The Fire God

Chapter Twenty

     Clarissa was downstairs in the family room. Syllie was sitting on a beanbag chair, glued to the TV, blasting the digital soldiers on the screen into pixel oblivion. Tiffany was in the kitchen. Mike had been nicer to me since Clarissa had been poisoned, but still distant. Several days passed of CSI testing everything in the kitchen for cyanide or some other kind of poison. If they had asked me to do it, I would have been as effective.

    Max had been furious. Clarissa had been taken to the hospital, though she insisted she was well. I had remained in my room and worked.

    I went to Clarissa, handed her the stack of papers. She asked me what it was, but I couldn't answer her. My mind was swimming in memories. I needed to focus. I wandered to the track where we trained.

    I would be one of these insane, mishmoshed justice enforcers.

*****

    Clarissa read the first few pages out to the others, but her voice dropped a few times. When she read, That was the last time I was truly happy for years, she fell silent, left the group.

    She disappeared into one of the spare rooms, locked herself away for an entire day and didn't emerge until dark was a thick spread over us. The butler, whom Syllie called Alfred, but was in fact named Nathaniel, checked on her. I asked him how she was, but he said she ignored him. I peeped at her a moment. She didn't notice me. A pile of papers were next to her, a fist still before her. Her eyes were switching over the words at gazelle speed.

    I brought her a cup of poison-free cream soda and a turkey sandwich. She still wouldn't allow interruption, refused to remove her eyes from the race track. I thought she would stop when she saw me, but she was too engrossed in the stack of pages.

     When Clarissa emerged, Syllie set upon her, demanded answers.

    "Mricul didn't give me permission to share," she said.

    "Permission? He gave you the story. He authorized you to do whatever you wanted with it when he handed over the pages." Syllie's tongue wouldn't have literally been hanging out, but that was what I pictured from my room where I paced.

    "The language he speaks, it's related to Tumshuquese," she said. "He doesn't say exactly, but I think he was born in 253 B.C.E." Her voice started to catch. "Asperia was born in 255—" She sniffled. 

    "Wait," Syllie shrieked. "Am I getting B.C. confused? She's only two years older?" 

    Clarissa was hiccuping on her sobs. 

    "But she looks so old. He looks like he's Mike's age."

    Clarissa was gulping her tears. "He killed Asperia's husband."

    "Asperia had a husband?"

    "His life was horrible," Clarissa choked out. "He—I can't." 

    The padding of feet at a runner's pace.

    I emerged from my room, but Clarissa was gone. I sank to the steps, stretched. Syllie hovered over me, asked me for a copy.

    "I didn't write it for you," I said. "I may give a copy to Aditi one day. Or daughters I adopt in the future."

    Syllie relaxed into a seated position next to me on the marble stairs and threw his arm around my shoulder. "You like to sit on steps."

    I leaned away from him, pushed his arm off of me. The bannister was also marble. I detested all the metal and rock.

    "I hear your life was horrible, basically torture from birth."