Chapter 45: Magical Anchoring with Fire

(I painted this in Procreate using various oil paint brushes - Chaiga T. Cheska)

Tavik sat between Liv and his older brother and felt as though he were caught in a rising turmoil of emotions that threatened to overwhelm him whether he wanted them to or not. A heavy guilt pressed against him. He felt like a traitor to his brothers, because they had always shared everything with one another, every secret and every fear, and that honesty was the reason they were so close. To sit between his mother and his older brother and pretend that everything was fine when it was not felt enormous, and he wondered how long he could keep himself from breaking.

He listened as Oren and Bran asked eager questions about the Crystalsong elves. Tavik had questions too, more than he could count, but they tangled inside him and refused to form into words. He could only think about why his mother had left them when they were so young, and how it was even possible that he was related to this towering elvish warrior who seemed carved from strength and fierce purpose. How could this be his mother? How could no one be addressing the fact that they were sitting with her four hundred years before their own births? And how old did Crystalsong elves live to be? How long had she walked the world before they ever existed?

The questions pressed against him like stones, and he felt smaller and smaller between Oren’s steady presence and Liv’s immense, unknowable one.

Liv interrupted his spiralling thoughts by lifting both her hands and sweeping them in a slow, deliberate arc around the campsite. The air shifted at once. The exposed edge of their camp, the part that opened onto the nightly forest, sealed itself behind a barrier that pressed back the growing chill and smothered the woodland noises beyond. Tavik stared with the others, wonder rising through him, as a shimmering membrane of magic unfurled like a pale curtain between their fire and the darkened trees.

Liv seemed unaware of their astonishment, or perhaps she simply did not care. She rose to her feet and gestured for them all to stand. For a moment she listened to the forest, her head tilted slightly, and then she ignored Olis when he said, “Perhaps the night is not the time to give them a magic lesson, Liv.”

Oren rose to his feet and pulled Tavik up beside him, sensing that his younger brother had no interest in participating. Whatever was happening inside Tavik needed shifting, and Oren decided that perhaps learning from this elf might be the best way to nudge a moody brother out of his slump.

Tavik stood and shoved Oren’s hand off his arm, glowering at him before turning to Liv, trying to guess what she intended to do. Across the fire, Nix struggled upright and did not seem to mind Bran helping him. The sight gave Tavik a sharp stab of worry because the thrumming pain still reverberated through the tether from his cousin. For a moment Tavik wondered if he had been too harsh with Nix earlier.

Liv looked at each of them, her frown deepening as though she were weighing something unseen. After a few moments of silent thought, she lifted her arms wide, her gaze sweeping first upward and then downward, as if she were observing currents or shapes that the others could not perceive. The boys watched her closely. The elf drew in a long breath, closed her eyes, and began to hum a low, resonant note that seemed to brush against their senses like a feathered vibration.

The sound shifted the air. The fire responded, its crackling and popping and flickering flames seeming to merge with the hum. The air at the edges of the flames began to move, forming subtle patterns that curled and unfurled like drifting smoke. As Liv altered her pitch, the patterns changed shape, bending and folding in ways that made the fire appear to dance with them. It was mesmerising, and the four boys found themselves unable to look away.

Liv changed pitch again. As she did, the patterns in the air reached outward, and her humming wrapped itself around her body in a shimmering aura. It moved like leaves stirred by a breeze, shifting and rippling in delicate waves. The moment the connection settled, Liv seemed to glow with magic, her entire form threaded with light that pulsed in time with her voice.

Liv opened her eyes and looked around at each of them, her gaze moving through the intricately shifting patterns that still danced between the fire and her body. She gestured to the living shapes in the air, her voice a soft murmur, as though she feared that speaking too loudly might break whatever spell she had woven. “This is how you anchor your magic.” She touched her throat and chest, then extended her hand towards the dancing patterns. “To anchor to the elements around you is to create a kinship with what you can give to nature and what it can give to you. Between this union, you have magic that strengthens you instead of taking from you.”

Even though she spoke in a low murmur, the dancing energy around her did not dim. It grew brighter, more vibrant, as if she and the fire were feeding one another. The flames flickered with a strange intelligence, and the air rippled with a rhythm that pulsed in time with her breath.

It was a marvel to witness. Oren, Bran, Tavik, and even Nix found themselves caught in the wonder of it, their thoughts shifting as they watched the patterns move. They exchanged glances, each boy thinking the same thing without speaking it aloud. Their magical journey, which had felt scattered and uncertain until now, might finally be on the verge of becoming something structured, something reliable, something that could grow.

Liv kept her connection to the fire patterns and gestured to the boys, clearly indicating that one of them should attempt the technique. The air around her still glimmered with the strange, living shapes that moved in time with her breath.

“Should we always hum to make this connection?” asked Oren. He needed practicality at all times, and he wondered whether this humming belonged only to the Crystalsong elves or whether all magical beings used sound to anchor themselves. These felt like important foundations to establish before attempting anything.

Liv’s brows creased for a moment, a flicker of irritation passing across her face, but after catching a placating glance from Olis, she answered quietly. “Humming is not always necessary, but when children of my kind learn to use magic, they are taught to hum so they may learn to anchor. You are children in the eyes of my culture.”

Olis sighed beside her, watching the boys and hoping they would not test the elf’s patience any further.

Oren absorbed Liv’s words and accepted that he and his brothers were beginners in the craft of magic, although he felt Tavik bristle beside him. He drew in a long breath, closed his eyes, and let a hum rise from his chest as he reached towards the fire beyond his sight. He listened to the popping of the flames and felt the warmth settle along his limbs. Somewhere nearby, his youngest brother gasped, but Oren kept his eyes closed and allowed the hum to deepen.

Something shifted inside him, subtle at first, then widening like a door opening in the dark. He felt a pull towards the fire, a quiet beckoning, and suddenly he understood its nature. He sensed how it lived, how it fed on timber, how the air curled around it in a dance that felt almost joyful. The fire and the air were partners in their existence, each shaping the other, each sustaining the other.

In that moment, Oren felt himself drawn into the same rhythm. He understood his place in the world with a clarity that startled him. The shape of him fitted into the shape of everything around him, as though he had always belonged to this vast, breathing pattern and had simply never noticed it before.

As this awareness reverberated through and around him, Oren felt an urgent need to use his magic. Instinct rose before thought. Still with his eyes closed, he lifted his hands and moved them through the air, and the air answered. It rose to meet him in a weaving dance, tracing the shapes he made with his hands and fingers. Oren’s magic amplified, a strength he had never known holding him upright as he drew his fingers through the warmed air before him. A resonant chiming filled the space, delicate and bright, and Oren opened his eyes.

Everyone was staring at him. His brothers and cousin stood open-mouthed, their faces lit by what could only be constellations suspended within the fire. The constellations shifted and turned as Oren’s fingers wove through them, each movement shaping the stars as if they were threads of light. He did not know what he was focusing on, only that instinct was guiding him, pulling something into form.

The constellations gathered themselves into a strange piece of cloth that gleamed within the firelight. When Oren reached forward and drew it from the flames, it changed in his hands. The cloth folded itself neatly, its surface hardening and smoothing until it became a well-made map. Strange constellations and ley lines sprawled across a landscape none of them recognised, the markings glowing faintly as if remembering the fire they had come from.

The moment Oren took the map and held it in his hands, the fire and the magic he had summoned faded, leaving only the strange cloth map and a deep, steady strength inside him that he had never felt during any previous attempt at magic. He looked up at the elf, then at his brothers and Nix, bewilderment written across his face, before lowering his gaze to the map again.

“How… Oren, how did you do that?” murmured Bran. His mouth hung open, his eyes wide, and he felt a rush of wonder that made his eldest brother seem both extraordinary and a little frightening. Bran thought Oren looked different somehow, as if the magic had altered him.

Tavik, standing beside Oren, stared down at the map in Oren’s hands and then glanced sideways at his brother, trying to understand how his practical, steady older brother had conjured something out of nothing.

Liv smiled, though she raised an eyebrow at Oren, and said, “You are a quick learner, and it seems the world has provided you with something you are in need of.”

Oren held up the map, confused and amazed, and looked at Liv. “But why did this come to me? What is it for, and why do I need it?”

“Our natural world knows our story more than we do and provides what it feels we need when we listen closely to the echoes of magic,” murmured Olis as he watched Oren. Bran looked up at the scribe and then across at Oren, a strange unease creeping through him that he could not explain. While the others continued discussing the strange new cloth map, Bran shifted sideways, half behind Nix, and drew the Færlom from his pocket where he had tucked it earlier. He looked at the crystals as they shifted and glittered, but nothing stirred within them, and yet the same disquiet returned, sharper than before.

He slipped the device back into his pocket and turned to find everyone looking at him. He gulped, his eyes widening, discomfort rising at the weight of too many gazes he could not return. He moved behind Nix again, using his cousin’s presence as a shield.

Oren called over, smiling in a way meant to steady Bran. “Why don’t you try, Bran? You need to learn to anchor your magic.”

Nix stepped aside so Bran could no longer hide behind him. Bran drew a deep breath, straightened his tunic as if that might lend him courage, and glanced briefly at both his older brothers across the fire. Then he copied what Oren had done. He closed his eyes and let a hum rise from his chest, trying to concentrate only on the warmth of the fire, the crackling pop of the embers, and the steady glow of the flames.

His heart hammered in his chest. He could feel everyone watching him, and that alone made his nerves prickle. Even at the best of times, too many eyes unsettled him, and now he felt every gaze like a weight pressing against him. He tried to push the feeling aside and focus on the fire’s warmth, the rhythm of its sounds, and the small hope that he might manage whatever Oren had just done.

At first Bran felt certain he was doing something wrong because nothing happened. He stood there humming with his eyes closed, feeling foolish, knowing every person around the fire was watching him. The awareness of their attention sent heat creeping up his neck, and he was just about to open his eyes and suggest that someone else try instead when something shifted.

The shapes of the fire beyond his closed eyelids began to jump about inside the darkness, as if the flames were dancing or performing some jaunty little walk. Bran found himself smiling at the absurdity of it and wondered if his imagination was simply running away with him. He tried to steady himself, tried to channel what he had seen Oren do, tried to hold himself in a way that did not look silly whilst also seeing a silly dancing fire behind his eyes.

Then as he refocused, he saw the fire dancing behind his eyes, but the shapes between the flickering flames began to take on the forms of letters. They made a kind of sense to Bran, yet not quite, so he frowned and tried to concentrate on the strange shapes of the letters moving between the flickering flames. A word seemed to be stepping forward, almost as if it were dancing out of the fire itself, and he saw it spell the word “mother”, though he had no idea why. He did not know what he was meant to do with this spelled out word or how it was supposed to help him now.

Bran frowned again and tried instead to focus on using his magic the way Oren had done. A sudden urge rose in him, sharp and insistent, and he realised he wanted to open a portal. The thought made him anxious at once because he absolutely did not want to open a portal and end up alone in another bramble bush in the dark in a forest he did not know. But the urge pulled at him so fiercely that Bran felt he had no choice but to comply.

Still with his eyes closed, he reached out, and his fingers seemed to know exactly where to pinch time apart even without him needing to look. He felt and heard the rending shudders as he pulled the air open before him. Slowly he opened his eyes and saw that he was looking into a very small portal, as if it were a little round window hanging in the air directly in front of him. He felt at once that it was meant only for him, and that no one else around the fire could see through it.

Bran looked through and saw a strange broken landscape, a horizon torn open with distant fires and smoke drifting like wounded banners. Closest to him lay a scatter of caves that he realised were the burnt-out hollows of enormous ancient trees, their fallen trunks crusted with crystals in every colour. Inside one of these crystal-lit hollows lay an elf, blood pooling around her in a dark alizarin crimson that seeped into her clothes while a battle roared just beyond the fallen tree.

Bran clamped a hand over his mouth, his eyes stinging as he recognised the elf in the blood. It was Liv. His gaze flew towards her where she stood beside Olis, watching him with a strange, intent stillness. Bran reached out without thinking and pulled the portal closed. It snapped shut with a sharp bang that sent him stumbling backwards.

Only when the portal vanished did Bran realise the other startling thing. He was not drained. He had not faded. He felt stronger than before, as if fire had threaded itself through his veins. Bran looked up at his brothers, their eyes wide upon him, and then the memory of the word he had seen flickered through him again. His eyes went round as he wondered whether Liv had anything to do with his lost mother, or if she herself was his mother, though she looked so young. She could not be… could she?

Bran looked over briefly to Tavik, who was watching him with a pained expression that made Bran’s stomach tighten. Something in Tavik’s face seemed bruised, as if he were carrying a hurt Bran could not name. Bran wondered at it, wondered what was stirring in his brother, wondered why Tavik looked as though Bran’s magic had pressed against some hidden wound inside him.

And then Bran surfaced from his thoughts as Liv turned her attention to Nix and then Tavik, giving them both a tilt of her head before speaking. “I feel that you both are bound so much that you must try to anchor your magic together.” She regarded Nix first, then Tavik, her gaze moving like a quiet assessment, and gestured her hand towards Nix. “Stand with the bigger boy. You must stand together for this anchoring lesson.”

Bran nudged Nix, and Nix flicked a brief glance at him before trudging over to stand between Tavik and Oren. Bran watched the two of them, noticing the stiffness in their shoulders, the way neither seemed comfortable standing so close. He wondered if something had snagged between them through the tether, some disagreement carried along that strange magical thread, and the idea unsettled him. Arguing through a tether felt like an odd, tangled way to clash with someone.

Tavik and Nix looked at Liv, then flicked quick sideways glances at each other, and both sighed, the sound carrying a shared frustration that seemed to ripple between them. They closed their eyes, drew synchronistic deep breaths, and hummed quietly. The hum wavered, and both of them winced in unison, a mirrored flinch that Oren and Bran found fascinating and worrying in equal measure.

Tavik tried to concentrate on following what he had seen his brothers do, but his thoughts were still snarled around the realisation that this elf was his mother and he was not allowed to tell his brothers, not allowed for fear of threatening their existence and his own as well. The knowledge pressed against him like a secret with sharp edges. He heard Nix humming beside him and felt a stab of guilt for snapping at his cousin, who was clearly still in pain. Nix was trying to protect him and his brothers, trying to hold everything together, but the whole thing felt so unfair. They were standing in the presence of their mother before she even knew she would have children, and he had to keep it locked inside himself, had to swallow it down, and it felt as though something inside him was cracking because he could not tell his brothers.

Tavik shook himself, trying to pull his mind back, knowing Nix was trying to do this exercise beside him and needed him to work with him, not drift away into the tangle of everything he could not say.

Tavik refocused and hummed, feeling the warmth of the fire settle along his limbs as his humming note slipped into his cousin’s beside him. The two sounds merged, a low vibration that seemed to gather itself in the air around them, and Tavik found himself envisioning a blue ball of fire thrumming to life and spinning around himself and his cousin. The image was so vivid that he opened one eye a crack, and astonishment jolted through him when he saw that a ball of blue fire had truly separated itself from their campfire and was now circling the two of them. It spun in a slow, deliberate orbit, and the sight made him feel strong, made the pain inside him feel as though it had finally receded.

Tavik opened both eyes and glanced sideways at his cousin, who still had his eyes closed, though both of them had stopped humming. Tavik watched as Nix’s brow creased, and he felt the sharp stab of pain through the tether again. Tavik closed his eyes and tried to send strength along the tether towards Nix, thinking that perhaps facing the pain together might make it ease, but instead, as Tavik pushed along the tether, he felt a sudden surge of electricity. He knew in an instant that their combined Caelvarae magic was arcing around them, and remembering what had happened to Bran previously, Tavik pressed with all his thoughts that this lightning arc was only for healing, so that if anyone around them were touched by the lightning, they would not be harmed.

He felt Nix gasp beside him and reached out instinctively to steady his cousin, his hand finding Nix’s shoulder and feeling the tremor running through him. Tavik opened his eyes and saw his smaller cousin struggling to catch his breath, his eyes wide and fixed on the elf across from them. The sight jolted Tavik’s own panic into a thundering rush inside his chest as he watched Nix fight for air.

He heard Oren’s voice cut through the crackling lightning and the noise of his own fear. “Breathe, Nix, just calm breathing.” Oren’s face was tight with worry as he kept his distance beyond the arcing lightning, but his eyes stayed locked on his cousin’s face, refusing to look away.

Nix found that the air seemed to have thinned, as if something had quietly stolen half of it away, and he could not draw enough into his lungs. He frowned across at the elf, a woozy, drifting thought rising that perhaps she had something to do with this, or perhaps it was some failure of his own body; maybe his wound had finally decided it was ending him earlier than planned. The idea did not frighten him. Death had never frightened him. Death was only an end to having a physical presence in this world, a slipping away of weight and bone and breath.

Somehow Nix knew that even without his body, he could still choose where his spirit roamed, could still wander the places he loved, could still watch over the people he cared for. But he did hope that today was not the day he learned about that transition, not the moment he crossed into whatever waited beyond the tether of flesh.

Nix looked over at Tavik’s wide, panicked eyes and thought, in a brief drifting way, that they might have failed the lesson to anchor their magic, and he found this oddly amusing. Then he wondered if it had anything to do with the fact he was not an elf like his cousins, and if that even mattered, and perhaps he was thinking too much. Nix felt so tired, a heaviness settling through him, and decided he would sit instead of stand. He sank down, sitting cross-legged before the crackling fire as Tavik dropped to sit with him.

Nix realised their lightning magic had stopped, and now for some reason Tavik and Oren and even Bran were crouched around him, jostling him and speaking, their faces close, their movements urgent. As Nix squinted blearily at them, he could not seem to hear their voices. Everything felt muffled, distant, as though he were listening through thick cloth. He wanted only to sleep; perhaps he was simply tired, so Nix let himself flop backwards and sank into a blissful darkness, not hearing the panicked voices of his cousins who crouched around him, seemingly wanting something Nix was unable to give.