Strange Fire

by Tommy Wallach

  As if things weren’t bad enough already, four days after the altercation at the pumphouse, Eddie’s condition suddenly took a turn for the worse. He’d insisted his injury wasn’t all that serious, but ever since the softleaf ran out, he’d been losing strength. They’d set up a nice big pile of blankets for him in the back of the wagon, but the low-grade fever he’d been running for days had begun to intensify, and he wasn’t able to keep down more than a few spoonfuls of chicken broth.

  When they stopped that evening, Honor Hamill called everyone but Michael and Flora together for a parley. They made sure they were far enough from the wagon that Eddie wouldn’t overhear.

  “We’re coming up on Wilmington tomorrow,” Honor Hamill said. “It’s the biggest town until Two Forks, which is another fifty miles on. I don’t think we can afford to wait until then. Eddie could lose his leg.”

  “We’re likely to lose a lot more than that if we stop for too long,” Burns said.

  Clive didn’t want to be seen as always agreeing with his father, but he’d never be able to look Gemma in the eye again if he didn’t make an effort on behalf of Eddie.

  “We’ve put a good fifty or sixty miles between us and that pumphouse,” he said. “And for all we know, those men gave up following us a long time ago.”

  “What if they sent word on ahead, with that telegraph contraption of theirs?” Burns asked.

  “We can’t make decisions as if the whole world has gone crazy,” Ellen Hamill replied. “If you’re so worried, Sergeant, you go on alone.”

  “You know I can’t do that. You’re all my responsibility.”

  Burns could be confusing that way; Clive figured it was part of being a soldier. Sometimes, your sense of duty made you seem like a hero. Other times, it made you seem like a monster. Burns had sworn an oath to protect them, and Clive believed the man would willingly lay down his life to honor that oath. But if the order ever came down from the Grand Marshal that the whole ministry had to be killed, Burns would carry out the directive without a second thought.

  “All of us except my father, I guess,” Gemma sneered.

  “Your father, too. I’m here to keep everyone safe.”

  “Like you did at the pumphouse?”

  “We’re all alive, aren’t we?”

  “No thanks to you.”

  “That’s enough, Gemma!” Honor Hamill said. “Burns is right. We have to be sensible.”

  “But—”

  “And you’re right that we have to see to Eddie. We’ll stop in Wilmington, but not for a second longer than we have to. That work for everyone?”

  Clive could tell Gemma and Burns had plenty more to say on the subject, but both were smart enough to keep quiet.

  “Good,” Honor Hamill said. “Then it’s decided.”

  The Wilmington church was a typical Descendant house of worship; beneath a low-roofed dome painted a pale, flaking blue—unlike the domes in the Anchor, which were all elaborately tiled—pews were arranged in curved rows that stepped downward as they went, describing the two-thirds of the room that an Honor could comfortably address at once. The ambo was always given pride of place at the room’s lowest point. Above it hung an enormous annulus made up of tiny twigs braided together; it looked like a bird’s nest with the bottom sliced off.

  “Hello?” Clive’s father called out. The sound echoed around the room.

  After a moment, a woman emerged from a door behind the apse. Her head was shaved down to the skin—an odd tradition among some outerlands ministers—and the thinnest layer of silver fuzz had begun to grow back. As always, Clive found it strange to see a woman in the flame-red robes of an Honor. There were no female ministers in the Anchor proper, though it had been more than half a century since the Distaff Encyclical had granted women the right to seek ordination.

  “Can I help you?” she asked. Then recognition flooded her face. “Honor Hamill!”

  “Afternoon, Honor Epley.”

  “I didn’t expect you this early in the season.”

  “That makes two of us.” He quickly related the broad strokes of their story, eliding the details of what they’d seen in Riley’s cottage.

  “Well, thank the Daughter you got here safe. We’ve got guest quarters in the basement. Nothing extravagant, but they’ll keep you warm.”

  “I’m afraid we won’t be staying the night,” Burns interjected. “We just need to see the doctor and get moving again.”

  “That’s a shame. I was hoping I could convince the Honor here to give the sermon tomorrow morning.”

  “Next time around,” Honor Hamill said.

  “I hope so. Now, Dr. Brinton is just down the road from here, in the blue house with the gables. He’s a fine physician, Anchor-educated. Meantime, I’ll send Novice Dawson out to the sheriff, and he’ll let us know if any unfamiliar faces come sniffing at the gates.”

  “Thank you kindly, Honor.”

  Dr. Brinton’s house was only a few minutes’ walk from the church. When he answered the door, it was clear he’d just risen from a midday nap; his fluffy white hair had matted into a surprisingly tenacious crest. Thankfully, his apparent drowsiness evaporated when he learned who they were and why they were there, and his examination of Eddie—which he insisted take place behind a large paper screen, for the sake of the patient’s privacy—was anything but cursory. Clive held Gemma’s hand the whole hour they spent waiting for the doctor’s diagnosis. She stood up swiftly when he came back around the screen.

  “Can you save the leg?”

  “I believe so,” Dr. Brinton said. “But there’s a small pellet of what I believe to be iron buried deep in the muscle. I’ll have to take that out right away.”

  “Will you use chloroform or ether?” Clover asked.

  Dr. Brinton chuckled. “Chloroform, of course. It’s much faster.”

  “But it’s more dangerous.”

  “Speed is of the essence, Doc,” Burns said. “We need to get back on the road tonight.”

  Dr. Brinton took off his spectacles, the better to display his frown. “Oh, I can’t recommend that. I’ll need to see how Mr. Poplin responds to the surgery. If the infection doesn’t improve, the leg will have to go, and that’s not exactly a procedure you can carry out on the road.”

  “How soon then?”

  “Twenty-four hours at the very least.”

  “We don’t have twenty-four hours!” Eddie shouted out from the other side of the screen. “Just get this thing out of me and we’ll take our chances.”

  “But Daddy—” Gemma began to say.

  Only Eddie wasn’t in the mood for arguing. “Everybody who isn’t pulling metal out of my leg get the hell out of here right now! We’re wasting time.”

  Clive saw the first tear spill down Gemma’s cheek, just before she went running out of the room. A moment later the front door slammed shut.

  “Clive,” his mother said, a note of censure in her voice.

  “What?”

  “Go after her!”

  “Oh. Sure.”

  If it were him, he would’ve wanted a bit of time on his own. But girls were strange that way; they never seemed to want to be alone. He took off at a jog—down the hall and out the front door, off the porch and through the little wrought-iron gate. Distracted by thoughts of what he’d say when he caught up with Gemma, he smacked right into someone walking the other way.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “That’s all right.”

  It was a girl, licking at a sugar-on-a-stick she must have bought at the town general. She wore a white poncho and a dark wide-brimmed hat, and her skin was the color of wet clay. She was the sort of girl who made you realize that all the other girls you’d called “beautiful” hadn’t really deserved the label. And somehow Clive could tell that she knew he was thinking along those lines.

  “I’m chasing after someone,” he explained.

  “Lucky girl.”

  The smile she gave him was both open and sly at once, and his m
ind went blank as a tightly fitted sheet. “I’m Clive,” he finally managed to say.

  “Irene. See you around, Clive.”

  She walked on, toward Wilmington’s main street, and Clive paused a moment to watch her go. In a different world . . .

  Gemma. He was looking for Gemma. It seemed unlikely she would’ve headed toward the center of town, which was still pretty busy even though the sun had just begun to set, so he went in the other direction. There were only a few houses out this way, and you could see across the prairie for miles—thousands of cacti, each one standing there with its arms up, as if it were denying some wrongdoing: Don’t look at me, buddy.

  It was a good thing that Gemma was a whimperer; Clive never would’ve found her otherwise. She’d hidden herself behind the knee-high turret of a well, sitting with her legs akimbo and her face all splotchy from crying.

  “What am I?” Clive asked, then put both of his arms up at right angles. “Can you guess?”

  “Clive, please.”

  “I’m a cactus!”

  She wiped at her nose, trying to conceal the shadow of a smile. “You’re an idiot.”

  “That too.” He sat down next to her, leaning back against the uneven stonework. “Your da’s tough, Gemma. He’s gonna be fine.”

  “I don’t think so, Clive. I think this is my punishment.”

  “Punishment? For what?”

  “For what I did outside that pumphouse.”

  “You mean the man that Clover killed? That wasn’t your fault.”

  “It was, though. Otherwise why would I feel so bad? Why would I see his face every time I close my eyes?”

  “Because you’re good, Gemma. And it’s right to feel guilty sometimes. It means your conscience is working. But take it from a future Honor: the Daughter forgives you for what you did.”

  He couldn’t tell if she believed him or not, but after a moment, she let her head fall onto his shoulder. “I’m never leaving the Anchor again after this. I mean it. If you end up having to preach on the circuit, you can damn well do it on your own.”

  Clive laughed. “Deal.”

  “And when I get home, I’m gonna sit out in the Maple Garden every day for a month.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  Her voice got softer, dreamier. “Absolutely. I won’t do a single thing, either. No thinking, or reading, or anything. I’ll just sit there, being a person. And you can come too, of course. Unless you think your father will want you to start seminary right away.”

  “I’ll make time.”

  “It’s exciting, isn’t it? Finally starting your career in the Church? This is what you’ve been waiting your whole life for.”

  “Sure. But it’s hard to get too excited about something you’ve always known was going to happen.”

  She lifted her head abruptly off his shoulder, but it wasn’t until he saw the hurt in her eyes that he realized what he’d said. “That’s . . . that’s not to say that . . . you can’t be excited,” he stammered out, “only it depends on the exact, you know, thing . . . that you’re talking about.”

  “Sure,” Gemma said quietly.

  “I mean . . . there’s plenty of stuff that isn’t like that. Like you and me.”

  He reached out to take her hand, but her fingers lay limp in his own.

  Idiot, he thought, silently berating himself. He had to do better. It wouldn’t be long before he and Gemma were married. They had to figure out how to speak to each other like a husband and wife.

  “Gemma, I’m sorry—”

  “Shut up,” she said, rising quickly to her feet.

  “But I’m trying to apol—”

  “I said shut up!” She was staring out over the prairie, her eyes wide and fearful. “Look out there.”

  Clive stood up next to her. They couldn’t have been more than a mile or two away—six horses, black as nightmares beneath the wide crimson sky. A cloud of dust loomed up behind them like a sandstorm.

  The riders had come.

  13. Clover

  CLOVER GAZED OUT THE BACK of the wagon as it bucked and bumped along with every stone and divot in the road. He had his satchel next to him, the weapon from the pumphouse still hidden away at the very bottom. He’d told his father he’d dropped it during their chaotic escape in the dark.

  On the rare occasions when he could manage a bit of privacy, he would take it out for examination. Every time, he was struck by the sheer craftsmanship of the thing: the grip of dark polished wood, the complex floral tracings in the metalwork, swelling smoothly up to the cheek-like bulge of the barrel, which popped out to reveal the twelve small cavities where the pellets were kept. Only one of these holes was empty at the moment—the pellet he’d discharged to extinguish Riley’s lantern. The others were each plugged with a small cylinder of copper, a gritty white powder, and the pellet itself. His guess was that the trigger mechanism caused the hammer to slam into the copper, creating a spark that ignited the powder and expelled the pellet. Of course, how it worked wasn’t important—only if it did.

  They’d left Wilmington within ten minutes of Clive and Gemma spotting the horsemen—not west along the Southern Tail, as would be expected, but north, making use of a treacherous and boulder-strewn old mining road that ran all the way to the Northern Tail.

  The black hours of night passed uneasily; Clover managed only a few hours of sleep. There was an unfamiliar tension in the wagon—a silence heavy as guilt. Eddie was restless with pain (the doctor had managed to get the pellet out, but there’d been no time to treat the wound), and Clover’s parents were still bitter over the argument they’d had back in Wilmington.

  “We’d be safe hiding out in the basement of the church,” his mother had insisted.

  “And if they found us?” Honor Hamill had said. “What then? I won’t endanger every man, woman, and child in town.”

  At least Honor Epley had provided them with fresh horses, and promised to do everything she could to persuade the men from the pumphouse that the ministry had stayed on the Southern Tail.

  And yet, as the sun rose the next morning, Clover caught sight of something, moving toward them from the direction of Wilmington. It was a single rider, coming on fast.

  “There’s someone out there,” he announced.

  Clive leaned out the back of the wagon, squinting into the distance. “If those strangers were coming for us, they wouldn’t be coming alone.”

  That made sense enough, but Clover went on watching anyway. The shapeless speck gave up its secrets one by one over the course of the next half hour: a horse the color of rainclouds, a white poncho flapping in the breeze like a sheet on a line, a wide-brimmed hat. And finally, a sun-reddened face . . .

  It was a girl. And now she was raising her hand, hailing them.

  “I think she’s trying to wave us down,” Clover said.

  Clive raised an eyebrow. “It’s a she?”

  “Honor, you want me to stop?” Burns asked from the driver’s seat.

  “Might as well,” Honor Hamill said. “She’s overtaking us anyway.”

  Burns slowed the wagon to a halt, and all of them got out. The girl caught up with them a couple of minutes later.

  “You the minister’s family?” she said.

  Burns rested his right hand on the hilt of his sword. “Who’s asking?”

  “Irene Pirez of Eaton. Honor Epley sent me.” The girl dismounted in an easy swoop and took off her hat, releasing a long, loose braid of jet-black hair. Her lips were bright red, chapped from the wind, and the smooth skin of her forehead was sheened with sweat. She looked to be Clive’s age, or maybe a little older.

  Everyone introduced themselves. When it was Clover’s turn, the girl took hold of his hand with an odd, almost masculine firmness.

  “Good to meet you, Clover Hamill.”

  He felt embarrassed, though he couldn’t have said why.

  “So you’ve got a message for us?” Burns asked, once the pleasantries were finished.

  “Th
e Honor knew I was heading north this morning, so she caught me before I left and asked me to bring you something. You all disappeared in such a hurry, she didn’t have time to get it out from the church pantry.”

  “Is it candy?” Michael asked.

  “Close,” Irene said with a smile. She went back to her horse and unhitched what Clover now saw was an extra set of saddlebags. They were filled with biscuits and jams and dried fruit. “I only hope it tastes half as good as it smells. I nearly stopped to sneak a few things, I’ll admit. Though that’s probably just because I skipped breakfast.”

  “That’s mighty kind of you,” Honor Hamill said, taking the saddlebags.

  “Well, it’s been a real pleasure meeting you all.” She put a foot up in the stirrup. “Safe travels to you.”

  “We were just about to eat, ourselves,” Clive said. “You should join us.”

  Irene hesitated. “You sure? I wouldn’t wanna inconvenience you.”

  “Least we can do is give you a bite to eat, after you came all this way. Isn’t that right, Ma?”

  Clover could tell his mother was a little surprised at Clive’s sudden hospitality, given their situation. “Of course it is. But we won’t be stopping long.”

  “That’s fine by me,” Irene said, stepping back down to the ground. “I’m in a bit of a hurry myself.”

  The girl was reserved at first, but she warmed up before too long. She told them her father was a vegetable farmer, and that he’d sent her out to talk to other farmers along the Tails, to see what was growing well and bring back the seeds for next season’s planting.

  “Doesn’t your mother worry about you?” Ellen asked.

  “My momma’s dead,” Irene said. “And my da knows I can take care of myself.”

  “I guess with that hat on, a lot of people mistake you for a man,” Gemma said.

  If Irene was insulted by the comment, she didn’t show it. “That’s one of the reasons I wear it. Same with the poncho. It hides the curves.” She smiled, and suddenly Clover couldn’t help but wonder what kind of curves she had. “But that’s plenty of talk about me. What about you? You spend most of your time out on the road?”