Rhiannon
I know my name is Rhiannon. I know I can feel the void and the warmth, and I know I’m getting closer to the warm side. I know that my body is like living fire. I know I’m beautiful and wrathful like the sun. I’m peaceful of heart like the moon. I know my soul glimmers like the still surface of the lake that holds Excalibur.
None of that matters when you still have a job to do, bills to pay, and people to bother. But it is all true. It is real magic, right here, in the “real” world you live in. I am a magical being. No one needs to understand it but me. When I do, you’ll believe it, too.
My name is Rhiannon. I think it’s a beautiful name. I chose it myself, or maybe it chose me. The name comes before the thing, the word exists independent. You inhale your name, and exhale your existence. Breathe for me. That’s good. You’re so good, you know that? Because you exist. Because you’re alive.
I realized that my form was fire at college. I went in so lonely, hair shorn, black hoodie coiled around my body like a parasite. But if you know where to look there are priestesses of the ways all around you. Some don’t even realize who they are and what they can do. They might only have to shine a light on you so you can see yourself, finally. To help you dig through layer after layer of dead skin until nothing is left but the heart. And make it beat! And grow yourself, vein by vein, bone by bone, anew. My heart woke up with a sound like lightning.
Rhiannon. I remember the first time she called me that. From far across the hallway, she said it, and I heard my name with an echo. I heard it repeated as if to say, you can say it again. The word predates the thing. Every breath I take is an echo of my name.
The first time I used my fire was with her. In my memory, it’s always snowing. I’m sure that can’t be right. But in the film grain of my mind, her eyelashes are always dotted with snow like flaky salt. She was there. We breathed together. And I shot a line of superhot flame from my fingertip. It left a ribbon of melted snow and ice in a familiar pattern. She fell backwards into it and wriggled like a caterpillar across the smooth surface, smiling up at me.
Dana. Her name was Dana. Like Dana Scully, she always used to say. I dyed my hair red soon after the first fire. The reborn/phoenix stuff is a cliche, except I also knew a girl named Phoenix, who said we could have been sisters in a past life. And Dana said, announcing it from across the common room like she was rising to address the nation: “We are sisters in this life.”
The nose ring came a short while after. We got them at the same time. Dana had short, pixie-like brown hair and a sweet face that the world trusted. I was told I was beautiful enough times that I decided to believe it. Dana gave me the confidence to try new things. My face was pale just like it is now. I started to wear makeup in extreme ways. I wanted my eyes to be like a viper’s, and my face to be like a seductive ghost. My hair made me stand out anyway. I never felt bad about being conspicuous. Letting my fire burn for all the world to see.
We did things together that, I know, you won’t believe. We went to nightclubs and saw our people, sometimes without exchanging words. We moved through the streets finding dark sorcerers and used our skills to defeat them. We never killed anyone, but we could have. That scares me still when I think about it. I set someone’s car on fire with my mind. It exploded, and we watched it burn. I’ve never been more scared. When it was done, the car was just an ashy skeleton. The driver just gave up, peacefully, after that. We probably shouldn’t have been doing any of this.
We were taught that there was void and warmth. The void was chaos, absence of order, amorality, and the warmth was the positive love of the world. We were against those who lingered in the void too long. We’d push ourselves to do more, to make the world better, to make the world we wanted to live in. We wanted to be the good girls who could save the world.
Eventually, we stopped. Violence and aggression were sometimes necessary, but they were a burden and a poison to our magic, not fuel for it. We gave up that life. I learned to harness fire for other things. I started to cook with it. I could violate the laws of physics in a few different ways. I could trap heat in a metal or stone tile and cook on it. I started to develop superheated focused beams, I wondered if I could bake bread in a few minutes. It didn’t work, but I could superheat water to steam buns faster and safer than a microwave.
There were some unexpected elements. I wondered if they had always been there and I never noticed, or if I had changed. I could breathe in smoke to no ill effect. I never even coughed when smoking a joint. If I focused enough, I could inhale the smoke from a small fire completely and snuff it out with just my breath. I could still be burned, but my sensitivity to heat had become so fine-tuned that my body was trained to evade anything dangerous.
After college, I wanted to live with Dana. She said we needed time and space. She may have been right. She lives in Sedona now. She’s a therapist, she’s married, and she doesn’t want to talk about what we used to do. Not that she denies it, or doesn’t believe it in anymore. She’s too smart to delude herself. She just wants to leave it in the past. She’s not afraid of power, but she’s a little afraid of knowledge. We know something about how the world works, and you can’t turn that off. She knows she’s made of ice, that she’s a roaring winter storm that could bury you or build you up, that she’s a fresh blanket of snow, smooth and sculpted by the wind, by the breath, into subtle, beautiful shapes.
She has to pay her bills, too. She has ats. I don’t have any pets, besides the beetles that have made their home on my railing and my fire escape. They swarm around all night and calm themselves when I open the window. I’ll light a little fire for them, burn wood so they can reproduce. They need the extreme heat in order to lay their eggs. They’re not common in New Jersey, but there are a lot around here. Did they follow me or did I follow them?
I can still feel the void and the warmth. The warmth of the sun is good for my face, even through sunscreen. I’m so careful not to burn myself. But my light still shines. I can still hear my name. I can be noticed. Even though I burn a little cooler now, a blue flame. Focused, precise, and hot. I go to work every day, and the only difference between me and anyone else is my water boils faster than you think, my flambé is always expertly done, and my steamed buns come out perfect every time.
I know I could be more. And I will be. I will be a priestess for this truth and shepherd it to a new generation. I’ll tell them everything they can be. Of all the dead skin they can remove, tear off, inch my inch as it curls away, white and papery and ready to be discarded. The bright pink flesh underneath, the lungs that make our breath and the heart that pumps our blood and the secrets that exist inside you. Let it out. Say your name. Breathe.
© Jessica Umbra, 2024
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