Book of Magic

[Short Story] The Girl on Fire

They carried her in darkness, through the stormy winds that swept across the barren, volcanic slope. Charcoal-gray clouds swirled overhead, hiding the sun from the red-garbed fire priests, but for a sliver of blue sky that rimmed the horizon where the tumultuous cloud bank ended.

Two imposing figures led the solemn procession, their heads, neck, and wrists crowned in blackened bone. Fitted, sleeveless, ember-hued tops—embroidered with volcanic symbolism in varying shades of red—revealed matching fiery tattoos that snaked around their upper arms, curling across their exposed collarbones. More inked patterns encircled their ankles and shins, against which their crimson waist wraps billowed and flapped. The rest of the priests were dressed similarly, their long, braided dark hair swinging in the bursts of wind.

The middle four priests carried between them two sturdy wooden shafts, tied together with palm leaf twine and holding up a large, swaying object between them. The object stirred, and a flash of purple lightning revealed, for the briefest of moments, the ovular, curved face and defined features of a young woman, hands and feet bound tightly to the poles.

Startled by the light, the woman opened one chocolate-colored eye and immediately shut it again. Her head hurt, her arms and legs ached, and everything was just sore all over. She tried to remember where she was and what she was supposed to be doing, but her mind was one fuzzy, chaotic blanket, like the storm clouds she heard rumbling above. Salty, cold wind blew the comforting scent of tropical fruits and lush undergrowth past her nose, so she knew she wasn't too far from home, but...

The air grew warmer and the swaying stopped. The dark-eyed woman felt herself being lowered, felt the cool press of inky volcanic obsidian against her exposed shoulders and lower back. Hazy red shapes moved around her, undoing her bindings, chanting and murmuring ritualistically in what her ears told her was Archaic Tongue.

A ritual. She was part of a ritual, but which one? Flashes of a fire circle, of people chanting and stepping in circles in the sand, of the bright, full moon cascaded through her memory, but everything was as if she was watching and listening through a long, echoey tunnel. She couldn't remember, and that sent shivers through her fingertips.

A tall, honey-colored woman with striking black velvet hair approached the trembling young woman and offered a slender hand. "Come, Farista. It is time." Her tone was soothing as she pulled the woman—Farista—up with powerful ease. Farista could hear undertones of sadness, and beneath all of that, something so desperately familiar to her. The woman's mocha eyes met Farista's chocolate ones for a brief moment before the other woman glanced away back toward the gathering fire priests, who had moved a bit ahead of them. Guiding the young woman forward into the forming circle, the taller priestess stepped back and watched with glowing eyes from beneath her ebony-colored bone headpiece.

A clean-shaven, middle-aged man with a flowing, red, one-shouldered cape in addition to the usual fire priest attire, stepped up, his hazel-golden eyes scanning the procession authoritatively as they filled in around a concave patch of rock worn down by footsteps and lava flows over the centuries. He was flanked by an older, well-statured woman with a long, charred staff curled in her left palm. They clasped hands and raised their voices toward the churning ashen skies, inviting the rest of them to do the same. The woman in the center shivered as the wind picked up, whipping around her legs, which were only covered in a short cloth wrap that reached down to her thighs. Her loose black locks tangled themselves around her face and she reached up to run her fingers through them, touching a laurel-like crown of jagged bone upon her head. For the fourth time since waking, she wondered how she had gotten there and what this ritual's purpose was, although something in the back of her mind told her that she wouldn't know the full answer even if all her memories came back then.