Free Enna Burning by Shannon Hale

voices.
    “Up, up, up with your glass,” they sang, “the man has fallen down. Lift up, up, up your last glass, lift up for the downed, downed man.”
    It was a rough tavern song, but one they all knew. Enna liked it more the more they sang. The rhythm clipped, the words rolled over each sound, and some men pumped their arms as though they toasted the dead. It reminded her that there was still living to be done.
    She watched the flames, but her focus slipped past them to the dead bodies, an arm tucked there, a face blackened in smoke, a tunic eaten through. The last of Leifer in this world, made brilliantly hot and bright and alive. She walked away before the fire burned out, before all that was left was ash.
    Two weeks after the battle of Ostekin Fields, Enna walked back to the Forest. She felt uneasy, as though Leifer were at home waiting for her, hungry, unable to make a stew without her help. She knew it was not true, but she told Isi, “I just have to go see that he’s not there, and make sure the chickens are all right.”
    She traveled in the company of a dozen Forest boys, most of whom were needed more at home than on the battlefront and some of whom now stared about with wide eyes and wizened brows, unready as they were to have seen what a war really was. Enna had thought Finn would be one of the returning, but he surprised her.
    “Send a message to my ma, if you can—I’m staying with the prince,” and he walked swiftly back to his hundred-band camp.
    Enna thought how Finn was changing, how everything was.
    Faintly, she could feel the heat of her traveling companions as they walked beside her and the living plants beneath her feet. A few days into the journey, her sense of their heat was unmistakable. At night she felt uncomfortable around the fires, instead sleeping several paces beyond the others on the edge of the firelight. Even from there, she could sense its delicate heat weave through air to touch her skin.
    When they passed under the Forest canopy, she was surprised by how thick the air was with the warm emanations of plants and animals. Enna had never realized before just how much was growing around her, how much life filled up every inch. She entered her empty little house, sat on her cot, and stared at the wood grain of the floor. She refused to look at the door, fighting a ridiculous hope that any moment her brother could come through it. Her old restlessness was so profound now that it was almost audible, a discontented buzzing that could compete with the crickets.
    Enna spent much of that night with open eyes, wondering how Leifer had slept so soundly. How could he not lie awake, constantly marveling at the ribbons of heat that seeped out of trees and animals and through the cracks in the walls? Her awareness of it felt like a last link to Leifer. As she paid closer attention, her sense of the heat became more distinct. She thought she could tell the difference between heat from an animal, a tree, a fern. Everywhere, things were alive, awake, and growing. The heat tickled her skin and felt as pleasant as baking bread smells.
    The hearth was cold. She stubbornly refused to light a fire, even with flint.
    In the morning she shut the house up tight and made Doda a present of half of her egg layers in exchange for looking after the hens and the goat indefinitely. By the next week’s end, Enna was back in Ostekin. She greeted the west gate sentries and headed to the councilman’s house where Geric had set up headquarters.
    Up the main road a bit, she thought she saw Isi dressed plainly with her hair in a scarf as though out for a walk. Two young soldiers, clearly agitated about something, stopped her and began speaking with energy. Enna picked up her pace.
    “I’m sorry, I don’t think that’s a very fair request,” Enna heard Isi say. “You should speak to your captain. . . .”
    “No, I’m telling you,” one of the soldiers said. “My brother died out on that field, and I’m not going