Chapter 52: A Night of Fire

We had an hour of quiet and then the ridge caught fire.

I was sitting on the sand with Ronan's head in my lap and my hand on his bare chest where the mark had been, and I had stopped shaking and started to think about what came next, which was nothing, because I could not think of a single thing.

Then Elara said, "What is that smell?"

We went to the mouth of the cave.

The whole north ridge was on fire.

It was a long way off and it was coming toward us, and it was not a wildfire because there was no lightning and no wind and the night was still. It was a line of fire going along the top of the ridge from the harbour end, and it was burning the heather as it went.

"They have set it," Padraig said. "That is a hunt fire. You light the heather and you drive the wolf in front of it and you wait at the other end."

"Who?"

"The Council does not set fires. The Council writes things down." He looked at me. "This is Bran. Or it is Petra with Bran's wolves and a favour called in."

The fire was coming down the ridge toward the coast and it would reach the headland by dawn, and there was nowhere to go but the sea.

"Oisin," I said.

"He said an hour and it has been two."

"Then we go to the point and we wait for him and if he is not there we go into the water." I turned back into the cave. "Padraig, get the bundle. Elara, take the lamps. I have got Ronan."

Ronan was awake.

He was lying on the blanket with his eyes open and his hand on his own chest where the mark had been, and he was feeling the skin with his fingers as though he could not believe it.

"Fiadh," he said. "It is gone."

"It is gone."

"I can feel my hands." He held one up. It was steady. It had not been steady for a month. "I can feel my hands."

"You can feel them later. The ridge is on fire and we are going to the point." I got my arm under him. "Can you stand?"

He stood.

He stood up off that blanket on his own and he did not sway and he did not hold the wall, and he looked at me with his pale green eyes and there was something in them I had not seen since the first night on the beach. He looked like himself.

"You are not grey," I said.

"I am not grey." He took my hand. "Come on."

We went out of the cave and along the base of the headland with the fire on the ridge above us and the whole sky going orange, and the smoke came down over the rocks and made us cough and Elara fell and Padraig picked her up.

The fire reached the top of the headland when we were halfway round.

I have never seen anything like it. The heather went up all at once in a wall of flame that came over the edge of the cliff and down toward the rocks, and the heat of it came with it, and there was nowhere to go but into the sea.

"Down," Ronan shouted. "Get down into the water."

We went down into the water at the base of the rocks with the fire above us and the smoke rolling over the surface and the sea up to our chests, and we stood there with our backs to the stone and our faces turned away and the heat came down and then passed over us and went on along the coast.

It took a long time. The fire went up the headland and down the other side and along the ridge behind the cave and then it was gone north and the sky went from orange to red to black.

We came out of the water.

Padraig was coughing and Elara was holding him up and Ronan stood on the rocks with his clothes dripping and his hand out to me.

"Fiadh. Come out."

I did not come out.

I was standing in the water up to my waist with my hands at my sides and I could not move. There was something in my chest, in the back of my head, behind the door, and it was pushing hard now and the door was not holding.

"Fiadh."

"I cannot move."

"What?"

"I cannot move." I looked at him and I could feel my own eyes and they were not right. "Ronan. It is the wolf. It is pushing."

He came down into the water and took my face in both hands.

"Look at me," he said. "Not at the fire. At me."

"I am looking at you."

"You are not. Your eyes have gone gold." He held my face. "Listen to me. It has been asleep for twenty two years and it has woken up in a burning cave and it wants out. You cannot let it out here. There is fire on the ridge and smoke in the air and if you shift now you will run into it."

"I do not know how to stop it."

"You do not have to stop it. You have to hold it until we get to the boat." He put his forehead against mine. "Hold it for me. One hour. Hold it for one hour and then we will find somewhere safe and you can let it out."

I held it.

I do not know how. I stood in the sea at the base of the headland with my hands on Ronan's wrists and I held the door shut with everything I had.

We got round the point at first light.

Oisin was there.

He had his boat in the lee of the headland with a lantern shaded at the bow, and when he saw us come round the rocks he did not say a word, he just put out his hand.

"Get in," he said. "All of you. The fire is going north and the Council boats have gone after it."

We got in.

Ronan sat down beside me in the stern and put his arm round me and I leaned against him and shut my eyes and held the door.

Oisin rowed.

"Fiadh," he said, after a while. "The Council has posted a bounty. It went up on the harbour wall at first light. Two hundred gold for the healer known as Fiadh, dead or alive, and a hundred for the Alpha of the Blackthorn Pack."

I opened my eyes.

"Two hundred," I said.

"Two hundred. That is more than they have ever posted for a rogue in my lifetime." He pulled on the oars. "Every hunter from here to Rathlin will be on the water by noon."

I looked down at my hands. They were steady. The gold had gone out of my eyes and the door was holding.

"Then we had better not be on the water by noon," I said.

Behind us, on the ridge, the fire had burned itself out and the sky was grey and clean.

And in the back of my head, behind the door, the wolf sat down and waited.