Chapter 4 Flame 

“In the end, what happened  when the mine collapsed, can you repeat it again but slowly?”

Anna nodded and began to describe.

Roland was a bit surprised.

He thought the other side will be silent, would be angered, or would curse, but she just answered their questions, “ask whatever you want”.

It wasn’t a complicated story, but a sad one, Anna’s father was a miner, when the mine collapsed he was at work. Immediately after Anna got the news, she and the other miners families went over to rescue their loved ones. The North Slope Mine was previously rumored to be an underground monster lair, with many forks in the road, extending in all directions. Since the rescuers were under no unified command, the voluntaries separated after arriving at the mine entry. When Anna found her father, only her neighbors, aunt Susan and uncle Ansgar were by her side.

She discovered that her father’s leg was crushed under a filled ore cart, he couldn’t move, but by his side was miner Ming searching for her father’s money.  As the looting robber saw her, he took a hoe and rushed at Ansgar and knocked him to the ground, just as he was ready to kill, Anna killed him first.

The neighbor couple vowed that they would never say anything about this matter, along with them Anna rescued her father. But before dawn the next day, Anna’s father went out on crutches and reported to the patrolling guards that his daughter was a witch.

“Why?” Roland when he had heard until this point could not help but ask.

Barov sighed, “Probably in order to get the bestowed gold reward. To discover and furthermore reporting a witch, you can get 25 gold dragons. For a man with a broken leg, these 25 gold dragon are equivalent to a saving from half of a lifetime.”

After a moment of silence Roland asked, “the other side was a sturdy and grown up man, how could you kill him?”

At this time, when Anna laughed. The flame tips of the torches shocked, just like great waves on a lake surface.

“Exactly what you think, with the power of the devil.”

“Shut up! Siren!” Shouted the warden, but everyone could hear that his throat vibrated.

“Is that true? I want to see it.” the fourth prince was unmoved.

“Your Highness, this is not a laughing matter!”  interrupted the Chief knight and furrowed his brows.

Roland stepped out of the protection of his knight, step by step he moved towards the cage, “Everyone who fears her can leave, I did not ask you to stay here.”

“Don’t panic, she has a ‘God Punishment locket’ on her neck!” shouted Barov loudly to comfort everyone, but likely also to comfort himself, “no matter how powerful the devil is, he cannot break the god’s blessing.”

Standing in front of the prison railing, Roland and Anna were at arm’s length, he could clearly see her dusty and bruised cheek. Her innocent facial features showed that she still was a minor, but her expression did not catch any trace of childishness. More than that, even anger was hard to find – this kind of disharmony Roland only had seen on TV.

It was the appearance of a wandering orphan who had suffered from poverty, hunger, cold, etc… but it was not exactly the same, normally in front of the camera the lost orphans always stood with a bent body, their head down, but Anna did not.

Until now, she still tried to stand with a straight body, her gaze slightly upward, calmly looking into the prince’s eyes. She did not fear death, instead Roland realized, she was waiting for death.

“Is this the first time you see a witch my lord? Your curiosity might kill you.”

“If this is really the power of the devil, you would absolutely not be in this current situation,” Roland replied, “If that were true, not I should be dead but your father.”

The fire in the prison suddenly became dark, and this was definitely not an illusion, what seemed to be like suppressed flames, soon left with only small flame clusters. Behind him he heard the sound of rapid breathing and prayer, as well as the muffled sound of panicked people accidentally falling down.

Roland’s heartbeat accelerated, he felt himself being in a wonderful cut-off situation, one side was the world with common sense, in accordance with the laws and constants he knew, not one thread loose.( idiom: strictly according to the rule)  The other side was an incredible world, which was full of mystery and the unknown. And right now he was standing in front of this new world.

Hung on her neck really the ‘God Punishment locket’? What a simple and crude locket, a red iron chain with a sparkling and translucent pendant, if the witch did not have both her hands handcuffed behind her back; couldn’t a pull destroy this kind of thing?

Roland glanced at the crowd behind him, while they were still praying in panic, he quickly reached into the cell, grabbed the said pendant a little bit harder, the pendants chains snapped once and then crashed down broken – the move even startled Anna.

“Come on.” He whispered.

Are you in the end still a liar, an alchemist or a real witch, what are you? If you now take out bottles and jars and start configuring acid, I will be disappointed, he thought.

Roland then heard a crackling sound, which was the sound of the thermal expansion of water vapor – thanks to the dramatically rise of the temperature , the water on the ground beneath them changed to fog.

He saw a blazing flame rising directly under her foot, and then the ground where she stood was burning up. The torches behind them exploded simultaneously, as if they got pure oxygen, in a burst of brilliant light. For a short time, the whole cell was day light, all this was accompanied by the crowd’s terrified screams.

When the witch moved forward, the cruising flame moved with her. As she came to the prison side, the dozens of iron bars become pillars of fire.

Roland had to retreat, the hot air was biting his skin, making him feel the pain. Just in the time of few breaths, he returned from a late autumn summer, no, this is a different kind of summer heat, this is simple generated by this high-temperature flame and not a full surrounding summer heat. One side was facing the flame heatwave, and the opposite side he felt a chill. He even felt cold sweat.

– She really does not fear fire.

Roland remembered the words of the Assistant Minister. Only now he really understood the meaning of this sentence.

She is the flame herself, and how could someone fear oneself?

Soon, the iron railings turned from crimson into a light yellow, they begun to melt. This meant that they have been heated to more than fifteen hundred degrees, and this in a condition without any insulation measures, which was far beyond the imagination of Roland. Like others he has stepped away from the cell, firmly attached to the wall farthest away from the cell.

If he had not done this, the heat the molten iron produced was enough to kill him even without direct contact, but also it let clothes burn – such as Anna’s, her prison uniform had burnt to ashes, the body was now surrounded by a raging fire.

He didn’t know how long it lasted, but in the end, the flame completely faded.

The torches were quietly burning at the section of the wall next to them, it seemed like nothing had ever happened. But Anna’s burned clothes, the hot air and the prison railing which looked like as if it was burned by the devil’s minions, all this, told everyone that this wasn’t an illusion.

In addition to Roland only the knights were still standing, the others had collapsed to the ground, the warden was so scared that his pants smelled of urine. Anna was now standing naked outside the cell; her arm shackles were gone. She did not block the view at her naked body, her hands were hanging naturally at the side of her trunk, her eyes which were blue like the sea were restored to the quiet from before.

“I satisfied your curiosity, Sir,” she said, “Will you kill me now?”

“No,” Roland stepped forward, he wrapped his coat around her and said with a tone as  mild as possible, “Miss Anna, I want to hire you.”