Siena (Forestfolk, Book 1)

Chapter 16

“You can’t go!” Sember pleaded for the hundredth time that week. “I need you here!”

This was by far the hardest part of leaving Foresthome. When I first told her, she wouldn’t stop crying. It broke my heart.

“Sember, I’m coming back.”

“You don’t know that,” she pouted. “You could die.”

We were sitting on a log by the lake again, and I crouched down so our eyes were level. Her large green eyes were shiny with unshed tears and I nearly crumbled. “I’m a healer,” I told her with conviction. “I’m not that easy to kill.”

“But why do you have to go?”

I perched back onto the log and looked out at the flock of birds squawking in the middle of the lake. “If you knew you could do something to keep disaster from hurting the ones you love, would you do it?”

Sember’s long sigh spoke volumes, and she nodded.

“This is why I have to go.”

Sember was silent as she pulled strands of moss off the log. Reluctantly, she said, “Okay. But I don’t like it.”

* * *

As word spread about our impending departure, more people approached me with words of encouragement, support, and thanks. I wasn’t sure if they truly believed I increased the mission’s chance for success, or if they were just glad I was leaving Foresthome and hopefully taking the danger with me.

Sember no longer followed me around, and I began to worry about her. She grew sad and sullen, keeping to herself all the time, and I worried that she might do something rash. A few days before we were set to depart, I sought her out. I arrived at her cabin and found her sitting on the ground outside, playing by herself with a rag doll.

I sat down next to her and she handed me her doll.

“Her name is Siena,” she said.

My heart constricted. The doll was made of a coarse cloth worn thin in some places. Some of its edges were a little blackened, perhaps burned. Pieces of yellow straw were jammed into its head to imitate hair.

“Sember . . .” I wasn’t sure how to start this conversation. “Are you afraid of having another accident while I’m away?”

She nodded and reclaimed the doll.

“You’ve been trying to hold yourself back? Not use your gift at all?”

She nodded again and adjusted the straw hair on the doll.

“I have an idea. Why don’t we spend the next few days practicing?”

She looked up at me then, puzzled. “Practice what?”

“Making fire.”

Her fearful green gaze stared wide-eyed at me. “No, making fire is bad.”

“Fire is useful. You use it to cook, stay warm, make light, and fell trees. The only bad fire is the kind you can’t control.”

As the gears in her mind turned I could see the fear ease from her features a little.

“The more you use your gift, the better you can control it, and the safer you will be. What do you think, shall we try it?”

Her eyes lit up. “Yes!”

We went to the lake for the safety of water and fewer trees. I gave her a twig and said, “Burn this.”

She took it and stared at it, but nothing happened. She pouted with disappointment.

“When you normally make fire, what happens?” I asked, trying to figure out how her gift worked.

“I get mad.” Her lips twisted and she kicked a pebble.

I considered this, then asked, “When you get mad, what do you feel inside?”

“Really hot. Like something is . . .” She gestured with her hands to imitate a ball growing.

“It’s swelling from inside, from here.” I patted my stomach. “Right?”

She nodded vigorously.

“When you’re mad, you don’t have control. But you can tap into your power without being mad.”

“How?”

“You reach for it. You pull in your stomach, you concentrate, and you reach for that energy.” I broke off a long blade of grass and wound it around my finger. “You reach for it and you draw it out like this.” I slowly pulled the grass, unwinding it from my finger. “You draw it out, and you direct it to where you want it to go. You tell it what to do, because you are in control.”

Sember looked doubtful, but was eager to try. Her brows furrowed and her face squinched into a picture of pure concentration. She squeezed her eyes shut for several seconds, then bore her eyes into the twig in her hand. Her teeth gritted with the effort, and she began to breathe rapidly, air puffing out of her nostrils in short bursts.

“It’s not working!” she wailed and threw her fists down to her sides, eyes flashing with anger.

“Sember, look!” I pointed to the twig, now burning wildly in her clenched fist.

She held her fist up, gazing at the flames, pouting. “But I got mad.”

“It’s a start,” I said. “We can improve from here. Think about what it felt like just before you got mad. That feeling of building energy. Imagine it’s a small ball of fire that you carry around with you. It grows when you’re about to use it. Instead of letting it burst out of you, you reach out and grab it yourself. You take a piece of it and release it.”

“Like catching a fish?”

“Like catching a bee from a whole beehive full of bees.”

She thought for a moment, probably imagining the bees, then picked up another twig. The ashes of the first twig fell to the ground. She concentrated again, this time not so fervently, and after several seconds, she pouted again. “Nothing’s happening.”

“Let me see.”

She opened her hand, and the twig was now black where she had gripped it.

“Look at that!” I pointed at the blackened bark. “You scorched it!”

She gaped at it, not quite believing.

“Try again,” I said excitedly. “Only this time, catch a few more bees at once.”

She tried again, and this time, a small flame flickered from the top of the twig. She saw it and squealed. “I did it! Siena, look! I made it happen on purpose!” She jumped with excitement and threw the smoldering twig into the water, then grabbed two more, one in each hand. Within moments each one was aflame in her little hands.

“I think you got the hang of it!” I grinned.

I spent the rest of the day cheering Sember on while she created controlled flames of varying sizes. It warmed my heart to see her looking so happy. By dinnertime, she was tired.

“I don’t think I have many bees left,” she said as we walked back to the commons.

“Don’t worry,” I replied as I pushed a branch out of my way. “You’ll have a whole new beehive tomorrow.”

* * *

In the morning, Sember greeted me at my cabin, full of enthusiasm. “I have more bees!” She held up a smoldering fist. Whatever was in it had already turned to ash.

I smiled and congratulated her. When we reached the commons, Nirrin was already at a table.

“I’m learning to use my gift!” Sember declared.

Nirrin widened her eyes. “Really? Is it . . . safe?”

Sember frowned, and I said, “Perfectly safe. The more we practice our gifts, the better we are at controlling them.”

“Ohh . . . can I watch?”

I turned to Sember, silently handing her the question. She shrugged and said, “Okay.”

After breakfast the three of us headed to the lake. We settled on a spot away from the beaten track, and Sember began assembling a pile of sticks the size of a campfire.

“I’m going to try for even more bees,” she said.

“Bees?” Nirrin looked confused.

Sember glanced at me with a secret smile, then turned back to Nirrin and said, “Never mind. I mean I’m going to try a bigger fire.”

She crouched in front of the pile and laid her hands on top of the sticks. It didn’t take long for a tiny flame to appear, but Sember looked dissatisfied. She rubbed her hands together, and seemed to stare straight through the sticks, furrowing her brow.

A small, unexpected explosion scattered the pile and blew Sember onto her backside. I rushed to her side and found her giggling. “Too many bees,” she whispered in between giggles.

Nirrin had looked alarmed at first, but soon started giggling too. Sember scrambled to her feet and said, “I want to try something,” before scampering off to the edge of the water. She held her palms out toward the water and braced her feet solidly on the ground. Several moments later, an even larger ball of fire ignited in front of her and exploded with a loud bang. A gust of hot air nearly blew me off the log.

“Did you see that?” she squeaked.

“Yes, and I felt it too,” I said, hiding my shock. She could already produce these powerful explosions, and she was only six.

“Wow!” Nirrin exclaimed when she had recovered. “I want to be gifted too!”

Sember was beaming, happier than I’d ever seen her.

I felt good about that.

* * *

Sember was able to create bonfires with little effort now. I sat with her next to a crackling flame by the lake, thinking about the day she’d burned the cabin. The day I’d revealed myself as Gifted. It had been traumatic for both of us, and I wondered if she was ready to talk about it yet.

“Hey, Sember?”

“Yeah?” She looked content as she poked the fire with a stick. 

“Do you . . . remember the big fire?”

Her hand froze, stick in mid-air, and her face darkened. When she turned her little face to me, her lip quivered.

I immediately felt horrible. Of course she remembered. What a stupid thing to ask. “I’m sorry. I was thinking about what your brother had said, about taking the fire back. You made the fire disappear.”

She turned back to the bonfire and resumed poking it with the stick.

“Are you still able to do that? Make fire go away?”

She shrugged and avoided looking at me.

“Would you like to try it?”

She nudged a burning twig and watched sparks float up.

“Sember, I think it might be an important part of your training.”

She threw her stick down and glared at me. “I don’t like thinking about that day. I was bad that day. Very bad. I don’t want to be her again.”

I was taken aback by her glare. “You’re not going to be her again,” I said gently. “You’re better than she was. In control now. A brand-new you. Right?”

She was listening, but didn’t seem convinced.

“If you can practice taking fire back, then you’ll have even greater control. Even if another accident happened, you could fix it just like that. Wouldn’t you like that?”

Sember’s stormy expression disappeared. “Yes.”

I smiled. “Good. Now see if you can make this bonfire disappear.”

She scrunched her face and held her palms against the bonfire’s edge. Her lips pressed together in concentration, and she stared into the heart of the blaze. After a few moments, the crackling stopped and the flames seemed to shift toward her, as if being sucked away by her hands. When all that was left were blackened pieces of wood, she looked back at me with a peculiar smile.

“Siena, this feels different. It’s like . . .” Her eyes shifted about as she searched for the words. “It’s like I’m putting the bees back in the hive.”`

“You feel your energy returning?” I asked, curious about this revelation.

She nodded. “Can you do it too?”

It had never occurred to me, and the thought troubled me. “You mean, take life instead of giving it?”

Sember’s face clouded. “It sounds kind of bad when you say it like that. Like that bad tribe chief.”

I nodded in agreement, but an uneasy feeling settled into the pit of my stomach.

“How about . . .” She paused, trying to complete her thought. “Can you borrow from, like, trees or something? To help people? Maybe then you could last longer before you faint?”

“I don’t know.” I looked down at my hands. Was that even possible? Taking life was not in my nature, but if I could borrow a little from several sources, then maybe it could be a way for me to extend my energy.

“You should try it,” she said and sat down next to me. “Here, borrow from me!” She held out her hand.

I pushed her hand away. “No, I won’t take life from people. I’ll try on plants.”

I brushed my hand over some nearby grass and hovered it above the patch, not really knowing what I was doing. I’d never tried anything like this before. I held it there for about a minute, but nothing seemed to be happening.

Sember waited patiently, watching my face.

“I don’t think I have that ability,” I said, frowning.

She pursed her lips in thought, then said, “Goben told me to do what I did backwards. So now I think about catching the bees and putting them away.”

I regarded her, a little discomforted by the irony that she was now giving me advice. But it made sense, and it worked for her. Maybe I had it in me and just didn’t know it.

I tried again, quieting my mind this time, and grasped a handful of grass. Closing my eyes, I felt its energy, a faint vibration trembling against my own. Then, they began to mingle. Rather than opening my floodgates as I usually did, I focused on turning the tide in my direction. I focused on absorbing rather than radiating.

Then I felt something. A tingle, similar to what I usually felt when I healed my own wounds. It was so unexpected that I let go of the grass.

“Did it work?” Sember asked.

I didn’t answer her and grabbed another handful of grass. I felt its familiar energy more quickly this time and concentrated harder on absorbing it. The tingle was stronger this time, making me shiver and lose my breath. I was momentarily stunned. My hand still gripped the grass, which was now brown and dead.

I jerked my hand away, eyes wide with horror.

Death. I just caused death.

“You did it,” Sember whispered, not wanting to startle me.

“I did,” I murmured, still dazed. “I didn’t know I could do that.”

“It’s neat, right?”

I looked at her expectant face, not wanting to tell her that this new development scared me. “Yes. Thank you, Sember.” I pulled her into a hug so she wouldn’t see my troubled eyes.

She hugged me back and said, “I still don’t want you to go away, but I feel better about it now.”

“You’re doing so well, Sember. Better than I could have. You’re amazing.”

She beamed at me. “Can I call you my sister?”

“I’d like that.”