Ember Born

Chapter 10: The Face on The Wall

Weeks passed after Jade left the hospital, and life in the house slowly, quietly returned to something resembling normal. Daniel went back to work, more cautious now but no less determined. Mary kept a closer eye on Jade than she used to, though she tried not to make it obvious. And Jade, for the most part, seemed fine, at least on the surface.

Neither Daniel nor Mary brought up the idea of looking into Jade's origins. It wasn't that they didn't think about it, they did, more than they let on. But somewhere along the way, they had both quietly decided that whatever answers existed, they would come when they were meant to come. Chasing them down felt like inviting trouble into a life that had otherwise been good to all of them. Mary sometimes told herself that everything would make sense eventually, on its own, without them having to go looking for it.

Jade, though, couldn't stop thinking about the old woman.

The vision had faded in most ways, the crowd, the stake, the fire, all of it had blurred slightly with time. But her face stayed sharp in his memory, clearer than anything else from that night. The shape of her eyes. The way her voice had cracked around the word home. He found himself thinking about her at strange moments, during class, at dinner, lying awake at night staring at his ceiling.

Eventually, without really deciding to, he started drawing her.

He wasn't particularly good at art, that had always been more Helen's thing, but he sketched her from memory anyway, again and again, each attempt a little closer to what he remembered. After the fifth or sixth try, he finally got something close enough that it felt right, an old woman's face, tired and lined, but with eyes that felt strangely full of love, love aimed directly at him. He pinned it to the wall above his desk without really thinking about who might see it.

Mary saw it first.

She had come in to drop off a stack of freshly laundered clothes when she noticed it, standing there for a long moment staring at the sketch pinned above his desk. Something about the drawing unsettled her immediately, though she couldn't quite explain why.

"Jade," she said, when he came upstairs later that evening. "Who is this?"

Jade glanced at the drawing, then back at his mother. "I don't know," he admitted. "I saw her. In a dream, I guess. When I was in the coma."

"You dreamed about her?" Mary asked carefully.

"I think so," Jade said. "It felt more real than a dream, though. She was, I don't know, in trouble. She kept telling me to come home."

Mary went very quiet at that, her eyes fixed on the drawing for a long moment. "Home," she repeated softly.

"I don't know what it means," Jade said, noticing the strange look on his mother's face. "It's probably nothing."

But Mary didn't seem convinced, and later that night, once Jade had gone to bed, she sat with Daniel in their room, unable to shake the unease that had settled over her.

"He drew her so carefully," Mary said quietly. "Like he knew exactly what she looked like. Daniel, what if this means something? What if he's starting to remember things, about before, about where he actually came from?"

Daniel considered this for a moment. "Even if he is," he said slowly, "I don't think that has to mean anything bad."

"What if it means he leaves one day?" Mary asked, her voice barely above a whisper. "What if all of this, the visions, this drawing, what if it's leading him somewhere we can't follow?"

Daniel didn't have an answer for that. He simply reached for her hand and held it, the same quiet unease settling into his own chest, even though he didn't say it out loud.

Helen noticed the drawing too, the next time she came over.

"Who's that?" she asked, nodding toward the sketch pinned above his desk.

"I don't really know," Jade said. "Someone I saw in a dream."

Helen studied the drawing a little longer than necessary, something unreadable crossing her face. Things between them had been strained since the hospital, not broken exactly, but different somehow. She'd tried a few times to bring things back to how they used to be, texting him first, showing up with snacks he liked, sitting closer to him than she probably needed to. But Jade had been distant in a way she couldn't quite name, distracted, somewhere else even when he was right in front of her.

"You've been different lately," Helen said quietly, sitting down on the edge of his bed. "Ever since the hospital. I feel like I barely know what's going on in your head anymore."

"I'm sorry," Jade said, and he meant it. "There's just, a lot going on that I don't fully understand myself."

"You can talk to me, you know," Helen said. "Whatever it is."

"I know," Jade said, though something in his voice suggested he wasn't entirely convinced of that himself.

Helen sighed quietly, glancing once more at the drawing before standing up. "I just miss how things used to be," she said. "That's all."

"Me too," Jade said softly, watching her leave the room a few minutes later, an ache settling in his chest that he didn't know how to explain, even to himself.

Thousands of miles away, in the Chemari tribe, King Zeno stood alone in his private chambers, his eyes closed, focused entirely on a faint, distant sensation he had felt building for months now.

He had learned, over the years, to sense the flame's power whenever it stirred somewhere far beyond his reach, small ripples traveling through whatever invisible thread still connected the flame to the boy he had failed to find. Those ripples had grown stronger recently, sharper, more frequent. Something out there, wherever the boy was hiding, was waking up.

Zeno opened his eyes slowly; his expression unreadable.

He made his way down to the palace's lower levels that same evening, past guarded halls that led to the small, quiet prison where certain prisoners, ones whose deaths might prove more useful alive, were kept locked away, mostly forgotten by everyone except him.

Amara had aged considerably in the years since Odalo's death. Her once-strong frame had grown thinner, her dark hair streaked heavily with gray she hadn't had before her imprisonment began. She looked up sharply when Zeno's shadow fell across her cell door.

"Come to gloat?" she asked bitterly.

"No," Zeno said quietly. "I've come to tell you something."

Amara said nothing, watching him warily.

"Your son is alive," Zeno said. "And his power is beginning to wake."

Amara's breath caught sharply. "You've found him?"

"No," Zeno said. "I can only sense him, faintly, from a great distance. But it's enough to know he's out there, growing, and that whatever he's meant to become, it's finally beginning."

Amara's hands gripped the bars of her cell tightly, her voice shaking. "Please," she said. "Please, don't hurt him. Whatever you're planning, whatever you think he's meant to do, let him live his life. Let him be happy, wherever he is. He doesn't need to come back here. He doesn't need any of this."

Zeno studied her for a long moment, something almost like sympathy flickering behind his otherwise calm expression.

"I never wanted your son dead simply for existing," Zeno said quietly. "I want peace for my kingdom, nothing more. If he never returns here, if he lives out his life far from Chemari land, I see no reason to hunt him down."

"You promise?" Amara asked, her voice breaking. "You promise you won't hurt him, as long as he stays away?"

"I promise," Zeno said. "As long as he never sets foot on Chemari land again, I will let him live his life in peace."

Amara sagged against the bars, relief and grief tangled together in a way that made it hard to tell which emotion was stronger. "Thank you," she whispered.

Zeno turned to leave, pausing briefly at the door. "For what it's worth," he said quietly, without turning back around, "I hope, for his sake and yours, that he never has a reason to come home."

Then he was gone, leaving Amara alone in the dark, clutching the bars of her cell, praying to whatever ancestors might still be listening that her son would somehow, someway, stay far away from the danger she knew was still waiting for him.