Shannon Hale - Enna Burning

Enna's life was not meant to be simple. When her brother, Leifer, brings home a mysterious piece of vellum that teaches him how to set fireswithout a spark, without flintEnna cannot decide if this power is one she wants for herself, or something that should be extinguished forever.

And when Bayern, their country, goes to war, the choice becomes nearly unbearable. Enna never imagined that the warm, life-giving energy of a fire could destroy everything she loves, but she must now save herself and Bayern before fire consumes her entirely.

Shannon Hale's new tale is wholly original and spellbinding, a powerful companion to her highly acclaimed first book, The Goose Girl.

Map in book below

The map below is same as above but its ZOOMED in 150% for easier viewing of details

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he woman bore a scorch mark from her chin to her brow. The vision in her left eye was still blurry, as though she were looking through a scratched pane. She had been walking away from the burning for a few weeks by now and so supposed the eye would never heal, even if she lived long enough to give it time. Closing her bad eye, she squinted to see where she was going. There was a patch of greenness on the horizon that stretched into the east. A forest. Perhaps that would be far enough away.

As the woman walked, she leaked fire unawares, and the dead river wood occasionally smoked beside her or crackled into flame. Once or twice, to ease the burning, the woman threw herself into the stream beside her path, choking on the water and weeping as the stream took away her heat. It was hard to get back up after that, but memory of the horrors she left behind drove her on.

Her skin twitched to remember hot ash falling; her eyes roved as though watching again and again the village in flames. She clutched the sack containing the vellum tighter to her chest, remembered her purpose, and walked faster.

She walked until the wet forest air enclosed her and washed the scorched smell from her hair.

She walked until she fell. Then she dug where she fell, pulling away handfuls of soil from under a young fir tree.

"Here," she said, talking to the fir, "keep this."

The woman unrolled the oiled cloth and took out the vellum, looking again at the writing that had started the end of her everything. It was still in beautiful condition, though the vellum had been made from lambskin in her mother's time. Tight, delicate writing filled its face, each black stroke bleeding tiny lines thin as spiders' legs, each word stitched together in a lacework of ink. Glancing over it again, she sobbed once at the beauty of the knowledge it held. Her eyes stung, and the fever burned away any tears.

She loved the fire, loved it more than her own flesh now. Destroying the vellum and the truth it held seemed a hopeless gesture. Deep inside, behind her scorched eye, she knew she probably should.

But no, she would hide it to prevent destruction like the kind she had caused. And she would hide it so that perhaps one day someone with the talent to learn could read it and know its goodness. She prayed it might be someone stronger than she.

She wrapped the vellum back in its cloth, then slipped both into the slim clay pot she had used for water, burying the tiny coffin beneath the pine.

The woman lay down and let herself relax, deep inside, where for so long she had trembled to hold the fire at bay. Her control broke like a tree limb under too much weight, and the snap made her cry out. Heat poured from her chest and pressed out against her skin, burning her as she had burned others. Her blurred eye went dark, her good eye saw gold, and the forest pulsed with life, then stilled under a winding breeze.

She rested her head on the ground. The pine needles pressing into her cheek began to crackle.

Smoke rose in fragile tendrils, and she watched them rise until she could at last give in fully and die.

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SISTER

nna let the fire burn out.

She was not used to this duty. For the three years she had lived and worked in the city, the hearth had been the hall mistress's responsibility. And when Enna had returned to the Forest a year ago at the onset of her mother's illness, her mother had continued to tend the fire. After her mother's death in the spring, Enna had become the mistress of this little Forest house, but with a garden to tend, wood to chop, and a brother, a goat, and chickens to feed, she often forgot the fire.

It was not hard to do. A fire in a kitchen hearth was a quiet beast.

Of course, Enna thought, she would overlook the coals on a night when her brother and, more important, the flint in the kindling box were out wandering in the deep woods. So she walked to the house of her nearest neighbor, Doda, and borrowed a spade's worth of embers in her milking pail. She struggled home, gripping the hot handle with a rag and the end of her skirt.

The embers drew her eyes. They were beautiful, pulsing red in the bottom of the dark pail like the heart of a living thing. She looked away, and the orange coals stayed before her eyes, burning its image over the night. She tripped on a tree root.

"Ah, ah," she said, trying to regain her balance and keep the hot pail from touching her or spilling to the ground. She cursed herself for the hundredth time that night for being so careless, sought out the dark outline of her house, and headed for it.

"Strange," said Enna, blinking hard to clear her vision. There appeared to be a light in her window, and it was getting brighter. Enna ran through the yard and looked into the open window.

First she noticed the hearth fire blazing. She was about to exclaim when she saw her brother, Leifer, sitting beside it, his pack on his lap, his attention taken up by something in his hands. Enna thought he looked handsome like this, his face still and thoughtful. He shared with Enna the black hair and dark eyes that had marked their mother. At age eighteen he was two years older than Enna, though unlike her he had never left the Forest even so far as to visit Bayern's capital, just two days'

travel from their home.

Leifer unrolled the thing in his hands, and the firelight illuminated it from behind so that it glowed like a lamp. Enna could see it was a piece of vellum with writing on one side. Leifer could read a little, as could sheunusual for Forest-born, but their mother was from the city and had taught them. Parchment was rare in the Forest, and Enna had no notion where he had found such a thing.

A slow, burning pain in her hands reminded her what she held, and she tottered onto the porch and through the door. She caught sight of Leifer hastily rolling up the vellum and stuffing it in his pack.

"Hot," said Enna at a near run. She put the pail by the hearth and brushed off her hands. "Ow, but that rag grew thinner the farther I walked. Greatness, Leifer, I thought the house aflame from a distance."