getting distracted from my story again. I must learn not to do that.

I was picked to tend a fire on the western edge of the village, facing the hill country. This is where greatcats live, but I was not too much afraid. I can throw stones as far as any boy, and greatcats like being pelted with rocks as much as my schoolmates do, which is to say not at all. Also, I was careful to keep the flames between me and the grasslands, so that the greatcats would think they had to pass through fire to get at me.

My time by the fire was like the rest of my life, neither all good nor all bad. I had to keep watch and make sure the flames did not die down, but I had potatoes to roast in the hot embers for when I got hungry, and there are many stories which are good to tell out loud, even to oneself. I was telling one of these, a tale from across the seas about a set of twelve gods and goddesses and their parts in the birthing of the world, when I heard another voice than my own.

At first I thought it was one of the other children tending fires, calling to me or to the rest, but then it shouted again and I knew it was none of us. No fires were further from the village than mine, and this voice was coming from the grasslands. It sounded exhausted and alone and afraid, and what it shouted was, “Help! Help!”

“Who are you?” I shouted back. “What do you want?”

“Please, let me come in!” It was a boy’s voice, broken between every few words with panting. “They’re after me, they want me dead! Please, I’m not alone... take her if you can’t take me...”

I dipped the end of a stick in the oil I had brought to give the fire extra heat if it needed and lit it for a torch. In my other hand, I picked up a rock. “Come where I can see you,” I said, and moved to one side of the flames as the form of a tall boy carrying something on his back appeared out of the darkness of the night. “Who are you?”

“My name is Valle.” He said it vall-yeh, but he has told me this is how it is spelled. “The child is Mary. I am responsible for her.”

“Child?” I asked.

Valle came a little further into the firelight and lifted down the thing he was carrying. It was a little girl, about four years old, and when I saw her I could not help thinking of Snow White. Her skin was so pale that I could see the blue lines of the veins on her closed eyelids, her lips were soft and rosy red in the glow of the fire, and her hair draped as black as the night over Valle’s brown arm. She was breathing softly, but did not wake.

“Who is chasing you?” I asked, though I knew the answer already. There are no bandits in these parts, no humans at all unless they live in the villages, and there are no villages west of Renth.

“The rogues.” Valle swayed where he stood, but recovered his balance before I had to run forward to help him. “The renegades. The same ones who threaten you.”

“The greatcats.”

“Yes, that’s what...” He stopped, frowning, then went on quickly. “Yes, that’s right. Greatcats. They want to kill me, and do worse than that to Mary. I can’t let that happen to her.”

“No, you can’t,” I agreed, and tossed my torch into the fire. “Come sit with me. They never come past the flames. This village is Renth, and I am Katia.”

Now Valle did stumble, but I had my hands free and caught him before he fell. He was heavy, but no more so than Mother when she has a bad night and I must convince her to go to bed. “I have food if you need it,” I told him as I guided him to a seat on the little slope where I had been sitting myself when he called. “Only roast potatoes, but better than nothing.”

“Thank you, but I can’t take your meal away...”

“I always bring too many, in case I want to trade with the others.” I picked up another stick and began digging my potatoes out of their fiery tombs. “Will Mary want one?”

Valle laid the girl beside him, stroking her hair back from her face. “I think she’d better stay asleep. She was badly frightened when we heard them screaming out there.” His eyes were nearly as dark as the sky, and fixed on me curiously. “Do you always greet strangers so hospitably, Katia of Renth?”

“I dare not speak for the rest of the village, but I greet strangers as I hope they would greet me.” I speared a potato and reeled it in to drop it beside Valle. “And I have a proper surname, though I never spoke it so you would not know. It is Manton.”

“Katia Manton.” The inflections Valle gave my name made it poetic, more beautiful than I had thought it could be. “I hope I haven’t offended you by naming you with your village.”

I drew in a potato for myself. “You offend me not at all. The rest of this village offends me sometimes, by assuming the worst of everyone.” “Ah.” Valle scooped up his potato. “Nothing more need be said.”

“Careful, that’s hot—”

“Nothing burns me,” Valle cut me off. “And if you’d like, I can make sure Mary and I aren’t followed. Just in case the lure of us draws the... greatcats in past your fires this once.”

I have put hesitation marks in Valle’s last sentence, though the hesitation was very small and I could have been imagining it. If I was, I can erase them later, or pretend that they are there to mark where Valle cursed. The reason I think I was imagining the hesitation is that I cannot imagine why he would hesitate over the word “greatcats.” I do not know of any place where they are called anything different.

But as tonight has reminded me, there is a great deal I do not know.

Again, back to my story.

“How will you do that?” I asked. “Do you have a weapon?”

“In a way.” Valle took a bite of his potato, though mine was still too hot for me to touch. “I could say you have a weapon, except you can’t use it,” he went on, speaking around his mouthful in a way that would earn any child of Renth a spanking. “These potatoes are very good, by the way. I haven’t had anything but meat for three days and they’re most welcome.”

“You’re confusing me.”

Valle swallowed. “My apologies. Here, watch.” He got to his feet and held out his hands towards the fire. “Or, should I say, feel,” he said over his arm to me.

I was about to ask what he meant when the question was no longer needed. The fire flickered twice and went back to burning as merrily as ever, but the air around us grew thick and warm, as if we were downwind of the flames and surrounded by smoke. It was not bad to breathe, though, and Mary smiled in her sleep beside me.

“I take some of the fire’s heat, like so.” Valle stared out into the night, and I saw his lips move again, though I heard no words. “Shape it and tame it to my will,” were the next things he said that I could hear. “And then...” He drew his hands to his chest and lifted them to the level of his shoulders, as though he hoisted a huge ball for throwing. “Let it go.”

A warm wind blew past me, and the cool of the night returned. The grass beyond the flames rippled briefly and stilled.

“And now, if there are any greatcats out there, they’ll run away as if their tails were on fire.” Looking very smug, Valle sat down again. “Because they will feel exactly that.” He yawned. “Now if you will forgive me, I’ve been on my feet since early this morning...”

“Of course,” I said, though the words came out without my meaning them to. If I had said what I was truly feeling, it would have sounded more like, “What did you do? How did you do it? How can anyone take heat from a fire and shape it just by willing it so?”

But such questions are rude, and I doubted they had answers I would understand or want to hear, especially late at night. So I watched Valle finish his potato and lie down to sleep beside little Mary, and I kept the watch until James Alradi came out to take my place at midnight. He and his family have never been cruel to Mother and me, though they have never been very kind either, so I knew I could safely ask him to run to my house and fetch Mother here. She would be sitting up, working at her spinning and waiting for me to come in. Little things like this are how I know she does love me despite all her pain.

She came with James, and she was very sarcastic about my letting strangers past the boundary fires, but eventually she agreed with me that I could not have let them stay outside, especially if they were truly being chased by the greatcats. I told James he could have the rest of my potatoes, Mother picked up Mary, and Valle followed us to our house, where I asked him quietly if he would ask Mother for a candle. And that is how I got the light to sit up here and write in my book the happenings of this night, while Valle and Mary sleep beside me wrapped up in our extra blankets.

I have so many questions I cannot decide which to write down first. Who are Valle and little Mary? What are they to one another? Is it only Snow White Mary reminds me of, or is it someone else? And most important of all, where did they come from? Are there hidden villages of human beings out in the grasslands that we do not know about? How could they hide from the greatcats, who have noses that can track the scent of one human as far as three days’ travel?

The easiest way to get answers to these questions would be to ask Valle, but I do not think he will answer them. Perhaps Mary would, because she is not old enough to know better, but that seems underhanded and I will only do it if I must. I will see what I can learn from watching them and listening to the things they say, and the things they do not say.

One thing I know already. Valle’s body is at war with itself, the way the bodies of the old sometimes are. Whether it is the disease that sometimes strikes children as a fever, or whether he was born with it so, I cannot tell, but I can see in the candlelight his knuckles and wrists are swollen, and I daresay the rest of his joints are the same. What rare courage he has to run so far, and carry little Mary on his back, when his own flesh and bone betray him moment by moment.

The candle burns low, and I am weary. Besides, I have said all I mean to say for this night. Tomorrow I will watch, and listen, and learn.

Wait—Mary is crying out—

The strangest thing. When I went to comfort Mary, she caught at my hand and said a name. It may have been, it must have been, a trick of my hearing and my memories, so I will not write it here, but it sounded to me as though she said—

I have said I will not write it, and I will not. I must sleep. I will write more tomorrow, when there is more to write.