The fire is singing.

The fire song awakens the little flame in Croi’s veins. It flares inside her and warms her body gradually, melting the ice magick encasing her limbs.

She pushes against the fear and thinks. If the flame melts the ice holding her, will she be able to run before she is caught?

Where can we go? How far can we run?

The leader issues a command in a staccato click followed by a sharp whistle. In response, a Redcap disappears into the caravan only to reappear a minute later with a rectangular wooden box in his hands. The wooden box has symbols carved on it, and a strange sort of magick weaves in and out of these symbols. The Redcap hands the box over to the leader, who opens it to reveal a large dagger with a dangerously curved blade. When the light hits its blade, the dagger wails. The hilt is bejeweled with rubies.

Croi’s attention locks on to the dagger, and she realizes that her time has become finite. Her heart thunders in her chest, her throat goes dry, and her eyes prickle with unshed tears.

Though she has joked about dying, Croi has never considered it with any gravity before. What shape will it have? How much will it hurt? Will she just be gone? Will the pixie wonder what happened to her?

The Redcaps don’t lift their gazes from her body, and she is too afraid to look away from them. What if she blinks and they pounce? She’s food to them. Just like a chicken is food to her. Is that how it is for them? Is she just a chicken to them?

Croi tenses as the dagger-carrying Redcap approaches her.

This is it. This is the closest she has come to not being. The red threads of magick wound around her feet and hands have been loosened by the little flame inside. Croi pushes against the magick with all the strength she has. Nothing happens.

Why can’t she fight back?

We are always without power when it matters the most.

A wave of violent anger sweeps over her, taking the little flame that was in her veins and stoking it into an inferno, shoving the fear away. The numbness disappears; both her selves are angry. A moment later, “angry” is too puny a word to correctly describe the savagery of the emotion both her selves feel.

Call the fire to you.

Croi obeys, crooking her finger in a silent summons, and the fire burning in the pit responds. The Redcap nearest to her slams his hand down on her shoulder, intending to reinfect her with his magick and freeze her limbs again, but before he can, the fire oversteps its boundaries and comes to her, scorching the ground between them.

The fire’s movements alarm the Redcaps, and they give off a series of whistles and clicks. She doesn’t know what else they do because the fire slams into her, and for one long moment, she doesn’t think at all. She can’t. She simply burns. It is a glorious feeling, but the heat fades too soon. And just like that moment in the clearing when she first met the catkin, both of Croi’s selves exist at once in a tenuous harmony. Her two selves unite.