The Fire Children Read Free Page B

in the scant moonlight as she looked up and down the table. Maybe she’s admiring it, Yulla told herself. But the woman looked... eager, somehow, greedy.
    The witch-woman caught her looking, and spread her lips in a grin. It was probably supposed to be welcoming, but Yulla was sure the woman could open her mouth so wide she could swallow their family whole. She hurried to catch up to Aunt Mouse, and didn’t look behind them until they were home.
     
     
    E VEN THOUGH Y ULLA had thought she wouldn’t be able to eat another bite for at least a week, she found room when Amma brought out the last of the milk, and a plate of the flat, thin anise cookies she’d made. These were the broken pieces—she left the perfect ones out for the Fire Children—but they tasted just as wonderful.
    Kell and Yulla sat on cushions on the great room floor, painting a few last pictures to leave for the Fire Children while Amma and Abba and Aunt Mouse laid out offerings of their own. Amma brought her earrings and the necklace of shimmering gold down from her dresser and laid them on the hearth; Abba set a recorder beside it—he’d carved it himself, and had it inlaid with silver.
    Aunt Mouse draped a quilt over a chair. She’d spent nearly a year making it, finding the perfect bits and pieces and piecing them together. Now she laughed self-consciously and said, “Foolish of me to think they’d ever be chilly. I should have made a fan!” But they all told her how beautiful it was, with its cool river-blues and the green of the leaves that bloomed after a rain, and Aunt Mouse blushed, pleased.
    Near midnight, the bells began to toll. They rang out across the city from the top of the Worship Hall, echoing off the stone walls of the buildings before they faded out into the desert. Amma herded the girls down the cellar stairs, to where Aunt Mouse had gone to doze in their makeshift great room. On the upstairs side of the door, Abba painted the symbol that would tell the Fire Children ‘do not enter.’ Kell had said it was a ward taught to the people of Kaladim by the witch-women, but that had never been enough to set Yulla at ease about them. As Abba put the last bright white touches on the mark, she thought of the glittering eyes of the witch-woman from earlier, and shuddered.
    No, being protected by their magic didn’t make her feel any better at all.
    Aunt Mouse had lit a few lamps when she’d tottered downstairs for her nap, but Amma suggested they light a few more. It felt like noonday in the room, then, the shadows banished for just a little longer. Yulla and Kell settled in on either side of Abba as he opened a huge book across his lap. The letters stamped on the cover had been worn smooth from years of handling. It was the only book Amma had kept out of storage—these few hours would be the last time there’d be light enough to read by until the Darktimes ended, and they gathered around him in a way they hadn’t for a few years. Not since Kell had declared herself too old for stories when she was twelve, and Yulla—eager to copy her elder sister—had insisted the same.
    Yulla had always regretted that, but never knew how to ask Abba to start reading to her again.
    Tonight, he read whichever stories the girls called for: “The Wind-Dancers,” “Emir and the Silver Shoes,” “How Inkspot Escaped the Wolves,” and, of course, “The Brigand Queen vs. The Scourge of the Seven Sands.” But soon, even the excitement of the Darktimes’ imminent beginning couldn’t keep the yawn from stretching Yulla’s jaw. Amma had had them out of bed before Mother Sun herself this morning.
    She dozed in and out of sleep, her dreams shifting with the tales Abba read aloud. Sometimes she heard other voices, as neighbors shuffled down the tunnels to make sure everyone was prepared or to leave a basket of sundries. At some point, Aunt Mouse went visiting as well, and Kell went with her. Yulla tried to rouse herself, but it was so comfortable