The old man said something in response, but she could hear only the melody of him. She crept closer and peered into the shadows. There were tall trees past the dogwoods. A fat sycamore with scaly bark, a magnolia. And in a little patch of sunlight, a slim young maple, just about her own height. She stopped, suddenly breathless.
Just steps away, Max stood facing the old man, who sat on a bench with his back to Nell. Max bent toward him, nodding, intent. Nell’s heart thumped, and she took a step closer, clinging to the low branches of a dogwood.
That song of a voice came more sharply now. “Concentrate,” the old man was saying. “See the color. See the heat. What is its essential quality? It devours. Can you see that?”
Barely nodding, Max fixed his eyes on his own cupped hands. He looked sweaty and tired, but Nell had never seen him more completely absorbed. She could feel the weight of his will in the air, feel that undercurrent of hunger, that buzz of wanting he had written about tugging at her own skin. She almost stepped out to reach for him, the wanting was so strong. She wanted it, too, whatever it was! Show me! she thought. Show me, too!
She stopped herself just in time, by force of will alone, and hung on instead to the dogwood, her fingernails gouging the smooth bark.
Like a pool of still water suddenly disturbed, the space above Max’s raised hands rippled and bent. A flare, a glow, and then, like a bud uncurling, a flame bloomed, throwing a wild spark into the shadows.
Max stared at it. His mouth fell open and then he was grinning, grinning and laughing. “I did it! Fire!”
Behind him the new maple rustled a little in a sudden breeze.
“Good boy! Fine boy!” the old man said in his musical voice. He was laughing, too.
Nell crept away then, her hand smarting where it had caught on a hawthorn twig, and something worse uncoiling in her chest. She slipped back through the thicket of low trees and out into the heat of the gardens, into the hot, uncharged air.
She hurried now, nearly running along the inner band back to the tunnel. She stopped only when she was back at the vegetable garden, staring down at her small sack, her rake, and spade.
They were nothing. Nothing. She could have had them at home. Ordinary metal things, and seeds, and dead earth that didn’t listen, or maybe it was that she had nothing to say. She swallowed against the boulder lodged in her throat and held out her hands, thinking of fire, but her mind was too full of the old man, laughing, and the look of delight and wonder on Max’s face.
It was not until later that it occurred to her to puzzle over what she had seen. They could make fire. This was different from the mist, which wrapped itself around the sanctuary, waiting to ensnare unwanted visitors. Fire could do things. She wondered again why the Guide, who Max said hated the Genius so, didn’t go after him. If Max could learn to make fire, what could the old man do?
She asked Susan about it after supper as they climbed the stairs and crossed the library footbridge to reach the dorm side of the first ring. Voices echoed in the great canyon of books, so she lowered hers.
“Did you know they could do things like make fire? Does it say that anywhere in any of those books?”
Susan didn’t answer right away, which had become normal lately. She only ran her hands over the brass railings and kept walking. Yellow light poured down from the skylights and caught in her hair. Nell frowned and tried again.
“Did you know it, Susan?”
Her sister glanced her way, looking disconcertingly hazy. “Who told you that? The Shepherdess?”
Nell shrugged. “I just heard it.”
“It’s in the books,” Susan said. She motioned to the stacks of them ahead. “But it’s just a legend. Do you think they’d be hiding here if they could make fire?”
“It’s not a legend!” Nell said, too quickly. Her words bounced back at her from the far wall, and her tone sharpened the look on Susan’s face.
“What did you do, Nell?” she asked warningly.
Nell only shrugged again, but Susan kept pushing until she admitted that she might have seen something like it in the third band. “You know, through a window.”
Unfortunately, Susan knew better.
“You snuck in there!” she fumed. “Don’t try to lie!”
Lie, lie, lie echoed off the books.
“Shh!” Nell snapped.
Susan glared at her but said not another word until they reached their room. Jean and Kate were already there, playing their invented game of stones. They took one look at Susan and scurried into the hall. Nell watched them go with a sinking feeling. Susan had been growing more irritable by the day.
“Well?” she demanded. “Did you go in there or not?”
When Nell didn’t answer, Susan’s face turned colors.
“What were you doing?” she said. “I thought we agreed you weren’t going to break the rules here!”
Nell lifted one shoulder in another half-hearted shrug. “I was just looking.”
Her sister ground her teeth. “Just looking! Do you think this is some kind of game, Nell, like you play at home? It’s not — I can promise you that. You get caught and what’s out there is worse even than what we saw in the city!”
She seemed desperate in a way Nell had not seen before. Looking at Susan made her wince, and suddenly fear crowded out all her anger at Max and her hunger to be in the third band as she searched her sister’s face, trying to understand what was going wrong.
“What’s happening to you, Susan?” she asked. “I can get Max if you need him. I can get anybody. Somebody here’s going to
