Enna Burning Read Online Free PDF

streets. Enna had not seen Isi since her mother took sick. She was shocked to hear now that the young prince, Geric’s brother, had passed away from a fever in early summer.
    “I would’ve come see you,” said Isi, “but Geric was stricken, and things here were . . . ” She paused and looked around distractedly. “Watch that cartwheel.”
    “What?” said Enna.
    “Oh, nothing.” Isi seemed embarrassed and did not explain.
    The farther they walked, the more distant Isi seemed, and sometimes she did not respond at all to what Enna said. Enna watched her silently, worry creeping over her like a chill.
    When at last they reached the hilltop and the palace courtyard, Isi dismissed the guards and took Enna to a side entrance. The door was partly ajar, but before Enna could push it open, a breeze did so for her. Isi tugged at her headscarf to loosen it, then another breeze unwound it from her head and laid it in Isi’s hands. Her long yellow hair fell free.
    “Isi, your skill with the wind is much better than I remember,” said Enna.
    Isi tilted her head and whispered something about a palace page in a hurry.
    “What was that?” said Enna.
    Isi scrunched her eyes closed and batted the air before her face. “Being out in the crowd, it affects me so much faster than it used to. Let’s go somewhere—quieter.”
    Isi took Enna’s hand and led her deeper into the palace, farther in and farther down. Isi nodded to a sentry standing beside a stone door, and he grunted as he pulled it open. There were no windows. The guard lit a rush torch on the wall, and thin smoke crept along the ceiling. Enna could make out a small room, shelves loaded with armor, lances, javelins, axes, golden boxes, ivory statuettes.
    “A treasury,” said Isi. She sat on a blanket that lay on the floor, and Enna followed. The sentry shut the door, and there was a hollow thunk as it sealed. The light in the room was low and yellow. Trembling shadows moved over Isi’s face.
    Isi sighed. Her face smoothed as she relaxed. “Geric found this place for me a few months ago, just after it started to get worse. He says he can’t talk to me anywhere else. He says it sadly.”
    “What is it?”
    “The wind.”
    “Oh,” said Enna, beginning to understand.
    “You know, when I first learned to understand its language, I could feel only the bigger winds. I’d sit in the goose pasture, and when a breeze rose off the stream I could hear, or rather sense, where it had been, what else it had recently touched—wet stones, a sparrow, a lost goose. And when I was indoors, I rarely felt anything, just a draft from the hall, a slip of air from an open window. Now, Enna, it’s everywhere. I’ve come to realize that air is made up of tiny parts, and wind is a lot of them moving fast. Right now, even in a still room, I can feel the air. I hear it constantly.
    “That’s why Geric likes to trap us in here like a couple of worms in the earth. We can shut out most of the movements. And I can have a few moments of . . . quiet.” Isi smiled. “So now that I can hear you, tell me about Leifer.”
    Enna took a breath. “I was wondering if there’s such a thing as fire speech, like how you know bird and wind speech. Leifer, I think he’s learned to control fire somehow, but he . . . can’t seem to control it very well.”
    “Oh,” said Isi, a soft, birdlike sound, and gently lifted the edge of Enna’s skirt from her ankles. “You’re hurt. I wonder why I didn’t hear the wind whisper of it before. There was so much going on outside, I guess, and that bit got lost. I can have a physician look at it later. Enna, did Leifer do that?”
    Enna shrugged off the concern and jumped into the story of Leifer’s trip to the deep wood, the vellum, and his behavior up to the night when he set her on fire. “You see why I need to know what I can, now, before he does something else, something worse.”
    Isi looked at her a long moment, still and unblinking, as though she