Hold Your Fire

by Lisa Mangum

  I froze like a starving man holding a spoon of food up to his mouth, afraid to take that first delicious bite. It was there, within a day’s journey—two at the most! I could traverse the shallow lake and climb those cliffs. I could find the Seven Cities of Gold at last.

  But what if the cities were a disappointment when I found them? What if the gold was tarnished, the majestic cities no more than abandoned huts that were crumbling into dust? Maybe it was better that I didn’t risk that.

  After all, my dream was perfect as it was.

  Because it was late in the afternoon, I camped. The sun set behind the mesa, and red rays sent a firestorm of flares reflecting from the broad lake in the distance. That night I slept restlessly and dreamt of the finish line, the long unfulfilled quest that had sustained me for my entire life.

  What would I do with myself if I finally found my goal?

  Next morning, I packed up my camp and headed into the sunrise on the trail ahead, away from the mesa, leaving the prize in the shadow behind me.

  No, I was not ready to find the cities—not yet.

  Long afterward, I kept telling my story to many people who listened breathlessly, and the tales grew in the telling, thriving like a garden. My search itself became a thing of legend—and that was something I chose to perpetuate, because it was good for them to have their legends too, to have their unattainable dreams which I could provide. In my mind, that was a far more satisfactory experience than actually finding the Seven Cities.

  Life is but a candle, and a dream must give it flame. Who was I to extinguish the flame?

  About the Authors

  Kevin J. Anderson is the bestselling science-fiction author of 165 novels. His original works include the Saga of Seven Suns series; Spine of the Dragon; the Terra Incognita trilogy; and with Brian Herbert, he is the co-author of 15 novels in the Dune universe. He has written spin-off novels for Star Wars, DC Comics, and The X-Files. His first novel, Resurrection, Inc., was inspired by the Rush album Grace Under Pressure, with lyrics by Neil Peart.

  Neil Peart was the drummer and lyricist of the legendary rock band Rush and the author of Ghost Rider, The Masked Rider, Traveling Music, Roadshow, Far and Away, Far and Near, and Far and Wide.

  Anderson and Peart coauthored the steampunk fantasy novels Clockwork Angels and Clockwork Lives, as well as the graphic novel adaptations of both, and the story “Drumbeats.”

  Neil Peart passed away January 2020 after a long battle with brain cancer.

  The Fire Sermon

  Mary Pletsch

  I don’t even like cigarettes, but I light one anyway. I flick my thumb to mimic a lighter, and the tip of the cigarette bursts into flame.

  I wonder if this alley has security cameras. If so, I wonder if the person watching them could tell that there’s no lighter in my hand.

  I tilt the cigarette downwind, letting the breeze wash my long-sleeved silk blouse in tobacco smoke. It’s hot today, even with the wind. I wish I could wear short sleeves, but I don’t want my scars to show.

  Will anyone notice if I don’t take a drag on this cigarette? Best to be safe. I take a few puffs, grimacing, knowing if I keep up this front too long I might actually get addicted to the damned things. I drop the cigarette and crush it with my foot.

  I should pick it up and put it in the canister thoughtfully provided nearby. Flame courses through my veins and sets my heart pounding with alternate possibilities.

  The canister is meant to hold cigarette butts. The liner is fire-resistant. The canister itself, though, is made of rugged plastic.

  It might still burn.

  The contents of the garbage can beside it will definitely burn. Paper bags with half-eaten muffins, napkins, paper cups …

  My fingers grow hot. Underneath the cloud of tobacco smoke I can smell my hair beginning to singe.

  Deep breath. Cool thoughts.

  I walk out of the alley, turn the corner, open the door of the coffee shop, and step inside.

  I am not sure I belong with this writing group. I’ve been a member for five months, and the disorganization still irritates me.

  Shareef, yet again, has nothing to share this month because he’s been busy. He works in my office and he’s always busy. To his credit, he provides thoughtful analysis on everyone else’s work. I should be happy with that.

  I should be.

  Rua, yet again, has provided us with three thousand words of fan fiction.

  Kimiko, yet again, has refused to edit something unpublishable.

  And I, yet again, sit there, seething. The constant bickering pisses me off and starts me sparking. I’ll have to write all night to calm myself down. I wonder why I even bother with this group.

  Am I really this damned lonely? Is this what it’s come to?

  I don’t date. Don’t have kids. I avoid close friendships. I say it’s of my own choosing, but I don’t know how true that is. My choice is made with extenuating circumstances.

  I hate that I’m like this. I shouldn’t have to cope with a constant desire to burn things. Nobody else does.

  Injustice makes me angry.

  My gut roils. My hands itch. I can feel my skin tightening with heat. I keep thinking about the garbage can in the alley.

  I can’t stay. I’m too frustrated and that’s too dangerous.

  I stand up. Turn around.

  Come face to face with a girl with lank black hair that needs a good combing. A moment later, I inhale the skunky scent of weed.

  Ugh. I guess that’s legal here now, but I don’t want to smell it. It’s obnoxious; one more pushed button I have to try to ignore.

  You want to smoke? I’ll give you smoke.

  Wrath and hunger are a united voice shouting in my brain stem. Logic is a cool warden keeping the lizard brain in its terrarium. There’s a part of me that’s always found burning garbage cans unsatisfying. That part wants to know what it might be like to set fire to something more consequential.

  This is a person. Not tinder. A person.

  You can’t turn someone into a pillar of fire in the middle of a Coffee Moose.

  Look at her, and tell a story about her. Tell a story and burn it slowly. Keep the flares at bay with a story and a slow burn.

  I look at the girl again. What kind of person is she?

  She looks about the same age as Kimiko, who’s in university, but Kimiko is all cute collegiate in her pricy branded sweatshirt, while this girl … I can’t tell if she’s poor or just doesn’t care. Perhaps the second. The gold bracelets on her right wrist look real. She’s wearing a tee and jeans that aren’t like the deliberately distressed clothing they sell in the mall. Those little blackened holes in her clothes are made by sparks.

  “Uh, is this the writing group?” she stammers.

  “Yes,” I say. Sizing up our new member has distracted me from my frustration, and my hands are no longer burning. I offer one instead. “Welcome. I’m Kenna.”

  She shakes my cool hand, and I wonder what she sees when she looks at me: middle-aged, sensible blouse, pressed slacks. We couldn’t be more different.

  Then sparks jump between our palms.

  Instinctively, I press my hand hard against hers to snuff the fire.

  She sniffs. Her eyes grow wide.

  I don’t react. I’ve had forty years of not reacting in a way that others can see. My heart is pounding as I release her hand.

  Can’t be.

  In a lifetime of looking, I’ve never met anyone like me.

  “Folks, this is Agni, from my English Writing course,” Kimiko says, ignorant of my life-altering revelation.

  Kimiko’s words break the spell. Agni pulls up a chair, pulls out a sketch pad, and starts doodling. I sit back down and pretend to skim notes on Rua’s story.

  I sneak peeks at Agni’s art while we workshop Rua’s and Kimiko’s stories. Agni is drawing a dragon wreathed in a crown of flame.

  Shareef and I will have our turn next week. Kimiko invites Agni to submit something
too, and I know what she’s doing. Shareef is going to be too busy again. Agni agrees. We all give her our email addresses.

  I wonder if I’ll hear from her.

  I don’t hear from her. Not personally. Perhaps it’s my own fault. I don’t reach out to her, either, though I know I should.

  What I get from Agni is the same thing that everyone in the group gets: a short story submission entitled “Some Like It Hotter.”

  Kimiko is going to say the story is unpublishable, and she’s not wrong. Serial killer stories tend to be a hard sell. Worse, Agni makes a novice’s mistake. She dwells on the gruesomeness of the murders rather than making her protagonist compelling.

  I’m fascinated anyway.

  Because Agni is writing for a very specific audience. An audience of those who know what it’s like to feel the urge to burn.

  I wish she hadn’t chosen this boring detective as her point of view character. This should be a story for an audience that has looked at passersby on the street and imagined the pyre, smelled the smoke, and gritted their teeth and pressed their hands against their own arms and let the heat tear through their clothes, through their skin, down to the bone where there’s no more pain. An audience that has held the fire inside them until their eyelashes burn away and their skin blackens, lifting away from the muscles beneath.

  What if we didn’t hold back?

  I’m afraid to dwell on the wild excitement flaring inside me, so I take another look at my own submission. Princesses and Thieves is a perfectly serviceable fantasy, and last night I had been happy with it. Today, not so much.

  The best thing I can say about this story is that it’s okay. Solid beginning. Definitive ending. Suspense. Action. Laughs.

  This isn’t a story. It’s a checklist.

  Frustrated, I skim the folder labeled “Kenna’s Writing” for an alternative. One particular document catches my eye. Its name is a description, not a title: dragon. I have a sudden, vivid recollection of Agni’s sketch. I click and read to remind myself where this document came from.

  Hah. I’d cut it out of an early draft of Princesses and Thieves, where the princess and her sidekick attempt to steal the royal crown back from a dragon. I had scrapped the dragon because I was devoting too much of my word count to the dragon’s point of view, and I’d replaced her with a generic ogre warlord. A scoundrel who wouldn’t tempt me to waste limited space with detailed rhapsodies of fire.

  I like those rhapsodies. I love the part where the dragon faces down the heroes. “I was born to burn,” she proclaims, “and burn I will.”

  I wonder if Agni would enjoy it too.

  This concept appeals to me far more than Princesses and Thieves. It’s not like my usual submissions, but does that matter? I’m not trying to sell this story, and I don’t care what most of the group think of me.

  What’s the worst that could happen?

  I could write a crappy story.

  So what?

  I start typing away on the dragon file, and I do what I wish Agni would have done in her submission. I abandon all pretense of the princess as protagonist. I evade all temptation to dwell overlong on the crispy skin and bubbled fat of bodies retrieved from burned-out houses. I don’t flinch from the horror of villages razed to the foundations, but I do tell a tale of a dragon who turns a kingdom to ash because she was born to burn, and because she can.

  I call it “The Fire Sermon.”

  It’s a good night. A good day follows. No smoldering hands at work. No dreams of flame at night.

  Two days later, I get a private email from Agni.

  I’m nervous about my first workshop. Do you want to get together for coffee and talk about our stories before we meet with the whole group?

  Underneath is her cell number.

  I don’t believe she’s really anxious, but there are things that I won’t put into text. Particularly on computers, where nothing is ever really deleted. The incorporeal web of data and light is more permanent than an epigraph chiseled in stone.

  There are some things I don’t even say out loud. Words can change the way people think about you.

  I’ve always hated this, all the thoughts and feelings I don’t dare voice, and the tension of cloaking them under enough layers of fiction that I can plausibly deny they came from my heart. Someday I just want to write what I feel, no metaphors or allusions, no fear muzzling my deepest truths. Ironically, “The Fire Sermon” has been the most honest thing I’ve ever written.

  Yes, I want to talk about it. Not in a Coffee Moose, where other people might overhear. But there’s no way to put let’s go somewhere private onto the internet in a way that won’t seem suspicious to outside eyes.

  The texts I send are blandly agreeable. I accept the invitation. We pick a place—the same Coffee Moose—and a time—6 pm—after I’m done with work.

  No hypothetical investigator would know the subtext when I type I loved the real hero of your story.

  When I arrive, Agni is already there, waiting for me. She comes up to me while I order a coffee. I notice she doesn’t smell like weed today. She smells like ash and blackened logs.

  Drinks in hand, I suggest we walk and talk. Agni agrees. Once we’re out of the coffee shop, I mention how some things shouldn’t be spoken in earshot of others.

  “Yeah,” she agrees. “Sometimes it’s just hard to hold back, you know?”

  Do I ever.

  “You don’t smell like tobacco,” Agni says abruptly.

  “And you don’t smell like weed,” I counter.

  “But I still smell like something burning. You don’t. You don’t smell like anything at all.”

  I blink. “I … It’s been quiet lately. The fire, I mean.”

  “It does that?” Agni pounces on my words. “Goes out, I mean?”

  From her words I guess that hers is a constant low boil at the best of times. I remember feeling that way when I was her age.

  “I’d never say goes out,” I reply. “More like a low smolder. But I can manage it long enough to go to work, do chores, sleep at night.”

  “I have to burn a lot to concentrate in school,” Agni admits. “Or smoke a lot. I can sedate myself to the point I don’t want to set all the idiots around me on fire, but then I don’t want to do anything else, either.” She looks at me. “You’re obviously getting through life without spending every day getting so high you lose the urge to burn. How do you manage it?”

  “How I manage it,” I repeat automatically. It sounds like the most boring discussion I could imagine. How to blend into society while keeping everyone at a distance? I don’t want to talk about how I manage to hide what I am. What we are. I want her to keep blazing brightly, that weird, off-kilter spark that she is.

  “Yeah,” Agni says. “I mean, you must’ve burned something a lot bigger than dumpsters and abandoned buildings.”

  A chill runs down my back. “You’ve burned an abandoned building?”

  Her expression turns quizzical. “You haven’t?”

  I feel ashamed that I am not cool enough to have ever had the nerve to set a building on fire. Oh, I’ve wanted to.

  “I was a farm kid,” I say, by way of explanation. “I made huge bonfires.”

  “So what’s the biggest thing you ever burned?”

  “Tractor.” I’m proud. “An old rusted-out hulk that my grandfather had abandoned in the bush. Took me almost a year to finish. When I was all done, it was just a big oval of melted metal.”

  “You can focus your fire hot enough to melt metal?”

  “Like I said, it took a year of practice.” I pause. “Actually, I think I learned a lot from that. Focus, like you said. Control.”

  “Control,” Agni repeats with a frown.

  “Like this.”

  I reach into my purse, pull out a cigarette, hold it up in one hand, and snap my fingers with the other. The tip bursts obediently into flame.

  “Wow,” Agni says. She seems impressed, which surprises me, because I could d
o this easily at her age.

  “It’s about meeting my needs without drawing attention to myself. Some of it is burning small things. Like candles, incense, or these cigarettes that I don’t actually want to smoke.” The urge to burn something larger crawls over my skin, itching. “Most of it is about keeping myself distracted by writing stories.”

  “That’s why I draw as well as write. It’s easier to draw while other people are talking. Keeps my hands busy while my brain concentrates on reality. With writing, it’s easier to lose yourself inside your characters’ heads.”

  Which is exactly the point. When I’m tired of staying in control—when my patience is wearing thin—I can escape into someone else’s life. Someone else’s problems.

  Or I can escape into the life of someone who can let their fire free without fear of real-world consequences. They’re my characters. They’ll only suffer the consequences I’m willing to give them. Of late that’s been precious few. It’s my fantasy, after all. My dream.

  “Hey, you’ve got a car, right?” Agni says.

  “Yes.”

  She grins. “Because I know this run-down old barn outside of town. Eyesore, really. They should knock it down before it falls down.”

  The image hits me with almost physical force. I can smell the sweet scent of blazing wood, see the colorful chemical-tinted flames, feel the heat on my face.

  I want it.

  I want it more than anything.

  It’s beautiful.

  There were things I never thought I would dare to try. Things I never dreamed I could be.

  The barn’s main beam collapses. I watch a thousand sparks fly toward the moon, glowing like fireflies.