Fire of Ennui (Evocation Book 1)

By Ivana Skye

Nena has already done the one thing she wanted in life: become the champion of a major athletic competition at a younger age than anyone else ever had. So now what’s she to do? Well, apparently, discover that she has superpowers...

Nena hits the road out of sheer boredom, and quickly runs into Maràh, another traveler who she decides to befriend, although they don’t make that easy for her. Then again, between figuring out what she wants to do next with her life and why things keep catching on fire around her, Nena figures “easy” is far behind her.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ivana Skye
• Release date: Jan 13, 2018
• ISBN: 9780997854442

Book preview

1

Nena

heat enough to melt the snow

Outside the window there was snow, and inside me there was months’ store of pent-up energy with nowhere at all to go. There was me in my room by that window with nowhere to go. I writhed with boredom on my bed, I flopped most of the way off of it. I was tossing, turning, groaning. I almost wanted to suddenly fall off the bed entirely, just for the brief sense of excitement.

And yet—this was the beginning of nearly everything. This was the moment that led to moments and moments ahead filled with light and discovery and bright sparks, this is what led from Sifir to Cradle, this is what changed the world.

Me. So bored that I could neither sit still nor think of any particularly interesting way to move.

My home city of Ta Ralis spread around me, but the walls of my room held me in. I had nowhere to go, but yet this was the beginning. I was twitching and yet there was nothing to do, even though there technically was—I could have done so many things. I could have visited a library, any library, and read the stories my ancestors recorded. I could learn any bit of knowledge anyone ever knew. But I’d already done that, six months home now, and I’d had more than my fill. Experience was more my style; I preferred to learn from more than just books and talking.

But also I could have walked out into the snow. I could have skied, I could have hiked, I could have climbed something. I could even have gone back to the gym, as if I hadn’t already won everything there was to win in that regard.

But none of that would do, none of that was enough. I looked in my mind for anything, anything that would engage me, and all it could tell me was nothing nothing nothing.

So instead I writhed.

And instead I found myself living and breathing boredom.

And instead I let my mind wander back to what had been the most interesting and important moment in the world. Orange lights and the cheer of a crowd. The way the world blurred as I flipped around on the trapeze. Adrenaline and muscle memory and confidence fueled my every moment.

It was exactly what I had prepared for my entire life.

There were five parts of the competition and two categories of judgement: athleticism and artistry. And I won both. I danced in the air on trapeze and silks, more than kept my coordination on the high beam, flipped dramatically on the floor, spun effortlessly on the wheel. Altogether, in those things combined, I was the best—in both ways of thinking about it.

Hardly anyone ever wins both categories in the same year. And if they do, they’re not seventeen. No one manages something so difficult as young as that.

Except, of course, for me.

So here I was, just eighteen now, and I’d already months ago done everything I’d wanted in all my life, and I was lying on my bed in early afternoon, and I was bored. And I’ll say exactly what it felt like: it felt like fire. It felt like sparks under my skin, this desire to move and do something. It felt like I would burn up entirely if I stayed still. It was at once flickering and intense, and I was certain it had the capability to destroy me.

My boredom was fire, I thought to myself. It was fire.

Before I even went on stage for anything that day that I won—the best day of my life, the end point of everything that had mattered to me—I psyched myself up backstage. Every color was so bright and my heart rang in my ears. That waiting room would go on to become in my memory both a place and a feeling, the walls themselves in retrospect seeming to be more anticipation than walls. Even now, I can think up that room, and feel everything I felt then.

The competition was in the west, on a peninsula called the Scythe for its shape. Not everyone could make it: my aunt’s wheelchair wasn’t tricked out enough to cross the mountains; the Scythe’s plans for extending its rail system for exactly that reason hadn’t quite gone through yet. So, since she had a synonym and I knew it—and it was an easy one to use, too, a truename like mine—I decided to contact her.

"Eriye, I said, the word not reverberating in actuality but still somehow doing so in spirit simply because I knew from experience that she heard me say it, hundreds of miles away. I’ll be going up soon, I continued, I just wanted you to know, since you couldn’t make it."

I felt the response as sound, though it didn’t touch the air anywhere near me. "Nena, she said, hundreds of miles away, and the syllables vibrated deep in me. In my bones, it felt like, although in actuality it was deeper—those syllables vibrated in my soul, by virtue of me having decided that my very self and that name were one and the same. Now that the synonym was invoked, the connection opened, her following words moved through me too. Thanks for telling me, she said. Good luck."

I smiled, more than willing to accept the luck. The intensity of the connection—the biggest downside to synonymy, for all that it allowed instantaneous long-distance communication—didn’t bother me at all. If it did, I wouldn’t have been entirely public with my truename.

But I liked feeling that call to attention, frequently. People could say my name without it affecting me so deeply if they wanted, a connection wouldn’t be opened unless they intended it to be—but still. Anyone, anywhere, who’d heard of me, which was a lot of people at this point, could get me to listen to their words.

I wasn’t one to close myself off. I never had been.

And so I told my aunt that I’d tell her how it went, and with a thought of cutting and a flat-handed gesture, I ended the connection. With a slight twinge, I could feel that she’d done the same.

I was ready, then. And of course, it turned out that I won.

So I was bored, and as I reminisced to combat the feeling, I thought of that aunt who lived in a different city, a different climate, hundreds of miles away. I had talked to Eriye that day when I’d won, but I hadn’t visited her for perhaps three years.

I smiled, sitting up at last. I had a plan.

My backpack, well used from all those years of long travel for circus competitions, was still resting right there against my bed. And I knew my system for packing it like I knew the motions of shaving my face.

Planning had never been my strong suit, but memorizing a routine was something I could do. And so it took only thirty minutes of stuffing various items into their proper corners for me to be entirely ready, minus the provisions I’d need to pick up on my way out of the city.

Suddenly the flurry of snow outside my window felt suiting to the moment, like a motivation to go. I wasn’t going to actually contact my aunt ahead of time, of course: I couldn’t risk her telling me not to come, leaving me to my boredom once more. But, it occurred to me in a spark of thought that made my bite my lip, I should probably tell my parents.

My house was by all means a typical Ta Ralisite house: a low and long cabin with plenty of space for a full extended family. Mine tended to feel a little empty though, as it hadn’t been particularly designed for my mother to marry a man from out of the city who brought none of his family to live with us. I made my way to the central living space, filled with wood carvings and the display copy of the intricate family tree scroll: most of the details coming only from one side of the family, of course, as my father knew very little of his own genealogy compared to the average Ta Ralisite.

I found my mother curled up in some furs, a book in her hands, the fireplace on. She took one look at me and gave something that at least halfway resembled a frown.

Hey, so, I’m leaving, I said, as if it wasn’t already pretty obvious.

Um, she said, likely in substitute for all the questions she probably wanted to ask: doing what, going where, why.

I’m bored here, I explained. I’m gonna go visit my aunt. And, yknow, everyone else up there in Mangtena.

You know that’s three hundred miles away, right?

Eh, I said. It’ll be a fun trip. I hope.

My mother just shook her head, used to me by now. It’s nice having you back here, you know.

She wasn’t trying to convince me to stay; I knew that. Yet I gritted my teeth anyway, annoyed by the slightest hint of something that might prevent me from having a life. Another life. After all, it seemed I’d already had the one.

Nena, she said, not invoking the name, nothing about the way she said it reverberating in my soul.

I waited for her to say something else: an actual invitation to stay, an admonition of some kind.  But it seemed she intended all her meaning to be carried only by the syllables of my name.

And I didn't know what that meaning was; I never was the best at understanding subtext.  So I asked: what?

Nothing, she responded.

I frowned.  This exact style of interaction was among my greatest weaknesses.  A walking handstand was one thing, but following this was near impossible.  Are you sure? I asked.

Well, you're leaving, she responded.  I was sure I was supposed to say something back, but that was not the way I was.  I was of directness and specificity, focus and certainty; we all were, those of us who would go to Cradle.

Thankfully, my father walked into the room then, took one look at my pack, and said: Ah, that's what all the commotion was about.  I could hear rustling in some of the other rooms too, surely intrigued grandparents and cousins who weren't quite ready to get themselves directly involved.

I almost said to him that I was sorry, but I wasn't sorry.  I was doing exactly what I wanted to do.  So instead I said, Bored here. You know?

He laughed and asked, Getting back into competition?

I almost blushed and perhaps certainly bristled, as that was not what I was intending to do, not yet.  Just a visit, I said.  Mom's sister.  Even saying it that way made me bite my lip, worrying now that this trip too would bore me.  And if I talked about it too much longer, I expected the chances that it would begin to truly sound boring would increase.  I needed to leave.  Immediately.

My father