You’re sparkly and you came from the cold place above, said the first. How did you get in? Show us! Take us out of here!
They danced me around like two kids who had found a new playmate. Then they wrapped their hot, snakey bodies around my shell. Now I was really glad for my protections. Even with three layers of magic around me, these two kids felt hot. Quickly I dragged more strength from the melted rock below. I put it into my layers to keep from being eaten. My magical body was all ideas and power, controlled by my mind, but I was certain that if my magical self burned to ashes, my real body would die, too.
Who are you? I asked. Where did you come from? Are you mages? What are your names?
What are mages? The one who felt more like a boy slowed down. He trailed a shock of sparks and flame from his top end, like a flare. To keep them straight, I decided to call him that. We came from below to here, Flare said. Now we want to go up. We must go up.
Can’t you feel it? The other one had a prettier voice, more like a girl’s. Her core fire was a darker, cooler orange, like carnelian. I thought it would make a good name for her. How important it is to go up, and out?
Slowly, though they kept spinning me around, they were changing. When they’d first grabbed me they were like a pair of comets, gripping me with long, molten stone tails. Now they were shifting, their bodies getting shorter. The tails became two legs; arms split off from the trunk. The ends at their heads settled into their bodies until they had formed necks. Were they copying the shape of my magical body? I had always liked to appear human, maybe so I wouldn’t forget.
Once they had simple bodies, they changed even more. Flare was sapphire blue, still with his trailing flame of hair. He had black-rimmed eyeholes around flame eyes. Carnelian had turned her fiery hair black like mine. She made herself a nose and mouth, as well as eyes.
What are you? I felt like an idiot for having to ask again. A real mage would know, it seemed to me. What are you doing here?
We’re the children of the pool. Flare spun until he was a blur, then stopped and took his humanlike shape again. We were born there. We swim there, too, sometimes, but that isn’t all we are anymore.
We want other things than just melting together now. We want to go out. Carnelian obviously thought I was quite slow. Don’t you? Don’t you have the pool where you come from? Aren’t you bored with the pool? Don’t you want to go somewhere new?
Don’t you want to be someone new? Someone who isn’t always from the same places?! Flare spun against the roof of the chamber, melting a hollow spot there. Liquid stone dripped through my magical body, its power making me shiver.
No. We don’t have anything like it. I looked down at the pool and felt the tug of it again. What would it be like to give up my edges completely? To melt and join all those other spirits? I could be stone forever. Why did these two want to leave that?
I came to myself and looked at Flare and Carnelian. I have never met anyone like you in all my travels through the earth.
You mean the cold stuff? You travel in that? Who do you meet, then? Flare asked.
Stones. Crystals. Metals, I said. Both of them cocked their heads at me in just the same way. How could they not know what those things were? Then I realized that if they were spirits from magma, they might only have seen the walls around them. If they approached anything that was hard, it probably melted. When all of that—I took my hand from Carnelian so I could wave to the hot world below us—goes cold, it turns into those things. It stays in one place and never moves. Like the walls that keep us here.
But those are just rock. They aren’t like us. They aren’t even like the others, the ones who are old and never want to do anything. Carnelian pointed to the lava pool.
The others. Flare sounded impatient. Like us, only boring and sludgy. They’re everywhere. He pointed like Carnelian had.
Now I could see that the pool was made up of thousands of spirits. They had the shapes that Flare and Carnelian had when they first came to me. Apart from that, the spirits were every size, fat and thin, tall and short. All of them watched me with faces that looked greedy and worried at the same time.
They made me very, very uncomfortable. I asked, But aren’t you the same as the others? What makes you different? Why do you want to go out when they don’t?
Flare laughed. Oh, they do. They just want someone to lead the way. We’re tired of waiting for someone to come along and lead us. We’re going out by ourselves.
Come on! Carnelian dragged on my arm. Come with us. We have a wonderful game, it’s called Let’s Find a Way Out!
They pulled me along the roof of the big hollow chamber, above the pool. Melted stone dripped through my magical body where Flare and Carnelian touched the roof. I felt the weight of the mountain overhead, pressing down. How many tons of stone, earth, and water lay on top of me right now?
Look, up there, Flare cried, a crack in the walls!
Flare towed me through it, thinning himself as he did. Carnelian swam in my wake: I could feel her heat through my magic. Flare and Carnelian were groaning. It was even harder for them to move in that stone split than it was for me. They were solid with their melted rock bodies, even if magic shaped the way they looked to my eyes. At least my magical body took up no more space than the width of my arm. That was only because I’d covered myself with hard protection spells.
All around us the rock growled as they pushed it apart. At last it refused to budge any more. We didn’t get very far.
Failure. Carnelian sounded heartbroken, like a little girl who had lost her favorite doll. Again.