Clara Dee Fuego Better Now

Not her grandmother. Not the room. Not the Conflagration.

She burned her fear of being alone.

Clara learned to summon a corona of heat that could melt steel. She learned to walk through walls of flame unharmed. She learned to set a man's shadow on fire—and when his shadow burned, so did he. The Conflagration sent her on missions: burn a dam that diverted water from a company's private lake; ignite a warehouse of counterfeit medicines; torch a courtroom where a corrupt judge had freed a killer. clara dee fuego

"You see?" Mr. Cinder smiled. "Sentiment is just slow combustion. We burn it out of you." Not her grandmother

Clara grew like a weed on a fault line. By five, she could look at a candle and make it dance. By seven, she could cup her hands and birth a flame that burned only the thing she wanted—the weevil in the corn, not the corn itself; the tick on the dog, not the dog's fur. The village children feared her, then worshipped her. She built them tiny suns to warm their hands on cold mornings. She once lit a dead tree on fire for three days, and the fire was blue, and the tree did not crumble—it sprouted white roses from its charcoal limbs. She burned her fear of being alone