Clara remembered: Her fire was for bread and birth.
"Grandmother," she whispered.
Sometimes, late at night, Clara sits by a river and cups a single flame in her hands. It is no longer white or violet or blue. It is the color of a peach's blush, of a child's laughter, of embers cooling into soil. clara dee fuego
Clara, who was shelling peas on her grandmother's stoop, looked up. "What do you want?" Clara remembered: Her fire was for bread and birth
She finds children who set things on fire when they are angry—or sad, or scared. Children with too much light inside and no one to teach them the difference between a hearth and a hell. She stays with them for a month, a season, a year. She teaches them to bake bread with their palms, to forge plowshares from scrap metal, to light a candle for a dead loved one and let the smoke carry their goodbye. It is no longer white or violet or blue