“I was wonderin’ who I’d seen runnin’ past my farm,” Torth chuckled. He stopped a few paces away and crossed his arms as I got to my feet. A light flashed overhead, followed by a thudding boom. “You look like peka’ri-pickin’s, boy.”

“I’m starting to feel like it, too. What are you doing here?”

“Visitin’ the festival with my sister. Thought I’d told you that at your party. I should ask you the same question. Your father’s in a fit, y’ know. Saw him in the mornin’ on my way out and realized that had been you I’d seen runnin’ west in the middle of the night.”

“To be honest, I hadn’t meant to come this far,” I admitted. “I kind of panicked. When you go back, could you, um — could you tell him I’m okay?” Grateful, I signed as an afterthought.

Torth snorted. “I’m not your messenger, kid. Tell ‘im yourself when we get there.”

“We?”

“Soon’s this festival’s over, I’m takin’ you back. Can’t really set you on the road alone, can I? You can stay with me’n my sister until then.”

I noticed his words were slurred, and the way he swayed ever so slightly on his feet. I’d never liked Torth much, but he was at least tolerable when he was sober.

“B’sides, it’d make me look real good with your father. Never figured why he didn’t like me much.”

I wanted to stare him down, plant my feet, tell him, no, Torth, I’ll do as I please, and I have the sword to prove it. I wanted to prove to us both I was no longer a child – that he should stop calling me “boy.”

But before I could so much as square my shoulders, a soft violet glow fell on the platform.

Torth’s mouth fell open. Liquor had dulled the dexterity in his hands, and the prayer he signed to En was as slurred as if he’d spoken it aloud.

I took a step back, and Torth’s gaze snapped from the spirit to me. He watched me like I was a rebellious mutt holding the key to his house in my mouth. Another flash of light lit up the canal. Half a dozen storefronts mirrored the starburst above as the bang reached our ears. I heard cheering from some distant part of the city.

“So that’s why,” Torth muttered. “That’s why you left in the middle of your trial. That’s why you ran.”

“No! I – it was something else,” I said lamely.

“Listen, tha’ spirit’s a lot more important than you can appreciate. It’s not up t’ you t’ decide what gets done with it. That’s not a responsibility you want.”

“I’ve heard the rumors,” I said. “I know the Stranger wants it. I was there when he came to Eiden.”

Torth stepped closer. I could see the sweat on his brow. “Don’t worry ‘bout none of that. Let some adults handle it. Just come stay with me’n my sister for the night. We’ll get y’ back next thing in the morning. B’fore this all gets worse.”

“It’ll only get worse if you make it worse,” I said. Was my voice shaking? Why was the street so empty? And where in En’s name was Elani?

“Kid, I’m here t’ help you. It’s them Followers. They —”

Another flash of light and a sharp, hollow bang shattered the night — only this one had exploded directly between us.

I threw my hands in front of my face. A piercing sound ripped into my eardrums like a bone needle and blotted everything else out. An afterimage of the explosion seared itself into my vision. I stumbled backwards, blinded and deafened.

A firm hand grabbed me by my wrist. I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t hear myself shout. The hand tugged. I blinked, my vision too damaged to see what was going on. I yanked my hand free, and was rewarded with a stinging slap across my cheek.

“Run, you idiot!” came Elani’s voice. It sounded like she was shouting through a wall.

She grabbed at my hand again and this time I let her pull me away. We ran. Behind us, Torth’s bellow broke through the shrill ringing in my ears.

We hurtled through the city’s narrow streets and open plazas. I tripped several times, only for Elani’s grip on my wrist to save me from pitching forward. I blinked over and over to get rid of the burn spot in my vision. I could only just see the red of Elani’s curls ahead of me, the brown of her arm guiding me.

“What was that?” I asked, my voice underwater.

“Flashrock,” came the reply.

“What?”

“This way.” Elani pulled me abruptly to the side.

The sides of buildings rushed by at the extreme edges of my vision. An alley.

“Here’s good,” Elani huffed. She removed something from her ears.

I slumped against the curving wall, ignoring the abrasive stucco. My vision burned, my ears rang, my heart hammered at my chest, my legs wobbled, and my lungs were tight from panic and poison— every inch of my body screamed its pains and demanded rest.

“Why did you —” I started.

“Nobody will think anything of it,” Elani said, her breath already slowing. “Just another bang and a flash. The street was empty.”

“But why? I know him, he —”

“Put your kavi away, we need to go,” she interrupted, unslinging her pack and digging through its contents. “Did you get the medicine?”

“No,” I spat. Before I could demand answers, voices echoed down the alley toward us. Elani’s sensitive ears must have noticed their approach already. Or maybe my hearing was still destroyed.

“Just a trick of the fireworks,” one of the voices suggested. “That, or — “

“I know what I saw. Purple spirit, just like the Oracle was saying, or I’ll kiss a mudgrub.”

A spurt of adrenaline shot through my gut. I couldn’t make out the reply, but I’d heard enough; someone had seen my kavi. Torth might not tell anyone outside of Eiden about the spirit, but I could not say the same about the men approaching us.

Elani thrust an empty bottle at me. “We’re not getting out of here with your spirit tailing you like that. Hide it or bottle it!”

I regarded the rudimentary spirit-catching bottle, my vision restored enough to see its general shape. The wide tube of glass had a rune etched on its surface. A similar rune, I knew, would be carved into the wooden stopper.

I shook my head. “Too late for the bottle. They’ve already seen it.”

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Elani rasped in frustration, baring her sharp teeth in a uniquely Keléri gesture. “Well at least hide it!”

“Just a kid with a lantern, probably,” one of the voices grumbled. It was close enough to be distinct even with my numbed hearing. We were out of time.

“Follow me,” I whispered, and took off in the opposite direction, ignoring the proffered bottle.

Elani groaned, but followed. We emerged from the alley, jumped across a gap in the platforms, and dashed down an empty street. The sky above us glowed as the smoke caught the light from the city below. For the first time I noticed some of the rockets sailing to burst among the low clouds had kavi within them.

I tugged on the little mental strand binding me to my spirit, but nothing seemed to happen. Obstinate, spitting kavi. I threw a glance over my shoulder. My spirit followed just behind me, with Elani not far behind, bottle still in hand. Past them, beyond Amaranza’s eclectic skyline, was the volcano Dur Tolo.

The volcano was northwest, and the city’s bridge was at the southern end; if the volcano was at my back, I was going the right way.

Just then, one of the men rounded the corner.

“Ay, see! There!” he called to his companion. “Hoi, wait, stop!”

I spun and snatched the bottle from Elani’s hand, then flung it toward the Enling man. I didn’t wait to see if it connected.

“You idiot!” Elani shrieked as the two men yelped in surprise.

I heard the bottle shatter on the wooden platform a moment later. I couldn’t help but wince — a spirit bottle like that wouldn’t be particularly expensive, but they weren’t cheap, either. Would that I had my slingshot instead.

Elani was still swearing as we arrived at the end of the street. A bridge spanned a canal to the adjacent plaza where a small crowd of people loitered. Their backs were turned to us while they looked to the sky in anticipation of the next burst of light. Many of them wielded sparklers, the bright tips of the toy wands fizzing and popping.

“Ren,” Elani muttered behind me, her anger melting into uncertainty. “They’ll see –”

Overhead, a brilliant viridian flash lit up the sky, followed by a powerful, thumping boom that obliterated the rest of Elani’s warning.

I didn’t stop. I took the bridge at a run, directly toward the spectators. The blight was already tightening its grip. My endurance waned. Remembering my first meeting with the purple kavi, I spared some air to mutter a prayer to Tesamet for luck.

A withered Keléri woman began to turn at our frantic approach. I could see the light of my kavi reflected in the water below us as I led Elani over the bridge.

Another flash erupted, this one a fiery orange, followed by a boom like an explosion of fire from three dozen red kavi. The woman squeezed her eyes shut against the light just before she saw me, a grin on her face as the force of the distant explosion pounded the very air itself. A cascade of ruddy sparks fell from the sky, each glowing ember popping in quick succession, causing a flurry of duller yellow flashes.

We passed just behind the group, unnoticed. Enthusiastic cheers from the Keléri woman’s gathered family masked our passing. I ducked into another alley just as the glittering lights faded from the sky.

“Tsh,” Elani snickered, “you didn’t plan that.”

“Of course not,” I said, breathless. “I’m just glad it worked. Are they still following us?”

“Probably.”

The corridor opened out and I realized we’d entered an entirely new district in the city, for across the canal floated a platform constructed from the leaf of a massive, buoyant plant.

The plant’s stem broke from the water like the trunk of a tree, arching high overhead before dipping back down to rest a single, gigantic frond on the surface of the water. Water seeped over the edge of the arboreal platform, pooling half a hand deep across much of the frond. Round huts stitched from a similar material sat in a ring around the organic platform’s perimeter. Their curtained doorways allowed water to flow inside unimpeded.

Atop the arching, lantern-strewn stem, the locals sat observing the show from dozens of feet in the air. Their green huts were too small to creep around, and the center of the platform was too exposed to pass unseen. They would see my kavi long before we made it to the far side. Doubling back was not an option, lest we come face-to-face with our pursuers.

Beyond the green of the plant-borne neighborhood I could see the shoreline, connected to the city by a single, wide bridge. We were so close.

“We have to run,” I breathed, pulling the hood from my shawl over my head. My chest hurt from the exertion in ways it never had when I was healthy. “They’ll see us, but at least nobody will be able put a face to the kavi. It’s the best we can do. Elani? What are you doing?”

“I have a better idea. You really can’t hide that spirit?” she asked, pulling something from her pack. She thrust the object into my hands.

It was a Festival of Lights sparkler.

“What does this have to do with anything?”

“I snagged a few after we split up,” she explained, digging through her pack for another. “I thought I’d bring them home to my siblings. Quickly, light it!”

I struck the tip of the baton against the rough wood of the city street. It took me a few tries, but I was rewarded with a burst of hissing light. Erratic sparks erupted from the end of the baton in a silver-white shower, and I realized what Elani was planning.

“It might work, but —” I stopped short as Elani’s own sparkler burst to life with a glittering spray of purple light. It was nearly the exact color of my spirit. I grinned.

Elani produced a third sparkler, this one cyan, then glanced behind us. “Time to go.”

We dashed across the platform, our feet splashing in the shallow, brisk water. The massive frond was sturdier than I expected, and my shoes kept their traction easily.

The sparklers worked like invisibility shawls; nobody payed mind to a couple of younglings running around the city waving sparklers. Children had been tearing through Amaranza all day with sparklers in hand, and there was a much more riveting display taking place overhead.

Another flash from above bathed the city in silvery light. There was no bang this time, and the light lingered in the sky for longer than it should have.

“Wow,” Elani remarked, “I wonder how many kavi they used for that one.”

I tilted my head skyward. A translucent sphere of light hung in the air, as though Tesamet herself had trapped some of the night-moon’s glow above Amaranza.

“About six that I can see,” I said.

“What?”

The awestruck Islanders overhead were similarly transfixed by the magic-wrought display, and we passed beneath the arcing stem without attracting attention. We leapt from the Var’ra district and onto a dock tied with bobbing watercraft.

“Those men stopped,” Elani remarked. “I guess they don’t want to get their feet wet in the Var’ra neighborhood.”

I nodded, glad to slow to a walk. Sharp pain poked at me as though one of the sparklers burned within, and my breath didn’t want to slow.

“I didn’t find the medicine,” I said.

“I worried as much. I didn’t either.”

Elani took the lead and guided us back toward the city’s main thoroughfare via side streets. Before long I could see Amaranza’s bridge extending out from the platforms, docks, and bridges the city was built on. Our escape.

Two dozen people watched the light display from the city’s entrance. Another dozen lounged about the bridge, strewn about like whales sunning on a beach.

I winced as the needles turned to knives. I tried to control my breathing, to stop irritating the blight, but I was too winded to take slower breaths.

“Hide here… for a second,” I rasped, stumbling behind an unassuming Durim tower.

“I’m out of bright ideas,” Elani said. She finally sounded winded herself. “These sparklers won’t fool anyone up close. You can try to withdraw the spirit now, at least.”

I barely understood what she was saying. Fear dug its fingers into me as the blight continued its sharp, suffocating squeeze.

“…or just wait for the festival to be over,” Elani was saying, “and we can sneak out then.”

Silver kavi crept into my vision as my breath grew shallow. I squeezed my eyes shut, but the silver motes remained. I couldn’t cough. I could barely breath at all.

I put a hand out to steady myself against the earthen building.

It’ll pass, I told myself over and over. It’ll pass, it’ll pass, it’ll pass.

“Ren? What’re you doing? Are you okay?”

Another bang shook the air. Elani said something again.

It’ll… pass.