Benyu Born of Ash: The Ischyró Chronicles

By Katie Feavel

Neurodivergent Elemental, Roan, doesn't belong in any of the worlds. She boils things, she dreams of death, and she keeps to the shadows whenever she can. But her copper freckles and ashy red curls make her about as subtle as the benyu, the fiery bird of the mythkeepers' stories. On her nineteenth birthday, Roan's village is beguiled by conquering Woodlanders. In an effort to save her people, she throws herself into a reckless blood bargain with Galin, the roguish Woodland general who challenges her heart, complicates her sense of self, and unmasks the true nature of her magic. And he's not the only one who wants to forge her into a weapon…Roan must find her own voice in the darkness of trauma and, like the benyu, rise from the ashes to set her people free.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Acorn Publishing
• Release date: Feb 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201055363

Book preview

1

M

aster Adrastí says there’s no place in the village school for an Elemental girl like me. He spits the word girl like it’s an insult.

Roan. I want to say. My name is Roan.

He already knows that, but the Masters here don’t like my name. This one hovers over my desk. I should probably hang my head in shame for what I’ve done, the pain I’ve caused. But I can’t stop staring at his cavernous forehead wrinkles. He’s angry about what I did to Beau’s arm. That might be an understatement. He’s livid, irate, so positively furious that his wiry eyebrows narrow down at me like two indignant caterpillars forming an arrow of accusation.

I’m not sure whether the sound I stifle is a laugh or a sob. My little sister, Sparrow, kicks me under the desk we share. It stings just enough to stamp out the rogue ember of humor sparking in my chest. Even I should know this isn’t a laughing matter.

I try to read the master’s expression. There’s no humor in his eyes, no compassion in the clench of his jaw. His lips coil into a scowl above a speckled goatee and I’m suddenly curious as to whether there’s more hair on his chin or atop his scalp. But this line of thought doesn’t fit, just as I do not fit.

Process. I try to command my brain, but it doesn’t like to listen to me.

I pull my gaze back down to my desk, where my textbook lies open to a page about the foínix, the great bird of myth that could fly from one end of the cosmos to the other, moving from realm to realm, from world to world, without ever needing to rest, without being held back. What else might I learn about the bird if I could actually read the pages? It seems to me that a bird that burns pure white with such ferocious heat, dies a thousand deaths, and then rises again amongst its own ashes wouldn’t care so much if it didn’t fit in.

Master Adrastí clears his throat.

React. He’s waiting for me to react. Even in his frustration, he waits. He’s been my instructor for long enough to know my mind doesn’t always get to the natural conclusion of a thing as quickly as another’s might. But his disappointment is patient.

Speak. I need to speak. I just managed to melt the skin on my classmate’s arm. Words are expected. Beau should have let me go the first time I asked, but that’s not what the master wants to hear.

I’m sorry, I say at last.

Master Adrastí’s response gets lost in the buzzing of my classmates’ whispers around me. Too many sounds simply cancel each other out, making my head spin. I resist the urge to shake my body loose of the irksome input.

I’m sorry? I say again. This time it comes out like a question. I hope he’ll understand that I need him to repeat what he said.

He does. He tells me to leave and never come back.

Which is fine. Except that the smell of Beau’s boiling flesh hangs thick and stagnant in the air, searing itself into the recesses of my memory. This is fine. I rise from the desk, my hand on Sparrow’s shoulder, telling her to stay. It’s bad enough for her already. She has the misfortune of being the sister of the only Elemental in Sendiya.

I will leave. I’ll take one step toward the door, then another, and this will all be fine. I won’t miss anybody, and they’ll all likely be glad to have me gone. I have no false ego. None of the other children will mourn the absence of the girl with copper freckles and dangerous magic in her veins. Because that’s what I am to them, dangerous . . . and different.

I’m glad to leave. It’s not like I can read anyway. I only went to school for lessons on how to blend in, how to conceal myself behind this mask. But the markings, the talon scratches they call letters shift and spin so that no words are understood. For everyone else, this is language. For them, this is freedom.

But for me, the deconstructed symbols swirl, swim, and drown . . . rather than form something akin to language. For me, this is prison.

My boots kick up the gravel as I stomp the thoroughfare. Coils of ashy red hair fall into my eyes, and I don’t bother brushing them aside. Let me look like ash and flame. Maybe it will keep the others away. To rise from the ashes, the benyu had to be hotter than the flames. That’s why it was said to be white and blue, not red or orange.

I wish I could become the benyu, the ancient bird of the mythkeepers’ stories.

I wish I could fly away into the sun that beats on my back.

I wish a lot of things.

Madam Ginger waves me down from the back door of Kapó’s tavern, beckons me inside. She lets me rest with the younger working girls until I have to go home. They aren’t afraid of me. Here, I’m just another wretch amongst outcasts.

There’s a mirror on the wall in one of the girls’ rooms. It’s cracked down the middle and bends and warps in a way that makes my reflection nearly unrecognizable. I feel like it’s the only time I actually see myself—more of a fractured fledgling than a great bird of myth.

This girl in the damaged mirror . . . she doesn’t belong and she knows it. I watch as a single tear streaks her caramel skin. I wonder why she cries, why I cry. Maybe it’s because nobody remembered that today’s her ninth birthday.

Shadows build, curving up over my shoulders in the splintered reflection. Do the other girls actually see the darkness of my shame the way I do? Do they sense the anger there? Or maybe they just see a strange girl lost in her own broken reflection. I know better than to ask. Even these girls, who should feel comfortable in the shadows, would reject me if I started telling them what I see. Because it isn’t only my inability to read that casts me out. It’s the víchrice, the vision storms. If I ever admitted to possessing such sight, the kind that carries with it beacons of Death, I’d be branded a witch and burned alive or tied to a stone and sent to the bottom of the sea. Better the masters think me dumb or defiant than cursed.

No matter how much I tell myself I don’t care about getting kicked out of school, a part of me knows I will always wish to belong. But for now, I’ll take the shadows, and I’ll wear them like a comfortable old cloak, holes and stains and all.

I may not be able to read, but I get by in other ways. I see patterns amidst chaos, details that otherwise go unnoticed, the color of sound and the shape of silence. Then again, I also see shadows and hurt my classmates, so it’s not really something to brag about.

Being an Elemental is a rarity, an oddity. My sight, the víchrice, makes me something feared. The combination of the two brands me as doubly other.

I can’t change what I am.

What, not who. I think you have to be normal to be a who.

I boil things and I dream of Death and I do not belong.

S

The door groans as Ginger presses it open just enough to pop her head inside. School’s out, Red, she whispers, so she won’t wake the other girls. They need their rest today to deal with the night.

Can I stay a little longer? I ask, already knowing she’ll let me. She’s never turned me out before.

She nods. But if you’re here when we start to get clients, I’ll put you to work. She gives me a wink and pulls the door closed again.

I listen to her heeled boots clap away down the hall. We both know she’d never let that happen. The other girls here, they don’t have a choice. They all belong to Kapó. He’d bought Ginger when she was just thirteen, like the girls who sleep in a cluster of limbs on the bed behind me. These girls belong to something warped, a perverse industry that profits from the exploitation of their bodies for sex. Yet, Ginger has still found a way for her own existence to matter. She’s become a protector, a sort of mother figure to the girls here, as she has offered sanctuary to every wayward soul who appears at the back door.

Another life, she’d told me once, when I’d asked about her childhood.

Another life. That’s what all these girls had before coming here.

And another life is what I get to go home to. I may be an outcast who has to hide in the shadows, but they are shadows that carry me to a home where family waits, where I cannot be bought and sold. At least, in this way, I am still free.

S

I wait until dark to leave the tavern though Ginger chides me for delaying so long. You’re gonna need to face them sooner or later, Red. Might as well get it over with.

The girls have begun to rise, readying themselves for their night’s work with masks of deference and a sense of humor they wear like armor.

My shadows blend into the night as I take the alleyways home. I like walking the streets this late. It’s dark and quiet, and I can open my senses to my surroundings without feeling like I’m under assault. Some see the void of night as absence, abandonment, but I welcome it as a blanket for my constantly exposed nerves.

When I lift the wooden handle on our front door and step into the kitchen, the light from the fire gilds the edges of my shame.

My parents are sitting at the table. My mother keeps her gaze downcast. She grips a mug of tea with blanched knuckles. But the piercing sense of disappointment I find in my father’s face crumbles my resolve. They know what I’ve done.

Bed. My father’s voice rasps, as if he’s been yelling for hours. His words are like a fist clenched around the base of my throat. I shake my hands at my sides in an attempt to dislodge the anxious weight from my shoulders.

Sparrow’s sitting on the edge of our cot when I enter. I sink into the worn spot next to her. She wraps her arms around me and holds me close. For a moment, the light of her reassurance chases away the shadows. For a moment, I’m just another little girl with a sister who loves her.

For a moment, I feel like I belong. But then, I fall asleep and Death haunts my dreams.

2

I

t’s still dark when my mother drags me out of bed, away from my sister’s sleepy warmth. She gestures to a stack of clothes without a word, though her silence is less about waking Sparrow and more about punishing me. But I feel everything left unspoken.

A sliver of light filters in from the kitchen fire. I dress slowly, my aching ego a pulse in the silent room. The fitted wool tunic puts up a fight over my thick hair. But I know not to underestimate its payback. The way the wool itches my rear, even through my undergarments, should be punishment enough for my offenses.

For the first time, I wonder how Beau’s arm is. I’m not sure whether I should be more ashamed that I haven’t thought of him sooner or that I’m complaining about itchy wool when his skin is boiled and blistered and will likely cause him pain for weeks. It’s not like he’s entirely innocent. It’s not like he didn’t provoke me. Still, I shouldn’t have lost control.

I yank a twill tunic over my head next, gathering its loose fabric at my waist with a leather belt. Knitted ankle and wrist warmers lay atop a thick cloak at the foot of the bed. My winter boots sit propped against each other next to the door.

Summer still lingers here in the Lowlands. I can’t imagine where I’m being taken today that would make such garments necessary. But my parents’ secrecy is part of my sentence, I’m sure. They know how much it bothers me not to have a plan.

I’m fed porridge like it’s a penance. A metallic tang lingers on the back of my tongue after each bite, but I know better than to complain. When my father clamps a heavy hand on my shoulder, I let him steer me to my feet and out the door.

S

We’ve been hiking for nearly three days, my father leading me through the swamps and meadows to higher ground. We make a bare-bones camp each night and he turns his back to me to sleep. I don’t dare speak first.

My father doesn’t have to say it. He’s disciplining me with his silence. This seemingly pointless pilgrimage is my punishment for not controlling my magic, for hurting Beau.

There’s always been an uncrossable line between my father and me, some obscure boundary that’s different from how he is with my other siblings. There’s a certain pride he shows to my little brother, Leif. A father-daughter bond fuses him and Sparrow, one rooted in an affection that isn’t shown to me.

The web of my relationship with my father is more . . . tactical, more pragmatic in nature.

I’m an Elemental. Even my own father knows to keep some distance between us.

I’d sweated and itched my way through the first two days of this hike. Then, the temperature dropped as we gained altitude, and now I can’t decide if I’m grateful for all the added layers or if their dampness is making me colder.

Chilly fog lingers in the foothills. It filters the morning light into something gray and gloomy. A layer of hoarfrost blankets the slate beds that sprawl north of Sendiya. My numb fingers slip on the frozen azure moss as I clamber over ancient shale in my father’s wake.

I keep my eyes on the ground, letting the silence envelope me, as my path becomes one of contrition. The clank of my father’s weapon belt sets the rhythm of my steps. Each tread is an atonement for my wrongs.

I boil things and I dream of Death and I do not belong. My mind repeats the thought over and over like it’s my only remaining tether to reality.

My breath pinches my chest as we climb, the air drawing thin. I’ve never been so far north. At the end of the trail, my father reaches back, clasping my forearm to haul me up. He turns and disappears into a copse of densely clustered pines. I follow. The ground is dusted with snow that seems impossible for the time of year.

We stop here, he mutters at last, gesturing to the open space inside the ring of trees.

A flurry of red movement catches my eye. A fox, perhaps. Whatever it is has disappeared again, but it leaves the lingering sense that we aren’t alone.

We’re in the Highlands? I whisper the question, pretty sure I shouldn’t be speaking at all.

He frowns at me but nods.

And I brace for it, the verbal lashing I’ve been expecting for three days. I’d done my best to berate myself, but it wasn’t nearly enough. I’d let my magic run away with itself, and it had caused very real harm.

But the rebuke I’m waiting for never comes.

When my father speaks, his voice is something warm and worn out. We will not discuss what happened at school. Not any more than to agree that you have to learn to control yourself.

I nod.

He slides a dagger from its sheath at his side. For a moment, my heart stutters. The rabid thought that my father has brought me all the way up here to end my life shrieks its way into my skull. I shake my head to silence it. He’s my father. He’d never do anything to harm me, never betray me. I hold the thoughts in check until he speaks again.

I wouldn’t let you carry a knife, he says, unless you knew how to wield it properly, safely. Your magic, Roan, is like this blade. You will learn to use both. He holds the dagger aloft. The twinkling light from the frosted forest glints off the sharp steel edge. It flashes as he flips it so the hilt extends in front of me. Take it.

I grasp the blade with both hands, but when he lets go, it sinks like a weight to the ground. It’s too heavy, I whisper. I’m too weak.

You are stronger than you know, he replies. And therein lies the problem. Lift the blade, Roan.

S

Ten Years Later

Ú

3

M

y dry mouth stings as I approach a murky stream. Floating shiny yellow discs of poisonous algae cloud its surface. They mirror the blazing sun above, and they taunt my thirst.

I close my eyes, cupping my hands and dragging them through the water to make the sign of infinity. A bright blue ring forms in the water where the sign intersects. A pool within a pool. The resulting clearwater ebbs its way outward in a perfect circle a few yards wide.

This is my people’s magic, our ward’s element. The Lowlanders are water-cleansers.

The other wards of Dasos want what we have. They covet that Elemental magic given to my ancestors by the gods of the ground and streams. Nothing is more crucial than water. But they’d drain it all, and this part of the world is too beautiful to become another place of punctured ruin.

The iron bangles on my wrist clang together as I lift my hands. I drink from the now clear center. I’ll only have a few minutes before the yellow slime edges its way back into the space I just purified, so I take in what I can before continuing my trap line.

This is difficult land for hunting, but it’s what I have to work with, so I make do. My family needs the meat.

Toxic green swamp extends for miles along the outskirts of the Lowlands, blending into inlets of blue moss-covered shale and clusters of swaying swamp trees. But as I walk away from the stream, tracking toward my next set of snares, the earth shifts from bog to marshy meadow. An hour or so passes in this way, my boots squelching in mud and splashing in places that retain a few inches of water. And all my snares are empty.

Today, I turn nineteen. The day I got sent home from school for hurting Beau was my ninth birthday. It’s been ten years since I wished to fly away from the schoolhouse. But Beau’s screams and the smell of his sizzling flesh scald my memory still.

It’s a different smell that crowds in on me now. The odor of rotten eggs lifts off the sulfur beds in waves as I walk the ridge surrounding the Roan. I’m named after this place, this bed of copper and red-veined clay, these hot springs that pan out for miles like living, boiling glass.

My mother says I was born of the Roan itself, the blood marbling my rusty hair and cinnamon flesh. She named me after the Roan, and she’s threatened to send me back to it ever since.

Steaming boulders crop up as the sun swings into high noon. My last snare lies just beyond the hot springs, but what I see as I approach has me slowing my steps. A forked black tail peeks out from the reeds. I sink into a crouch, approaching just closely enough to pull the bow from my back. I use it to brush the tall grass aside.

Serpents are mirror creatures. A split tail means two heads. A gemini on my nineteenth birthday, on my thirteenth snare . . . I squirm a little at the significance of the ill omen combined with the fated number thirteen and my coming of age. I shake my shoulders loose, refusing to cave to the emotionally driven superstitions of my ancestors.

My mother would tell me the only unluckier thing now would be if I took off its heads. But my mother’s not here. And there’s mynt to be made off such beliefs, an entire black market in fact, and my family needs the coin as much as the meat. I’ll be able to get a better price for the heads if they’re already beginning to dry out, and I can use the separated pieces to barter.

My hatchet decapitates the gemini in one swift cut. I remove its tail too, stashing the pieces in the satchel slung across my chest.

S

The trip to and from the Exchange will take the entire afternoon, but it’s the only place I’ll be able to sell the gemini heads and tail.

At least it’s argímera, slow day. The Exchange will be nearly empty, most of the storefronts canvased off and the merchants’ tents closed down. It’s the one day each week most of Dasos break from the bustle of commerce. But the sellers who might be interested in what I have will still be doing business behind the scenes.

The only tent that never truly closes its front is the café. Its owners, Horsk and Hildr, don’t believe in time off from food. I’m inclined to agree with them.

The yeasty smell of marída, fluffy fry bread heaped in finely powdered sugar, floats through the air. The growl of my stomach and the two mynts in my pocket tempt me. Normally, I’d never justify spending coin on such things. It’s been years since I’ve stepped foot in the little café—seven years since my father took the brink shift at the salt mines.

That’s when so many things changed. Our weekend training stopped, as did our frequent day trips down to the Exchange. My world grew infinitely smaller without my father as an ambassador to other people. He’d always been a buffer of sorts, a way I could experience more of life without being left exposed to the parts I didn’t understand.

In recent years, he’d stopped wanting to know all the details. His job at the salt mines keeps a roof over our heads but little else. I don’t know if it’s that he disapproves of my methods, like hocking dark talismans. Or does it simply hurt his pride to think too long on what I provide and on what he doesn’t? I’ve never wanted to make him feel worse by asking, and I’ve learned to be out here on my own, even if I’ve found a different way to do it. While other Lowland girls apprentice for seamstresses or ready for marriage, I hunt and pawn snake heads.

Though, finding something like the gemini is not a regular occurrence. Admittedly, going all the way to the Exchange, to the back alley black market known as Stéki to conduct trade, is a first for me.

If I’d found anything less ominous than the gemini—an arrowhead, or a piece of obsidian—I would have taken it to Lark Lacewood. He keeps Sendiya’s only feed and tack store, but there isn’t much of a market for his sort of merchandise in the village. Most livestock is limited to small animals like chickens, milking goats, and the occasional meat or dairy cow. So, Lark runs a side trade, taking weekly trips to the Exchange, bartering others’ goods for a share in profits.

Lark is a good man, caring. His wife and my mother grew up together like sisters. His daughter Anneyce and Leif are nearly inseparable. He’s easy to talk to, patient, and doesn’t request I look him in the eye as so many of my parents’ generation insist I do. Above all else, I can trust him not to take advantage of me.

But even Lark wouldn’t want the gemini. Most people would be terrified if they knew I carried the talisman, but Stéki is one place I know I can find a buyer.

Having to trade with somebody I don’t know, that I don’t already trust, has my palms slick with apprehension as I enter the café. I’m not only seven years older now, but I’m also seven years more aware, more able to hold my own with other people. At least this is what I try to tell myself. As long as I don’t freeze, I’ll walk out of the Exchange today with my pockets heavy.

But first, I’m hungry, and the marída seems a small indulgence compared to the promise of the day’s earnings. I can bring some home to my father. He’ll try to hide his smile when he unwraps the parchment paper, but he won’t question how I made it happen, how I found the coin for such an indulgence.

There’s a wooden sign that hangs in the opening of Horsk and Hildr’s café. I press a kiss to my index and middle finger and touch it to the carved runes on the sign. It’s not so much that I worry about the fabled caelicat poisoning my food, but I remember Horsk well enough. She’d swat me with her rolling pin clear out into the street if she caught me entering without making the gesture.

It’s not Horsk I find today. Her husband, Hildr, glances up when I walk inside. He freezes where he’s been sifting sugar onto a row of marída. His shoulders square off as he straightens up.

No. He barks the word as a command. No. You will not enter here. You are not welcome.

Alarm signals in the back of my mind, but I’d never been turned away from this tent as a child. When I was younger, when things were better, father would buy me marída and himself a coffee. He and Hildr would chat about the tides or the shipments that came into dock, or the ones that didn’t make it that far. Sometimes ships cut the currents a little too close, washing up on the jagged rocks at the base of the Coastland lighthouses. It was always a favorite topic of gossip in the café.

I’d sit on the edge of one of the long benches, savoring every bite of the fry bread and catching snippets of their conversation.

My mouth begins to water now as I step further into the tent, trying to guess at Hildr’s reaction. He comes out from around the counter, puffs of sugar floating from his hands as he claps at me like I’m some dog to be shooed away.

You will leave, he orders, each word emphasized by the sound of his palms whacking together. "We don’t need your kind here. Even on slow day. Thank the gods it’s argímera, or you’d scare all the customers away."

"My kind?" I question, but realization sets in. He means Elemental. "I’d just like to order some marída. I pull two small, gray coins from my pocket. My mynt is good."

He shakes his head furiously, then takes an aggressive step forward to spit into the dirt at my feet.

I can’t help but jump back, staring from Hildr’s reddened face to the spittle on the ground.

"Really, Hildr! Horsk scolds her husband as she enters through the back of the tent. Do you not recognize Druin’s girl?" She bustles over to the table and snags one of the brown, wrapped packages off the counter.

I’m not entirely sure how to respond as she approaches and uses the heel of her boot to drag dirt over the spit on the ground. She holds the wrapped marída out to me.

If I were better at reading people on instinct, it might not take me so long to interpret the way she thrusts the food forward, the furrow of her brow, and the furtive glances she casts behind me into the street. I can’t reconcile her barely hidden hostility with the pleasant, welcoming woman from my childhood.

I . . . I’d like two, please. One for my father, I clarify.

She tilts her head, something unkind sparking behind her otherwise dull brown eyes. I’ve always found myself preoccupied with the things the eyes say that words do not, but right now I’m having a hard time reading Horsk’s. Without looking away, she reaches her free hand toward Hildr and snaps twice.

He huffs, rolling his eyes emphatically. But he marches to the counter and back again with another package. Horsk’s gaze flits to the corner of the tent where two traders sit, half-reclined on the benches, and staring directly at me.

In that moment, I realize Horsk is not any less prejudiced than her husband, only smarter. And I’m not just some strange child anymore. I’m an adult. I’m an Elemental. And I’m a threat. She’d rather get rid of me than make a scene.

Well? She jabs the marída at me like she’s trying to drive home a sword.

I imagine steel would hurt less. I reach out, taking the package and placing both coins into her palm. She doesn’t even wait until my back is turned before she spits into the dirt, mouthing what I’m sure she believes to be some counter curse against Elemental magic, unnatural magic.

Even the most mundane Basals have at least a little magic. Horsk can manipulate air density and temperature just enough to craft her batches of marída with flawless precision. But there’s nothing natural about what I can do, the way my freckled skin marks me as other.

Ginger had once told me it’s different in other parts of the world, that some cultures even venerate Elementals, but that’s not the case in most of Dasos.

I’m the only one to bear the freckles that mark an Elemental in Sendiya, other than the temple priests, and nobody ever sees them. I’d be amongst them had I been born a boy.

I’d once thought my freckles beautiful, so many specks of copper against the rich brown of sulfuric clay. At home, I’m met mostly with a familiar indifference. A known oddity can be ignored as long as she doesn’t make too much trouble, but to the rest of Dasos I’m a pariah.

I tell myself it doesn’t matter what people like Horsk and Hildr choose to believe. I can’t control their opinions. I can only control how I let them affect me. But the marída still tastes a little less sweet on my tongue as I walk away.

On market days, the streets are packed with people from all over southern Dasos. Meadowland farmers call out offerings from their stalls of produce and pungent spices. Market goers crowd the docks to chat or haggle with the Coastland fishermen using their boats as floating storefronts. The Lowlander tents brim with water purifying kits, salt, and healing salves.

But I’m grateful for the midweek lull of argímera as I make my way up the deserted streets.

I pick at the warm marída, steam rising against my fingertips as I pull apart the dough. My feet carry me up winding roads, which become more narrow as they curve away from the harbor. The dirt road gives way to worn cobbles. A spattering of permanent structures intersperse the tents lining either side. The first shops are for clothing, pottery, blown glass. There’s an apothecary and a hole-in-the-wall repair shop for musical instruments.

I’ve never been out of Dasos, but I’ve heard that the Exchange isn’t particularly different from markets found in the Kismos or Zounkla or other realms. A market is a market, with its people and its food and its wares. But in this market, when you turn left at the Rozelium and follow the Bone Road back toward the sea, you find an entirely different sort of trade.

There you’ll find Stéki. This place isn’t slow because it’s midweek but because Stéki sleeps during the day and comes alive at night. At night, these streets are filled with unordinary people doing extraordinary things. It’s become a place for the magical misfits of the world to ply their trades. I’d come here just once, with a boy who also didn’t fit in. My cheeks warm at the memory of the night Oren and I spent lost in Stéki’s dark delights. If I ever run away, I’ll come here.

A door creaks to my right. I nod at the fortune teller that sways out onto her stoop. She touches her fingers to the brim of a top hat in greeting. I can’t help but think it an odd sort of head covering for someone like her. Sparks fizzle in her hands, and I watch her light her pipe with something mechanical in nature. I don’t dare stop to ask her where she got it, but I make a mental note. If I get enough mynt from the sale of the gemini, maybe I’ll indulge in a lighter like that for myself.

The next few shops all carry an array of superstitious paraphernalia: iron jewelry adorned with the evil eye to ward off curses, filaxta amulets for babies and elderly to keep their souls from being stolen, bat bones to hang over one’s door, shrunken heads, ashes of the dead . . .

This is still considered a tourist section. Most of the true residents of Stéki don’t buy into any of this nonsense themselves, the magic to which they ascribe being of a deeper, less gimmicky sort.

But the superstitious patrons frequenting the back main street of Dasos’s largest market have a penchant for backwards charms. They wear the evil eye to ward off other evil, to guard against deception and ill-intent. They keep close the things they fear to banish other fears. They believe hoarding some scaly talisman like the gemini heads could prevent the misleadings of two-faced vipers of another kind. But I don’t have to believe any of it to profit from it, and the shopkeepers of Stéki still have to find a way to eat.

I choose one of the dingier looking shops, its windows dusty and dark with only a few old books on display. A crow caws when I open the door. It hobbles atop a precarious stack of books toward the back, shifting from one hooked foot to the other, mirroring my own anxiety. Maybe it knows I can’t read the pages it’s dancing on.

The bird and the books taunt me from on high. An acute sense of longing pools in my belly. I’m struck with the familiar desire to gain access to words, to knowledge, to the stories and adventures that lie within so many pages. Sparrow had read aloud to me when we were little, but it was a practice we’d fallen out of when our father went back to work. His wages weren’t enough to live on, so it was up to me to take on many of his duties, Leif still being far too young to hunt or keep up repairs. But I know what would happen if I tried to read now. The lines and curves that form letters would appear to burst apart, swirling into a cloudy mess of indecipherable markings. A searing pain would flash behind my eyes. Nausea would rise from my belly, up into my throat, and I’d have gleaned nothing from the pages.

The crow caws again, announcing the entry of a man twice my size. He’s bald, with a mustache that twists into corkscrews at the ends. He sniffs the air, puffing his chest out where his thumbs loop beneath the straps of his suspenders. But he doesn’t say anything; he just stares at me.

I wonder if he’s had his tongue cut out. I’ve heard of it happening in these parts, lesser shopkeepers angering the warlocks and finding themselves short a finger or tongue.

Or maybe I just have powdered sugar on my face. I wipe my mouth with the back of my sleeve, just in case, before retrieving the gemini heads and tail from my satchel.

I’m not interested, he says finally, his voice low and smooth. "I won’t be buying anything from you."

Why not?

He unhooks his thumbs and folds his arms across his chest.

I repeat the question, this time trying to sound more firm and less like a petulant child. Why not?

He shrugs.

Not superstitious are you?

He raises an eyebrow to the room as if the lack of talismans or runes is answer enough.

I didn’t think so. Is it because of what I am?

I wouldn’t do you the dishonor, Elemental.

I didn’t think that was it, either. Not here. Not in a place where shadows are the norm.

I, uh . . . I guess I’ll try somewhere else . . .

He cuts me off. I wouldn’t bother.

What do you mean?

I mean don’t waste your time trying to sell your goods in Stéki. You won’t find a buyer. We’ve all been warned not to make any deals with the Elemental girl from Sendiya.

By whom?

He smiles slightly, like we both know he’s not going to disclose that information.

I curse under my breath, stuff the gemini parts back into my satchel, and turn to go. But something stops me at the door, my hand hovering over the knob. I turn to the shop owner. Thank you. You could have let me spend an entire day in vain, but you didn’t. I appreciate the truth.

Half-truth, he says with a shrug.

Half-truths are still better than lies, I say, and I don’t wait for his reply.

S

Not only have I not found a buyer, but I’ll have to walk the entire way back to Sendiya. Even if a wagon does happen by, I’ve spent my only mynt on fry bread. I clutch the package I’ve saved for my father to my chest. Maybe I didn’t think this through.

But it hadn’t even occurred to me that selling the gemini would be anything but straightforward, not when there’s an entire shopping district devoted to dark magic and superstition.

Who could possibly have a vested interest in keeping me from this transaction? There’s nobody who could know about the gemini. Did Hildr somehow spread word ahead of me? Neither he nor Horsk strike me as the type to even acknowledge Stéki’s existence, let alone communicate with its questionable tenants. And for all they know, I am just in the Exchange to buy fry bread.

I shake my head. Too many problems I don’t know how to solve. The walk does nothing to clear the chaos that crowds my thoughts. The sun has sunk in the sky when I reach the Roan. I curve west, away from the merchants’ road toward home.

S

The familiar stench of sulfur doesn’t fade as it should, as my village, Sendiya, comes into view. Swirls of ominous, gray fog curl in and around our walls. There’s one thing other than the Roan that gives off the odor of rotten eggs . . . a certain type of magic. Sulfur is the scent of glamour.

I’m struck with contrasting urges to freeze or to run toward it. My body decides for me, my feet halting on the dirt path, refusing to take a step closer. Invisible spiders ricochet up my spine. The sickening din of too much silence prickles my arms with goose flesh. I can see the bodies of the sentries, Aspen and Brine, propped on either side of the gate. Something tells me they aren’t sleeping.

They can’t possibly be dead. That’s just my vision talking, my own propensity to see Death in everything. But that fog . . . there’s no doubt in my mind now. That’s a glamour. Such magic is illegal, the stuff of faerie tales and dark alleys.