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Maple and the Pyre
by Jack Skye
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The letters on the sign were carved by hand.
"Welcome to Pyrestown," Maple read aloud, crossing her legs and arms. Beneath the welcome was an intricate carving of a building set ablaze. "Odd thing to put as a mark."
Maple's Uncle Roman, dreary and looming as ever, hardly looked at the sign. Instead he was examining yet another of his small, tattered books, comparing it to the landscape around him, as if a tourist. He tucked the book into his crimson coat, adjusting his matching top hat, and looked sternly at the teen.
"Stop flying."
Maple looked down at the wooden staff she sat upon; perched on it like the witches of old atop their broomsticks. She adjusted the goggles on her forehead, uncrossed her arms to put her hands on her hips, and looked at him plainly.
"I'm not flying. I'm floating."
"Stop floating."
With a sigh, she slid from the staff and landed onto the dirt path beneath her. She snapped her fingers and the staff went from horizontal to vertical, still hovering an inch above the ground. She took the staff in her gloved hand and gave it a shake, disenchanting the flight spell from it.
"Thank you. Now come along. I want you to see this." Uncle Roman started lurching along the path. Maple followed behind.
Pyrestown was at the top of a gentle hill amongst a great mass of gentle hills in the countryside. A carpet of emerald grass rolled along the curves, punctuated by clusters of the first orange emberflowers of spring. The air still bit with just enough cold to merit the use of her leather jacket and scarf, though she wasn't sure if it merited Uncle Roman's thick coat. Not that the weather ever mattered; he still wore it in the heat of summer.
The town gate was a simple wooden wall and an overweight guard with a dull sword and a kettle-like helmet who took to his job with great enthusiasm.
"Hello, and welcome to Pyrestown! Are you here on business or pleasure?"
Uncle Roman retrieved a set of leather-bound documents from his coat, flipped through them casually, and selected one to hand to the guard. The guard fumbled it open.
"Official business. My niece and I will be needing a place to stay for the night, do you suppose you could arrange that for us?"
"Ah...y-yes sir, of course, anything for a royal envoy! I'll find your our finest rooms!"
"Ah, yes, please do keep quiet about our presence. No need to attract undue attention. As for our lodgings, anything to keep a teenage girl comfortable will suffice. Luxury is not of importance."
"Very good, sir! Can I escort you somewhere? Perhaps to the tavern or the center of town to view the-"
"No. We are heading to the center now. Please retrieve us there once you've arranged our lodgings."
"Yes, sir!" The guard saluted too hard, clanging his hand on his helmet, and trundled off to his important duty. Maple quirked a brow.
"Royal envoy?"
"Yes, it's an older document but Pyrestown doesn't have a magistrate. They won't be checking the validity of it." Uncle Roman started down the street. Maple skipped to catch up, looking at him with focused confusion.
"But why deceive them at all? Why not just tell them we're from the Institute, that's sanctioned by the Queen just as much as any royal envoy."
"Working with the Institute means applying a measure of discretion. We need not announce our presence for a simple stop on our tour. You would do well to remember this, should you ever wish to be anything more than a courier."
Maple instinctively tapped her courier bag to make sure it was there; there was nothing in it other than a flask of water. She scowled.
"Nothing wrong with being a courier..."
"Which is why you begged me to take you on as my apprentice. Ah, I see the logic clearly now."
Uncle Roman released a rare smile and Maple's scowl deepened.
Pyrestown was quaint and quiet. The rose colored cobblestone street was hardly worn, free of the carriage-ruts so often found in the big cities. The buildings were wood and stone with warm colors painted on the sides and window box gardens filled with pastel blue raindropflowers. A young girl swept the porch half-heartedly, her eyes drifting over to a group of children chasing a woven ball through the street. They nearly ran over a man carrying a long pole with a flame twisting at its end. He barked a few complaints at them before continuing on to the bakery door. He carefully maneuvered himself and the flaming stick inside. A typhoon of warm, billowing aromas burst from the shop and swept over Maple, stirring immediate hunger into her.
"Isn't it time for lunch yet?"
Uncle Roman shook his head with mild disapproval. "Keep focused at the task at hand, little leaf."
"How am I supposed to do that when I don't know where we're going or why we're here? You can't leave me in the dark as to our purpose and then expect me to focus on it, that hardly makes any sense at-...oh no!"
A towering inferno blazed before her.
The building was at least a dozen stories tall and drenched in crimson flames, coughing thick blankets of black smoke from every window.
She snapped her fingers and the staff dropped from her hand into its flight position. She vaulted one leg over it, gripping the front with one hand and sliding her goggles into place with the other.
"There might still be people alive in there, I'll check the top- waaah!"
Maple tumbled off the front of her staff and onto the ground, rolling across the cobblestone. Her autumn colored hair burst out of its neat bun and over her eyes. She clawed away at it, trying to get a clear view. How in the world, she hadn't messed up a flight enchantment since she was six, what had-
"Calm yourself, little leaf."
Uncle Roman's hand was clasped hard onto the other end of her staff, anchoring it in place. He shook it, waving off the flight enchantment. Maple bound to her feet.
"But the building! The fire!"
"Pay closer attention. Don't just look. See."
She spun around to the conflagration, frustration burning in her chest. This wasn't the time for one of his stupid enigmatic lessons, this was...hm...
"Why isn't anyone else doing anything?"
Uncle Roman stepped beside her and held out her staff. She took it, her eyes wide and searching across the townspeople who milled about their day; as if they didn't see the burning building at all.
"You are asking the correct question. Now, see the building. See it closely."
She did.
The fire didn't spread. The wood didn't eat away, the smoke rose into the sky but vanished once it reached the top of the building's precipice. She blinked, trying to peer into the sky above the building...it was dark. As if it were night.
"What is it?"
"The establishment's real name has been long-lost to history, but the local people call it the Hotel Pyre."
"It's a hotel?"
"It was, yes. Very long ago. Examine the architecture, note how the building is stacked, how the wooden columns glide off to the sides like wisping grass. That style dates back hundreds of years."
Maple could see it so plainly now. Even the fire's dance repeated its spirals and sways in the same manner each and every time. She felt a bit foolish for trying to fly into the Hotel Pyre.
"How is it doing that?"
"You are asking the incorrect question."
Maple frowned. She stepped closer to the blaze; she could feel the heat of the fire on her skin, growing in intensity as she moved closer. She took off a glove and held out her hand. It was warm, but not as hot as it should be; it felt as if there were a wall separating it from her.
"Why is it doing that?"
Uncle Roman smiled. "The most accurate answer I can give you is that we do not know. It is an intentional action of incantation, that much we know. Someone placed it here for a reason. What that reason was, however, has been burned away with time."
"There's no clues? No one here remembers or knew someone that did? No story, no legend?"
"Plenty of stories and legends. And poems, and songs, and myths, but none of them can be proven. There is one theme that carries out through them again and again, however. That this was the place where a great mage of the olden days found his lover. Some stories say she was killed in this place, others say he found her with another man and he burned it himself. In either case, he set the hotel like this, frozen in time, either as a memorial or a warning...perhaps both."
Uncle Roman stepped past Maple, standing at the very edge of the invisible barrier. "It is a bubble in time. Very old magic, an art long forgotten and I fear may never be recovered. Though perhaps it is for the best. Time moves forward for a reason."
Maple slipped her glove back on. "So what are we going to do about it?"
"Do?"
"I mean, it is the Institute's job to find and categorize and contain these things, is it not?"
"The Institute is dedicated to finding sources of magic and learning their secrets, either containing them from the public for their own good or cultivating it for their benefit. But this is beyond our scope. I was first introduced to the Hotel Pyre as a student by my master, just as it was introduced to him as his. No, little leaf, this is not an assignment. It's a lesson."
"A lesson in what?"
She stared at Uncle Roman's passive stare long enough to realize he expected her to discover it. She turned to the endless pyre, thinking of the tale.
"A lesson in not forgetting the past."
"You are looking, but you are not seeing. Look about you, little one. What do you see? What did you see on your way in?"
"The mark? The town's called Pyrestown...so they adopted this burning hotel as their icon."
"And for good reason. This is the center of the town. That means over hundreds of years, those who sought a place to live built up their homes around it. They sought it for protection against the animals, for endless warmth in the winter and fire to be harvested at will."
As if on cue, a young man with another long pole came to the edge of the pyre and dipped the end through the invisible barrier. Light bent around it, waving like an oar paddling through a pond. The end of the pole touched the flame and caught; he withdrew it through the barrier and carried it delicately back through town, tending to the fire like a newborn child.
"So is that the lesson? The things of the past can be used for good, no matter what their purpose was?"
"That is an apt lesson to take away from this, little leaf, but there is one much broader. One that shall affect, I hope, how you do your duties for the Institute from now on."
He sat an arm around her shoulders.
"Some things are miraculous and should be left alone."
He turned away from her, digging in his coat for another tattered book and took his long, looming strides back to town.
"Now, let us find our portly porter and see if we can't get a tavern recommendation. I believe it is time for lunch."
~
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