Strange Fire

by Tommy Wallach

  “Should I be worried?” Gemma asked.

  “Nah,” Clive said, hoping he sounded more certain than he felt.

  The two of them were sitting on the lip of the small wagon. Clive could touch the dirt if he stretched out his toes, but Gemma’s feet were a good eight inches off the ground.

  “Why can’t the Protectorate just send soldiers out after we get back?”

  “They’d take too long to get here. Things might get covered up.”

  “If it’s so important to Burns, can’t he go on his own?”

  “Da wouldn’t let him. He said it was a responsibility they had to share.”

  “Of course he did.” Gemma kicked the heel of Clive’s boot with the toe of her own. “I’m so tired of being on the road.”

  “We all are. Even Da, I think.”

  “Momma always hated it. Remember that tour we did over to the coast, way back when? Us kids were seeing the ocean for the very first time, jaws down on the sand practically at how beautiful it all was, and then Momma said—”

  “ ‘What use could anybody have for so much water?’ ”

  They laughed. It had been doubly funny at the time, because Gemma’s mother had been a particularly humorless woman.

  “She didn’t even realize she’d made a joke,” Clive said.

  “Oh, I know she wasn’t always the most fun, Clive, but I miss her. I miss her all the time.”

  “I know.”

  Six years ago Viola Poplin had gone out to harvest summer squash from the family plot outside the Anchor, and nobody ever saw her again. Bandits most likely, who’d killed her for her horse and what few shekels she had on her person. Michael and Flora were only four at the time, young enough to shrug off the hurt, to allow the maternal void to be filled by their older sister and Ellen Hamill. But Gemma had been too old to forget what she’d lost—in a way, it made her the only one of them who was truly motherless.

  Something told Clive to take hold of Gemma’s hand. It was still a novel sensation; they’d only done it for the first time about a month ago. He’d always thought couples looked silly that way, like overprotective mothers afraid to let their children run free. Now he understood what all the fuss was about. It was more intimate than you’d expect, locking your fingers up in someone else’s—a pale but palpable imitation of that greater intimacy that was not to be spoken of, however much it might prey on your mind.

  “You know what I’ve been thinking about?” Gemma asked.

  Not what I’m thinking about, Clive thought.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  “I’ve been wondering what would’ve happened if our fathers hadn’t been friends. Would we have found each other anyway? Walking around the Anchor, just a couple of strangers, you think we would’ve seen each other and said, ‘That one, there, that’s the one I’m meant to be with’?”

  “I don’t know,” Clive said. From the slight crumple in Gemma’s expression, he recognized his mistake. “I mean, I would’ve noticed you, of course. I just might not have had the courage to talk to you.”

  “Flatterer.” She smiled, giving his hand a little squeeze. “Do you remember the first time you noticed me?”

  “I’ve known you since I was a baby. How could I remember that far back?”

  “I’m not talking about the first time you saw me. I’m talking about the first time you noticed me. You understand the difference?”

  “Not really.”

  Gemma rolled her eyes. “Well, how about I tell you the first time I noticed you?”

  “Go on, then.”

  “It was just after my fourteenth birthday. I was scared to see you, because a couple days before, Da was talking to me about boys, and he said something like, ‘How would you feel ending up married to Clive?’ And I swear I’d never thought of you like that before. You were like another brother to me, you know? But then I saw you that Sunday at church, all dressed up in that adorable blue suit you used to wear—”

  “It’s Clover’s now.”

  “—and when you waved to me across the aisle, you gave me this big old grin, and I thought to myself, ‘well, Gemma, you could do a whole lot worse.’ ”

  Clive laughed. “That’s some faint praise if I ever heard any.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way!”

  “I know, I know.”

  They were quiet for a moment.

  “Your turn now. When did you first notice me?”

  She was looking up at him, her eyes big and sapphire blue, and because he still didn’t have an answer, he leaned over and kissed her. It was their first kiss, and even though Clive had kissed plenty of other girls (seven, to be exact), he was so surprised at the enthusiasm with which he was met that he forgot what to do with his hands or his head or his lips or his tongue, and before he had the chance to remember any of it, Gemma was pulling away.

  “All right, lovebirds,” Burns said, coming around the side of the wagon, “you finished saying your good-byes?”

  “No,” Gemma said. “But it’ll have to do.”

  They followed Burns back to the big wagon, which was all packed up and ready for travel. The plan was for the men to ride east in search of this pumphouse, while Clive’s mother would take the big wagon and hole up with the children fifteen or twenty miles west along the Southern Tail. The small wagon would have to be left behind, hidden as well as they could manage in the woods outside Amestown, and the men would hitch it up again on their way back.

  “You be careful now,” Clive’s mother said, hugging him so tight he felt his ribs creaking. “I’m not kidding around.”

  “I will.”

  Clover was waiting just behind her, still looking guilty as a killer approaching the gallows.

  “Here,” he said, and offered up the crystal he’d found at the stream.

  As angry as Clive still was, he couldn’t help but feel touched by the gesture. Ever since he was little, Clover had collected precious stones like this one, hoarding them like a goblin in a fairy tale. He didn’t part with them easily.

  “Thanks,” Clive said, taking the stone.

  “Don’t lose it, okay? I’ll want it back.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  After that, Clive was tackled by a dual hug from Michael and Flora, who hadn’t yet learned to be ashamed of loving someone unreservedly.

  Only one more parting left. He’d only been planning to give Gemma a friendly hug, but she tilted her head at the last moment, catching him with a kiss right there in front of everyone. “When we get home, you can propose to me proper,” she whispered in his ear. “Then we can do whatever we want.”

  She backed away before he could say anything in response, casting her eyes demurely toward the ground. He climbed up onto his horse and urged it into a trot. When he looked back for one last glimpse of her, the sun was so bright in his eyes, she appeared only as a shadow—the faceless outline of a girl, waving good-bye.

  7. Clover

  CLOVER SAT IN THE BACK of the big wagon, trying and failing to read a book of poetry, Flora’s little head heavy in his lap. Michael was up front in the driver’s seat next to Ellen; whenever he was scared, he liked to be close to her. Gemma was passed out on a pile of folded blankets up against the wagon gate. Only a few hours ago, he’d had to watch her kiss Clive good-bye. He could still picture their lips sticking together as they disengaged; just the thought of it made his stomach churn.

  Still, however revolting the kiss might’ve been, it wasn’t the source of his current disquiet. He couldn’t stop hearing his brother’s voice—You gave me your word. And while there had been plenty of good reasons to break his promise—because keeping secrets from your parents was a sin, because they had a duty to the Church to investigate any incident involving the anathema, because Clive’s odd infatuation with Burns needed to be nipped in the bud—Clover knew his true motivations had been far less noble. Bitterness. Jealousy. A desire to show his parents that Clive was far from the perfect little Honor-in-train
ing he pretended to be.

  Now, at Clover’s prompting, they’d ridden off into who knew what sort of danger. And what if one of them got hurt, or worse? How would he live with himself knowing that it was all his fault?

  “What’s wrong?” Flora asked, gazing up from her cozy berth in his lap. Her eyes were a pale, eerie blue—different from those of her siblings. If you stared into them for long enough, you started to get the feeling the girl was a lot older than she looked.

  “Nothing. I thought you were sleeping.”

  “I’m not. And you’re a liar.”

  “Am not.”

  “You are, though.” Flora turned her head to look out the back of the wagon. “Rain’ll be here soon.”

  The sky was gray, aswirl with clouds, promissory.

  Suddenly Gemma sat bolt upright, bending into a perfect right angle. Clover’s first instinct was to laugh, but then he saw her eyes: pure white, the same color as the crystal he’d given to Clive. She jerked violently and fell onto the wooden floor of the wagon, shaking like a fish freshly pulled out of the water.

  Clover crawled to her side, calling out to Flora as he went. “Get up front and tell Ma to stop the wagon. I’ll see to your sister.”

  He’d seen Gemma have plenty of fits over the years, though this was the first time he’d had to take care of her on his own. He rolled her over onto her side, so she didn’t end up choking on her own spit, and lifted her head up onto his leg, where it was soft. He didn’t know if she could hear him, but he tried talking to her anyway—“Everything’s gonna be okay. You’re gonna be just fine. I’ve got you.” It always hurt him to watch her like this; he wished he could take the suffering on himself. She would be so grateful to him that she’d forget all about Clive, and then they’d—

  It came without warning: a sharp contraction sent her flexed fist careening into his left eye. His surprise gave way to agony, as Gemma’s fingernails tore bright red ribbons of pain down his cheek. He reached for her hand and held it there, trapped against his face, until at last her fingers loosened and her whole body went slack. It was over. She’d wake up in a few minutes with a thumping headache, but it didn’t look as if any permanent damage had been done. On impulse, Clover brushed a lock of Gemma’s hair back around her ear. So soft . . .

  Only then did he notice that the wagon had come to a stop, and that his mother, Michael, and Flora were all watching him from the front seat. Michael’s smile grew wider and wider, until it broke into a full-on laugh.

  “She punched you! You got beat up by a girl!”

  “Michael Poplin, you better hush,” Clover’s mother said, “or this girl will give you a punch in the eye.”

  A pattering started up on the canvas roof of the wagon: the rain had come. Little droplets darkened the dry red earth they left rutted in their wake. Clover let his head fall back against one of the hickory boughs that arched overhead, and before long, the swaying of the wagon and the thrumming of the rain put him to sleep. His dreams were haunted by a shapeless threat, a red-eyed monster hidden in roiling black fog. When he came to again, the wagon was jostling to a stop at the edge of the road, though the sun wouldn’t set for a couple of hours yet.

  “This is as far as we go,” Ellen said, opening up the gate so they could all get out the back.

  “Da said we should spend the night in Laramie,” Clover replied.

  “I know what he said. But we’re safe enough here. Nobody’s going to trouble a ministry wagon full of children.”

  Clover figured he knew the real reason his mother wanted to stop: she didn’t like the idea of being any farther away from the men than she had to be.

  “That doesn’t make any sense, Ma. Five more miles might as well be a hundred, if something goes wrong—”

  “Clover!” There was a profound terror in his mother’s eyes; for a moment, he wondered if she was going to cry. “Don’t you talk about things going wrong,” she said, more quietly but with the same intensity. “Don’t bring those thoughts into the world. The Daughter will protect them, like she always has.” She made the sign of the annulus on her chest.

  “Sorry, Ma.”

  He felt bad about upsetting her, but it wasn’t as if talking about something made it any more likely to happen. Besides, the prospect of dying was something they’d all had to come to terms with a long time ago. There’d been so many close calls over the years: the snakebite that kept Clive in a fever-sleep for almost a week, the bandits who stole their gold annulus and a couple of weeks’ worth of food at knifepoint, the half-dozen run-ins they’d had with Wesah raiders. Luck had seen them through all these misadventures, but luck always ran out eventually. That was what his mother didn’t want to think about.

  That night, Clover struggled to find his way into sleep. He kept imagining all the ways his father and brother might be killed—stabbed through the stomach and slit open at the neck, hanged from a tree and hacked into bits, starved and tortured and drowned and burned and choked and beaten. These fantastical horrors proliferated and ramified, growing ever more byzantine and gruesome.

  Only after he’d spent hours tossing and turning under the blanket did it occur to him: all of this was happening for a reason. Here he was, only half a dozen miles from where he’d started out that morning, and wide awake while everyone else was asleep. The signs were too obvious to ignore.

  A few minutes later he tiptoed past his mother’s tent, past the soft shushing sounds of the Poplin children breathing. The moon overhead was bright and full, milky white, benedictory. He carried the saddle from the wagon over to where the animals were tied up.

  But something wasn’t right. There were only three horses here; the chestnut called Dart was missing. Clover looked around and spotted the animal standing at the crest of a hill just a little ways up the road. Someone was mounted on her back, and they were moving slowly enough that Clover was able to catch up on foot.

  “Gemma?” he whispered.

  She turned the horse about. “Clover?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Sneaking off, obviously. How’d you catch me?”

  Clover held up the saddle. “Because I came out here to do the same thing.”

  “Huh,” Gemma said. “Well, ain’t that something.”

  They stood there in silence for a moment, marveling at the coincidence. Whatever trepidation Clover had felt melted away. Clearly, the Lord was telling him he had a job to do, one that required him to be alone with Gemma, possibly for days.

  He went back to the other horses and untethered Almondine.

  “Your ma won’t be able to move that wagon with only two horses,” Gemma said, once Clover had rejoined her at the top of the hill. “We’re stranding them here.”

  “Better to be without horses than without a husband,” he said, then gave a little tug of the reins and trotted off into the darkness.

  8. Clive

  THEY MADE CAMP AN HOUR after sunset. Other than a couple of broken-down shacks and the rotted remains of a silo, they hadn’t seen any sign of human habitation since Amestown.

  Clive was given the first watch, apparently because it was the easiest. He thought he’d be frightened, staring out into that panorama of darkness, but the gravity of the task made his fear seem insignificant. These three men were trusting him with their very lives, and that made him want to be the kind of man who deserved such trust. He’d never been more awake or alert than he was during those four hours; a squirrel could have leaped off a tree a mile away and he would’ve heard it.

  He woke Eddie when the fire was burning down low and then unrolled his blanket and lay down. The events of the past twenty-four hours scrolled by in his head: blowing out the candles of his birthday cake, the dark vortex of the painted woman’s bosom, Arthur Edwards screaming as Burns crushed his skull, the stranger threatening Clover in the streambed, the soft cushion of Gemma’s lips. This last thought lingered, the same way her smell did after she’d left a room—saddle leather and horsehair, jasmine f
rom a bottle of scent Eddie had given to her on May Day.

  No red-blooded man could have failed to notice the way Gemma had grown into herself over the past few years, and that passionate kiss they’d shared had revealed a side of her Clive hadn’t known existed. Yet he still wasn’t sure how he felt about marrying her. They’d spent their whole childhoods together, like brother and sister almost, and there was an inevitability to their pairing that had defused any sense of tension between them. The boys he knew back at the Anchor were always talking about the girls they liked, and whether those girls liked them back, and whether their parents could be convinced to arrange it officially. Clive could never play along, because there was no fun in saying, This is the girl I’m meant to be with. I guess she likes me and I guess I like her. We get along just fine.

  But he did love her. Of course he did. She was beautiful and musical and as good with a horse as any Wesah warrior. But his love for her was all muddled up, not only because everyone seemed to take their eventual nuptials for granted, but also because of how Clover felt about her.

  At least the kiss had been good. Clive could think of a lot of things worse than kissing Gemma. He allowed himself to relive the moment, to hear her voice low and soft in his ear—we can do whatever we want—and the sweet promise of it was just enough to put him to sleep.

  By the time the sun succeeded in hoisting its pale pink frame above the jagged horizon, they were already back on the move, following the vague outline of a trail. The silver snake of the Ivan slithered along the valley floor to the west, while to the east, hills dotted with ponderosa pine and cottonwood trees rolled past. Summer made itself known that day with a heat that descended early, landing on the back of the neck and slinking slug-slow down the spine. The warmth from the animal beneath him was almost unbearable, making his legs sweat and then chafe with each step. But almost unbearable was still bearable, when it came down to it. Clive was ready to drop by the time they stopped for lunch, but all he said was, “We done already?” The food fortified him, so he barely groaned when the time came to mount up again.