Episode 43: Fire Part 3 (Acheron)

Ach hadn’t been to Sylem that often, even though it was where Spence was from and where Spence went to school and where Spence was now running for governor.

He’d never been to this neighborhood before. He’d never even known there could be a city falling apart this much and have people still live there.

They wouldn’t live there anymore.

He looked at Spence, and he looked at the fire.

“Okay,” Spence said, standing just close enough that their shoulders touched. “We should pull the fire out right? Not add water?”

“Yeah, we can get it out of everything. Do you know how to do it?”

Now that Spence had the bond, he also had fire magic. It made Ach warm to think about. Spence had his magic. Not given by his parents, but something he’d gotten from Ach.

“I think so,” Spence said. He must have felt Ach’s warmth because he teased, “I’ve had practice.”

Ach blushed. Getting engaged had made it harder to control himself with Spence, which meant that Spence spent a lot of time protecting their bedding in their new apartment.

Spence was way better at controlling his fire than Ach was. Spence had learned in just a few days what Ach hadn’t mastered in a lifetime.

It was good, Ach guessed, even if it was embarrassing. They managed to pull all the fire out of the building, into themselves, in a few seconds. Ach settled the warmth from the fire into the molten pool inside him, which all his fire came from.

When the last of the embers were gone, Spence reached for the big canvas bag they’d brought with them.

“What’s in there?” Ach asked.

Spence untied the drawstring and peered inside. “Water, medical ingredients…” He trailed off, as his eyes took in the dilapidated neighborhood, the sea of hollow faces that stared at them, their threadbare clothes and rusty cars and the pitted road they stood on…

“We have a lot to do here,” Spence commented. “We should set up a job fair. Get supplies. They can rebuild like in the Dells, right?”

“Yeah,” Ach agreed. He wondered if the Dells had been this bad. If this was the kind of problem his dad had died to fix.

He couldn’t die for these people. They looked angry and it made Ach want to shrivel up. How had his dad talked himself into it all those years ago, dying for strangers? Giving up what mattered most to him?

Ach would never know. He’d always just be not-quite-that-brave. A flickering candle to his dad’s supernova.

He was okay with that. Mostly. He walked across a lawn to the burnt-out building, which had collapsed, and helped Spence start to pull pieces of unsalvageable detritus out of the rubble, searching for anything worth keeping.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a large woman detach herself from the wall of people and walk towards them. She had skin darker than his mom’s and probably could have fit three or four of his mom inside her body, and she had one of those faces that angry nannies in movies had.

Ach shriveled a little more, but he managed to not hide behind Spence.

She marched over with one finger raised, pointed at them. “You boys look like you could use help.”

Maybe he could just melt into nothing.

“We could,” Spence said. He stood up straight and used water magic to clean his hand before he dried it. “I’m Spence and this is Ach.”

He offered his hand to the woman, who looked at it and then looked back at Spence. “You boys are on the wrong side of town.”

“Unless there’s a fire or other disaster elsewhere, that’s worse, this is exactly where we want to be.” Spence looked back toward the burnt-out houses.

Ach looked at the ground.

“What are you aiming to do?” the woman demanded.

Die. They were aiming to shrivel up and die. And never come back here again.

Spence wanted this. Maybe he even needed this.

Ach looked up at the woman. This wasn’t any different from helping in the villages at home. Except, you know, people actually liked him there.

“Help any way we can,” he said, in a voice he thought his mom would have used.

He tried to look a little less gay. He messed his hair a little, and then he realized he’d smeared charcoal on his forehead.

He tried not to want to die even more.

“You should help yourselves, by getting out of here before someone redistributes some of your body parts,” she threatened.

“I’m not concerned,” Spence said. He looked back toward the rubble again. “Do you really not want help? We have resources and tools. We can coordinate a job fair and classes to help.”

The woman put a hand on her hip. “No one here is an election tool for you, understand?” she asked. She gave Ach a look.

She probably guessed Ach was the easy one to push around.

He pushed back, for Spence. “Just because no one has helped in the past, doesn’t mean you should turn it down now.” He met her eyes, like his mom would. Calm, like his dad, assuring like his mom. “You don’t have to vote for him.”

What a great campaign slogan – Don’t vote for Spence!

This was why Ach was a librarian. Teacher. Person.

He was a person who avoided other people, and this was hard.

But it was good, too, because what if something happened to Talise? He could either become crown heir or give it to someone else, and his dad would have died so that someone else’s kids could rule.

He knew he needed practice at not avoiding people.

“I want change,” Spence added. He rested his hand on Ach’s back. “Even if I lose. And I’ve run these streets and saved lives hundreds of times and no one said, ‘let me die or struggle instead,’ before. Just because I’m being public doesn’t mean this is new behavior for me.”

“Fine,” the woman muttered. “Maybe you boys will learn something.”

She turned around and walked back towards all the onlookers.

“So much for help,” Spence said. He leaned over and got back to work with the debris. Ach helped him move a heavy crossbeam into the pile of not salvageable stuff. Lifting it up stirred the ashes and made breathing more difficult.

Someone broke away from the wall and rushed toward them. “Get out of our house!” she yelled before she was halfway there. “That’s not your stuff.”

Ach looked at the crossbeam. He wondered why the girl would want it.

Spence stepped away from the rubble of the collapsed house. “If you decide you’d like help rebuilding your home or clearing debris, I will. Until then, I’m sorry for entering your property.”

She picked up a strut and looked at it. She looked back at them. “Get out! We don’t want your help!” She looked back at the crowd behind her. “No one does.”

Ach had travel packs in his pocket. They could get out of here fast if they needed to, but it would be bad. Somebody needed to see that attacking them wouldn’t work.

Everyone thought Ach didn’t pay attention, but he remembered the stuff that mattered, when he needed to remember it.

Spence pulled something iridescent and blue out of his pocket. He unscrewed the cap of the glowing vial and tipped the blue stuff out. It dissipated against the grass and spread out before disappearing.

“If you don’t want my help, then take back your life. I saved you once, you know.”

Ach looked at him and wondered if he was serious, and if he had, when. How. Why. Ach had never saved anyone.

How could Spence have brought that and expected to need it tonight?

He must have, because Spence didn’t lie, not when it mattered.

“I get it,” Spence said. “I’m the gay Lavesque now. Help yourself if you’re that stubborn.”

The girl swung the strut at Spence and Ach moved, ready to transport them before it could hit. Maybe not home, but at least a few feet away.

An arm came out of nowhere and grabbed the strut in a tight grasp. Ach’s gaze followed the arm up to the eyes of a guy about their age, maybe a little older, who was almost as tall as Zero and at least as masculine.

“Don’t,” he said to the girl. “You don’t need that trouble.”

Ach shrank. Why hadn’t he thought to just stop her?

“Thank you,” Spence said to the guy. Ach blushed, ashamed. He should have protected Spence more. Anyone else in his family would have, and Ach was his fiance. And was almost completely safe from permanent harm.

Some mortal guy had stepped in and protected Spence.

Ach looked at him.

He looked a lot like Spence’s dad. The same eyes, the same sharp-edged jaw.

He looked a lot like a guy Ach wanted to avoid. He was angry. Ach loathed angry people. They made him want to stop existing.

“You should probably campaign in neighborhoods that don’t hate your family,” the guy said. He ignored Ach completely and glared at Spence. “The bluffs, downtown…not here.”

“I’m not campaigning,” Spence insisted. “Your community sucks because you won’t accept help, not because it’s not offered.”

The guy clenched his fists.

Ach stepped closer to Spence.

“Is that what you think?” the guy demanded. He stepped closer to Spence too, and he stood so much taller than Spence and Ach that just stepping closer felt threatening.

Ach thought of a song Talise liked, something about shrinking like an ice cube in the sink.

Yeah. Maybe they could do that. They had water magic, their bodies were mostly water. They could definitely turn themselves into puddles if they concentrated hard enough.

Spence put his hands up, placating. “I’m standing here offering training so your own people can take the jobs, and you’re going to let an insurance company hire someone else.”

The guy glowered. “Clovercrest’s problems didn’t start tonight.”

“And this isn’t my first time in Clovercrest,” Spence countered.

This was too intense.

At home, Ach had a habit of spilling drinks whenever things got tense at dinner. It distracted people and turned all that negative attention on him, which was okay since he didn’t like himself most of the time either. It was a rare opportunity to have something in common with the rest of his family.

He didn’t have a drink here, but he had to do something.

“But it’s my first time here,” Ach said. He stepped toward the scary guy. “Hi, I’m Ach.”

“Hi,” the guy said. He glared at Spence. “I’m Rhyss. Hartmann.”

“I want to help,” Spence reiterated, calm and even. “The campaign is only a tool.”

“Yeah?” the guy asked, looking around. “How about you end your campaign and just help, then. That’s what I’ve been doing since I found out, and I didn’t need a campaign to make it better.”

Ach was so lost. He was used to being lost in conversation though, so he decided to tune things out and look around at everyone else. The fire trucks were leaving, now that the fire was gone. The crowd had grown though, and it had started to rain.

It was kind of pretty, watching the ashes from the fire and the way the raindrops made them drift off the ground and then resettle. The blurred faces of the crowd, the caustic stench in the air, everything…

Ach had never experienced anything like this before. He felt alive in a weird way, like doing this was more important than anything else he’d done with his life.

He got why Spence wanted to do this. It mattered.

“I have to get into government?” the guy bellowed at Spence.

Ach jumped. He’d forgotten the angry guy was there. Scary, angry, irate, irrational.

“It’s a terrible inaccuracy of language,” Spence said in a soothing tone. “I had to, I want to. I want change that extends past this community. I want to build better schools for the neighborhood, make it easier for anyone to get into the Sylem Academy. I want everything more fair. Did you not hear my speech?”

“No,” the guy said. He said it in a way that made it seem like it was Spence’s fault he hadn’t seen it. “I missed it,” he accused.

Ach had missed it too. He hadn’t really cared about it, but now he was curious. He tried to imagine Spence public-speaking about the things he was passionate about. He wanted to see it.

“If you won’t listen to my speeches then you don’t get to tell me what my motives are,” Spence told him. “I’m here to help. Screw them.” He nodded his head to the right and Ach turned to see what he was nodding towards.

A few vans with numbers painted on the side had pulled up. It took Ach a minute, watching someone set up a tripod, to realize they were news vans.

The Dells didn’t have news. They had word of mouth, and Maelvish services.

Ach had black streaks on his face, he could feel them, and he looked too gay to be on tv. He blushed, and realized he’d started sweating and sparking.

Spence saw and casually quelled the sparks before they grew into anything worse, all while arguing with the guy.

That teenage girl who had almost hit Spence saw the news vans too and she walked closer to them again. “I saw your speech,” she told him.

The angry guy ignored her. “I know he sent you because of what I said.”

“Who sent me?” Spence asked. At least he was as baffled as Ach was this time. “My uncle told me there was a fire, so I came to help. That’s it. I don’t know you.”

This seemed to make the guy even worse. Ach thought he’d probably be glowing by now, maybe even blazing, if he were a fire fairy.

“Do they breed you just to be politicians?” he asked.

“No,” Spence argued, “my ideal career involves protecting people I love. Oh, wait…that’s what this is at the end of the day. Just a different way than I planned on doing it.” He picked up the strut where the teen girl had dropped it and tossed it onto the unsalvageable pile. “Hate me all you want, but I can assure you I’ve done nothing, aside from exist, to deserve it.”

The guy’s upper lip curled when Spence said all he’d done was exist, but he didn’t say anything.

“I’m not even a Lavesque,” Spence added. “I was adopted by my dad. I mean, I’m my mom’s.”

The guy clenched his fists again, opening and closing them once. “He’s a twisted asshole,” he announced, cold, and he walked away.

Ach felt like he could breathe again, with the angry guy gone.

“Wow,” the teenage girl told Spence. “He really doesn’t like you. He likes everyone. You know what you did wrong?”

“Showed up?” Spence guessed. “Argued? Existed? Or is there something new for the list.”

The girl pointed at Spence’s outfit. “Those clothes? Probably cost more than my family’s food budget for a week, and there’s eight of us.”

There was no way. Ach’s mom had a weird woman in the prison who grew a lot of the food their family ate, from nothing. And he bet their food budget cost more than Spence’s clothes even with the free stuff the prisoner made.

Spence looked at his outfit. “Okay,” he said.

Maybe those clothes were special somehow, since Spence wasn’t arguing with the girl. Nothing Ach owned could ever cost more than food, but Spence liked clothes that suited his body. Maybe they really did cost that much.

Spence looked at Ach. “We can bring food.”

They could bring a weird, food-making prisoner if they wanted, but Ach thought it wasn’t fair to put her in danger.

“When you have the job thing,” the teenager said, “I want one.” She started sorting through the rubble of her house.

After a minute of thought, Spence helped, and Ach followed. Back to the soot and the grime. Ach was going to have to burn this outfit. The second ruined outfit in a week.

“We’ll have tents set up. Jobs, food…”

Ach could see Spence’s vision. It would be easy to set up, especially if Talise helped. No different from getting ready for Maelvish service, and they’d probably be more awake when they did it.

“Do you need food right now?” Ach asked the girl.

“At three in the morning?” she said, snarky.

Another woman came over. She looked tired, not angry. “Maelys, come on,” the woman said. “We can sleep at your uncle’s house tonight and find something new tomorrow.”

More people were moving around, and Ach was losing track of everything. He realized all those camera tripods had moved a lot closer at some point and now Ach wondered how long they’d been filming.

He hoped he hadn’t said anything on camera.

He vowed not to say anything else. No more talking.

He tried not to spark or blush or do anything else weird. Gay. Fairy-like.

He was normal.

His hair. And the soot on his face. And the argyle.

Maybe his brother Arkady could teach him how to be more of what Spence needed. Arkady was older, more into fashion, very masculine and had no trouble looking like he knew what he was doing.

Someone else came over and held his hand out for Spence to shake. He stood angled in front of the camera like he was used to doing this. “I’m Mason Carlisle. On behalf of the Southside Carlisle Inn, I would like to offer rooms to anyone displaced this evening at no charge. We’ve been watching the evening develop and we’d like to offer our support.”

Spence looked at the hotel guy. Probably no one else could tell how surprised he was by the offer, but Ach could hear the change in his voice.

“Thank you,” Spence said.

“We’re all here to help, right?”

“Yeah,” Spence agreed. He turned his face toward the camera. “To pull together as a community.”

The hotel guy stepped back while all those reporters started asking Spence questions. Spence answered them, one at a time, direct and open and careful.

His mom worked in contracts and negotiations, and for the first time Ach realized Spence must have learned a lot from her. He knew what to say that sounded good, but was still true and honest.

One of the reporters shoved a microphone in Ach’s face.

“How do you feel about your fiance running for governor here?” she asked.

Ach tried to think of what his parents would say and do. Ruling was serving.

He looked at Spence, and smiled more than he meant to because he was so proud of all of Spence’s answers.

“I think,” he said, thinking, “I think he’s awfully lucky if people decide to trust him to be the one to make their lives easier. Being governor’s not an easy job to do, and if he’s elected it will be because the people here saw in him the same things I see: That he’s strong and smart and capable, and he’s one of the most compassionate people I’ve ever met.”

Spence smiled back at him, and they made eye contact and for a minute Ach forgot they were in front of cameras, campaigning. It was just him and Spence.

“Well, folks,” the reporter said. “I think these two mean business.”

Spence’s eyes stayed locked on Ach for another second, then he reached for Ach’s hand and looked out at the mess.

“Love you, Ach,” Spence said. Ach wasn’t sure if the news people heard it, but if they were listening they probably did.

Ach tried not to blush, “I love you too.”

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