“No!” I yell back, my words nearly swallowed by the wind. “I have no idea what’s happening!”
On the altar, the offering bowl trembles. Its broken edges draw toward each other, seams knitting themselves together until the cracked vessel re-forms into a massive, seamless vessel.
A jet of fire lashes up from the center of the bowl in a sudden explosive column of flame.
The blast rips us apart and flings us in opposite directions. I fly backward, skidding across sand-covered stone. I slam into the ground with a breath-stealing crack that sends pain streaking up my spine. Heat washes over mein a scalding wave. For a disorienting second the world inside the Tower is a smear of light and smoke.
Across the altar Declan hits hard, the sound of him striking the stone muffled by the roar of wind and flame.
Plumes of dust and smoke rise in choking clouds around us. I cough until my eyes water and my throat feels raw. I shout for him, but the cyclone and the crackle of fire answer instead, swallowing my voice whole.
Flames continue surging from the mouth of the bowl, snaking up into the spinning vortex of sand and smoke. The fire grows, stretches, a serpent of orange and red that twists higher and higher. It coils inward like a clenched fist, and with a thunderous crack that ricochets off the columns and vibrates through the stone beneath my feet, it slams down into the offering bowl.
A wave of heat tears outward, thick and shimmering, warping the air. The burn licks my cheeks, races down my arms, slips beneath my wrap, and scalds my skin. I brace for more, for flames to engulf us, for the Tower to crumble, but nothing comes.
The cyclone unravels. The wind dies. The flames settle. The roar dwindles to a hush.
When the dust clears, the fire has changed.
Flames peel out of the bowl above the altar and stretch into moving pictures of firelight. Movies drawn in fire.
First, a row of tents forms in the flames. Then, the images of people appear. The fire figures pin sheets across lines, flames of laundry fluttering against the backdrop of the night sky. A man kneels to lace a child’s sandal while another child blazes past, barefoot and shrieking with laughter, a comet trailing sparks.
Tables appear in silhouette, heat-rippled heaps of bread and roasted meat rendered in shimmering orange. The whole caravan blooms in ember and smoke.
The vision inhales and exhales, growing and contracting like a living thing as branches of light arc from the bowl. Trunks of fire knit into trees, their leaves tiny tongues of flame. The canopy lifts and arches until the tents are crowned in fire-forged shade. Flames lay themselves out like rivers, long braids of fire that thread through the camp. Glowing bridges arch over channels formed of heat ripples. Orchards bloom in sparks, fruit rendered in orange fire—a garden of light that once held the whole kingdom.
From the other side of the altar, Declan’s breath ripples through the fiery image. “It’s the kingdom.”
“But from the past,” I add. “Like Tarek said. When the Everspring covered the whole desert.”
Through the flicker, I see Declan lean closer, pulled toward the flame. “How does something like this turn to sand?”
As if in answer, heat flushes over my skin, threads through my blood, and everything narrows to a single pull. To the flame. My fingers tingle, then glow with a light that isn’t mine. A thread of smoke reaches from my palm to the flames. Without thinking I move, following the smoke to the vision of what once was. I reach for the nearest slender flame—an instinct to touch what feels like truth—and heat bites my fingertips. The pain is fierce and instant. I snatch my hand back. My touch ripples through the flames and, impossibly, opens the picture wider.
The flames carry us forward, winding through thecaravan of the past. Children dart between the tents, waving palm fronds drawn in whiplike curls of flame. The murmur of voices ripples through the air. Two women sit together, passing a steaming platter between them. A woman holds a cup to a child’s lips. A group of men roar with laughter, and one of them lifts a cloth to wipe his grinning face. There are no rehearsals, no performances, no roaming guards. Just life, simple and sacred, shaped from heat and memory.
The flames press onward, guiding us toward the center of camp, where the stage stands now. But here—in this memory of the past—there’s only the Tower.
A fire burns in the center of the altar, and gathered around it is a ring of flickering figures. They sit close, shoulder to shoulder, knees tucked beneath them. Smoke rises in glowing coils, curling through the space. The scents of cedar and cinnamon wind through the air.
Although I’m not a part of this vision, the flames pull me so close it feels like I am.
A woman leans forward in the firelight, her outline wavering. Her voice comes with the crackle of coals. “My husband left with the last full moon,” she says, thin and frayed. “He spoke no farewell. Walked beyond the reach of the kingdom and…never returned.”
She draws a steadying breath without looking away from the vision’s sacred flame. “Still, I set two places at my table.”
Her words fall into the altar fire like an offering. The flames before her jump. Sparks lift and spin. She holds out her hands, and one by one they drift down and settle on her outstretched palms. Her lips part on a sound thatis half gasp, half laugh, and when she smiles it’s small and stunned and somehow whole.
Beside her a man’s outline bends forward, his figure rendered in a long, loping ribbon of orange light.
“When my brother took ill,” he says without looking up, “I bade him speak to the sun. Told him faith would mend what flesh could not. Belief alone would carry him through.” He pauses, and his eyes burn like lit coals. “When he died, I told the others the wheel had turned as it must. I told myself to keep away from the Tower, that I did not belong. But the truth is, I fear it. I fear I do not deserve its mercy.”
He drags a fiery hand across his face. The motion doesn’t erase the tears of flame that fall in the heat.
The circle leans in, holding him with their silence, their presence and peace.
“I gave my brother hope. Sent him to the grave with promises I knew I could not keep. If I stay in the hurt, perhaps I can pay for the harm I caused him.”
