4 – 5

Please, the cry goes, help them! Save them!

The woman who first gave voice to it now pushes her way free of the crowd. Her tangled hair is soot-stained and stuck by sweat to her ashen skin. Her bare feet are caked in dirt and dust. Tears have run clean lines down her face, and yet more well in her reddened eyes. There's a naked terror in them, and in how she reaches for Clarke with trembling hands. When I last saw this woman she was doing a poor job of hiding her disdain for me, for my appearance, and for how I wasn't good enough to be in the company of a magi.

Bronwyn Alderwood, wife to the alderman of the burning town, is begging, pleading with her entire self. “Please,” she begs. Her voice is a smoke-hoarsened croak. The crowd has made a circle for the three of us; her to one side, myself and Clarke to the other. “It's – Michael! He's there, he's fighting! He can't – none of them can!”

Is Michael her husband? Her son? Did it matter? Clarke's eyes are wide, her face drawn. I don't know what she's feeling, or thinking. The crowd presses closer, encircling us. Entrapping us. We collide, our shoulders touching. She removes her gaze from Bronwyn long enough to give a quick look, full of relief. The thin line of her mouth ticks upward. It's not much of a smile and it's not for long, but it's enough. She turns back, and says, “I –”

Bronwyn interrupts her. “Please,” she says, in an ashen-caked whisper, “please. He needs you. Please.”

Over the heads of the entrapping crowd, a wide pillar of smoke rises against the gray dawn. Its distant roar crawls into the heads of all who hear it, and do not for one moment let them forget what lay behind them: their homes, their trades, and their lives. All burning to cinder, eaten by the gluttonous burn. I look at the faces around me, bright-eyed and stain-faced, and wonder if they count one of the firefighters back there as friend or family. Likely, they do.

It is fear, then, that drives them. That has driven them here, to the outskirts, where they are safe and those they left behind are not. They see themselves as cowards and for that they lash themselves to bloody ribbons in their hearts. They want help. They want to help. It's just that their fear made them forget and brought them here; where it cruelly faded enough for them to remember. I swallow a bitter laugh. Is it these people I'm thinking of, or myself? That's why we're all out here, while the brave fight behind us.

Clarke's eyes dance over the crowd, over Bronwyn Alderwood, and the wide pillar of rising smoke. It hasn't shrunk, nor has it grown. The battle goes on, but it won't be the fire that gives out first. Clarke's mouth opens and closes without a word emerging. I find then, something that had somehow escaped my notice until now. She's here, with all of us.

She's here, with all of us.

Moonlit hell, I'm an idiot. A blind, cowardly idiot.

The silence continues, and as it does the already laden air fills even more. Not with the drifting choke of smoke, or falling flakes of ash, but a tension born of suspicion: that Clarke is not going to heed the pleas she's been given, that she won't help, that everyone they – no, we – left behind will die in fire. It winds through us, binding itself tightly. Deeply rooted, watered well by our fearful desperation, it grows. Quickly.

Something is going to happen, and soon. Someone here will take her continued silence for the refusal I fear it may be, and their anger will all the light that is needed for a new flame to burst into life. I can see it in clenched jaws and twisting mouths, in the cold look that smoke-reddened eyes take on. She sees it, too. “Everyone,” she says, voice wavering, “I – if we could – all just...calm ourselves, I–”

Again, she's interrupted. Not by anyone in the crowd, though a ripple did travel through them at her words. They aren't the words they wanted to hear. Brought together and made as one as they have been by those twisting, gnarled roots, their displeasure has an almost palpable weight. Where once stood dozens of people, now were only three. Myself, Clarke, and Bronwyn Alderwood. Behind us, back from where we had all fled from, comes the droning roar of the burning flame.

“I'll go with you,” comes the interruption. The voice is clear of ash and clean of smoke, the offer given strongly and with conviction. Who is that's suddenly found courage? Who here has suddenly become brave? Not Bronwyn, who's staring at me in naked astonishment. If not them, then who? It can't be Clarke, that would be nonsense. Then, and only then, does it become clear:

It's me.

I made the offer.

What's surprising about it is; I mean every word.

- - -

Why did I say that? Clarke and Bronwyn are looking at me with just as much confusion as I feel. Another ripple travels through the crowd, uprooting that tangled, uniting knot of suspicion and displeasure, returning the one to many once more. Murmurs of conversation follows in the ripple's wake, under which the distant roar of the fire drones on. Who is that is followed by what did she say which is answered by said she'd help Miss Zira. It's Clarke who addresses me directly, locking her blue, blue eyes on mine. Many emotions dance in them, so tightly together that I should think it impossible to separate them. “What did you say?” she asks, in clear disbelief.

“I will go with you,” I say it again, and relief comes fast on the heels of those words. Relief from the guilt of leaving Harlan, my one road-friend, behind. Relief from the self-given title of coward. Relief, from not knowing what to do. It is not that I'm no longer afraid. I still am, it's just that it doesn't seem to matter as much anymore. Like so much else to do with Clarke, I don't fully understand why. I will go with her, into the almighty blast of the fire's heat and face the full volume of its mind-numbing roar. I'll stand at her side and breathe in the ash-and-ember choked air and blind myself in the brightness of the obscene tongues of flame. I must be mad. I must be.

“But–” Clarke begins, and is for the third time interrupted. Bronwyn this time, pushing Clarke out of the way to take my face in her hands. She grips tightly, smearing the mix of soot and sweat on her palms onto my already filthy skin.

“Thank you,” she breathes. Her hands move from my face down to my shoulders. Her grip is just as tight there, nails biting even through the protection of my clothes. “Thank you, thank you, I – thank you.” Tears, this time not from smoke but from the relief of a hope fulfilled.

Except it's not fulfilled, is it? Clarke's the one who has to agree to go fight the fire. All that I have done is say I will go with her, wherever she decides. I hope it is back to the fire. I believe that she will, but I'm not certain. I can't be. I've known her for less than a day. I wrap my hands around Bronwyn's wrists and coax her to let me go. She does, her tears turning to sobs as she all but sinks to the ground. People gather around her and comfort her. Friends, I'd guess, or maybe family. Clarke watches it, something wistful and longing in how she does.

Then, when I'm close, she looks to me. For all that we're surrounded by people, that a woman is sobbing loudly from sheer relief behind me, for all the distant drone of a roaring fire fills the silence, we may as well be alone. “Did you mean it?” she asks me quietly. I nod, and she breathes deeply in, as my doing so lifted a weight from her chest. “I...you have my thanks,” she says.

It's nothing, I mean to say, or I'm perhaps supposed to say. It would be a lie, though, and whatever quality Clarke possesses that leaves me unwilling to lie to her, remains. In the absence of this, with her so close, I haven't an idea of what to say. I smile at her, and it's a small thing in the corners of my mouth.

It's not returned. A shadow passes behind her blue, blue eyes, and it's followed by a confession. “There may be nothing I can do,” she says quietly. “It may be too late.” From how close we are and the way she's lowered her head, the words are practically given to my shoulder. I think of Harlan; old, graying Harlan, standing tall and strong and fighting without a drop of magic to his name.

I bump the crown of my head into hers and she looks up. We're so very close to each other. It's a strange and exhilarating feeling. Each one of her short, quick breaths washes over my mouth and chin. “Try,” I whisper. It's encouragement and plea and something, all wrapped in one word. Then, “I'll be there. For whatever it's worth, I'll be with you.”

Dawn's rising light catches in the silver-trimmed piece of ice at the hollow of her throat. Thin, bare fingers of sunlight reach over the Icewalls and touch its heart, bringing to life the cold star that slumbers there. Her brows touches against mine as she nods. Her eyes reflect the light of the ice, gleaming with their own light of brightest blue. Her smile is small and sly when she says, “More than two silvers. Much more.”

I grin. The fire remains, and still, there's a wide grin on my face. I take her hand as we turn back to Valdenwood. The glow of the burn is barely visible from where we stand. The smoke it gives off is not. It rises in a thick, wide column to the sky. It's roar, muted by distance, drones on. These things that filled me with so much terror I ran until my throat bled and I tasted it on my tongue and in the hollows of my teeth haven't gone anywhere. I don't know what we'll find there; if Harlan or anyone is still fighting, or if there's anything left of the waterfront to save.

Clarke doesn't know if she can help. Maybe she's right. Maybe what we're going back to is beyond the ability of even a magi to help. It's possible, but I don't think so. There's much I don't know, but what I do is this: I fled before, and now I mean to face it head-on. Only this time, I'm not alone.