Free Spirited by Shannon Delany, Judith Graves, Heather Kenealy, et al., Kitty Keswick, Candace Havens, Linda Joy Singleton, Jill Williamson, Maria V. Snyder

plateful of gruel and an apologetic frown. “We have very little.”
    Isaiah’s chains rattled as he took the plate. “Destiny, how did you… get the way you are?”
    “You mean this?” Destiny smiled and produced a flame in her hand. She bounced it back and forth between her palms until it vanished in a puff of smoke. “It’s the way I was born. How’d you get so you could blow it out?”
    Isaiah shook his head. “I didn’t do it.”
    “Yes, you did. You did it last night, and you did it again now.”
    “I didn’t.”
    “You did, you did, you did,” Destiny chanted while clapping her hands. She flopped onto the ground in front of him. “Teach me how. Please. I’m a fast learner. Really, I am. I’m a faster learner than anyone, even the adults.”
    She looked around conspiratorially and whispered, “I’m a faster learner than anyone because they don’t hardly know any tricks at all. Sure, some of them can do a few little things, but I can do my fire trick, and I healed your leg and—”
    “What do you mean they can’t do any tricks?” Isaiah interrupted. “I can sense it in them.”
    Destiny shrugged. “I dunno. They can do some little things, I guess, but it takes a long time, and isn’t much anyway. Not like us. No one could put out my flame before. Show me how to do it. Please.”
    Isaiah frowned. He had wanted Destiny to stop both times. And what about the cloud of dust as he escaped New Coventry. Was that just a dry road, or something more?
    “I’ll tell you what,” Isaiah said. “If you teach me your flame trick, I’ll teach you to put it out.”
~*~*~
    A small, flickering flame emerged from Isaiah’s palm. Excitement and disgust filled him at the same time.
    Destiny extinguished his flame and frowned. “It’s more than putting out the fire. It’s like your flame goes out too. Like your talent is gone. Or hidden.”
    Isaiah nodded. He’d noticed something similar during their practice. When he extinguished Destiny’s flame, he could no longer sense the stain in her.
    He frowned and shook his head. Using the word stain to describe this bright little girl seemed wrong. And the sense of the stain—or to use Mathias’ term, the talent— was not as offensive as it had been, though it still pervaded the cavern. It reminded him of how tea had tasted when he first tried it— bitter at first, but he eventually grew accustomed to it and even came to savor it.
    Perhaps he had subconsciously used this talent when hunting witches, shielding their powers so he could capture them. And Destiny said they could only do little things anyway and that it took a long time at even that, so perhaps their powers were too subtle to be of much use in preventing capture.
    And if Cotton had the same talent that he had, then he would eventually sense all the people down here and—
    “Mathias says you’re bad,” Destiny said. “But I think you’re good.”
    “Maybe I’m both.”
    “How can you be both?”
    Isaiah shrugged. “Your mother taught you to be good?”
    Destiny nodded.
    “How did she know what’s good?”
    Destiny shrugged. “Maybe from her mother?”
    “Maybe,” Isaiah said. “The man who raised me—the one I thought of as a father—taught me that people like you were bad. He taught me that I was doing good.”
    “Did you believe him?”
    “No one told me any differently,” Isaiah said. “And maybe I wanted to believe. I was skilled at it.”
    “But you don’t believe that anymore, do you?” Destiny asked. “You don’t think I’m bad?”
    Isaiah shook his head. Destiny took his uncertainty as an answer and smiled.
~*~*~
    The next day Faith Jacobs came, and she was as distractingly beautiful as Isaiah remembered. He remembered her smile too, though she did not share it with him now.
    “How did Destiny get her… talent, if you have none?”
    “You don’t believe she contracted with the devil?”
    Isaiah shook his head. “I don’t know what to believe.”
    “Our