Fire Girl, Forest Boy

by Chloe Daykin

  It takes a minute to work out the light is coming from our river cruiser. ‘Matias!’ We run downstairs and find Matias out on deck.

  He yells at the guys, something I don’t understand. He looks livid and shaking, his eyes wide and hard.

  The traffickers pull out guns.

  Matias shouts again.

  The rain hisses, the logs pound us. I grab his arm. ‘Don’t!’ The torch swings down into the water and cuts across the froth. Raul tries to grab it, but Matias pulls away and yells something. Raul tries to put a hand over his mouth, but he’s too late.

  I throw myself on the ground. I’ve never seen a real gun. Never been faced with what bullets can do. I think of the hard metal tip ripping into flesh.

  Matias stays standing.

  ‘Get down!’ I grab his ankle.

  He doesn’t. Crack. Ping. The gun shoots and hits the side of the boat.

  Raul flattens his head on the ground next to mine and I start to shake. ‘Can’t we hide in the food store?’

  Raul’s foot kicks me as a shot hits near us and he flinches. Maybe we could make it if we crawled. No way we’re standing. ‘And leave Matias?’

  I stare at him. It’s like he has anger in him he can’t control. Like it controls him. We need to make it stop.

  I look up through my fingers over the edge. Their boat gets closer. Any closer and the dark won’t cover us any more. We’ll be moonlit targets.

  I try to reach into myself and call the fire up. Ding! Another shot fires out and Matias yells. They yell back. The rain pounds the boat and the water. I put my hands over my ears and try to concentrate.

  But my heart’s like a lighter that’s run out of gas.

  I try to light my lighter.

  I flick it and flick it and flick it.

  The boat gets closer.

  Come on! I yell inside myself. My heart beats so hard it vibrates against the metal of the floor.

  BAM. Their boat bangs against the side of ours.

  I pull myself up off the deck and stand in front of Matias.

  Raul

  Maya glows like a ball of fire, a shining ball of light. Lit by the balls that pop out of the air as she closes her eyes and squeezes them. Balls with eyes that burst into the dark like fire bubbles. Hovering round her like angry fire bees.

  The rain pours over the edge of the boat. The drops hiss as they fall through the rust in the roof on to the balls. The traffickers boat pulls alongside and they squint in the light. One of them climbs out on to our deck.

  One of the fireballs flies away from Maya and pushes him back. The others vibrate with a high-pitched ringing sound. He falls and the fireball pushes, looming over his face like a dog.

  ‘Get back in the boat,’ Maya says.

  I translate.

  He doesn’t though – he just lies there and stares at us. Two more fireballs come. They hover over the guy’s head, look at each other and dive overboard and set their boat on fire. The guy down there starts yelling and screaming. The guy on deck looks at us, looks at the water, at us, at the water. He gets up and backs off for the boat. But before he jumps he hesitates.

  He raises the gun.

  ‘No!’ Maya screams.

  A burst of fireballs fly from Maya to the gun. To the man’s arm, pushing it back. He pulls back, burnt and yelling, and shoots.

  BOOM.

  Maya stops glowing.

  She crumples to the floor.

  Maya

  Raul crawls over and grabs me. ‘It isn’t me!’ I yell. ‘It isn’t me!’

  Matias is groaning and swearing his head off. He rocks on the deck.

  Their boat sails away, glowing with fire and then dark.

  The smell of smoke wafts over us.

  The fireballs hover over Matias and his leg.

  ‘Get them off, get them off,’ he yells.

  ‘They won’t hurt you.’ I reach out for one. It rubs into my palm like a cat. ‘Thank you,’ I say. Raul looks at the balls and grins. They wobble-smile back at him. I step over to Matias. ‘His leg is shot. We need to raise the wound to stop the blood and get the bullet out.’ We step out of the way of the flow that is trickling over the floor.

  ‘Oh my God, oh my God!’ Matias keeps yelling.

  ‘Why did you yell at them?’ We drag him backwards to the light above the gas stove in the food galley. ‘You could be dead. We could all be dead.’ I hold his foot up in the air. Blood runs down his leg.

  ‘Those guys just do it for the money.’ Matias digs his fingers into his arms. ‘They don’t even get what they’re part of. What they’re doing.’

  Raul goes to get water, which he pours over the wound. ‘We can dig it out with this,’ he says and gets his knife out of his shorts.

  ‘We’ll need to sterilise it,’ I say. I make a fireball hover over to the knife. It bulges like it’s squatting and runs itself up and down the blade. ‘OK,’ I say. ‘That works.’

  Raul whistles while we wait for the blade to cool and stop glowing. Turning from fire-orange to silver. I think about it piercing his flesh and try not to feel sick.

  I squat next to Matias and take his hand and nod at Raul for him to start.

  ‘This will hurt,’ he says.

  ‘No kidding.’ Matias flinches.

  Raul raises the knife.

  I beckon a line of balls over to light the wound. I can see the hole refilling like a puddle, blood running and clotting in his hairs. I can’t see the bullet.

  ‘Can’t we just leave it in?’ Matias moans.

  ‘No.’ Raul winces and inserts the knife. Matias screams. He pulls out and breathes. ‘I can’t get it.’

  ‘Go on,’ I say. ‘Go on.’ I grip Matias harder.

  He sticks his fingers in the hole the knife has made. Blood squirts out. Matias writhes and screams, but Raul’s hands are quick and nimble. He sweats and pulls. Like his fingers are slipping and pinching and grasping at something they can’t quite hold.

  He pulls them out.

  Plink. The bullet drops on the floor.

  Raul

  I take my shirt off and tear it into strips and wrap it round Matias’s calf for a bandage.

  Matias wipes the sweat off his face with his hands and looks up. ‘You could’ve backed me up, brother.’

  That’s all he says. After all that. I feel like punching him. ‘That was stupid,’ I say. ‘You are stupid and you know it.’

  If Matias’s leg wasn’t hurt I think he’d have come for me then. I think we’d proper fight. His face is fierce.

  Did I mean it? Maybe it’s the shock, or maybe it’s something I’ve wanted to say for a long time.

  ‘Traitor,’ he sneers, and I want to rip his face off.

  I pull back and hold my knife up. I could slam it into his other leg, but he knows I won’t. He’s the boss. I’m the little brother, right?

  ‘Cut it out!’ Maya yells, and puts her hands between us. Fireballs fly into our faces and push us back.

  ‘Why are you here, Raul?’ Matias smiles. ‘Did you even tell her? Why don’t you tell?’ He laughs.

  I don’t say anything.

  ‘Guys like that killed my dad.’ He spits on the floor and stares right at me. ‘And his sister. Or maybe he forgot?’

  Maya

  Raul goes to slap Matias in the face, but Matias grabs his hand. ‘Do it, man, do it!’ he yells, so close the spit goes on Raul’s cheek.

  Raul drops his hand, kicks the wall and goes off upstairs.

  I put a rucksack under Matias’s head and go after him.

  The fireballs shrink and follow me. Hovering behind. I turn. ‘Thanks,’ I nod. It feels like we should spend time getting to know each other. But there isn’t time. ‘Come on,’ I say and coax them in front of me, lighting the stairs. ‘We need to find Raul.’

  I don’t know what to say though.

  I didn’t even know Raul had a sister.

  Had.

  I wish he’d said.

  I step out on to the top
deck. He’s sitting in a hammock at the far end. I walk over slowly. The balls bob by my side, glowing in the dark. The boat creaks and we hear the water smoosh and splosh under us as the floor sways.

  His back and his folded arms say he doesn’t want to talk. The vibe in the air says he has to.

  I sit next to him and swing. The balls hover over our heads. Their reflections rippling in the water.

  Maybe the silence is like Raul’s knife in Matias’s leg ’cos after a minute his words fall out. ‘This is my sister’s necklace,’ he says, and takes a white parcel out of his pocket and unwraps it. He pulls his knees into his chest. ‘JVF killed her,’ he says, ‘but it was my fault.’

  Raul

  The fireballs puff up into transparent lanterns and hover over us, their glow pulsing, warm and soft.

  ‘Alessa. She was called Alessa,’ I say. ‘She was killed in a tree fall. She shouldn’t have been there. She was hiding behind it ’cos I told her to. I was supposed to come and find her, but I didn’t. They should’ve checked the area. But they didn’t. It was stupid.’

  ‘Why didn’t you go?’ Maya says and looks out at the moon.

  ‘I was with Matias,’ I say, ‘playing football.’ And tell her the story, the way I’ve told it to myself. The way I’ve run it through my head over and over again.

  ‘That afternoon we were doing one on ones. We drew sticks to see who was paired with who. I got the one no one wanted.

  ‘Matias.

  ‘Matias always wins. Always.

  ‘Alessa kept pulling at my shorts to play with her.

  ‘I sent her into the woods. I said I’d come and find her and told her to hide.

  ‘I watched her run away and thought about beating Matias. That’s all I thought about. This time I really wanted to beat him.

  ‘The loggers were cutting close to the village and everyone was trying to act like things were normal, but they weren’t. Tension was high. We could hear the saws. Everyone was wondering when they would reach the village. How close they would come. When? But no one was talking about it. Everyone was just getting on with their lives.

  ‘Matias’s dad’s way was fronting up. He went to watch every day, refusing to leave while they worked. His presence reminding them of what they were destroying.

  ‘Everyone else had football. It was the best escape I knew. The only way to switch everything off. Alessa’s way was playing with me. I just wanted her out of the way.

  ‘We kicked off. Me against Matias. I scored first. I dribbled past him and bent it in from the corner. Matias equalised. There was one minute left. I had the ball. I wasn’t going to let him win. I wasn’t going to let him beat me. I ran at his goal with everything I had. All the other kids were calling my name like a wolf – Rauulll. Everyone used to scream it like that. I skidded and fell. I thought I was done for. But I drew my foot back and kicked.

  ‘He wasn’t expecting it. He thought I’d gone down.

  ‘It went straight through his legs and scored.

  ‘Everybody screamed and cheered. Nobody beat Matias. Ever.

  ‘I got up. I was so proud. My knee was bleeding, but I didn’t care. I had won. I felt magic.

  ‘Then I heard it. The scream. We all did.

  ‘Not cheering. Pure fear.

  ‘I looked up to see people running. “Alessa, where’s Alessa?” they were shouting. My mother came, drying her hands on her skirt, running after them. Everything went hazy. And slow.

  ‘The loggers ran.

  ‘When I saw it I was sick.

  ‘Where the logs were piled they had rolled. Squashing two bodies into the earth.

  ‘It wasn’t just Alessa under it.

  ‘Matias’s dad was there too.’

  Maya

  The words hit me and click everything into place. How Matias and Raul are united by this and pulled apart. How Matias calls the shots and gets to. Raul follows.

  Guilty.

  He must feel so guilty.

  And Matias is angry. So angry it’s eating him alive.

  ‘He died trying to save her?’ I say.

  Raul nods.

  ‘With Matias’s father gone, my dad did a ceremony and gave her necklace to the river to set their spirits free. Matias’s dad was the shaman. We couldn’t shake the bad luck. So we all moved away. To the town. To places with concrete. And cars.

  ‘We kept connected to the water by the channels flowing through our town. The Incas made the channels, pulling water up from the earth to flow down the streets. And the earth magicked up Alessa’s necklace. Two years later. Out of the water into our town. Calling me back. It was a sign. It was what brought me here.’

  We sit there in the dark. And the moon. Listening to the rain.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault. It was theirs,’ I say.

  ‘But you want to find your mother, right?’ He hangs his head.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say and pick my fingers and say the words that have been swirling round my head. ‘I don’t even know her. I don’t know what I want.’

  ‘You might want to see this first,’ Matias says from behind and we both turn.

  Maya

  Matias drags himself along the deck, supporting his bad leg by hanging his arm off the hammock hooks spread out across the low roof, his face lit up by his phone that he holds out.

  The fireballs turn to stare at him and wrap around me and Raul. I wonder if we look like two people wrapped in a cloud of fairy lights.

  I don’t know what it says on the phone but the look on Matias’s face tells me I don’t want to.

  The balls start to lift us off the earth. Away from Matias. They want to get away. They lift us off the boat. Raul grabs my arm. Our feet hover in the air. We go backwards, out over the edge of the boat and then up. Up and up. I see the rust on the ship’s roof, the moonlight glowing off the river. Higher, we go higher. We see the tops of the trees. The rain pours on our heads.

  ‘No, no.’ I shake my head. ‘Down,’ I say, ‘put us down.’ They grumble a low rumble and roll their eyes, but lower us down gently. We land back on the deck.

  Matias comes closer, closer. Blood has soaked through his bandages. Thump, thump, thump, his bad leg drags. He comes right up to us and holds the phone out.

  I take it.

  The page is in Spanish. I have no idea what it says.

  I pass it to Raul.

  He looks confused and like it touches something inside him that I don’t understand. ‘It’s about your mother. It says she isn’t in prison,’ he says. ‘It says she was an activist.’

  I don’t know what to say to that. A flash of connection lights in my stomach. We’re doing something she would have done? We’re doing something she stood for? Then I notice the look on Raul’s face. ‘Was?’

  Raul hangs his head and looks at his feet. ‘It says she died.’

  Matias takes the phone back. ‘It says she died in an attack on a sawmill,’ he says.

  ‘She was part of the EIA?’ I look at the floor.

  ‘Kind of.’ Matias shakes his head. ‘She was part of the movement before it existed.’

  I think of her on the other side of the world. When I had no idea where she was. When I was three and the world snuffed her light out like a candle.

  And I had no idea.

  I think of me coming back, carrying on the work she stood for without even knowing it.

  ‘The sawmill was dealing in illegal wood. Rainforest wood. Protestors were trying to blow up the machines, but the bomb went off too soon and—’

  ‘OK, OK, stop!’ I shut my eyes. I don’t want to know.

  Matias slides his phone back in his pocket, puts his hands on his hips. ‘Guess who owns the mill.’

  I look at Raul, but no one says anything. No one has to.

  JVF.

  Raul

  Matias turns and limps away.

  ‘Someone’s lying.’ Maya folds her arms and yells. ‘Someone has to be lying!’

  Matias disappears downstairs
and starts the engine. Me and Maya run after him. The fireballs float behind her like a long mane of hair.

  ‘You can’t drive in this,’ I tell him. We look at the darkness sticking to the boat like treacle.

  ‘You want to get there or what?’ Matias puts his hands on the wheel. ‘I don’t want to sleep, do you?’

  ‘You can’t drive with that.’ I look at his leg. Maya looks like her thoughts are somewhere else.

  ‘I just have to sit down and pull levers.’ He shrugs. ‘Mainly.’

  ‘Why would my dad believe them?’ Maya screws up her face.

  ‘Maybe he has hope,’ I say, and don’t meet her eyes. I remember the hope I had when they didn’t find my sister’s body. I hoped she’d run away. I hoped she’d got lost. I hoped she’d hit her head on a tree and forgotten who she was. Now all my hope is out of my hands.

  ‘They probably told him she didn’t die.’ Matias folds his arms like he’s talking about something on TV, something that doesn’t even matter. I could punch him. ‘They probably said they locked her up and the papers got it wrong. They lie to everyone.’

  I kick his good leg. Why’s he being such an idiot?

  ‘What?’ He raises his arms and the engine’s diesel fumes hang around us. ‘It’s true. Stuff like that happens all the time. People get locked up and disappear. You know it. We all know it.’ He looks out at the darkness. ‘He was probably desperate.’

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ I kick the chair this time.

  He revs the engine. ‘Get out of the way. I can’t see.’

  ‘All right, all right!’ Maya raises her hands to make us stop. The fireballs turn to look at her, nuzzling up under her arms.

  ‘Let’s just get there,’ she says. ‘Let’s go. I’ll drive.’

  Maya