Strange Fire
Page 3
A bell rang from inside the tent, signaling that the gathering was about to begin. There would be time to wrestle with all these questions later—wounds heal, doubts fester, as the Filia had it. For now, there was the Lord’s work to do.
3. Clover
EDDIE OPENED UP THE SERVICE a few minutes later. Though it had taken him a few years to grow comfortable speaking in front of a crowd, he’d eventually absorbed Honor Hamill’s dictum that “every human being has the word of God inside him somewhere.” These days, he almost seemed to enjoy it. The congregation recited the Trinity Prayer along with him:
Father in the ground
Whose fist is the Daughter
Whose love is Gravity
Thank you for your gift
Release us not into darkness
But hold us to your mantle
As you always have
And always will
Forever and ever
World without end
Amen
Then Honor Hamill came out from the back of the tent, dressed in his robes the color of flames. He gave the audience a big smile, the kind that made everyone want to smile along with him. Clover’s father had been a traveling minister for more than twenty years—making him the most senior Honor currently working the roads. Rumor had it that he would be nominated to the Gloria when they finished this tour of the Tails, and Clover hoped with all his heart that those rumors were true. At sixteen, he’d already been on a dozen tours, and he’d just about had it with life on the road. It also meant he would finally be able to dedicate himself to his studies at the Library full-time.
“Good people of Amestown,” Honor Hamill began, “it is such a pleasure to be here with you tonight. The Church sends its apologies that we haven’t been able to get an Honor out this way for so long, but I’ll do my best to make it worth the wait.” The laughter that greeted this statement was polite at best; Clover’s father was many things, but hilarious wasn’t one of them. “I was pleased to see that the mill our engineers helped you all build is still going strong, and from what I hear, you had a bountiful harvest this past summer. Glory be to God.” He applauded for them, which gave them an excuse to applaud for themselves. “I’m going to try to keep things brief tonight, so we can get around to the music and the dancing. But talk is like liquor; if you’re gonna go short, you gotta go strong. Ladies and gentlemen, the Book of Nelson will be our moonshine tonight.” A low rumble ran through the audience; Nelson wasn’t exactly a crowd-pleaser, particularly among those newer to the faith.
Honor Hamill produced his Filia from the shelf under the ambo. It was a work of art—bound in red leather, with a shiny gold-leaf annulus on the cover. “Let me attempt to describe to you the glory of the Daughter,” Honor Hamill read, “though no words could ever do justice to the terrible beauty of that creature as she fell from the infernal heavens like some radiant bird of prey. She wore a cloak of crimson fire, but as she approached, all the colors of the rainbow appeared within that crimson. The blue of summer skies. The green of fresh shoots breaking from the loam. Bronzes and silvers and golds more scintillant than any jewels known to man. And when she landed, she gave off a light so bright that it illuminated the farthest reaches of every cavern, every home, and every soul. All the works of man fell away like the veils they were, and humanity stood naked before her. And the Lord said, ‘Behold, for I have sent my only daughter to you, to cleanse this world of sin.’ But for Noach, who had been warned to build a stronghold deep in the crust of heaven, there to keep his family and two of each animal that walked the Earth, all others burned in the great Conflagration. Even babes and children melted away like wax, their flesh running in rivers through the streets, for they had been tainted by the fruit of those times, as Aleph was said to have been tainted by the nectar of the Great Tree. And the name of that nectar was science, and its sweetness was the sweetness of death.”
Clover shivered—he’d always hated that passage.
Honor Hamill gave the dark words time to breathe, to expand in the hearts and minds of the assembly. “There are truths in the Book of Nelson,” he said at last. “Truths that must be carried with us every hour of every day.” Finally he closed the front cover of his Filia, and it was as if the whole congregation exhaled at once. “My family and I, along with a few other good people I’m lucky to call friends, have been out on the road for almost four months now. Amestown represents the farthest reach of our circuit, the outermost limit of the Lord’s Descendancy as it stands today. Tomorrow we begin the long journey back home. But tonight is important for another reason. It is my eldest son’s eighteenth birthday. And it is for him that I read from the Book of Nelson. He left the Anchor as a boy, but he will return as a man. And a man doesn’t shy away from hard truths.”
Clover felt another stab of jealousy as his father beamed down at Clive.
“I fear for him,” Honor Hamill went on to say, looking back up at the audience. “As I fear for all of us. Time rushes forward, and it requires all our strength not to be dragged along with it. We must surrender to that divine energy that binds us to the earth, that holds the moon and sun at their safe and proper distance. We must resist the devil who beckons us upward, with promises of so-called progress. In the name of the Father below us . . .”
“In the name of the Father below us . . . ,” the congregation repeated.
“. . . the Daughter beside us . . .”
“. . . the Daughter beside us . . .”
“. . . and the Holy Force of Gravity.”
“. . . and the Holy Force of Gravity.”
“Amen.”
“Amen.”
From the back of the stage, Clover watched Clive step forward to take his solo. The gathering was in full swing, everyone dancing and clapping along with the music, their faces orangey-red in the flickering candlelight. In the enclosed space made by the canvas, the stench of moonshine and the reek of sweat battled for supremacy.
Clover’s father, his body mostly hidden behind the double bass, gave him a pointed look. Clover had lost track of the progression, chopping the wrong chord on the downbeat for the last few measures. For some reason, the puniness of the mandolin embarrassed him tonight, as if he’d shown up for a sword fight with a butter knife. Clive stepped back and made room for Gemma to take a solo on the fiddle, and as they passed each other, they shared a smile: man to woman, Aleph to Eva, ready to engender nations.
“I’m feeling fit to pass out,” Clover said to his father, once the song was finished.
“I think we can manage the last few without you,” Honor Hamill said. “Get yourself to bed.”
“Thanks, Da.”
Clover put his mandolin away and left the tent. Just outside, a handful of people were congregated around the tables where the food and libations had been laid out. Beneath one, a corpulent, thick-bearded man was already asleep and muttering. Nearby, a couple of teenagers were in the process of slipping away into the woods at the edge of the field, advertising their misbehavior with loud giggles. Clover wondered why it always seemed that everybody in the world was having more fun than him. Why did loneliness stick to the spirit like sap, so that even when you were surrounded by hundreds of people, you could end up feeling entirely on your own?
The urge struck him suddenly, and he acted before he could think better of it. Making sure no one was watching, he threw out the dregs of his old mug of pine tea and filled it up to the brim with shine. The alcohol burned like the Daughter going down, but after a few mouthfuls, everything turned warm and numb and sleepy. Within minutes, he could hardly remember what he’d been so sad about. What did it matter if Clive was a man now? What did anything matter?
He drifted like a dandelion seed back into the tent. Gemma was singing “What a Weight.” Her skin shimmered with sweat, and her voice was a lightning bolt.
I’m gonna tell her I love her tonight, Clover thought. My brother be damned.
“That’s a fine specimen, ain’t it?” said a man s
tanding nearby. His shirt was unbuttoned a few inches too far down his chest, and the red crackle around his pupils advertised his advanced state of inebriation.
“Sure is,” Clover said.
“The things I could do to her.”
“All of ’em,” Clover added, enjoying the novel experience of being taken for a normal teenage boy, rather than the prudish son of an Honor.
“Between you and me”—the man leaned closer, but went on speaking at a normal volume—“I say we’ve put up with these fanatics long enough. All this mumbo jumbo about God’s Daughter and how we should give ’em money for that fancy city of theirs? It’s horseshit, plain and simple.”
Even through the increasingly dense fog induced by the shine, Clover was shocked. He’d heard the adults talk about how difficult it was for the Descendancy to maintain its authority out at the fringes of its territory, but he’d never actually heard someone speak so disrespectfully about the Church.
“You don’t believe in tithing?” he asked.
“Tithe is just another word for tax, which is just another word for thievery.”
“But the Anchor built that new mill of yours, and they advise your farmers—”
The man waved this argument away like a bad smell. “We were doing just fine before they came along. Better, even. And now we always got to be worried they’re gonna get wind of what’s going on out east. I mean, if these folks had shown up just a few days ago, they mighta caught sight of that fire, and then what? They’d bring the hammer down, believe you me.”
“The Descendancy doesn’t believe in violence.”
“They say that, sure, but then what do they have that Protectumate for?”
“Protectorate,” Clover corrected. “And what fire are you talking about?”
“You didn’t hear? Riley was bringing the you-know-what over from the pumphouse, and he gets it too close to the—”
At that moment, a woman standing nearby suddenly slapped the man in the back of he head. “What kinda crazy are you talking, Dominic? You oughta be ashamed of yourself. And him a member of this fine ministry and all.”
“What’s that?” Dominic said.
“Didn’t you see him up there playing the mandolin?” The woman leaned down and pinched Clover’s cheek. Her breath stank of shine. “And ain’t he cute as a button?” She straightened up and took Dominic by the arm. “Come on. We gotta get you home.”
Dominic put his weight onto the woman’s shoulder and they stumbled off together. Clover closed his eyes, trying to get his swimming head around everything he’d just heard. He needed to lie down.
In his drunken state, it took him nearly half an hour to set up the tent, during which time he tried to put together a mental list of all the questions brought up by his short conversation with Dominic. Who was Riley? What was you-know-what? What was a pumphouse? Why had there been a fire, and what would it matter if someone had seen it?
He lay down inside the tent with every intention of staying awake long enough to consider these questions more deeply. But the moment his head hit the pillow, all of them dissolved, and he was out cold.
4. Clive
MY, BUT THERE WERE A lot of pretty girls in the crowd tonight: small girls and big girls, older girls and younger girls, light-haired girls and dark-haired girls, light-skinned girls and dark-skinned girls. Girls who danced like they had the devil on their minds and girls who danced like they wouldn’t give up their first kiss until they were standing beneath the bridal arch. Each one made beautiful by the candlelight and the shine and the music.
But there was one more beautiful than the others, because she was making such an effort to catch Clive’s eye. She wore her chestnut hair in a long plait that snaked down her neck and over her chest, limning the décolletage of a white cotton dress so tatty it was almost improper. She fingered the end of the plait coyly as she swayed along with the music, and her smile was like a promise.
After the next song, Gemma started up a reel on the fiddle, to give the rest of the band a break. And could it be a coincidence that the girl chose that precise moment to slip out of the tent?
Outside, a few dozen people were milling around, talking and laughing. Clive spotted the girl sauntering around the edge of the tent, away from the crowd, and began to follow her.
“Someone’s got mischief on his mind,” Burns said.
The sergeant was leaning up against the tight canvas of the tent, smoking a cigarillo.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I ain’t judging, Clivey. Truth be told, I’ve got some mischief of my own to attend to. Perhaps you’d like to join in on the fun? I could use a second.”
“What are you planning?”
“Sorry, but I can’t tell you that. I can only show you.” He took one last drag on the cigarillo, then flicked the stub away. “I’m not saying it’ll be more fun than a grope and a giggle with a willing local, but it’ll certainly be more instructive.”
The laughter and shouting of the assembly seemed to dim. Gemma’s fiddle was a distant birdsong. Clive thought of the thousand things he could say in objection—My father wouldn’t want me to or I’m supposed to be playing at the gathering or I don’t trust you far as I can throw you, and I doubt I could even pick you up.
But he didn’t say any of it. Not only because he’d been dying to pick the sergeant’s brain about the soldiering life ever since they’d started traveling together, but also because Burns had already begun walking away, across the long grass, toward the tree line—and whatever it was he meant by mischief.
Branches cracked beneath their feet like brittle old bones. The temperature in these parts could drop precipitously after dark, but tonight was on the warm side, and the forest was abuzz with insects. They congregated at the watering holes of perspiration perpetually forming all over Clive’s body.
“Why’re we walking through the woods when there’s a perfectly good trail?” he asked.
“Your brother would’ve worked that out already,” Burns said.
Clive subdued the flash of anger, resisting the urge to retort. The jibe only stung because it was true. And now that he thought about it, the explanation was pretty simple: they weren’t taking the trail because they were trying to avoid being seen. A few minutes later, Clive caught sight of a vague constellation floating off in the distance. For a moment, he wondered if he was about to be inducted into some supernatural realm—Fairies really do exist, Burns would say—then the lights resolved into a handful of candle flames seen through sooty windows.
“Amestown,” Clive said. “But isn’t everyone at the gathering?”
“Some folks are too old to make the trip. Others don’t want to.”
“Why not?”
“Whatever your daddy tells you, folks got their own religion in the outerlands, and they ain’t near as eager to trade it in as you might expect.”
“You mean the totems?”
The totems were little stumps of flaking iron that could be found most everywhere people had built up some kind of township, and even in the woods sometimes. Descendant doctrine had it that they were holy relics, left behind by the children of Noach in memory of their progenitor. But some outlanders believed the totems to be spirits in their own right, leaving burnt offerings and garlands of flowers at their bases—a bunch of silly superstitions, in Clive’s opinion.
“Sure. Or else they buy into that whole Jesus story, or they go the Wesah route and decide every squirrel and every other tree is some sort of god.”
“If the people don’t believe in the teachings of the Church, why did Amestown agree to incorporate?”
“Because we convinced the town council that it was in their best interests to do so—which it was. But most of the folks at that gathering wouldn’t mind if the whole Descendancy disappeared tomorrow.” Burns stopped and took a folded piece of paper out of his back pocket. “Now where are we going?”
“Is that a map of Amestown? Where’d you get it?”
They turned left, keeping behind the tree line. Clive caught an occasional glimpse of the town through the branches. It was bigger than he’d expected—at least a hundred buildings of one sort or another. The one Burns eventually singled out as their destination was practically a ruin—its porch had rotted through in a dozen places, and where there had once been a small four-paned window, there was now just a frame. Burns approached the door and knocked with his fist rather than his knuckles, so the sound was like a heartbeat.
Nobody answered.
“See anything in that window?” Burns asked.
Clive squinted into the darkness: a half-disintegrated wicker rocking chair, shelves collapsed and moldering, broken pieces of ceramic.
“I don’t think anybody’s lived here for a long time.”
“Shit on a stick.” Burns pulled out the map again. “Guess we’re going this way, then.” He didn’t head back toward the woods, but straight down the main road of Amestown.
“I thought you wanted to keep hidden.”
“I did. Now I don’t. Keep up, Clivey.”
Closer to the center of Amestown, the buildings were in much better shape. In fact, some of them were downright impressive. Most towns this far from the capital were pretty backward when it came to construction, but all the homes here had at least one window, and a handful were two stories tall.
Burns stopped in front of a white stucco building with a sign swinging creakily over the entrance: a public house. Light spilled out from the doorway, along with the jangle of an out-of-tune piano.