The chill bite in the air stretched its fingers through Esma’s thin, tattered tunic. It reached through the folds, scraping along her skin, burrowing deep into her marrow. She shivered, inwardly grimacing at the silent promise of an early winter. Peering out at the forest, she could already see the seasons turning. Greenery had slowly given way to the soft yellows and oranges of autumn, and though the season’s first frost was yet to come, Esma was sure it wasn’t far off.

“Quit daydreaming,” Niyam hissed. Esma hardly had time to turn before the sting of wood along her exposed calves made her knees buckle. She fell to the floor with a yelp, arms scraping along the wooden floor as she braced herself. 

“Get up!” Niyam spat, shoving Esma in the ribs with her foot. “There’s work to be done, but here you are like a prat staring off at the sunset. The only thing that’s waiting for you is a pile of dirty dishes. Now get to it, before I get angry.”

Esma watched Niyam turn her attention back to the others that had crowded around. With a sigh, and a bitter curse beneath her breath, she rubbed at the welts forming on her skin. Her knees ached from the pain of her fall, and the marks on her legs smarted from Niyam’s cane, but Esma scrambled to her feet all the same. As bad as the cane was, a fate far worse would await her if she was caught slacking off again. Niyam never hesitated to make an example of the children, a fact Esma knew only too well. 

With a last, wistful glance out the window, she turned and made her way through the rows of rickety benches and tables, until she reached the door on the opposite wall. She pulled the iron rung and the door swung wide, hinges groaning in protest all the while. Outside, the air was even colder. Without the walls of the orphanage to stave off the wind, the bitter gusts blew through the scraps of clothing she wore, making her teeth chatter. She shivered, wishing not for the first time that she had a pair of her own shoes as she made her way through the small square. Dirt and pebbles greeted her, the grass long dead after an unseasonably dry summer, and Esma shivered as she made her way toward the large fire in the center of the square. 

An overlarge cooking pot hung from a spit over the raging flames, thick clouds of white steam billowing over its edges as they caught the wind. As much as she hated dish duty, Esma was grateful for the fire. For a moment, she stood next to it, letting its warmth seep through muscle and sinew, until she felt warm enough to work. 

“You got stuck on dish duty too, huh?” 

Esma jumped. Heart hammering in her throat, she turned to find an amused Diyas watching her, his mossy eyes wide with mirth. She shook her head, but couldn’t stop the smile from tugging at her lips. 

“She hates me,” Esma insisted as Diyas dropped the large bucket in front of the fire. 

“Who, Niyam?” he asked, brow furrowed in confusion. “She hates everyone.”

Esma sighed. “You don’t understand.” 

Wrapping the small bit of cloth from her sleeves around her palms, she reached up over the edge of the fire and grabbed the iron spit, nodding at Diyas to do the same. He followed suit, grabbing the other edge of the spit, and together they tugged. The spit rotated forward, so that the lip of the pot stuck out over the edge of the flames. As Esma grabbed the iron rod and hook that lay nearby, Diyas positioned the bucket directly in front of the simmering pot.

“She might dislike the rest of you,” Esma continued, absentmindedly stuffing the hook over the edge of the pot. “But she hates me. She canes me without any kind of provocation. She’s always watching me, waiting for me to make a mistake, waiting for the minute I’m too slow to follow direction so that she can make an example out of me.”

Applying pressure to the taut end of the rod, she tipped the pot forward. Steaming water spilled over the lip, falling in a graceful arc into the wooden bucket before it. Esma continued to increase the pressure until the bucket was full. Then, she slowly tipped the pot back, unhooking the rod and tossing it aside. She ignored the searing pain in her hands from the heat of the rod, choosing to focus instead on the mountain of grimy dishes that waited for her in yet another bucket Diyas had produced.

“You read too much into it,” Diyas argued, grabbing up a small bar of soap and tossing it into the scalding water. “What reason would she possibly have to hate you like that?”

For a moment, Esma stared at Diyas. He glanced in her direction, his cheeks growing hot. Averting his gaze, he grabbed up a dish and plunked it into the water. 

“It’s not like the rumors are true,” he amended softly, wincing as he thrust his arm into the bucket, searching for the elusive scrap of soap. 

“Doesn’t seem to matter much,” Esma whispered. “People have always believed it, whether it was true or not.” 

She reached over and grabbed a wooden bowl, picking at the bits of dried food that remained inside. Her lips tugged downward in a frown, and she ignored the stubborn ache of sadness in her chest. 

“I never did.” Diyas’s voice was quiet, but there was an earnestness in it that warmed the edges of her heart. A weak smile flickered on her face, and Diyas was emboldened by the sight. 

“You mean, you aren’t afraid that my Ariyela blood will cast a curse on you?” she teased, wrinkling her nose. “We’re descended from Nadale, after all. I could turn your blood into fire like that,” she said, snapping her fingers. 

Diyas chuckled. “If you could do all that, then we wouldn’t be stuck here. I’m sure Niyam would have been the first to go.” He waggled his eyebrows at her, and Esma couldn’t stop the fit of giggles that consumed her.

She dunked the bowl into the water, swishing it around and grabbing the soap from Diyas’s hands. As she washed the dish, she glanced over to find Niyam entering the courtyard. 

The orphanage owner was a severe sort of woman. Though short in stature, there was something intimidating about her. Perhaps it was the black shadows that swirled behind her eyes, or the way her mouth set itself in a grim, tight line. Rings of silver lined her thick fingers, and as she looked at them, Esma’s hand reflexively flew to her ribs. Yellow bruises still lingered where she had been struck by those rings two weeks past, but she recalled the memory of the beating as if it were yesterday.

Tossing the bowl into a clean bucket, Esma watched as Niyam made her way across the courtyard to the shallow fence at the property’s edge. She was greeted by the orphanage’s cook, a burly man with thick arms and a narrow chin. There, they spoke in hushed tones, and Esma felt a stab of panic as Niyam turned to look at her. The cook followed Niyam’s gaze, then bent low to her ear and murmured something unreadable. 

“Sometimes, I feel like I’m going crazy,” Esma confessed in a whisper. “I feel like everyone’s talking about me. Sometimes I think I can hear them calling to me in my head.” 

Diyas sighed, letting the dish in his hands slip back into the water. Esma felt a jolt of surprise as his hand reached out and clasped her palm. 

“You’ve been through a lot, Esma,” he murmured, squeezing her hand tightly. “Your entire family was persecuted. Your father was executed in front of you. That’s bound to take a toll.”

Esma shook her head, fighting the hot prick of tears behind her eyes. “It isn’t just that, Diyas. I’m an outcast. A pariah. They look at me, and they see every descendent of Nadale, especially the ones that destroyed Mano and forced us all to uproot our lives and move hundreds of leagues away. No matter what I do, that’s all they see. That’s all they will ever see. Niyam is convinced of it, I know that for sure. I’m just so tired of defending myself against the rumors. I don’t think anything I do will ever be enough to convince them all that I’m not what they think I am.”

Diyas was silent for a time. He returned to the dishes before him, his movements slow, thoughtful. When at last he did turn to her, Esma was surprised to find an almost biting determination in his gaze. 

“Then don’t try to convince them,” he said in a ringing voice, one loud enough to encompass the courtyard. 

“Diyas, be quiet,” Esma hissed, glancing to Niyam in panic. The orphanage owner stared in their direction for a moment before returning to her conversation with the cook. 

“No, I mean it Esma,” he continued, though in a much quieter tone. “If you can’t ever prove to them that you aren’t a descendant of Nadale, then don’t bother trying. If you’re right, and they’re already convinced that you possess some of the Goddess’s skill with fire, then use it to your advantage.”

Esma puckered her lips in protest, narrowing her eyes at him. “And just how do you suggest I do that?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted, grabbing the last dish out of the bucket, and washing it clean. “But I do know that when people are afraid of you, and what you can do, they leave you alone. Isn’t that what you want?”

Esma stared into the murky waters before her. Did she want to be left alone? Was that truly what she wanted? 

“I’m already alone, Diyas,” she whispered, grabbing the rough edges of the bucket and tipping it forward. The dirty water spilled forward onto the grass, a thick film of soap riding on its tide, and as it disappeared into the dirt, Esma’s mouth set in a grim line. “I just want people to stop talking about me.”

“You’re not alone, Esma,” Diyas murmured, reaching out and squeezing her shoulder. “I may not be much company, but you have me.”

Esma glanced at the softness in his eyes, and a small smile touched her lips. “I know,” she nodded. As Diyas gathered up the bucket now filled to the brim with clean dishes, Esma watched him, and found herself wishing that he was enough. 

That night, Esma lay tucked beneath the thin scrap of blanket, tossing and turning on her cot. She waited for sleep, cursing its elusive nature, all the while growing more and more irritated. The sharp crackle of the fire outside her window bored into her brain, consuming her thoughts until it was all she could hear, all she could see in her mind’s eye. With each hiss and spit, she felt the searing heat of flames upon her skin. With each snap of cinder, she could smell the acrid smoke lingering in the air.

Finally, when she could take no more, her eyes snapped open in the darkness. Esma stared at the rafters overhead, their indistinct shape sharpening as her eyes adjusted to the meager strips of light that entered from the window overhead. Yet the sound of th44e fire called to her. It beckoned her, and with a defeated sigh, she sat up in her bed. Shuffling onto her knees, she peered out the window at the fire beyond. 

It was a small thing. Far smaller than she had imagined from the sound of it. Yet it was mesmerizing in its own right. Flames licked greedily at the dry wood lining the pit, tongues of orange flickering bright against a black backdrop. She could almost feel the energy of it, the desire that lived inside it. It wanted to grow, to burn hotter and brighter than any other fire. It wanted to swell and soar. It wanted to lick the sky. 

Esma shook her head at the thought. How strange, to think of a fire as a living thing. To think of it as having wants and needs. Yet somehow, it seemed right. She stared at the fire, chewing her lip. She wanted more than anything to sit next to it. To feel its heat on her skin, to have it warm her insides and thaw the frost that had already begun to build in her blood. 

A thought whispered to her then, one that was dark and audacious. Why couldn’t she go and sit by the fire? Why couldn’t she enjoy a small comfort in a world that had denied her so many? But the thought of Niyam and her cane crossed her mind, and with it came the sting of metal on flesh. She winced at the recent memory, feeling raw and vulnerable, wishing she was not so deeply scarred by the experience. Still, the voice whispered to her, punishment would come only if she was found out. What harm could it do, to sneak out into the darkness of the night, and to rest quietly by the fire? She could slip in and out of the room without being seen. She could return before anyone suspected a thing. 

Emboldened by the thought, Esma glanced around the room. Dozens of orphans lay side by side, their beds pressed tightly together, hardly more than an inch of space between them. Yet there was no movement, no hushed chatter, nothing to speak of save the deep breaths and muffled mutterings of those locked inside their dreams. Swallowing hard, ignoring the pounding of her heart in her throat, Esma reached forward and pressed the window shutters open wide. 

Hinges squealed as she pushed them aside, and Esma winced at the noise. She glanced back at the room, fearing the sound might have woken one of the others. But after a moment of silence, she breathed a sigh of relief. They were as oblivious to the noise as they were to the rest of the world. 

Slowly, carefully, Esma placed her palms on the window sill. She pushed herself up, throwing the top half of her body out the window in one easy motion. Leaning forward, she let the weight of gravity pull her the rest of the way. She tumbled forward, bracing her shoulders against the ground as her body collapsed on itself. With a quiet curse, she rose from the ground, batting at the few patches of dirt that covered her nightgown. 

With a furtive glance behind, Esma crouched low, keeping her head down as she made her way toward the fire. Stopping in the shadows just beyond the ring of light, she sat, crossing her legs tight beneath her. She inched her way forward until the edges of her knees were just visible by firelight. Warmth soaked through her skin, and with it her muscles began to relax. Esma closed her eyes, letting the heat of the fire soothe her tired, aching body. 

“Esma…”

Eyes snapping open, Esma cast about for the voice that called to her. She peered into the shadows that pooled at the edges of light, leaning forward ever so slightly. She sucked in a shuddering breath, trying to still the frantic beating of her heart. 

“Esma…”

As the voice called to her again, Esma chewed her lip. There was no movement in the stillness of night, save for the crackling fire, and the rustling of leaves. Unsure of what to do, she inched away from the fire, swallowing hard. Just as she contemplated returning to her bed, a thought stopped her. 

“You need not be afraid of me, child,” the voice whispered. Wind lifted her hair as a cool breeze swept across the courtyard. It danced upon her skin, and as it caught the smoke from the fire, a cloud of grey swirled upward. For a moment, Esma marvelled at the beauty of it. The grey smoke twisted across the sky, shrouding the stars, and it pulled her attention back to the fire.

“I’m losing my mind,” Esma whispered, lip quivering as she fought the prick of tears behind her eyes. 

A soft chuckle echoed inside her skull, and she struggled to breathe through the fear. 

“You are not losing your mind, child,” the voice whispered in her head. “You are awakening it at last.”

Esma shook her head violently, as if she could shake the voice free. “Get out,” she hissed, trying to remain quiet despite her panic. 

“You and I are one, Esma. You are my daughter. My child. And I am your mother. Your true mother. I can leave you no more than you can leave me.” 

“No,” Esma said, shaking her head. “No. This is a dream. I’m in my bed, right now. I’m safe inside, and this is all just some terrible mistake.”

She closed her eyes, swallowing back the bile and fear that had risen in her throat. “When I open my eyes, I’ll be back in my bed,” she whispered, trying vainly to convince herself. 

But when she opened her eyes, the world around her was black. Smoldering embers were all that remained of the fire before her, a faint glow of red coals that seemed to disappear into the shadows. 

“You must remember,” the voice murmured.

“Remember what?” Esma choked out. 

“Who you are.”

A rush of memories flooded her then. Images she had thought long buried or destroyed seemed to surface, as vibrant and clear as the day they were made. They played on a loop, over and over, burrowing deeper beneath her skin, and Esma could not stop the torrent of emotions that wracked her. Faster and faster they came, the lines of where one memory began and another ended blurring until all that remained was the haze of fear, and grief, and anger. 

“Enough!”

As the word tore from her throat, ashes burst into life before her. It was not a trickle of spark and flame. It was not soft and gentle, gradually building to a blaze. It was desperate, and angry, and hungry for life. The fire rose, fingers of flame scraping the sky, eager to blot out the darkness with their light. 

As Esma watched them, the world around her seemed to grow dark once more. Yet she could see the fire remained before her. In place of its usual orange pallor, thin silvery strands seemed to glow. They swirled upward as the flames flickered and danced, and Esma watched them with a detached sort of curiosity. 

“I knew it!” 

All at once, colour returned to the world. Esma turned at the sound of the voice, horrified to discover Niyam watching her from the doorway. 

“I knew you were one of them,” Niyam hissed, a triumphant gleam in her eye. 

Esma glanced at the windows of the orphanage, only to find dozens of faces staring back at her. She scrambled to her feet as Niyam charged toward her, thrusting out a hand and grabbing her up beneath her arm. 

“I knew you were a bastard of Nadale,” Niyam hissed as she dragged Esma toward the door. “You wanted to pretend like you weren’t. Well, I’ve seen the truth now. I know what you are beyond a shadow of a doubt. And I’m going to make sure everyone else knows it, too.”