Strange Fire

by Tommy Wallach

  “We live in the Anchor,” Michael said. He always got excited talking to somebody new, particularly when that somebody was a girl. “Have you ever been there?”

  “I haven’t,” Irene said. “But I’ve heard plenty about it. Is it true there’s a whole castle there full of nothing but books?”

  “Sure is.”

  “It’s called the Library,” Clover interjected. “And it’s not really a castle. And there aren’t that many books.”

  “My brother is apprenticing there,” Clive said. “He’s the scholar of the family.”

  “Oh, is he? So what does that make you?” Her tone was light, flirtatious even.

  “I’m studying to be an Honor.”

  “A scholar and an Honor. What a distinguished company. Cheers.”

  “Cheers,” Clive said, and the two of them tapped leather flasks.

  After they were done eating, Irene excused herself to answer the call of nature. Michael waited until she was just out of sight, then made a theatrical collapse onto the dirt. “She’s so pretty,” he said, staring up at the sky. “How is she so pretty?”

  “Michael!” Eddie chided. “It’s rude to talk about people like that.”

  Michael turned over onto his stomach. “But I’m saying nice things!”

  “Even so.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” Burns said. “You’re just saying what everybody’s thinking.”

  “I wasn’t thinking it,” Gemma said.

  “That’s just because you’re jealous,” Michael countered.

  “She is not,” Flora said, leaping to her sister’s defense.

  “Is too!”

  “Is not!”

  “Both of you shut up!” Gemma shouted. She must have realized how harsh she’d sounded, because when she spoke again, it was in a more placatory tone. “I mean, what will that girl think if she hears you talking about her like she was nothing but a slab of beef?”

  “Sorry, Gemma,” Flora said, and even Michael looked appropriately chastened.

  Clover figured Gemma was just anxious because her da was still running a fever. The last thing she needed right now was some strange girl making eyes at Clive. Luckily, when Irene came back, she immediately announced her intention to leave.

  “Thank you all so much for the meal,” she said. “It was real pleasant.”

  Clive stood up just a little too fast. “Hold on, though. I thought you were taking this road here up north.”

  “I am.”

  “Well, so are we. We should all go together.”

  Irene looked to Honor Hamill. “Only if I wouldn’t be a bother.”

  “Not at all,” Clover’s father said. “But I’ll warn you, this wagon doesn’t move nearly as fast as your horse.”

  “What good’s moving fast when the time moves so slow? The road gets awful boring with no one to talk to. Just let me know if you get sick of me, and I’ll be out of your hair straightaway.”

  They got on the move again a few minutes later. Irene rode just behind the wagon, chatting with Clive and Michael through the opening in the canvas. Clover’s parents were up in the driver’s seat, while Burns was jotting down some notes in a little logbook he kept in his jacket pocket. Clover once again reached the end of the only book he’d kept with him after the fracas at the pumphouse—an adventure story about a boy from the Anchor who discovers an ancient treasure map—and immediately started it over again from the beginning. Morning turned to afternoon, passing in a fraught but uneventful quietude.

  He woke from a daydream of the Library reading room to find most everyone else in the back of the wagon asleep—Flora had her head on Gemma’s shoulder, mouth leaking a shiny ribbon of drool; Eddie snored loudly on his pallet; even Ellen and Honor Hamill had left the driving to Burns and snuck into the back for a bit of shut-eye. Only Michael and Clive were still awake, the former talking up a storm with Irene, the latter just listening. Clover watched his brother out of slitted eyes. There was a brightness in Clive’s expression, a palpable excitement, as he gazed unblinkingly at the new girl. And every once in a while, she would look back at him with the same odd intensity. Though they weren’t even speaking to each other, Clover felt the urge to intervene, to defuse the tension somehow.

  But just when he was about to try, there was a loud snapping sound from somewhere close by. The rear of the wagon dropped a few inches, and the whole thing came to a shuddering halt. Suddenly everyone was wide-awake.

  “What the hell was that?” Honor Hamill said.

  “We must’ve hit a pothole or something back there,” Burns called out from the driver’s seat. “I’ll take a look.”

  Clover jumped from the lip of the wagon—which was closer to the ground than it used to be—and found the sergeant kneeling down next to the right back wheel.

  “Shit on a stick,” Burns said.

  “What is it?”

  “Look for yourself.”

  Clover came closer. The wagon wheel lay there on the ground like a dead animal, a nub of splintered wood sticking out from the center bore. The damn thing had broken right off the axle.

  They were stranded.

  14. Clive

  SHE’D FOLLOWED HIM. SHE’D FOLLOWED him all the way from Wilmington because she’d felt the same spark that he had. And now here they were, stuck together in the middle of nowhere. It almost would’ve been romantic, if not for everything else that was going on.

  “No offense, Honor, but I’m the faster rider,” Burns said.

  “And you’re the only one of us who knows how to fight, should it come to that.”

  A week ago they could have abandoned the wagon and continued on horseback, but Eddie couldn’t possibly ride in his current state. Their only hope was to get a new axle, but that meant somebody had to go back to Wilmington to pick it up.

  Irene was over by the wheel, examining the break. “You all expecting trouble?” she asked.

  “We had an incident,” Clive said. “Some dissidents. We think they might be following us.”

  She stood up and brushed off her hands. “Well, maybe I should be the one to go back, then. Ain’t nobody looking for me.”

  “Thank you, young lady,” Honor Hamill said, “but it’s our problem to solve. Besides, you said you had business up north.”

  “All respect, but you’re an Honor, and you’re in danger. I think that’s a good bit more important than vegetables.”

  Clive’s mother and father shared one of their famous long looks, communicating mind to mind. “Well,” Ellen said, “if you really don’t mind—”

  “Are you joking?” Clive said. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “She can’t go back there on her own. What if those men got it out of Honor Epley that we came this way? She’d run right into them.”

  “I’ll take the risk, Clive,” Irene said. “It would be a privilege.”

  “You don’t understand. These men . . . they kill people. You can’t go.”

  Irene smiled. “If we’re gonna be friends, you should know I don’t have much patience for being told what to do.” She gave a whistle, and her horse trotted over. “I’ll be back before you know it,” she said, swinging into the saddle and immediately taking off back down the trail.

  “Damn it,” Clive said. He unhitched one of the horses from the yoke and jumped up onto her unsaddled back.

  “What are you doing?” his mother said.

  “She could die, Ma. Least I can do is warn her what she ought to be on the lookout for.” He touched his boot heels to the horse’s flanks, and she was off like an arrow. Passing by the opening in the back of the wagon, he saw Gemma tending to Eddie, and his eyes met hers for just a moment. . . .

  But there was no time to think about that. Irene wasn’t far in front of him, but she was moving fast—far faster than was prudent. The mining road was pocked and pitted, barely wide enough to accommodate a wagon, with a sheer drop-off on the right side. Far below, a silver thread of river wound its way between towering sandsto
ne boulders.

  “Hey!” Clive called out. “Slow down!”

  Irene glanced over her shoulder, then turned to face forward again. There could be no mistaking it: she was racing him. The road angled precipitously downward, so they were picking up speed whether they wanted to or not. It wouldn’t take more than a single slip to send either one of them over the edge.

  Down and down they went, accompanied by the rhythmic flutter of hooves striking hard dirt and the rumble of loose rubble rolling in their wake. Irene’s hair had come loose beneath her hat and was streaming out behind her like a comet’s tail. Lord, but she was fast; she might actually get away from him! And the strangest thing was that Clive didn’t feel angry, or even scared—there was only the exhilaration of the chase, of the danger, of being away from Gemma and Clover and his parents and all the trouble they were in.

  The trail curved sharply to the right ahead of them. Clive watched to see when Irene would slow down, but she never did; it was only her horse’s sense of self-preservation that saved them both. Just a few feet shy of the curve, the animal pulled up short, sending Irene flying off its back. She landed once on the horse’s neck, then again on the trail. Her momentum sent her tumbling—once, twice, three times—straight toward the drop at the side of the road. Her legs went over the edge, but she managed to get a hand around a little shock of yellow grass just before the rest of her was carried along with them.

  Clive rode right up to the edge of the cliff and dismounted. Irene was trying to pull herself back up, but the grass was starting to come loose. He still had a grip on Orion’s reins, and now he looped his right foot through the leather strap and went down on his belly. He reached out to Irene.

  “Grab on to me,” he said.

  She glared up at him, a fear in her eyes so profound it looked like rage.

  “What are you doing, Irene? Grab the hell on!”

  With a grunt, she threw her hand into his. Clive pulled as hard as he could, using the rein around his ankle and the weight of the horse for resistance. It took everything he had—the race down the canyon had tired him out more than he knew—but at last he got her back up onto the roadway. They both lay there for a moment, gasping with effort.

  “Why were you chasing me?” she asked.

  “Why were you running?”

  He rolled over, supporting himself on his forearms just above her. There was a cut under her left eye from when she’d rolled across the road. Blood dripped down the side of her face. He wiped it away with his thumb, smearing it across her cheek. Her lips were salty, dry, but when she turned her head to kiss him more deeply, he tasted chicory and the sweet bite of tobacco. Then her hands were against his chest and she was pushing him away, so hard he fell onto his back. She towered over him, flushed and panting.

  “What the hell are you doing?” she demanded.

  “I don’t know.” And that was the truth: he had no idea why he’d kissed her. It was wrong in about a thousand different ways.

  “You think I owe you something?”

  “No.”

  “Because I don’t.”

  “I know.”

  “Good.”

  She slapped her dusty hands together a few times and limped back over to her horse. “Don’t follow me this time,” she said. Then she was riding off again, down the twisting corridor of the trail, no slower or more carefully than before. Clive was left with the taste of her in his mouth, and a bright crimson stain on his thumb.

  On the way back to the wagon, he passed the two younger Poplin children playing out among the cacti. Flora was pretending the plants were people—friends of hers who for some reason refused to move—while Michael was whittling a gnarled piece of old wood into another equally unrecognizable shape. Meanwhile, the rest of the party was carrying things out from the broken wagon to a spot just a few hundred yards away, hidden from the road by a boulder the size of a house. There was an uncomfortable silence that hadn’t been there when he’d left.

  “What’s going on?” he asked his father.

  “It’s Eddie,” Honor Hamill said quietly. “His fever’s back. Apparently it got bad almost as soon as we left Wilmington, but the fool didn’t say anything until now. He figured—”

  “We might try to go back if we knew,” Clive said, finishing the thought.

  “Exactly.”

  “So what does that mean for us? What happens next?”

  Honor Hamill let out a heavy breath. “I don’t know. For now, you should be with Gemma. She’s . . . struggling.”

  Clive found her sitting in the back of the wagon, holding a wet cloth to her father’s forehead. Eddie looked to be somewhere between sleep and waking. He said something incomprehensible, a mumble like a prayer. Clive was newly struck by the sheer size of the man; it seemed impossible that someone so big and strong could be brought low so easily. And though it didn’t make a bit of sense, Clive couldn’t help but feel guilty, as if he’d made this happen by kissing Irene. He felt even worse when he sat down next to Gemma and she immediately curled into him, collapsing against his chest, sobbing hard.

  “It’ll be all right,” he said, stroking her soft hair. “It’s gonna be just fine.”

  She didn’t answer him, just went on crying; both of them knew he was only saying what she wanted to hear.

  They ate dinner in the wagon that night, doing their best to keep the conversation light. Eddie woke up now and again, always making sure to crack a joke or two, trying to keep the twins from worrying. But it was far too late for that. In the middle of the meal, Flora began to cry, and nothing anyone said could comfort her.

  Clive stayed with Gemma at Eddie’s side all night, but sometime during the wee hours he allowed his eyes to close—just for a second—and he woke up again with the sunrise. Eddie was tossing and turning on his pallet, his forehead hotter than ever against the back of Clive’s hand. They couldn’t get any food into him, though he would take sips of water now and again. At some point late that afternoon, he woke up with a wild look in his eyes and grabbed Gemma’s hand.

  “Viola!” he said, almost as a gasp.

  “No, Daddy. It’s me. It’s Gemma.”

  “It’s been so hard, darling. It’s been so hard without you. I’ve missed you.”

  Gemma wiped away a tear. “I know. I’ve missed you, too.”

  Thankfully, that was all Eddie needed to hear, and soon enough he drifted back into fitful sleep.

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” Clive said.

  Gemma was so intent on her father, she didn’t even notice Clive leaving.

  He found his own father reading the Filia in the cool darkness just behind the boulder. Clover was next to him, also reading: some damn book of stories or poems that had exactly nothing to do with anything that mattered.

  “He’s dying!” Clive shouted. His father looked up at him. “You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Well, shouldn’t we go back to that doctor or something?”

  “We can’t,” Clover said, without looking away from his book.

  “Why not?”

  “You know why not,” his father said. “Because even if Honor Epley convinced those men we kept going along the Southern Tail, it won’t take them long to figure out we didn’t. All they’ll have to do is ask anyone they pass about a minister and his family farther up the road. Then they’ll likely be back in Wilmington with more questions.”

  “So you’re just gonna sit here reading while Eddie dies?”

  “The Scriptures are where I go for solace in the face of tribulation,” his father said quietly.

  “The Scriptures aren’t worth a copper shekel if we all end up dead!”

  Finally, Honor Hamill closed the cover of his Filia. Its gold-leaf annulus suddenly looked cheap, meretricious—a symbol for the Lord’s inability, or refusal, to help them.

  “We’re hundreds of miles from the Anchor right now, Clive, and y
et we’re still within the boundaries of the Descendancy. More than a hundred thousand people, spread out over thousands of square miles. All those souls. All that space. Yet we have peace. Do you understand how incredible that is?”

  “Sure,” Clive said. “But I don’t see what that has to do—”

  “It has everything to do with it,” Honor Hamill said sharply. He held up the Filia. “This book you think so little of at the moment is the alpha and omega of that peace. And perhaps you don’t yet appreciate the effort that is required to maintain it.”

  “Effort like letting a good man die?”

  “Yes, Clive. Effort like that. Should Eddie pass, he will find his reward in heaven, as will all of us who cleave to the path laid out for us by the Lord. Think on that.” He tossed the Filia at Clive, who caught it on instinct. “And think on that, too, son.”

  That night Clive lay awake in his tent, idly flicking through the Book of Ivan. Outside, he could hear Eddie coughing—a terrible hacking sound, as if the man were trying to cut his way out of a jungle that was only growing denser with every passing moment.

  “It won’t be long now,” Clover said.

  “No,” Clive replied. Then, because he didn’t want to think about Eddie: “You could’ve spoken up for me earlier. With Da, I mean.”

  “But you were wrong,” Clover said.

  And the strange thing was that Clive found himself smiling; it was such a quintessentially Clover-ish answer. “I know I was.”

  They were silent for a minute, while Eddie had another coughing fit.

  “I wish we had some music,” Clive said. “I miss playing.”

  “Me too.”

  It was a few seconds before Clive realized his brother had begun humming the verse melody of “I Came Me Down to Ground.” Ever since he was a toddler, it had been Clover’s favorite song. For years their mother had sung it to them both before bed every night.