Robin McKinley by Chalice

aroused, it was nothing at all like the fire produced by flint and dry wood—except that it was hot, and it burned.

    The day would grow warm later, but it was early enough in the morning now that the heat of the fire was pleasant. She held only her left hand out to it, and turned the back of her right hand away from it.

    “Your hand does not heal,” he said.

    “It is in an awkward place,” she said quickly, ashamed, snatching her left hand back as if she had done something discourteous.

    ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html There was a pause only long enough to register as a pause, and then he said, “I guess…it does not heal because it does not heal, and not because it is in a place where the skin is too thin and too flexible.”

    He held out one of his own hands toward the fire, and she saw that he wore no glove. She tried to remember—as she had tried to remember if he walked silently—if she had seen his hands since the day he had burned her, and she could not remember that she had. All she remembered was that he kept his hands hidden in his cloak when he could. At the banquet following his investiture, he had been wearing gloves—that was when she had first noticed they were tied instead of laced—and when he had to handle anything during the Circle rites, he wore gloves, and yet he still touched even stone and steel cautiously. When in the course of any meeting she held a cup to his lips, he let her do it, but he did not raise his hand to direct her. That was not unusual; many people believed that the binding work of the Chalice was more effective if only the Chalice’s own hands touched the cup; and whatever the cause it was a compliment to her as Chalice. The other members of the Circle, before the Master’s coming, had always firmly grasped the cup with her. She made it easy for them by always choosing among the long-stemmed Chalice cups, because it was forbidden to touch the Chalice herself if you were so fortunate as to be receiving a cup at her hands. To her surprise a few of the Circle, since the Master’s coming, no longer held the cup with her. The Grand Seneschal was one of these, which was the greatest surprise of all.

    He turned his hand over, palm up, fingers lightly curled. Then those fingers gave a little flick and recurl, a come-here gesture, as to a friendly animal; one of the ordinary-seeming flames of the ordinary-seeming fire streamed toward him, and the tip broke off, and jumped into his hand, like a tame bird coming for birdseed. It heaped itself up and swirled there for a moment—a nestling, making-itself-comfortable sort of motion—and then, almost as if rejecting some pleasure for a known duty, elongated itself and crept up his arm. He raised his other hand then—
    also gloveless—and began to sweep it together again, as if it were straw. No: as if it were feathers, light and fragile. He bent his arm as if its own weight would make the fire settle into the crook of his elbow, and easier to collect; and so it seemed to be. He cradled it there for a moment, gathering the last shreds together with his other hand, and then held it gently. It made a bundle about the size of a small skein of yarn. She could see it gleaming through his fingers.

    “I might be able to heal your hand,” he said.

    She fumbled, getting the bandage off. She had to do it quickly, before she lost her courage.
    She’d been able to stand without flinching when he’d burnt her, but then she’d only half known it was going to happen, and she wasn’t already hurt. To allow him, by sheer will, now, to do it again…because hemight be able to heal her hand…because she believed he should be allowed to be Master if he could….

    She held her burnt hand up toward him. It began to throb at once, in the heat of him, or of the fire he held, or to the sudden hard beating of her blood in her veins.

    She heard him