Phoenix

Eli

Ash stayed awake, tossing and turning for the second night in a row, replaying her conversation with Eli over in her head. She didn't know what possessed her to bring up Heather. It had just come out. And as soon as it had, she'd been filled with regret. Eli's reaction told her his Heather was her Jai—too painful to discuss.

Still, she didn't understand why Eli wanted to help her. What was in it for him except the possibility of getting burned again? She had to have missed something.

She worried into the next day, and when it was time to meet Eli on the training field, she didn't know what to expect. She found herself scrutinising his every move. Why didn't he smile? Why was he avoiding her eyes? Why did he keep reaching to touch the molten scars on the side of his face, then changing his mind and letting his hand fall back down to his side.

His lesson began differently to Gus's. Instead of setting her a task to complete, he began with lots of talking.

"What's this?" he said, holding out a match-sized twig.

"A stick," she said. Clearly.

Eli twirled the stick between his fingers. "Sure. You could think of it as a stick. Or you could think of it as potential energy in its crudest form—a building block for fire." He handed her the stick her for inspection. "Feel the fibres. Note the grain, the springiness, the weight. How much water is contained within it? What other properties are there? Oil, sap? Are there inconsistencies—burls, strange growths, discolourations?"

Ash felt the weight of the wood—light. Noted the texture—stringy. And the colour—ash grey. This stick had already been burned once before, but by a very hot flame, and only for a fraction of a second. She didn't know how she knew this. She just did. The stick was a signpost, covered in symbols that just needed decoding.

"What's this got to do with my training?" she asked. "How's it going to help me control my force?"

Eli sighed. "The more you understand your force, the better you'll be able to communicate with it. Once you start seeing the world for its potential energy and understand the ramifications of taking advantage of that energy, you'll be able to communicate your wishes to your force and it'll be more likely to obey."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"Your force is using you as an empty vessel, like a gas chamber without a tap. You need to be that tap. You need to control the output. And the only way you can do that is by coming to an agreement with your force. Developing a bond so that it doesn't run rampant and hurt the people you love." This time, his hand really did rise to touch his cheek.

Ash wondered if he knew how crazy he sounded. He was making it seem as though her force was a live being. An entity capable of making its own decisions. "So if fire is so wild, why don't Ollie, Apple and Jacob have a problem controlling their force?"

"I suspect most people are born with a natural tap on the gas chamber, some are not."

Ash took a deep breath. "Fine. Tell me what I need to do."

"Start noting things about your environment. Try to view the world around you in terms of its potential energy. This air for example. Is it air? Or is it a micro-environment of gases—hydrogen, carbon dioxide, oxygen? Is it moving, rising, falling. What does it smell like, taste like? Are there particles of decomposing matter in it? What's the dust made of? And are there any flammable properties that could be wielded. Remember, a stick is not merely a stick."

Eli pauses to let this concept sink in before taking the stick and breaking it in half. He handed one end to Ash and keeps the other end in one hand. "What were you thinking about when you burned that clearing?"

Ash thought back to the stillness of that morning, the moment she'd drifted away from herself and watched as a shadow. She'd been thinking about the orphanage, and all the horrible things that had happened to her there. "I was thinking about the orphanage." She shrugged. She wasn't about to share the fine details with Eli. "I was angry." She left it at that.

Eli nodded. "This time, I want you to think about good things. Excitement, anticipation, wonder. Anything that makes you feel hopeful, happy, content."

Ash scoured her mind for memories of the sort and came up with nothing. When had she felt happy? When had she felt truly content? She honestly didn't know.

She shook her head and thought harder. And from the pool of horror and pain, her brother's floppy fringe and dimpled cheeks rose to the fore, followed by the way he closed his eyes when he laughed. There was the satisfying rattle of a full collection bag against her back and the gentle rise and fall of her snoring bunkmates.

These memories coalesced with more recent ones, dawn sky sprinkled with stars, the salty sting of sea water her face, the insistent thundering of the Terra Flora Falls, the view from the top of the Elder tree, the plume of Herald's feathers, the sound of the grandfather clock ticking and ...

The smell wood fire and candle wax on Eli's robes.

She blushed at the last thought and hid it by looking down at the stick in her hand. A tiny tendril of smoke rose from the tip. The pressure against her fingertips was not forceful like it had been in the forest. Instead, it curled in her palms, purring, like a small, teacup kitten. Tentatively, she pushed the feeling outwards, felt it flow like luke warm water through her fingers and into the stick, which glowed red before bursting into a perfect tear-shaped flame. The flame worked its way down the grainy surface at a languid speed until it reached her fingers, flickered blue, then extinguished completely.

The tingling in her palms ebbed, the heat in her chest subsided and for the first time since being in the alleyway, she felt wholly herself.

Eli let out a long, deep breath. "That's it," he said. "That's it."

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