Book 5, Chapter 16: Gifts And Fire
We’d settled the horses, gotten the saddles and saddlebags down and I wandered over to the center of the clearing, tossed a mini-tornado and cleared us a firepit.
“Princess, if you remember, we’re going to teach you how to start a fire without magic.”
“Ah. Right. If I had a unicorn, I could just wish for a fire.”
“I’d like you to gather the smaller branches on trees. Dried moss if it’s there. It’ll be on the north side.”
“What, it knows where we’re going?”
“North has the least amount of sun, the greatest amount of moisture.”
“Ah. The things I don’t know.”
“We’ll rectify that, given time.”
Finding little twigs was easy. They were all over the place. And moss growing on what I guess was the north facing side of the tree. Dusty green and dry filaments, hanging off the branches. I guess light conditions favored growth there. It occurred to me that I didn’t need a compass if I could find trees with moss growing on them. Just follow where they were helpfully pointing and I’d go north.
But I still wouldn’t find that temple. Morry was right in that I needed him, or someone who knew where it was. The map didn’t have distance written on it. The locations were too large for the scale – Bechalle’s castle, for example, was drawn in and would have been the size of a large lake if to scale. That meant the temple, noted by a circle Etienne had drawn on the map, would be in a given radius, at an unknown distance from the castle, and within Laemacia. I could certainly head in that direction, but with hills, forests, and mountains that far up north, and few roads, finding the temple would take ages.
None of that bothered me, though. I was still thinking of the dryad’s grove and the unicorns. What if they really granted wishes? I could wish for more wishes! Ok, yeah, that has to be illegal or at least frowned upon. Maybe you’d get everyone else’s wishes, dumped on you. ‘Here’s Fred’s billions in pennies!’ Squish.
“I got a bunch of twigs.”
“Ok, stack them in a house-like formation, with lots of spaces for air.”
“But you usually just jumble them altogether.”
“As long as you have air spaces. For the fire to breathe.”
“Yeah, ok. Right.” I laid out a long one, placed a bunch of little ones atop it.
“Now stick the moss inside.”
“Morry! Why didn’t I just build the sticks around the moss?”
“You can do that, too.”
I grabbed everything, moved it, stuck the moss down, and rebuilt my twig fire home. Oh, you people living in the twig home are going to pay. You are not going to be happy tonight. I hope you have fire insurance.
“Princess, what are you doing?”
“Uh, nothing. Stacking the twigs! They’re definitely not talking to each other.”
“I see. Here,” he passed me a piece of jagged rock and his knife. “Strike the back of the knife against the flint. It’ll spark. You want those to land in the moss. Once you get moss starting to burn, blow on it.”
I pointed my finger at the entire set up, looked at him and smiled.
“Princess . . .”
“Ok, ok, no magic. Seriously, though, I could light every last piece of wood around you on fire.”
“I’m sure you can.”
“Those bandits who wanted my money? I melted their weapons.”
“Right, yes. You should have killed them.”
“Gods, ok. No, I wasn’t going to kill a bunch of random strangers for fun.”
“They’re parasites on good, hardworking people. We already talked about this.”
“I told them to get jobs. Find work. Become farmers. Fishermen.”
“Right. I’m sure they’ll be good men of the kingdom from here on out. Now, light the fire, if you would, my lady.”
I gave him a sideways glance, then turned to the task and struck and struck the steal against the flint. Sparks, no fire. Sparks, no fire. Sparks, no fire. “Morry, this is seriously taking forever!”
“Patience is an adult virtue.”
“I am an adult!”
“You did see the unicorns.”
“I’m not a virgin!”
“The unicorns say otherwise.”
“Grrr!”
“Calm down, try again. Princess, this isn’t about haste.”
“What, are you a monk now?”
“A monk?”
“Just, yeah, I’m just going to breathe in and out for a bit, then try again.”
“Suit yourself. Just get the fire going soon. We’ll need coals for whatever animals your foxes have rounded up tonight. I hope it’s not all mice.”
I squished up my lips and said nothing. Sparks, sparks, sparks, an ember! I blew and blew and it went out. I repeated the whole process another five times before getting an ember and this time blew more gently and it grew. I soon had a little fire going.
“Morry! Look, I got it going.”
“That you did. Well done. Now choose appropriately sized sticks and branches and get that fire roaring. We’ll need coals to cook by.”
“Can’t I just-”
“No.”
I rolled my eyes but did as he said and soon got the fire roaring. The flames held my attention, looking for all the world as if they were alive, moving from twig to twig, the twigs bending as they burnt up, their fuel exhausted. I put larger sticks overtop and the fire tickled them, warmed them, evaporating their water away, then climbing on, growing, red and yellow and orange, higher and higher, until I had a fire half as tall as me, burning merrily away.
“I got it!”
“Well done.”
“Alright, ok, that was . . . a lot of fun.”
“It’s engrossing, fire.”
“No kidding. A part of me thinks I should be careful. You know, if I find this too enjoyable and then burn the entire world to the ground, just to watch the pretty flames.”
“Uh, that would be bad, Princess. Don’t do that.”
“For sure. But it’d be your fault, you just taught me to enjoy making fire.”
“Right. I’d like you now to go and find four large sticks, about half the size of your forearms thick.”
“More firewood?”
“You are going to make a spit. A rotisserie to cook the gifts your little worshipers brought, oh goddess of the foxes.”
It took me a few moments to stop staring at him, about when I put my jaw back up, before the shock wore off and I went scavenging through the trees and brush, shaking my head in wonder.
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