The earth beneath us slammed upward, as if a giant punched it. Stone, clay, and water shot through us. I sent part of my magic out. Way down I felt a huge fist of melted stone push up. Flare and Carnelian's friends jammed in the thousands into the huge chamber under Mount Grace. The walls were melting, making the thing expand. Far over my head stones cried out as they split. Chunks broke away to fall and shatter after rolling for hundreds of feet.
I'd better go! I shouted to Luvo. I flew through the ground. I collected strength and fashioned spells as I went, adding pieces of granite for good measure. Then I pulled power and granite alike around me into a thick, tight ball.
WHAM! The slam happened again. It shoved my ball into a pancake. I was mixed in with the magic, spells, and granite. I yanked myself together into one central ball. Quickly I dragged my protection spells into a thick shell around that. Finally I added the granite shell once more. While I worked, the world shook. I felt cracks open in stone and dirt up where open air touched the ground. Bits of stone shot into that air, thrown from new chimneys in the mountainside. A few more jumps like that and the volcano spirits would spill through cracks in Mount Grace.
Let's go, I thought. I put a lot of magic behind it.
My granite ball slammed through the earth, into a tunnel that led down. It dropped, and so did I. I clung to every particle of the stone. If I'd had a real mouth, a real throat, and real lungs, I'd have been screaming as I dropped straight into a chimney full of magma.
Volcano spirits grabbed my stone sphere. They passed me down the pipe. Even granite has limits. My shell began to melt. The heat from the volcano spirits sizzled along my magical skin. It burned.
I was spreading out. My granite shield dissolved. My muscles felt like warm honey, my bones like melting butter. I fought to stay whole, but it was so hard.
I drifted in the heat. I thought I smelled power burning. That was silly, because magic doesn't burn. Slowly I descended into the birth chamber of stones. Evumeimei Dingzai was turning to smoke. My life was sizzling out. Any memory of what I did there melted. I wanted to hang on to the memories of my life as they dissolved, but I couldn't think why. Instead I gave them up, happiness by happiness. I floated in the great power of the earth…
She's flowing into the river! That sounded like a girl. I ought to know her voice, I thought in a dreamy way.
A boy said, I have her head—you grab her tail. Who knew she could get all liquid like us?
I ought to know the boy's voice, too.
Don't let her drip! the girl ordered.
Blue and carnelian-colored hands dragged me along, out of the heat and the power. Legs, or tails, or something, wrapped around parts of me. They pulled me along.
Carnelian and Flare yanked me into cold stuff. It had hard lumps in it. They rolled me up, shoving my liquid pieces into a tighter shape. I squirmed and wriggled, fighting to get back to that hot river. I was going to float in the heart of everything. I would be reborn with the stones.
A chunk of diamond dug into my side.
Diamond. I curled myself up around it. How could I forget diamonds? Diamonds were so hard it was almost impossible to cut them, impossible to break or crush them. I could only ask one to break for me. It would do so only if it wanted to. I'd never find a diamond in all that molten stone. I'd never find any rocks in it. And I'd never find a single crystal.
What had I been thinking?
I uncurled myself and looked around. Flare and Carnelian, shaped like they wore clothes, sat on either side of me in the earth. They had saved me. They had pulled me out of there.
The others said they had a rock that acted like one of us, Flare told me. You're lucky we thought that sounded weird enough to be you.
They say they'll go, Carnelian said. They say they'll follow us out. They were so excited they shook the earth. Are you fit to take us there now?
I wanted to be melted some more… The warmth pulled on me. I shook it off and ran