Strange Fire

by Tommy Wallach

“The night is dark, the sky is deep,” Clover sang, “the stars are small as crumbs. But if I e’er begin to grieve, the Daughter to me comes.”

  Clive joined in after that, and the two of them sang the next verse together. Then, halfway through the chorus, Clive heard his father’s rumbly bass voice, and soon after that, everybody else in their little party, all of them singing as loudly as they could, trying to drown out the sound of Eddie’s coughing, the claustrophobic hush of the night, the fear.

  “Grant me sleep, oh holy round, and so I came me down to ground. This humble fire by light be drowned, and so I came me down to ground. To ground, to ground, Oh Lord, to ground. How soft I came me down to ground.”

  The song ended, and the silence that came afterward was better somehow, less menacing. Before too long, Clive found his way into sleep.

  In his dreams, a flock of ravens loomed overhead, like a black cloud. They circled, cawing, then dove down at him one by one, talons grasping at his coat and piercing the skin underneath, clenching and dragging him up into the air. Their screams resolved into human voices, and he woke confused, angry, swatting at the air. His hand caught something in the dark.

  “Get up, Clive,” a voice whispered. “Get up now.”

  Clover. It was only Clover.

  “What are you talking about?” he said groggily.

  “They’re here, Clive. The men are here. We have to run.”

  15. Clover

  FOR THE REST OF HIS life, Clover would remember every detail of the next few minutes, each one seared into his memory as if with a branding iron. How he pulled on his trousers and threaded the belt through the loops, missing half of them in his hurry. How he stepped out of the tent and into a night that seemed full of dark, scuttling things. How he caught hold of his mother’s arm as she ferried saddles over to the horses.

  “Where are they?” he whispered.

  “Close. Burns saw them coming up the road from the canyon.”

  “We gonna try—”

  “There’s no time for questions. Just get yourself ready. Leave everything you don’t absolutely need.”

  “Yes, Ma.” She hurried off, just as Clover remembered Eddie, who was still sleeping in the wagon smack-dab in the middle of the road. “What about—” he began to say, but his mother was already too far off to hear him.

  And the truth was, he didn’t really need to ask. Eddie was too weak to walk on his own anymore, which meant he’d need to be carried out of the wagon. And would he have the strength to stay on a horse’s back at a gallop?

  No. There was no way around it: Eddie would have to be left behind.

  They worked as quickly as they could in the darkness, but only a couple of minutes later, Clover heard the hoofbeats out on the road. The horsemen were probably approaching the wagon gingerly, wary of an ambush. What would they make of Eddie, twisting feverishly in the back, so obviously helpless that he could only be some kind of decoy?

  “We still have a chance,” Honor Hamill whispered. “Move slow until I give the signal, then ride like hell. If we’re lucky—”

  “Where’s Michael?” Gemma interrupted, her voice low but frantic. “Has anyone seen him?”

  “Oh, sweet Daughter,” Clover’s mother said.

  She was peeking around the edge of the boulder; Clover joined her there a moment later, and together they watched the tiny silhouette moving toward the wagon. Gemma didn’t hesitate, sprinting out after her brother, Clive right on her heels. But they’d started much too late to ever catch up. Clover could only look on in horror as Michael approached the wagon, brandishing the little stick he’d spent the past couple of days whittling to a point.

  “Michael, stop!” Gemma shrieked.

  Maybe if the horsemen had known he was only a child, they wouldn’t have done what they did. But all they could see in the darkness was a shadow creeping toward them with a weapon in its hand.

  A burst of lightning. A crack of thunder. Michael didn’t make a sound as he slumped to the ground.

  “No!” Gemma screamed. “God, no!”

  Clive had caught up with her by then, and he half carried her back toward where the rest of them were hidden. A fresh set of explosions sounded, bolts ricocheting off the rocks around them.

  There could be no escape now without some sort of engagement. Clover knew of only one thing that might save them. He plunged his hand down into his saddlebag, delving through the layers of dirty clothes. The hoofbeats were getting louder and louder, fast as fluttering wings. The men barked out orders to one another; they were splitting up into two groups so they could come around the boulder from the north and south at the same time. Clover felt a rush of relief as his hand closed around something hard at the bottom of the bag, but it turned out to be the crystal he’d pulled from the stream outside Amestown, which his brother had duly returned to him a few days ago.

  Meanwhile, Burns had positioned himself at the northern end of the boulder and drawn his sword. Oddly, instead of holding it by the hilt, he’d laid it out horizontally on his palms, as if he were about to offer it up to someone. A moment later the first horseman came into view, and Burns launched the sword like a spear, catching the man in the stomach and knocking him from his mount. The horse just behind reared back, nearly throwing its rider, and by the time it steadied again, the sergeant was ready, leaping up and wrestling the second man to the ground.

  At last Clover’s fingers found the smooth wood of the weapon’s handle. He pulled it out just as three more of the horsemen came around the southern end of the boulder. He didn’t aim for the riders—afraid that his courage would fail him as it had outside the pumphouse—but their horses instead. His first shot sent the nearest animal tumbling, pinning its rider’s leg beneath its thrashing bulk. While his next few shots didn’t seem to hit anything, at least they forced the rest of the men back around the boulder.

  There was the sound of steel clashing with steel—a sword fight. If Burns kept up his diversion to the north, the rest of them might have a chance of escaping.

  Unfortunately, most of their horses had spooked during the tumult; only three were left. Clover’s parents mounted up together, as did Clive and Gemma. Clover helped Flora up onto the remaining animal’s back, then climbed up in front of her.

  “We’re going to make it, aren’t we?” she asked.

  Clover’s mother smiled. “Of course we are, sweetie.”

  Another explosion sounded, and Clover saw his mother shudder with the impact. A small sigh escaped her lips.

  “Momma?” he said.

  She listed and fell off her horse. Honor Hamill immediately jumped down next to her. “Ellen! You have to get up. You have to get up now. Ellen? Ellen?” His voice grew increasingly desperate. Clover felt paralyzed; his hands were like blocks of ice at the ends of his senseless arms. Then his father looked up at him, eyes full of emotion.

  “Go!” he shouted huskily.

  It was a voice Clover had learned to obey on instinct, and before he knew it, he was riding as hard as he could, blowing past the north end of the boulder, his brother and the surviving Poplin children just behind him. The horsemen caught on eventually, but by the time they started shooting, Clover and the others were out of range. Even so, Clover pointed his own weapon behind him and squeezed off a couple of shots. Then he molded himself to the horse’s back as the world turned to fluid motion. He tasted salt water on his tongue.

  They made it to the top of the ridge and kept going, farther and farther, mile after mile. Clover hoped they would never stop, because stopping would allow this nightmare to resolve into reality. Stopping would turn them into children without parents, stranded many hundreds of miles from home. Better to keep on riding forever.

  Clive’s horse gave up first, simply stopping in place and lowering itself onto its belly. Clover slid out of the saddle and lay down on the cold ground, and it wasn’t long before he sensed Gemma and Flora there beside him, and then Clive, too. They all put their arms around him, around one
another, but he couldn’t derive any warmth or comfort from the contact. The sorrow was simply too deep to be touched.

  He pulled away, stepping back from the cacophony of the girls’ sobbing, and that was when he noticed it—just beyond their little huddle, out there in the trees, something was moving.

  He drew the weapon from his belt.

  “Come out here with your hands on your head,” he shouted.

  A rustle in the branches, a silhouette resolving into familiarity. Clover lowered the weapon.

  “I’m sorry,” Irene said. She was standing just in front of her horse, her cheeks glazed with tears that shone bluish and ghostly in the moonlight. “I tried my best.”

  They walked. They walked because their feet could carry them places the horses couldn’t follow. They walked because the only way to make sleep come was to be too exhausted at the end of the day to grieve. They walked because there was still a home out there, across the continent, and it was all they had left to cling to. They walked through a lush landscape of crystalline streams and swaying trees, mountain caps floating in the distance like doves. And with each step, Clover felt himself retreating a little further into himself, away from a world that took what it wanted from you whenever it wanted to take it. He didn’t speak. He didn’t smile. Maybe for the first time in his life, he didn’t even think. He’d discovered a vast cavern inside himself, and all he wanted to do now was sit in the darkness of that cavern and listen—to the plinking of water drops forming stalactites and stalagmites, to the leathery fluttering of the bats, to the roar within the silence.

  He wasn’t angry, as his brother so obviously was, nor was he in mourning, as Gemma kept insisting he ought to be. He’d found a sort of peace on the other side of caring. Even the thought of dying didn’t bother him anymore. In a way, it would be fitting. The land would swallow them up, as it had swallowed up so many before them. As it swallowed up everyone, sooner or later.

  On and on, they walked.

  16. Clive

  THE CHURCH IN VIRGIL WAS widely considered to be the most beautiful house of God outside of the Anchor’s Notre Fille. It had taken more than two years of digging to lay the foundation—a full fifty feet below ground—and the dirt removed in this excavation had been used to construct an enormous annulus of raised earth just in front of the church; locals affectionately referred to it as the Cupcake. The pews were built of solid mahogany, polished to a shine, and the ambo had been carved out of a single piece of alabaster. Overhead, a row of windows, each one as tall as a man standing, ran around the circumference of the church, just below the dome. During the days, they filled the room with a liquid yellow luster, through which dust motes danced as madly as tadpoles.

  But when Clive entered the church, it was dark outside and dark within. The only light came from the handful of oil lamps left burning in sconces along the walls. He scanned the room until he spotted the Dubium, squirreled away in a crevice just below a painting of the beatification of Saint Ivan.

  Clive had never made use of a Dubium outside the Anchor before, had never felt the need. But the last few weeks had been the most spiritually demanding period of his life. After that terrible night on the mining road, he and the others had continued traveling north, through a miasma of fear and hunger and grief. And by some strange belated mercy on the part of the Lord, they’d made it to the Northern Tail, where they turned west. They traveled only by night after that, always out of sight of the road, until they reached a town large enough to absorb them without comment: Virgil. For the first time in a long time, it seemed possible they might survive to see the Anchor again.

  Clive rented a couple of rooms above a tavern, and immediately slid under the covers of the first soft bed he’d touched in months. But in spite of his exhaustion, sleep wouldn’t come. After a few hours plagued by terrible memories and even worse premonitions, he realized what he had to do.

  The Dubium was a small two-chambered box, each chamber screened off by a velvet curtain so heavy as to cut out any light from outside. Before entering, Clive tugged at a braided golden cord that hung from the ceiling just next to it. The cord would cause a bell to ring in Honor Ferdjoukh’s bedroom, elsewhere in the church. Clive regretted having to wake the man at such an hour, but attending to the Dubium was one of an Honor’s foremost responsibilities. Someday, it would be Clive dragging himself out of bed to speak to some guilt-ridden petitioner in the middle of the night.

  It was at least fifteen minutes before he heard the curtain in the other chamber slide open and shut again. Candlelight glowed through the lattice separating the chambers, projecting little orange rings onto Clive’s folded hands.

  “Good evening,” Honor Ferdjoukh said, his voice still thick with sleep.

  “Forgive me, Honor, for I have doubted.”

  “To doubt is to question God.”

  “I know, Honor.”

  “And what have you doubted?”

  “I have doubted the wisdom of our Lord’s injunction against violence.”

  “I see. And have you practiced violence?”

  Clive had known this question would come—it was standard practice with this particular doubt—but that didn’t mean he had an answer. How responsible was he for what had happened with Arthur Edwards? Technically, he hadn’t done anything to the old man. Nor had he directly hurt anyone at the pumphouse, or even during the skirmish on the mining road. Yet to be present for so much violence was, in a way, to condone it. And hadn’t he spent most every night since then dreaming of murdering the men who’d murdered his parents, of tying them to a tree and slowly scraping off their skin, of making them bleed rivers?

  “Yes, Honor.”

  “Was this violence done for personal gain or private grudge?”

  “No, Honor.”

  “Do you repent of this violence?”

  “I do.”

  “Then I absolve you of your doubt, in the n—”

  “Honor, I—” Clive hesitated. He wasn’t sure why he’d interrupted, only that he couldn’t stand to be given some easy answer, when everything in his mind was chaos and convolution. “I don’t think I deserve to be absolved.”

  “All men who seek absolution deserve it.”

  “I guess I doubt that, too.”

  Honor Ferdjoukh chuckled. “You didn’t wake me up for nothing, did you?”

  “No, Honor.”

  “You sound young. Have you spoken to your father about this?”

  For a moment, Clive thought that Honor Ferdjoukh had somehow recognized his voice. Then he realized it was just a general admonition; when a boy was confused, he spoke to his father. Clive gritted his teeth against the tears. “My father’s dead, Honor. And it’s important to me to do right by him. I want to live the way he taught me to. But I’ve got so much anger in me right now, and he never seemed to have any.”

  “To be angry is to believe the world is not as it should be. But the Lord made this world especially for us, through the love of his Daughter. To wish it different is just another form of doubt.”

  “I know, Honor.”

  “The Filia tells us a violent man can no more easily enter the Kingdom of God than a mule can pass through the eye of a needle. You have to let your anger go.”

  “I’m not sure that I can.”

  “And yet you must.” Clive sensed the note of finality in the Honor’s voice, so he wasn’t surprised at the familiar words that followed. “Your penance is twenty Trinity Prayers and two copper shekels.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have much money to spare, Honor.”

  Honor Ferdjoukh sighed. “Thirty Trinity Prayers, then. Through the ministry of the Descendant Church, I absolve you of your doubt, in the name of the Father, and of the Daughter, and of Holy Gravity. Amen.”

  “Amen,” Clive said, making the sign of the annulus on his chest.

  He listened as the curtain was pulled aside again, as Honor Ferdjoukh’s footsteps receded. He’d hoped talking with the Honor would calm the tempes
t in his mind, but their conversation hadn’t resolved anything.

  He exited the Dubium. In the short time he’d been inside, someone else had come into the church, a robed figure kneeling in the front pew. Clive shuffled out as quietly as he could, so as not to disturb the man’s prayers.

  It was colder than he’d expected outside—colder than it had any right to be. There was no one in sight, but Clive had barely made it to the bottom of the steps when he heard the church doors creak open behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the hooded figure step through. The inn where he’d taken rooms was all the way at the other edge of town, but Virgil was only about half a mile from end to end. Clive quickened his pace. As soon as he did so, the hooded figure sped up as well. Then Clive was running, and the figure behind him was running too, much faster than Clive had anticipated. The steep margin of the Cupcake loomed before him, and he clambered up it in a few easy leaps. But when he looked back from the top of the ring, to see if he could make out any sort of weapon in the other man’s hand, his foot caught in a divot, and he went tumbling down into the center of the annulus. He turned over just in time to see the stranger looming above him.

  “It’s really you,” the man said. “God damn.”

  He pulled back his hood.

  “Sergeant Burns?” Clive said.

  Burns stretched his arms out wide, as if he’d just performed a miracle and was now basking in the crowd’s adulation. “In the wasted flesh,” he replied.

  The bottom floor of the inn was empty but for the rough-looking girl serving drinks and a couple of men speaking in low tones at the bar. Clive staked out a corner table and Burns brought over a couple of pints.

  “Good thing you showed up when you did,” he said. “I was gonna start back home in the next couple of days.”

  “How’d you know we’d be here?”

  “Call it an educated guess. I figured you’d stick close to the road, and Virgil here was your safest option for a warm bed and a good meal.”