Cold Fire

“I won’t abandon you.”



Mercifully he did not add as your lover evidently did, but when he looked at me with that accusatory gaze, I knew he knew I knew he was thinking it.



“Thank you.” I lowered my gaze to the mundanity of the platter. Gracious Melqart! Between us, we had eaten through almost all of it. “Are you sure we’re not still in the spirit world?”



“I’m sure. But I wonder why you might think so.”



“I just never saw you eat like a normal person before. You said once that cold magic fed you. Doesn’t it here?”



“The secret belongs to those who know how to keep silent.”



The words ought to have annoyed me, but instead they reminded me of the other thing I possessed. I fished the stone from the jacket’s hem. “I found…this.” I handed it to him.



He gasped.



“Your grandmother walked with us for a while. I must say, she scolded me on your behalf. She favors you. It was very irritating.”



His smile twitched but did not quite bloom. Wisely, he said nothing.



“Then she was caught in the tide of a dragon’s dream. It swept over her, and she was gone.”



“Not gone, Catherine. Changed.”



I dropped my voice to a whisper. “Is the stone your grandmother?”



“Of course it isn’t my grandmother!”



“Her—uh—her soul, then?”



“What odd notions you hold, Catherine. Is this some sort of Phoenician belief??”



“Can’t you remember that it is properly Kena’ani, not Phoenician?”



“I beg your pardon. You told me before, and I forgot.” He closed his fingers over the stone. “Something of my grandmother touches this stone. By holding it close, we are close to her. If we sit down to a meal and pour the first drops of our wine on the stone, then she will be called to dwell close beside us.” He rose, still clutching the stone. “If you’ll excuse me…”



“Go and do what is proper. I’ll see if Aunty needs help.”



He took a step away but turned back to brush my hand with his own as if checking to make sure I was a solid creature and not an illusion woven out of light like the one he had once woven of my face. He walked to the two-story wing, hurried up the stairs, and vanished into a room.



If I had a thought, I am sure it was too faint to register. At length, I stopped staring after him. I finished the food and carried the tray back to the kitchen sideboard.



“A good appetite is a precious thing,” Aunty Djeneba remarked. She was back at the griddle.



“The food was splendid. My thanks. Can I help in some way? I’m a good worker. I know how to sew, cook, read, and write. I must tell you, I have nothing, no coin, no possessions, nothing but my labor to offer you.”



“Yee’s married to Vai, is yee not?”



I blinked. At least four times. I had no idea what my expression looked like, but Aunty Djeneba glanced away, and the girls giggled.



“Is that what he told you?” I demanded.



She considered me thoughtfully. “Everyone around here know the story. He and he sister come here six months ago. He is handsome and charming. He work hard. Know how to make friends. He manners is so very good, I should like to meet he mother. Such a young man is like a flower. The gals will come round to see if they can pluck it. But yee know, Cat, never a hint of that with him. Always he is talking about the gal he lost, that one he married. How can he look at another when he don’ know what had become of she he had lost? Yee know all this, don’ yee?” She grasped my arm. “Yee need to sit down?”



“Why would I need to sit down?” But I could not get out the other questions foaming up in my thoughts: How had the world come unmoored? Who was this baffling personage pretending to be my husband the arrogant cold mage? Was I actually going to be safe here? How could I save Bee?



“Yee’s looking unsteady, gal.” She guided me to a sling-backed chair next to a toothless old woman who smiled at me but spoke no word. “Sit.”



I sank into the sway-backed canvas and shut my eyes, overcome by a sense of extreme disorientation and by the unrelenting heat.



I dozed off. When I woke, the shadows had drawn long across the courtyard and a dozen children of varying ages were standing in a semicircle watching me with great round stares. As soon as my open eyes registered, one of the little lads raced across the courtyard over to the long counter where men gathered, drinking and talking. Vai was deep in conversation with men his own age who looked vaguely familiar, likely carpenters from the yard, the ones I’d thought had been teasing him. Except they hadn’t been teasing him at all.