Firebrand

In the deepening dusk of the winter wood, Grandmother stared in disappointment at the remnants of the snowball on her mittened hand. It had simply crumbled apart, refusing to take form around the knotted yarn as the spell required. The weather had been too frigid to make packable snow.

She shook the snow off her yarn. The weather was too frigid period. Oh, how she yearned for summer. Despite all the hats, mittens, scarves, and socks she knitted for herself and others, no matter the number of furred hides she wrapped around herself, she just couldn’t keep warm. She stamped her feet to force feeling back into them.

A crow cawed among the clacking branches of the winter wood, her only company. She’d needed to leave the encampment of her people, civilians and soldiers of Second Empire alike. She’d come alone because she needed silence and the ability to hear herself think. As Second Empire’s apparent spiritual and practical leader, they constantly sought her counsel on the minutest of troubles, whether they needed her to mediate disputes over the ownership of chickens or help mend a child with the croup. She could not get a moment alone, but today she had even left her granddaughter, Lala, behind.

Yes, she had set off alone, but not without protest from those who looked up to her. The woods were not safe, they said, warning that she could run into a pack of starving groundmites on the hunt, or be tracked by assassins from the king. Why, the woods were filled with ferocious wolves.

“The cold will likely kill me first,” she muttered.

She had shrugged their concerns away and come into the woods alone. If she wanted this spell to work, she needed silence.

Caaaaw!

Relative silence, anyway.

She examined her knots. To the untrained eye, they resembled nothing more than a lump of snarls, but she saw the spells she had instilled in them, full of her intention, potent with magic. There still existed in the natural world powers both small and great, which were the basis of elemental magic. It was possible to go even further and conjure spirits that were an embodiment of specific elements, cause them to manifest and do one’s bidding. The calling of such an entity, however, was not easy, for the conditions would have to be perfect and the spell carried out without flaw. Further complicating the procedure was the fact that elementals were unpredictable. One could try to bind them for better control, but such a tactic could compel them to turn on the spellcaster in retaliation. So, she had been careful to weave into her knots goodwill, as well as what it was she wished to achieve.

An attack on the castle, she thought. She hoped the power she beckoned could accomplish in winter what an army could not.

The flapping of wings drew her attention back to the crow. It shot up through the trees and became a dark blot in the sky, sailing away on air currents.

Truly alone at last, Grandmother examined her knots once more and found them satisfactory. This time she removed her mittens, exposing her flesh to the bitter air, and scooped up more snow. She must use the snow, for it was an expression of the entity’s essence that she called upon. She started molding it around the yarn. This time the heat of her bare hands caused the snow to adhere even as it froze her fingers. She tried to prevent her hatred for the cold from seeping into the spell—such an attitude would surely anger the one she called. She concentrated instead on the beauty of an unsullied field of snow, icicles glistening in pale sunlight, flurries muting the air, the bite and raw power of a blizzard.

She shunted her hatred toward King Zachary and all those who served him into the spell, for Sacoridia was Second Empire’s ancient enemy. The king hunted and persecuted them, and while her people suffered and perished in this harsh winter, the king stayed warm and well-fed in his grand castle. They needed a victory, Second Empire did, for there had been too few, and if this spell worked, it could bring Sacoridia to ruin. Oh, how she fantasized about what she might do if she could get her hands on the king. He was not invincible, but a man of flesh and blood, and she knew the ways to extract the utmost pain from one such.

“To Sacor City, I beseech you!” she cried, holding the snowball aloft. Better to beseech an elemental for its help than offend it by commanding it. The wind howled and rattled branches seemingly in approval. “To the castle! I call upon your winter fury.”

She tossed the snowball as high as she could. It plummeted back to Earth and plopped into a drift between a pair of trees. She stood over it, blowing on her stinging hands to thaw them before pulling on her mittens.

Nothing happened. The snowball just sat in the crater it had created in the drift.

She waited some more. The crow, or one of its brethren, returned to a branch over her head and cackled. At her, she thought sullenly.

Still nothing.

She hopped up and down to get her blood flowing. She paced and pounded her hands together. It was freezing and she was exhausted by the casting of the spell, and she still had a long walk back to the encampment. The spell, if it had been correctly fashioned, should have worked by now. Standing around and turning into an icicle wasn’t going to change anything.

A howl shattered the quiet of the wood, and was answered by others. Grandmother shivered, and not entirely from the cold. Wolves were on the hunt.

She gave the spell a little more time, but the howls came closer, and she dared not linger. She shook her head at the futility of it all and turned away. What had she expected? Some grand whirlwind of ice to rise up? A snow demon? A chorus of supernatural beings singing her praises? It was too much to hope that an elemental power would rise forth to aid Second Empire against the Sacoridians, and she wondered what she had done to so displease God.