When I regain consciousness, a world chopped up with billowing yellow grass stems greets me. Beyond the waving stems: a still corpse lies. A charred boulder is chewing the dirt. Past the watery rush of reeds: a distant thunder roars. I heave myself onto my elbows, body so shaky I am a nauseated passenger in it.

The distant thunder is no thunder, but a bonfire of red and orange and dancing shapes spreading through the burner's forces. The burner's wagons, the nearest row, make black silhouettes slowly crumbling in the yellow. A wheel explodes, a wagon bed tips out its barreled contents.

A chorus of screams catches up to my awareness. Kolariq, blond boy, army soldiers, Jadiya. I squeeze my eyes shut, I collapse, I press hands over ears and isolate the pulsing of my heart. My elbows scrape into the soil, the sound echoes up my forearms, palms and jaw.

But my skull still rings with voices crawling, "you are weak, boy"

"I loved him more than you"

"what did I ever do to you?"

"so you think you deserve this"

"You killed me but I will be with you until you die you will still die death mage who came to my continent"

"boy, you are so weak"

"so this is the afterlife," hisses Oversized-shield, the guard from years ago. "No palaces here"

"this is how I died"

"how I died"

"I died to a bird crashing through my cannon and the shrapnel took me in the neck"

"I died drowning at sea. Find my bones and bring them back! Bring them back, please"

"What did I do to deserve your curse killing me? I am only a kid"

"you are so weak, boy how could he ever love you"

"You deserve this, you came to my continent and you deserve this"

My skull rings with the shouts of the dead--"how dare you leave me to burn in my own kitchen"--and I crave the ocean to come drown the burner's bonfire. I crawl on elbows, hands pressed to ears, back stinging with slashes. "How dare you"

"--Do you remember me?" this voice laughs so clearly vivid in my memory, of course I do. My eyes squeeze out leaking salt water.

"Do you remember?" he echoes, and the other shouting dead people speak more quietly, "dare you" "still" "deserve" "me"

I push up from my elbows, to my knees, blood breaks through the scabs on my back, I open my eyes. The base of the bonfire has advanced to a circle of shrubs; the wooden parts of the catapult and wagons burn brightly. Mere steps from me, down the hill, lies the corpse of the burner. Mere steps from him, lies the charred boulder, a thrown heap of dirt and rocks lending no fuel for the flames to catch--the bonfire must've started at the wagons.

"Do you remember me?" he asks. The tips of the fire's crown bleed dark red, the magenta, green, yellow and orange of the frantic shouting people slowly fade to common flames. The red bleeds deeper, sketches out the edges of a foot, a leg, a hand outstretched.

"Of course I remember you, Tulimaq," I whisper. Pebble chips dig into my back.

"Do you remember me?" his mouth asks, this boy still of fourteen years. "I found this place and I can barely glimpse out through the walls, you're sitting on a hillside, aren't you?"

I nod.

"It took so long to find this place--I can see you moving! You nodded!"

I nod again. I risk speaking, "you silenced the other voices."

"Is that a sleeping person beside you? I don't recognize this place, wow I have tons of questions."

"You're still fourteen," I say. "I'm twenty-six...twenty-seven, barely," I hesitate. "Obviously I look different."

"Can you nod again if you can still hear me? This place got louder and I--"

I nod, rapidly. Desperately, I will the dark red form of a fourteen-year-old to resolve fully, but the shade bleeds backwards instead and I choke out, "Tulimaq" to his color's dying.

I reach out, with those senses, wildly I cut through the chorus of screams rising again. "How dare you" "no palaces here" "bring my bones back from the sea" "shrapnel in the neck" "still think you can escape" "how dare--"

I reach out with a skin of magic, and the rush of heat in reply knocks me backwards. Sends me sliding down the hill to the burner's corpse, so revolting on my hair that I hurl it away by its blood, spinning in the air, higher and higher. "Tulimaq," I whisper.

I have always dreaded a fire for its colors, the incessant voices, the dead. But this heat, dancing underneath my skin, so unlike the muggy warmth of the wind, terrifies me. How far I could reach into a fire and cup its beating coals in my palms and dilapidate the living by the dead. I could disperse the heat outward and hurl ghosts to eat up grass.

Oh, that burner lied. There is no tricking the dead into dancing. This is wielding the vessel--the walls and floors--that holds their cold souls and tossing it about like a fire ship in a freezing ocean.

It terrifies me, makes me shudder and sweat. But I bring Tulimaq back. I sift through fire walls like checking bedrooms in a vast palace. The heat creeps out from me, near my left fingers. But I sift faster, through dancing colors, just to see the picture of him again, hear a voice vivid in my memory for real again.

The flames go crimson. I stop.

"You are on fire," he says to me, in awe, or maybe terror. "From within. I see you."

"Can you hear me?" I ask.

"I almost have to squint at you. Wait, how am I here? I didn't move."

"I brought you here. I pulled the heat to show where you are. I think, I don't know how this works," I wave at him.

"You waved!" he exclaims. The dark red jumps, whole feet casting sparks over the grass. Over the grass unsinged between me and the burning wagons. The shrinking width of grass between me and the wagons.

"I'm going to let you go, Tulimaq," I cast out harder, further, for another, but only find cold and the vaguely lukewarm presence of shouting dead. "I miss you."

"I can't believe I can see you," Tulimaq says, waving his dark red arms amidst the yellow flames. His smile splits like sunbeams. "Can you see me waving to you?"

I nod. I nod many times. And I let him go, any words I speak he wouldn't be able to hear so I swallow them back. I release the heat tying him to this place and I turn and I crawl towards the coastline.

I pick up the unconscious jet bird gently, hold her in one arm and hobble on three limbs. The scabs on my back have broken, blood trickles out my skin and down my ribs. I crawl around the hillside. Ever so slowly. Perhaps a child's body will lie here and I'll know for sure, perhaps a backpack dropped from my shoulder will wait for me.

Then we run. Run from a fire and a dead burner and a dead child. By we, I mean I. Another day, death mage, another death. Then we run.

***

Dear dead, the frost orchards burned themselves out before the next dawn. Technically speaking. Technically, glowing embers lay like half-buried stars in the ashes, twinkling. You hardly slept when the day dwindled to night, and kept sitting up to stare out the window, so you knew that the fires died into embers halfway through the night, but kept glowing until sunrise swallowed them up, melting them into invisible fires.

All that night, you kept trying to find familiar constellations in the orange glows. Blinking blearily in bed, you traced out a bird, a sea creature, a hunter; clothed orange instead of white or yellow.

Tatter-cloak slept through it all, or slept through all the moments you were awake. Maybe, as you were sleeping, Tatter-cloak sat up and stared out the window too, counted glowing embers and wondered how his army was doing out there, in the deep winter.

They'd be fine, you reminded yourself, eyes tracing the lumpy shape of a flower in the embers. How many nights had you slept atop the cave's hill by the ocean in midwinter? They'd be fine, the heat radiating from the fire would keep them warm.

Deep winter meant dawn came late, you got breakfast well before dawn and ate, standing outside in fresh snow, unbroken by any pairs of boots except yours. Your teeth chattered with the cold, your hands froze and lost track of the texture of hard bread crust, but you formed each flickering ember into a shape of something. Leaping fish, crashing wave, hunter's bow, speckled leaf, bird's wing. You didn't know what the shapes in the embers told, you didn't have any good stories to tell about them, but it was something. Your own little eulogy for a frost orchard you had fond memories of--if walking through them for two days at a time could be called fond memories.

Then you went back inside. Tatter-cloak was stumbling sleepily down the stairs, and stared at your entrance in slow confusion, which you didn't take pity on until your frozen fingers had peeled the boots off your feet.

"I went outside to look at the embers," you tiptoed to the table. "I think the whole thing is gone."

"Oh," Tatter-cloak trod down the stairs. "Every single tree is gone?"

You nodded.

"All the bushes? The whole thing?"

You nodded again, kneeling atop the chair. The original chair.

"That's..." he stepped from the stairs to the beige floor, dirty with bootprints.

You didn't finish the sentence either.

Tatter-cloak stumbled to the kitchen, squeaked open the cupboards furthest from the sink.

"The bread is one over," you said.

"Right."

Rustling baskets and pans. "Do we have any water?"

"Not boiled," you said. "But there's snow outside."

Tatter-cloak sighed. More pans banged and his footsteps shuffled towards the sink.

"Are you going to the frost orchards today?" you rubbed your fingers over the table's grains.

"Yes, when the sun is up," he sighed again. "I think today's another he kind of day."

"Today's still a she kind of day," you said. "Do you want me to store boiled water in the cave?"

"No thanks. The bread cupboard will be fine," the sink spurted. "Are you going to the frost orchards today?"

"Yes. I am still your bodyguard. Maybe I will do something fancy with my hair today."

"But..."

"And an army will not keep me from seeing the frost orchards," you drew your lips to a line. "I know that place better than any of them."

"Knew. I mean, that just popped out. Sorry," the spurting sink fell quiet.

You traced an uneven row of bumps on the table's corner; wax, or something. "Maybe they will grow back quickly."

"Yeah. Maybe it'll only take a few days. Who knows how the mage grew all those trees in the first place, maybe it was only a few days then too."

"Yeah," you slid out of the chair and paced to the stairs.

"Where are you going?" Tatter-cloak called.

"To get ready."

"The sun hasn't even started coming up yet."

You crept up the stairs. "I know."

***

The sands of a beach become my bed, lapping waves a poor lullaby. If a fire comes, there is the full breadth of a beach to keep me safe. If a fire comes, there is complete blueness to submerge in and silence the silhouettes.

I prop the jet bird on the backpack. Which I found on the other side of the hill, undamaged but the contents rattled. No child was nearby. I couldn't sense the crystalline sharpness of his blood and I pretend not to think about what that means.

Lying on the beach, aching, I convince myself: the burner lied about the fires. The tingling heat under my skin testifies there is no such thing as tricking the dead.

To the distant roar of a fire, I convince myself: none of the voices were a child's screams, none of the silhouettes had his silent stare.

Maybe the burner meant another child, hope leaps within me. Maybe he never saw the child, it was only I who stood on the hill and threw curses at his skeletons. I shut my eyes, weakly stretch out for the crystalline jaggedness of his blood. Weakly, all I sense is a vague thrum of heartbeats up the coast.

Hope flutters alive and I can't bear myself to kill it--the child's not dead until I know he's dead.

So I will go looking. Take care of my wounds, then go looking. The jet bird will recover, her heart beats steadily, blood fragile like a night sky too dark to texture clouds. But no bones lie broken. I shudder at the burner twisting her blood into the soil; me, helpless to free her because I battled for my own skin. The burner was stronger than both of us, I bless a secret language of curses.

On the beach, my nerves count up my wounds, my head ignores my pain. Like I have practice at this. I crawl to the ocean, sand stuck to wrists higher than where waves wash away. I splash water over my back. The salt bites my wounds. I count the underwater plumes of sand instead of the pulsing bites.

My shirt is torn, certainly. I splash salt water on my back to wash the blood, that part is easy. Hesitating, I peer up and down the beach, of course there is no one, I know that, the closest person is a dead burner and his toes lie dangerously near the licking edges of a grass fire. I still hesitate, above this body of mine.

I shut my eyes, then tug my shirt off. Feel with my fingers the holes in the cloth, wince at the widths unrepairable with plain thread and needle I could just put the shirt back on. Hide the holes by wearing a cloak. Assuming it doesn't rub on the wounds, or soak up blood.

I exhale, skin stinging with the movement.

Cross-legged, I sit with waves gurgling around my ankles. I bundle the shirt in my fists, as much as it will bundle, and count the lukewarm waves instead of the sharp pains in my back, or the barren prickles racing over my torso.

I have practice at this. I will be fine.

A distant fire roars behind me, but no dead whisper. I reach out for a child's blood, stumble weakly in my search and circle to the jet bird. Asleep, peacefully. Heart beating. Nestled atop the backpack.

I scoot backwards up the beach--feet, tailbone, feet--instead of crawling, eyes sliding over my uneven trail through the sand. By the backpack, I reach for the jet bird, and she twitches. I retract my fingers, waiting, but she doesn't wake. I reach for her again and carefully slide her to the sand. She has no silver pebble nest for her rest here.

My hands dig through the backpack, find thread wound around a bone needle. Two cloaks, a comb, a spare shirt. Likely in need of washing. There should be soap, somewhere.

I pick out the roll of bandages by their smooth texture. Then replace the cloaks, add the spare shirt and the thread to my lap. Carefully, I set the jet bird, her wings limp, atop her sturdy perch.

I scoot through the sand, feet, tailbone, feet, up to the lapping water. To my pull, the bandages screech from the roll, I rip them into strips. Awkwardly, I lift them over my shoulder, they flutter in the breeze until they stick, hopefully they stick in the right place because I cannot smooth them out with the pain limiting my arms' motions. In my imagination, lines of dark tape adhere in even rows to cover vertical cuts of dark, sea-green scabs. I doubt it truly looks neat that way.

When I call my backside bandaged, I twist side to side, and there is no trickle of warm blood to set my skin tingling. Nothing comes loose.

But as I twist side to side I glimpse fragments of the fire. Flickering yellow, wisps of smoke over orange. Still, no roaring voices reach me, but I scoot until I can pull the jet bird and the backpack closer to the water. Just in case.

Sitting cross-legged in the waves, with my bone needle and thread, I sew shut the narrowest holes in my shirt. I frown at the ones I can poke my whole palm through. When the fire roars closer, and whispers leak across the beach, I scoot into the water so the lapping waves speak loud across my knees. I pull my elbows closer to this body of mine, I don't look at this body of mine; I don't.

Across the ocean, as if they could listen, I whisper to the horizon, to Tatter-cloak, "do you hear me? Do you imagine me?

"Right now, I sit on a beach with a fire raging on the plain behind me, eating up all the grass. Is this what you would be doing? Carefully sewing up the holes in your shirt beside a yellow wall of flames?"

I leave the palm sized holes gaping. Root through the backpack, trying not to disturb the jet bird, exchanging a roll of bandages taking up space in my lap for a smooth bottle of soap. I drown the clay container before my legs, washing the spare shirt in the ocean.