The Fire Children Read Free

blankets and quilts in thick piles.
    The walls were the same bare grey stone as always. The ceiling in here was lower than the one in the main room; Abba would have to duck if he came in to kiss them goodnight. Yulla traced the long straight groove left by a workman’s chisel. Its edges were smooth; the cellars had been hewn from the rock hundreds—if not thousands—of years ago.
    “Look at these.” Kell had hopped off her pallet and was peering at the wall behind the table. “Help me move it.”
    When they pulled it out, they revealed a whole town populated by stick figures chalked on the stone. The buildings reminded Yulla of Old Moll’s replica-town: there was the Worship Hall with its spires scraping the clouds, there the market; the lookout tower rose above it all, a tiny figure keeping watch within. The house in the middle was bigger than the rest of the town. The artists had left the facade open, so you could peer inside. Below the line that served as the street, someone had drawn the cellar rooms as well. Skinny double-lines branched off on either side of those, leading to the chambers beneath the houses next door.
    Tunnels connected all the cellars of Kaladim. They kept the citizens connected during the Darktimes—it was how the midwife had arrived to help Amma through her labor fifteen years before. Yulla and Kell had spent several of the last few days sweeping the cobwebs from the passageway ceilings. Where their tunnel split from the main one, they’d met the ropemaker. He’d been hard at work replacing the lines that served as guides through the darkness, but he’d taken a moment to show the girls how to tie a half-hitch before he’d sent them on their way.
    Yulla walked her fingers along one of the chalk tunnels. It ended in a room with three stick figures. She thought they might be dancing. “Who do you think these are?”
    “That’s me, and your Aunt Mouse, and our cousin Ro.” Amma stood in the doorway, a wistful smile on her face. “I’d nearly forgotten about those.”
    “This was your room?” Kell tilted her head, as if she didn’t quite believe it. Neither could Yulla. Amma as a little girl? And Aunt Mouse? She couldn’t picture either of them her own age—they’d always been old. Not ancient like Old Moll, maybe, but old all the same.
    “It was. Our family has lived here a very long time. Your ancestors were the stonecutters who carved out these cellars.” She traced a circle around the three dancing girls, her eyes gone soft with memory. Then she was Amma again, all business as she said, “Come on. We still have much to do before tomorrow morning.”
    She was not a woman prone to exaggeration. Over the next several hours, they finished stowing the furniture, baked enough extra flatbread to last through a year of the Darktimes, and checked and rechecked their supplies.
    When Abba came home, they began memorizing the space that would be their living quarters. Someone would call out a place to start from and a place to go, and the five of them took turns navigating around with blindfolds on. Abba made it into a game, taking away points if you barked a shin on an obstacle; awarding them if you could find your way even after someone spun you around a few times.
    Aunt Mouse and Amma won, of course. Despite the grey twisting through their hair, they moved around like girls at the versam : confident, graceful, sure.
    Kell was slightly less poised, the loss of sight stymying her, but only at first. Soon she’d learned the room as quickly as she’d learned the versam . Yulla felt awkward and ungainly when it was her turn beneath the blindfold, but she figured out the trick soon enough—shuffle your feet forward, sweep your hands along. Listen. Feel.
    Abba had a terrible time of it, stubbing his toes and tripping over everything in his path. Once, he ended up in the privy instead of the tunnel, and only came back when they all started giggling. Yulla suspected him of faking, but it was