The shaman seeing the child did not leave the boy in the ash. That alone changed everything.
At dawn, while the villagers argued in fearful whispers whether to flee, whether to bury the child again, whether the land itself had cursed them because of all the fighting and the blood spilt, the shaman stepped forward and lifted the boy into his arms.
He half expected the heat radiating from the child to burn him but to his surprise the heat did not burn him.
That was how he knew.
"He is not a thing," the shaman said quietly. "He is but a child."
Some protested at that, the absurdity of what he was about to do.b"He came from the dead," one woman said, clutching her son.
"He howled like a beast Hoshé, you clearly saw it" another whispered.
"He will bring it back," a warrior warned. "The fire." The shaman looked at them all, his voice tired but steady.
"No," he said. "The fire already came. He is what remains."
And so the boy was brought into the village.
The shaman named him Kánen'to.
⸻
By his seventh cycle, Kánen'to was loud, fast, and always barefoot.
"Slow down!" old Seya shouted as he ran past her lodge.
"I am slow!" Kánen'to laughed. "The ground is fast!" He climbed trees with Tarek and Miko, raced along the riverbanks, and returned home each night scraped, dusty, and hungry. He was scolded for muddy footprints and praised for carrying water without complaint.
They had monitored him so see if he was different in other ways as well but no. He was normal. Pain hurt him, cold made him shiver. Fire burned if he touched it.
Once, he cried after tipping over a cooking pot and singeing his fingers.
Naiya clicked her tongue as she wrapped them.
"You see?" she said. "Fire does not care who you are."
Kánen'to nodded seriously. "I don't like it much."
No one argued that point with the little boy.
The villagers stopped watching him closely. Children forgot whatever their parents once whispered to them about him. The boy laughed too easily, helped too readily, and grew too steadily to be anything but human.
Even Hoshé allowed himself to believe it.
"Why does the moon follow us?"
"Why does everyone stop talking when I walk in?"
The shaman, Old Man Hoshé answered what he could. "The moon does not follow," he said once, smiling faintly. "You are simply never out of its sight."
Kánen'to was cheerful, playful, quick to grin. He helped the elders carry water, brought herbs to Naiya, the healer, and sat patiently while she scolded him for singeing another pot by accident.
"Fire is not a toy child you need to be careful," she told him.
"I didn't touch it," Kánen'to said defensively. "It touched me."
She sighed. "That's even worse."
——————————-
It happened the first time during a game by the river. A boy named Tarek shoved him hard.
"Fire-blood," Tarek spat. "Ash-boy."
Kánen'to not being one to be a push over shoved back.
And the strangest of things happened, the ground cracked and with it, heat rushed outward, sudden and sharp. Tarek screamed as his arm blistered, skin reddening instantly. Seeing this the other children fled.
By nightfall, parents stood before the shaman's lodge with raised voices.
"He hurt my son Hoshé, He's dangerous."
Hoshé knelt before Kánen'to later after the whole commotion, voice soft but firm.
"My boy, you must not let anger lead you," he said. Kánen'to stared at his hands, shaking.
"I didn't want to," he whispered. "It just come out... it wasn't me I swear"
Hoshé rested a hand on his shoulder.
"Don't listen to them my child, this wasn't your fault so do not blame yourself for what happend do you understand me child?"
Kánen'to nodded, tears falling silently into the dirt.
————————————
The years moved gently.
Kánen'to learned to hunt, though he preferred fishing. He learned stories by heart and repeated them badly for younger children, changing endings when he forgot the right ones.
"You've ruined it," Aiyana laughed once, throwing a berry at him.
"It was boring," he replied. "Now the hero survives."
She smiled at him.
He grew into his limbs, awkward at first, then strong. He helped rebuild fences after storms, sat with elders during long evenings, listened more than he spoke.
Hoshé taught him the land not with warnings, but with patience.
By his seventeenth cycle, Kánen'to had a place among the people. He was well-liked, quick to laugh, slow to anger. He courted Aiyana, whose smile always came with a tease.
He and Aiyana walked together at dusk, speaking of nothing important.
"You'll leave someday wouldn't you?," she asked.
"Maybe," he replied. "But not yet."
She took his hand. That was enough.
By his seventeenth cycle, Kánen'to had a place among the people. He was well-liked, quick to laugh, slow to anger. He courted Aiyana, whose smile always came with a tease.
"You think too much," she told him one evening.
"You sometimes look at the fire like it might answer you or as if you are trying to remember something."
He shrugged and looked at her funny. "Fire does not talk Aiyana."
She smiled. "Everything talks. You just have to know how to listen."
They planned nothing beyond the next hunt, the next season.
They had time, at least that was what they thought…
⸻
The raid happened while Kánen'to and Hoshé were gone.
The day they left the village was quiet.
Hoshé needed herbs from the southern ridge. His breathing had grown heavy lately, his steps slower.
"Do not rush me," he said as Kánen'to adjusted the packs.
"I will walk at your pace." They were gone two days.
The smell reached them first.
Smoke.
But not the clean kind no.
Kánen'to stopped walking and without looking at his father he spoke up.
"Hoshé," he said softly. "Something is wrong we need to get back now!."
That was all he had said and that alone had prompted them both as they broke into a run.
When the village came into view, there was nothing left to run toward.
Bodies lay where they had fallen. Homes burned down to their bones. The land was once again after over ten cycles drenched in blood.
Kánen'to stopped as he saw the scene, his friends, family.
Something inside him broke.
He couldn't even scream or cry for he was frozen with shock.
Kánen'to dropped the packs.
"No," he whispered.
The world tilted.
Heat surged through his chest like a second heart slamming awake. His breath caught. The air shimmered around him.
"Kánen'to—" Hoshé began.
The raiders were still there, laughing and searching careless for their spoils.
They never saw him move.
His skin split with glowing cracks. Blue-orange fire rolled over him as he changed, his bones shifting under his skin, breath deepening and his eyes turned a burning orange.
He killed them… all of them, he tore them apart limb from limbs until the land recorded the freshly spilt blood.
Flame and force
Claws and heat, that's what it was, there was no mercy or hesitation. When it ended, nothing remained but scorched earth and ash.
The fire receded and Kánen'to stood alone and without prompt, he began to carry the dead.
One by one.
Gently.
An absent expression on his face, as though he were somewhere else entirely.
Hoshé watched all that happened, tears carving paths through the ash on his face.
"Again," he whispered.
"This is the second time," he whispered. "The second time I have lived to see my people burned."
Aiyana was the last to be carried.
Kánen'to knelt before her, with his hands shaking.
"I came back," he whispered. "I came back."
Kánen'to carried her carefully, laying her atop the others.
Looking at the pile with no one left to carry, he knelt infront of the small mountain of bodies.
Then, the heat leapt from him without effort engulfing the bodies in flame.
He did not move as they burned.
He stayed for however long it took for the bodies to be reduced to ash.
Then the rain started.
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