Maker of Fire

Emily, who does not know where she is

I woke up confused. The last thing I remembered was a steam flash in my furnace and then lying in despair on the floor. Now I was in a bed, on a mattress with fabric sheets and feather pillows, wearing a soft nightgown. My eyes were bandaged shut and my hands were tied down so I couldn't move them. My right arm was splinted.

None of these circumstances was as important to me just then as the need to visit a bathroom.

Pulling on the ropes must have alerted someone. "Good morning, though it's almost midday," a young woman's voice spoke somewhere to my right. "I see you are finally awake. I am going to untie your hands but only if you can keep from touching the bandage on your eyes. You've been asleep for two days. Do you need to visit the necessary?

I nodded my head only to be scolded: "Move your head as little as possible. No sudden moves if you can manage that. Let me help you down and we can visit the necessity."

It was obvious I was somewhere inhabited by Cosm. The owner of the voice had big hands which lifted me too easily out of bed. When we walked, her voice was high above me. When I got lightheaded after twenty or so steps, she picked me up with no effort and her arms were much more substantial than someone of my stature. As I could neither see nor speak, I was unable to even ascertain where I was or how I got there.

I was annoyed at my rescue. The arrival of an unlooked-for deus ex machina plot resolution was outside any realistic expectations on how life unfolds. My sense of reality had been violated. Nobody even knew about me or the location of my home. How could I be rescued?

Then I realized it had to be the magic monster lady and her griffin sidekick. She knew I existed and lived in my valley. How did she know where my home was? Had she been spying on me all this time? I had more questions than answers and without a voice, I could not even ask them.

In the meantime, I was treated with gentle care by constant bedside attendants whose names were Kayseo, Thuorfosi, and Twessera. These three women fed me though it was mostly soup; they carried me to and from the necessary; and they held my hands or tied them down when my eyes itched too much. Twessera told me funny stories. Thuorfosi played some kind of plucked string instrument and sang. Kayseo shared the latest news and gossip about places I had never heard of before. These three worked hard to keep me entertained since I could do nothing but atrophy in bed. The level of care sure beat the assisted living center I was at when I died.

On the third day after waking, a new voice came to speak with me: "I am Lisaykos, High Priestess of the Healing Shrine of Mugash. As soon as the Queen arrives, we will darken the room and take the bandages off your eyes. Once the bandages are off, we will slowly increase the amount of light in the room to see how well you can see. Depending on the results, we may leave the bandages on or remove them. Please nod your head slowly if you understand."

Well, this was an improvement in terms of information but I did not like the sound of some queen arriving. What queen? The Queen of Foskos? Why did Cosm royalty even know about me? I knew somehow that the magic monster lady was tied up in this. As the attendants circled the room closing curtains, I heard footsteps echoing in the hall along with what I would describe as the sound of overgrown nails on a dog clicking against a hard floor, only louder. Whatever made that noise, it stopped outside the door to my room along with the footsteps.

"You're late," Lisaykos remarked as if stating a simple fact. She could talk to a queen like that, I wondered?

"It could not be helped." That sounded like the magic monster lady. Was she the Queen? What a disaster. I was the most unfortunate being alive to have attracted the attention of the queen of the one place I never wanted to revisit. I should have taken off straight for Uldlip after she had crashed my hot spring, but fool that I was, I delayed to play with glass in a furnace I intended to abandon.

"This is your work so you should take the bandage off," Lisaykos stated.

"We need to sit her up first," the magic monster queen said. Someone supported my back and stuffed pillows behind me.

"Close the door and bring the light gem here."

"Keep your eyes closed until the bandage is off." I could feel fingers unwind layers of cloth. "Twessera, put the light out."

After a breath's pause, the Queen said: "It's now dark in here. Open your eyes. Is there any pain?" I shook my head no, wondering how anyone else could see in the dark when I couldn't.

"Open the curtain just a little. Thank you. Now, is there any pain?"

I reluctantly nodded my head because there indeed was some pain. Not a lot, but some.

"Can you see anything?"

I nodded yes. I could see the magic monster queen and one older woman's face with a beak of a nose and narrow sharp cheekbones. I could make out three younger white-haired Cosm-sized women standing by the two windows and the door.

"What do you see?"

Incredible. Did she forget I had no voice? How was I supposed to answer that question? I raised an eyebrow and gave her a look.

The young woman by the door giggled and got a glare from the older lady, who I guessed was Lisaykos. The giggler then said in Kayseo's voice: "Please pardon my rudeness, Great One, but she is mute. How could she possibly answer?"

The Queen gaped then facepalmed herself. "Well, I'm an idiot today. Let's try this." She fished a small wood tablet out of a pocket somewhere in her skirts plus something that looked like an ice pick. She wrote on the tablet and then held it so I could see it. I realized it was a wax tablet, something I had seen at reenactments and ren fairs. What she wrote was "3 x 3 = ?"

"Can you read this?"

In answer, I held up nine fingers.

"Good. Now, is there still some pain?"

I nodded.

"The fever hasn't come back, has it?" the magic monster Queen looked at the others in the room.

"No, Great One. Not for two days now."

"Well then, we will try this again the day after tomorrow."

As a reward for my honesty, my eyes were wrapped back up. The Queen tried to do it but Lisaykos scolded her, snatched the roll of linen, and did it herself. In the meantime, the Queen of giant monsters worked on tempting me so more.

"I took the liberty while you were sleeping to reset the bones in your arm and hand," the monster queen said. "The splint can go away in two more days. But since you're already here, what about letting us heal your old head injury?"

I shook my head no before the rest of me could even catch up to consider the question. I guess I didn't need to think about my answer. The Healing Shrine of Mugash had treated me well so far but it was still a prison for me and filled with Cosm. I was probably the only Coyn there based on the room I was in. When the bandages were off, I saw that the bed and the room were scaled for Cosm. Nothing was the right size for my own stature, not even the dinnerware. If they had Coyn patients at the shrine, then there should have been furniture and dishes of a more manageable scale.

The bed itself was huge. It was also too high. Two to three times a day, one of the gang of three young healers lifted me in and out of bed to walk around a little and to take care of trips to the plumbing. Frankly, my vanity over my self-sufficiency took substantial damage at the healing shrine since there was nothing I could do on my own, not even eat. Now there would be at least two more days of this.

If I was trapped here for much longer, I would not be able to travel back home to time fetch my quartz and tourmaline for the trade fair at Uldlip. That's what was on my mind when the monster lady surprised me with her next question.

"Has she been eating enough?"

"No, Great One," Twessera answered. "Even accounting for her size, she eats too little."

The food is bland and cold, you idiots, I screamed at them in my head. Try feeding me something tasty. I'm tired of bland boring broth!

"I will leave my basket then," the monster queen said. "Asgotl convinced me to bring some treats."

"You never change, you old fool," Lisaykos humphed.

"I thank you for the compliment. And here I thought you never had anything nice to say to me." That was the griffin's voice, which left me confused. The griffin was here? How in the world could you get one of those giant griffins to fit inside here?

My confusion must have been obvious since the griffin said: "Yes, little one, I am just outside the door. It is too narrow so I must be content with looking in from the hallway. I'm sure if the bandage was off, you would be making one of your wonderful faces again." This statement was followed by an odd snorting noise which may have been the griffin laughing.

"When we are back in two days, I would like to see the basket empty and its contents in your stomach," the griffin added.

"You should try to do as he says," the monster Queen added. "He can be a terrible nag otherwise."

I thought to myself that he likely wanted to fatten me up so he could eat me as a snack.

"Now then," the Queen said in a very queenly voice, "I would like to speak to this child alone, so please leave the room for now. Asgotl, guard the door for me, please."

I heard the scrape of chairs and footsteps retreating. Then the Queen sighed.

"You look like you are the same age as my daughter or maybe a year or so older. I could tell from the scarring that someone hurt you badly." She paused for a moment. "What I am about to say is something the others can't hear, for both your sake and mine. You removed a charm gem of control from your hand, which is something no one has done in living memory or even in written history. It is a feat that exists only in the legends of this place. That alone makes you dangerous and you would not survive more than a day if any Cosm knew about it. That is why I removed the scar from your hand.

"Removing that charm gem should be impossible. I have spent some time researching this matter ever since you rescued my children. The magic used for the charm of control is meant to kill you if you try to remove it. I can only conclude that you hated your life here so much that you would prefer to die than remain here. You also may have found some way to remove it without releasing the magic within; but since you can not speak, I may never know.

"I have given this a lot of thought because what I want to do is keep you here. Not here at the shrine or the palace in Is'syal. I have an estate of my own. Most of those who live there are Coyn. I have removed every charm of control. If someone wants to move on and take their chances elsewhere, I do not stop them. If they stay, I put a charm of illusion on their hands to fool other Cosm.

"I want to invite you to my villa so you can see other Coyn living lives of their own preference. If you want to leave, no one will prevent you; but first, I would at least like to know who you are and where you are from. I don't mean here and now; I mean who you were before. Your home has too many things that are out of place, like your matches and steel and something that looked electrical to me.

"I don't know where you are from. I have memories of a previous life in a different world and I think you may also. It is possible---and maybe even likely---that you are not from where I lived, but some other place entirely. My name was Jane Paxton. I was born in 1923 in the city of Coventry, England. I was training to be a bookkeeper and still lived with my parents in 1940. The last thing I remember was sitting down to read after dinner when the air raid sirens went off, and then running with my mother to reach the bomb shelter. It was November 14, the day before my birthday. I would have been 17."

She stopped there with such an uneven voice as if she were trying to contain strong emotions. I had put her previous mention of Coventry out of mind since I was not even sure that's what she said originally, back under the fir tree in the snow. Her account now brought it back to mind.

I did not even know how to respond to her in my sightless and speechless state, so I did nothing.

"Do you know the game of 20 questions?" she asked. I nodded Yes.

"You do? So you are from the Earth where there was the Kingdom of England?" Yes.

"Are you from England?" Her voice filled with hope. No.

"Europe?" No.

"The Commonwealth?" No.

"The United States?" Yes.

"America must be such an amazing place where a woman can learn so much science," she sighed. "I wanted to be a veterinarian but my family didn't have the money to send any of us to school."

It hit me just then that she was from the same generation as my mother who went to medical school at Marquette, in the days when it was still difficult for a woman to be a doctor.

"So, did you study science?"

Yes. I wasn't going to split hairs between science and engineering.

"You went to uni?" Yes.

"It is so frustrating that you can't speak." Another sigh.

"What is uni?" the griffin asked from the doorway.

"It's the place where they taught the highest level of learning on Earth," she answered.

"Huh."

"Asgotl is also another one of the reincarnated, which is a rather queer thing since there are now three of us in the same place at the same time," she said. I assumed she was talking to me. "Asgotl used to be some kind of whale."

What? After finding that reincarnation was real, and that reincarnation isekai-style was also real, perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised, but reincarnated whales? Really?

She kept talking after that but I was finding it hard to stay awake. I had been feeling tired a lot recently. I don't know if it was from recuperating or from being nervous around all these Cosm or a mix of both. Whatever the cause, I fell asleep while the Queen was still babbling. When I woke up later, it was already evening and she was gone.

The treats left by the griffin were quite good. Most of what he gave me were different variations on savory bread plus spreads to put on them. One was close to foie gras pate, which I adored and sometimes splurged upon in my previous life despite the political incorrectness. I planned to take some with me when I escaped from the shrine.

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