Outside, the wind blew harder, carrying a faint burned-leather smell. From the forest beyond the Store, I heard a foot break the snow, a ragged breath caught and held. I set the wood down and turned.
As I did, a stranger fled deeper into the forest.
I ran after the stranger, a boy around my age. Snow flew up from our boots as we wove among the bare trees. Patches of his burned sweater fell into the snow behind him. Had he been caught in the same fire as Ben? Was he the one who’d buried the younger boy?
The distance between us grew.
The boy skidded to a halt in a small clearing, snow flying in his wake, and I knew the name was his. He turned and walked back toward me, steps as stiff as those of Kyle’s ants, eyes as wild as those of a deer trapped in a hawthorn thicket. His hands were shoved into the charred pockets of his pants and his tangled curls reminded me of Ben.
“Is your town safe?” the boy asked.
“Safe from what?” No town was wholly safe from fire—but the fire didn’t explain why Ben had fled after he’d been burned. I narrowed my eyes. “What happened in your town?”
“It wasn’t my fault. The children—I tried—” Ethan’s legs trembled, and he crumpled into the snow. Beside him a redbud shivered its irritation, sighed, and was still.
“What wasn’t your fault?” I crouched beside him. Whatever danger his town had faced, my town needed to know about it.
Tentative footsteps came up behind me. Kyle reached out to touch the boy’s face. “Hot.”
I put a hand to Ethan’s forehead. His skin burned with fever. “Get your mom,” I told Kyle. As the town’s midwife, Brianna was the nearest thing we had to a doctor.
Kyle shook his head. “Not Mom.” He pointed to Ethan’s pockets. Wisps of smoke rose from them. The burned-leather smell in the air grew stronger.
“Mom doesn’t do magic.” Kyle looked up at me, as if expecting some answer to that.
“Get Kate, then.” Matthew’s grandmother knew some things about healing, too. “No—get Matthew.” Matthew could help carry Ethan to their house.
Kyle nodded and ran into town, arms flapping at his sides. I reached to draw Ethan’s hands from his pockets, but he moaned and pulled himself into a tight ball. The smoke stopped.
A few minutes later Matthew came running through the snow, Kyle at his heels. Matthew glanced at Ethan, gave my gloved hand a quick squeeze—his fingers were bare, as if he’d left in a hurry—and turned to Kyle. “Another firestarter?”
Kyle bit his lip. “Is this one going to die, too?”
Matthew rubbed at the ragged scar around his wrist. “I don’t know.” The look that passed between him and Kyle was filled with the years they’d secretly learned about magic from Mom while I’d thought my town free of magic. Just as I’d thought Jayce’s granddaughter had died of a fever, and not from trying so hard to control her fire magic that it had burned her from within.
“Council meeting’s at my house tonight,” Matthew said. “We have to take him to your place, Liza. Gram will join us there.”
I doubted we could keep this stranger secret from the Council for long, even if we wanted to, but there was no sense asking for trouble. I helped Matthew lift Ethan into a fireman’s carry over his shoulders. Ethan whimpered as his hands fell free. They were covered with weeping blisters. Had his firestarting slipped beyond his control, and was that how Ben had died? Would it be safer to leave Ethan in the forest after all?
I kept the thought to myself. I was done casting magic out if I could help it. I followed Matthew and Ethan to my house, picking up the firewood along the way. Kyle trailed behind me.
Mom and Kate met us at the door and urged us all inside. I set the wood by the fire and helped Matthew settle Ethan on the couch. Mom brushed the tangles back from the stranger’s face. I saw no sign of the pain that had made her bend over earlier.
Matthew’s grandmother, Kate, knelt by the boy’s side, her hair pulled back in its usual efficient gray bun. Once her knees wouldn’t have let her kneel, but Allie had healed them before she and Caleb left us. Kate frowned as she put her soft weaver’s hands to the boy’s forehead. “We need to bring his fever down. Matthew, get him upstairs into the tub. Liza, start filling buckets. Use water—snow’s too cold.”
Kyle tugged on my sleeve as I headed for the door. “I can help.”
“Buckets are too heavy for you.” Surely Kyle knew that, just as he knew ants couldn’t be allowed in the woodpiles.
Kyle stuck out his lower lip. “I
Kate and Mom exchanged looks. “Let him go with you,” Kate said softly. “He’ll have to go home soon enough.”
I sighed, but I didn’t stop Kyle as he followed me out the door. I grabbed a wooden bucket from around back and carried it toward the well. Kyle dragged a second bucket through the snow behind him.
Another boy from our town, Seth, was there drawing water, one hand extended over the well shaft, the other absently turning the crank. At seventeen Seth was a year older than Matthew and me, with close-cut hair and a lazy look that made him seem half-asleep. The bucket moved toward him, but the rope was too slack for his cranking to be lifting it; he must have been using his object calling. He tensed at the sound of Kyle’s and my footsteps, as if the habit of hiding magic hadn’t wholly left him, but he kept using his magic to float the bucket out of the well. “Hi, Liza. Kyle. What’s going on?” He unhooked the bucket and it drifted to the ground beside him.
Kyle let go of his bucket and said, “Liza found a firestarter.”
How had Mom and Kate ever kept magic a secret with Kyle around? I hooked my bucket onto the rope and lowered it. “A boy,” I told Seth. “Found him just outside of town. Water’s to get his fever down.” Liquid sloshed into my bucket. As I started cranking it up again, I watched Seth’s half-lidded eyes, gauging his reaction. Like me, Seth had once helped turn strangers away from our town.
“Firestarting. That’s rough.” Seth reached out a hand, and the tension left the crank. My bucket rose out of the well to hover in front of me. I nodded my thanks as I unhooked it. The bucket drifted gently to the ground.
Kyle grabbed his bucket and held it out to me. I sighed, took it, and lowered it into the well. I lifted the full bucket out—Seth helped again—and set it down in front of Kyle. He’d see soon enough that he couldn’t carry it.
Kyle pressed his lips together, looking determined, and reached for the bucket with both hands.
It came up easily in his hold. Kyle grinned. So did Seth, who had his arm stretched toward it.
I rolled my eyes. “He’ll never learn that way.”
Seth shrugged. “Why make things harder than they have to be?” He hefted his own bucket without magic. “Come on. Show me this firestarter. Chores can wait—I’ll haul what I can. We Afters have to stick together.”
Afters. Those born since the War. Seth and Kyle followed me back to my house. Outside, we met Matthew, who was frowning as he carried another bucket toward the well. I went inside ahead of Kyle and Seth. Kyle insisted on “carrying” his bucket all the way up the stairs behind me.
Like all the upstairs rooms, the bathroom was cold, because houses built Before had fireplaces only on their lowest floors. Ethan lay naked and shivering in the claw-foot tub, his eyes squeezed shut. Mom rubbed his forehead with a damp cloth while Kate wrapped bandages around his blistered hands. The rest of Ethan’s body wasn’t burned, not even his chest, in spite of his charred sweater. That made little sense. Did magic somehow protect firestarters from their own fires?
I was staring. I looked away, resting my bucket beside the tub, while Seth and Kyle waited in the hallway. Kate finished wrapping his hands and nodded at me. I began pouring the water in.
Ethan screamed at the touch of cold water on his fevered skin. I drew the bucket back. He jerked upright,
