Read Prairie Fire for Free Online

Theoretically, I knew the firearms inside and out, but I couldn’t take them apart and put them back together with any speed at all. I had surprised myself to learn I was a good shot, if I wasn’t moving. Apparently music had given me steady hands. I could keep up during physical drills, but I couldn’t pack my own kit or make my own bed fast enough to suit the sergeants. And Quick Change was an unmitigated disaster. I was getting much better at push-ups, though.
    â€œThank you, sir,” I said, hoping he would think I was talking about my hands and not his somewhat better-than-average expectation of me.
    â€œThat’s what we’re here for,” he replied. “Come back if you bleed through the gauze.”
    He got me a note to explain that I was exempt from swimming, and I headed back out to join my training group. The sergeant read the note with a glare, his natural expression, and then suggested I use my extra time to practice in the gun range. Well, it wasn’t exactly a suggestion.
    By the end of third week, I had calluses on top of my scars, and I’d gotten used to the extra pain. We started our wilderness training after that, out in all weather in the base’s carefully terraformed forests. Part of this training was endurance, and included all the recruits, but mostly this was training for the dragon slayers, and since I was still attached to Owen, I went with them. Even though it was much rougher than camping with Aodhan, I still found it better than the on-base training, much to the dismay of the remaining bettors.
    â€œI really wish you’d told me about the betting pools earlier,” Sadie said one night when we were back in the barracks with almost enough time to get dry before the next drill had us at the mercy of the elements again. “I mean, I know you’re not going to quit. I could have made a killing.”
    â€œThey might force me out,” I said. Every day the chance decreased, but it was still a possibility.
    â€œThere’s a different pool for that,” said the girl in the bed past Sadie’s. She was a dragon slayer from Chilliwack, which put her at odds with almost everyone else on the base. British Columbia didn’t send many people to the Forces, and the fact that its dragon slayers were conscripted was a sore point.
    â€œThen I’d definitely have made a lot of money,” Sadie said. “But don’t worry, I won’t hold it against you.”
    â€œThanks,” I said.
    â€œCan you sing the Manitoulin song before lights-out?” the Chilliwack girl asked.
    The request was echoed from all around me. It wasn’t the first time they’d asked me to sing, but it was the first time they’d been so specific. That was the first song I’d written with words, on the grounds that I didn’t think I’d ever be able to play it. Emily had helped, and I’d started taking voice lessons. My voice still wasn’t spectacular, but since I was writing the music, my songs were always perfectly in my range. It was almost like it had been, but not quite.
    Emily had also been the one to insist on a YouTube channel, claiming that it was the easiest way to go public without it costing us anything. We’d used the soundproof rooms at Trondheim Secondary to record it, and it’d gotten almost a hundred thousand hits within days of uploading. We’d also recorded my earlier works, played by the band or by Mrs. Heskie, with the appropriate footage of Owen where possible. Apparently we had a very large following, though I mostly left it to Emily to manage, because it made me nervous.
    The Manitoulin song was probably the best piece of music I’d ever written at that point. After it went up on the Internet, for all the world to criticize, I had Emily go through the comments (something she had made Owen and me promise never to do), and pick out all the useful critiques of the work. Most people said it was