Cinder Shepherd knelt at the edge of the lava river and held out an empty lantern. Six embers drifted above the current, small orange coals that had once been a single soul. Cinder had followed them across the ash flats for three days. To gather them into the lantern and lay the soul to rest, Cinder needed to speak the dead one's name aloud. Cinder did not know it. The fox sat on the black rock beside them, tail curled, white eyes fixed on the water. The stag stood farther back, breath steaming from its nostrils, antlers dark against the red sky. Cinder had raised both from cinders of other souls, long ago. They were patient in a way Cinder was not. "Come here," Cinder said to the nearest ember. "I'll carry you home." The ember flared once, then drifted out of reach. The others followed it downstream. Cinder swore under their breath and closed the lantern. Without the name, the coals treated the call as noise. A low grinding sound rolled across the flats behind them. Cinder turned. A caravan crawled toward the river, wagons black with soot, lanterns swinging, skeletal beasts dragging it forward on chains. The caravans traded in stories. Everyone in the depths knew that. They paid in memory and took payment in the same. Cinder had avoided them for years. Cinder stood up. The driver was hooded and did not speak. A thin figure climbed down from the second wagon and asked what Cinder wanted. Cinder described the embers, the drift pattern, the place where the soul had first scattered. The figure listened, then named a price: one of Cinder's own memories, chosen by the wagon, in exchange for the dead one's name and the story that held it. Cinder thought of the fox, the stag, the empty lantern. Cinder agreed. The figure pressed a cold thumb to Cinder's forehead. Something behind Cinder's eyes went dim. In its place a name settled, and with it a short, sharp story about a child who had run toward a burning gate of iron and basalt and never come back out. Cinder returned to the river and spoke the name. The six embers turned in the current like fish and came to the lantern one by one. Cinder shut the glass. The lantern glowed steady and warm. The fox stood. The stag lowered its antlers. Cinder felt the weight of the soul settle against their ribs, and felt, at the same time, that they could no longer remember their mother's face. The name in the lantern was not a stranger's after all. It was the name Cinder had been carrying the whole time, and had just paid to learn.

Cinder stood by the river with the sealed lantern warm against their ribs. The name inside it was their mother's. The empty place behind their eyes was where her face had been. Cinder had no time to sit with either. On the horizon, a gray wall was climbing fast into the red sky. An ashstorm, wide as the flats themselves, coming straight for them. The fox rose from the rock and pressed against Cinder's leg. Its ember-red fur crackled. Its white eyes tracked the wall of ash. The stag stamped once and turned its antlers into the wind. Cinder counted lanterns hanging from their staff. Dozens of small iron cages, each holding embers gathered from other lost souls over the years. An ashstorm this size would rip them loose. The embers would scatter across miles of flats. Years of work, gone in one gust. The new lantern would go with them. There was no cave in sight. No wagon. The caravan had already crawled off downriver and left only wheel ruts. Cinder scanned the flats. Far to their left, a shape broke the flat gray line. A tree. Cinder knew it by the skulls hanging in its branches, ivory against the black wood. An old bone orchard tree, alone on the plain. Its trunk was thick. Its roots humped up out of the ash in a ring. "Go," Cinder said. The stag broke first. The fox ran at Cinder's heel, sparks trailing. The wind hit them halfway there. Ash bit Cinder's hands. The lanterns on the staff clanged and swung. One iron cage tore free and rolled across the ground, ember tumbling out. Cinder lunged, caught it, jammed it into their robe. They reached the tree as the storm closed. Cinder dropped to the roots and pulled the fox in against their chest. The stag folded its legs on the leeward side and lowered its head. Cinder unhooked every lantern from the staff and pushed them down into the hollow between two roots. They laid their body across the pile. The mother's lantern went at the bottom, under their ribs, where they could feel it. The storm passed over them for a long time. Ash filled Cinder's hood. The skulls above knocked together in the branches like wooden bells. The fox did not move. The stag did not move. Cinder counted lanterns by touch. All there. When the wind dropped, Cinder sat up. Ash slid off their shoulders in sheets. The flats around the tree were smooth and blank. Every ember Cinder had ever gathered was still burning under their arm. But the wheel ruts were gone. The river was gone under gray drift. Cinder did not know which way they had come from, and did not know which way led home.

Cinder knelt in the ash and counted the lanterns again. Thirty-four iron cages sat wedged between the roots of the bone tree. The mother's lantern lay at the bottom, warm through the cloth. The staff could carry a dozen hooked along its length. No more. The rest would have to be left on the roots, and any lantern left behind would crack open in the next wind. The embers inside would drift. The souls would scatter across the flats again, and years of gathering would end here. Cinder tried anyway. They looped lanterns onto the staff until the iron bands bent. They tied more into the folds of their robe with strips torn from the hem. When they stood, the weight dragged them sideways. Two lanterns knocked loose and rolled. The fox chased one down and pinned it with a paw. The stag lowered its antlers and let Cinder hang three more from the tines. Still, a dozen lanterns remained on the roots. Cinder sat down hard. They could not carry them. They could not leave them. They did not even know which direction led home. The fox growled first. Cinder looked up. A shape came across the smooth ash at a steady walk. Four-legged. Black hide split by orange seams. Smoke curled from its shoulders and the tuft of its tail. A furnace hound, old by the scars on its muzzle, one horn broken short. It stopped ten paces off and watched Cinder with an ember-yellow eye. Cinder had seen these hounds circle the caravan for scraps. They pulled carts when the price was right. This one wore a length of chain around its neck, trailing in the ash. Someone had harnessed it before. Cinder reached slowly into their robe and drew out a single lantern. They set it in the ash between themselves and the hound. The hound stepped forward, sniffed the iron cage, and did not eat it. Its breath fogged hot against Cinder's wrist. Cinder unclipped one of the lanterns from the staff and hung it from the chain around the hound's neck. The hound stood still. Cinder added another. Another. The hound's hide warmed the iron but did not melt it. Cinder hung every remaining lantern from the chain and from a strip of robe knotted across the hound's back. The stag took its share on the antlers. The fox carried one in its jaws. Cinder shouldered the staff, heavy again with the rest. All thirty-four lanterns were with them now. None left on the roots. But Cinder still stood on blank ash with no landmark in any direction, and now four mouths depended on finding shelter before the next storm. The hound turned its head, sniffed the wind, and began to walk. Cinder followed, because the hound seemed to know something Cinder did not.