Sacred Fire

by Tanai Walker

  “Now what?” I asked. My words suddenly had recoil and echoed inside my head. The dim light shrank into a tight circle around us, and the darkness beyond became as vast as space. My aunt stood. She had a twisted face in her hands, with angry, sideways apostrophes for eyes, a pointed chin, and a crown of seven horns. She walked toward me slowly.

  Frightened of the face she held, I attempted to back away, scooting on my backside. The room tilted, and I ended up on my back, my aunt looming over me with that awful face. Someone whined like a wounded dog. It was me.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and felt Quinn’s weight on me. I felt something warm and leathery on my face, the bristle of a million stiff hairs. I knew that she was covering my face with that grotesque thing she carried in her hands.

  She spoke my name. I opened my eyes and saw Quinn’s face through a veil of horns. She opened her kimono, revealed her breasts and the seven-sided star over one of them. She leaned forward, placed her hands on my shoulders, and pinned me to the floor. Time passed. We both remained still, save our ragged breathing.

  She braced her body, and I felt her full weight. My body suddenly bucked as if attempting to throw her off. I moved again, more violently than before; my neck whipped side to side. I felt like a fault being ground between two opposing forces, one above and below.

  Quinn lay on top of me. I felt her breath on my neck. I blinked.

  I was on my feet, and she was rolling away. I saw a swatch of skin like mine, alternating with red and gold and silver. I moved faster than I ever had. The room slanted violently, and I had crawled halfway up one of the wood-paneled walls.

  Quinn moved in the darkness, her open kimono trailing the floor. She carried a crook in one hand and a flail in the other. Her arms were outstretched at her sides. Something inside me screamed that she meant to do battle.

  I leapt on her, and we rolled. I clawed her with my nails. She raised the crook and belted me across the face. Fabric tore. One of us cried out. I ended up on my stomach with Quinn on top.

  “You are strong, Tinsley,” she said into my ear as she pulled that awful horned face away from mine—a mask, I realized.

  She rose from me and walked away, into the darkness. I closed my eyes, and terrible dreams came. I saw the beast for the first time in the mists of my nightmares. It pursued me down the family beach, the deafening roar of the crashing waves segued into a different dream of a woman lashed to a stout wooden pole. It was night, and water ran over her feet as the world tilted side to side. She was lashed to the mast of a ship. Then there was a fire, a tall pyre, and a ring of women naked and singing. Cloaked in those flames was a burning woman. Her skin did not bubble or blister; it glowed. Her eyes were closed as if she slept serenely. She was the woman dressed in armor from the picture in the library.

  I woke the next day, in bed. From the intensity of the sunlight that streamed through the window, I knew it was late. I scrambled out of bed, woozy from the previous night’s ordeal and unsure exactly of what I had been through.

  Aunt Quinn waited in the dining room before a row of silver, her hair tied back with a kerchief. She looked like my mother for a minute, especially when she smiled. “Tinsley, you’re awake.”

  I frowned. “What happened last night?”

  She waggled a gloved finger at me. “You can’t hold your wine.”

  Lola appeared with a tray, grinning. She smiled at me as she set out tea and toast. “You should eat. Some food will settle your stomach.”

  I smiled back weakly and sat at the table, but glared at my aunt as soon as the maid’s back was turned. “What did you tell her? That I got drunk last night?”

  Quinn studied me for a moment. She reached over and began to prepare me a cup of tea. “You must learn to tell people what they can understand.”

  “Well, shouldn’t I understand what happened?”

  She sighed and set the cup in front of me. “You are a Sister of Flame now, an initiate of the Sisterhood. We have passed down a great wisdom through the generations, and we protect the secrets of that wisdom.”

  “And what’s that?”

  She picked up her task of polishing silver. “I have already spoken too much. All Mystai must be blind, and enter unknowing.”

  I took a bite of toast. I chewed and swallowed. “I want to go home.”

  Quinn rolled her eyes. “Don’t be such a child.”

  “This is weird and sick.”

  She put down the silver. “Why? Because you saw my breasts? You have to let go of that Puritan shit and just follow my lead on this.”

  I flushed at her words and ducked my head. She covered my hand with one of hers.

  “I can send you home if that’s really what you want. Perhaps we did not do enough to prepare you for this day.”

  It took me some time to speak. I thought of the mask and the surge of energy I felt the night before. “It’s magic, isn’t it? The wisdom?”

  She smiled. “It’s more than magic.”

  I finished my tea and toast in the library. I found the copy of Justine and the picture of the woman in armor. The night before, her image had surfaced to the top of my fevered dreams. She had spoken to me in a strange language. I closed my eyes there in the library and tried to remember more. Instead of the woman in armor, I saw a red sky glittering with stars, and a moon as dark as a black hole.

  Aunt Quinn left me to my own devices the next few days. She was preparing the house for her so-called sisters who were coming to visit in my honor. I tried to keep myself busy and not think about it. I sketched in the library and became acquainted with the Justine. I rode Abatos down to the beach. At night, I took sips from the bottle of rum hidden in the globe in the library. I found a few sips soothed me and helped me sleep at night without dreams of that frightening horned face.

  One evening as I returned from a ride as the last light faded from the sky, I heard voices in the parlor. Curiosity won out over my shyness and so I entered the room to find Quinn sitting with a woman and a girl a few years older than me. They both had ebony skin and a cascade of woolly black hair down their backs, the older woman’s loose, the girl’s tied with a ribbon.

  “Tinsley.” My aunt stood and came over to me smiling. “This is my good friend Sophie, and her niece, Juliette.”

  She pulled me over to them, and they both kissed my cheeks and spoke in French. Their warmth embarrassed me, and I looked to my aunt for help.

  “Go ahead and wash up,” she said. “We’re going to have dinner.”

  I did as told. On my way to the bathroom, I stopped at the library to have a taste of the unlabeled bottle. I showered, groomed, and went down to the dining room. On the way, I found Juliette standing before the great double doors of the ballroom. She touched the carvings, and something protective wanted me to tell her to stop. There were frightening things on the other side of that door.

  “Tinsley,” she said when she noticed me. “Your aunt says that you are Mystes now.”

  I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. Her accent was enchanting, and her dark eyes sparkled in the dim light of the hallway. She smiled and took my hand. The contact thrilled me.

  “We will be initiates together,” she said. “After the gathering, we will be Sisters.”

  “Isn’t this all a little bit strange to you?”

  She regarded me with the prettiest puzzlement. “Strange?”

  “It’s like a feminist cult that has existed all these years,” I whispered. “Men never found out? The church?”

  She laughed. “Sophie says that women have always had secrets, even those we must keep from certain members of our own sex.”

  “I suppose it’s because I am an outsider,” I said.

  “You are not an outsider,” Juliette said. “You are part of Alexandrine’s bloodline, and that is important to the Sisterhood.”

  I nodded, taking in her words. She still held on to my hand, her soft grip strengthening as we stood there in the hallway talking.

  “You must not
doubt, Tinsley,” she said. “There are members of the Sisterhood who doubt us because we are young.”

  “But I thought my heritage guaranteed I would be accepted.”

  “There are Sisters who do not believe young initiates should be trusted in these times. Quinn was not to initiate you on her own. It has caused quite a stir, Sophie says.”

  “She didn’t tell me.”

  Juliette smiled. “You are her progeny, and she will protect you at all cost.”

  We heard footsteps and looked up to see Quinn at the end of the hall. She smiled.

  “Juliette will coax you out of your shell yet.”

  I realized then that Juliette still held my hand. I pulled away and moved toward my aunt who just stood there grinning.

  We ate supper in relative silence. I was unnerved, not sure what to do with myself or what to say, and it felt like school. Sophie asked me if I played any sports, and I told her that I rode horses. She then tried to test my French, and I struggled to keep up, especially when Juliette joined in.

  After dinner, Sophie and Quinn excused themselves.

  I went to the library. Juliette followed me. She marveled over the room and its curiosities. I showed her the globe, and we took a drink from the bottle, then another. She asked me what kind of school I went to and what my parents did for a living. She sounded like the girls at school who judged each other by what their parents made per year. I showed her my sketches, and boldly, I studied her as she looked through the pages.

  Suddenly, Juliette grinned broadly and covered her face. She wore this white sundress with straps that tied at the top of her shoulders. A red stripe and a blue strip trimmed the top of the bodice and the hem of the skirt. Red, white, and blue. I wondered if she chose the dress specifically for her trip to America.

  She took her hands away and pointed to the ceiling.

  “They are lovers, you know, and it has been years since they have seen each other.”

  “Oh.” I was so preoccupied with Juliette, it didn’t dawn on me until then just how close Quinn and Sophie had sat together at dinner, and how they leaned in close when the other spoke.

  “Sophie talks of no one but her American Quinn,” Juliette said.

  “Why don’t they just live together?”

  Juliette laughed. “Then they would not be so happy to see each other.”

  “They would see each other every day.”

  She gave me a wise smile. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

  Juliette left me to poke around the room. She found the horn to a Victrola and bid me to help her find the rest of it. After an hour of searching, she grew bored and petulant. I grew impatient with trying to entertain her and curled up with an old anatomy book hoping she would settle down.

  “I want to go to the beach,” she said.

  “It’s nighttime,” I reminded her.

  “That is the best time. There is a car. We could take it.”

  “My aunt’s car?” I asked. “I don’t have a license.”

  She laughed. “You don’t need a license, and besides, I drive in France when we go out to the country and when we go to the islands.”

  “Aren’t the steering wheels on the opposite side?”

  “Tinsley Swan has a sense of humor.” Juliette grinned. “Fine, you can drive.”

  I rolled my eyes, though she already had me in the palm of her hand. “No one is driving. You’ll just have to wait until tomorrow.”

  “Please?” Juliette’s eyes brightened.

  “Impossible.” Though I was thinking of how we could make it down to the beach. Quinn’s car was a decade-old Buick. I had ridden in the car when my aunt and I went to town. It seemed to have an easy temperament.

  Juliette took my hand. “Our aunts will be none the wiser. They’re much too busy to care if we set the house on fire.”

  “Fine,” I said. “We’ll have to be quiet.”

  The keys to the Buick were hanging on the peg in the kitchen. I retrieved them, and we crept out of the house and into the darkness. We closed ourselves inside the car, careful not to make too much noise. I made sure Juliette buckled herself in before I put the car in neutral without turning on the engine. We coasted around the yard and back onto the drive. Once we were at the road, I put the car in gear and drove, very slowly, down to the beach.

  Before I could stop the car, Juliette flew out and ran to the water. I called after her and followed. On my way to the water, I passed a pile of fabric that gently billowed in the breeze.

  Juliette’s sundress.

  I looked out to see her frolicking in the surf in her underwear, and laughed nervously. “Tinsley,” she shouted. “Come in.”

  I did, bold enough to borrow my aunt’s car and steal away into the night with this exotic girl, but not enough to try my hand at skinny-dipping. I kept my clothes on. We splashed in the warm darkness and ducked beneath the coursing salt water, our bodies moving together with the push and pull of the tide.

  After, we lay across the trunk of the car, our backs against the window, and watched ash-colored clouds play across the violet sky sprinkled with stars. She kissed me, and the rest was a thrilling dream of fear and sensations I never imagined could exist. We returned to the house, to my room. We removed our wet clothes. Bolder now, I kissed her. She smelled and tasted of the sea. We lay on the bed; Juliette hovered above me, our bodies touching. I shivered and was embarrassed at my innocence. Juliette parted my legs and undid me in that bed, and the next morning, I was Tinsley Swan reborn. I actually began to feel like one of the Sisterhood.

  Quinn recognized it when the four of us gathered for a late breakfast, and only smiled at me as we exchanged pleasantries. I had tried to act normal, but Juliette wouldn’t allow it. She attended to me like a wife and flirted nonstop. It made me nervous, as I wasn’t sure how the aunts would react, especially Sophie.

  “You must allow my niece some space,” Quinn admonished my new lover playfully. “She is a solitary creature, who is used to keeping her desires secret.”

  Sophie scoffed and muttered something in French that caused Quinn to explode into laughter. Juliette covered her mouth and looked on at me worriedly.

  I excused myself, fled to the library, and locked the door behind me. I expected them to come after me, but none of them did. I stared at the picture of the Golden Goddess and was sure Juliette would never want me to touch her again. I searched around the library and found the rest of the Victrola in the form of a mahogany box with gold-feathered accents. It took me an hour or so to figure out how to attach the brass horn and then the needle.

  I had hoped for jazz music, but most of the discs I found were opera. I played Johanna Gadski singing Brunnhilde’s battle cry and then Celestina Boninsegna singing “Bel raggio.” I had gotten into the La Bohème when Lola brought me lunch―ham sandwiches and cookies.

  “Your aunt says to eat,” she said simply and left me.

  I ate and sketched from the anatomy book, occasionally wondering how long they would leave me to my own devices or if they were waiting for me to come out on my own. It seemed rude to shut myself away from my aunt and her guests, but I reveled in the pleasure of doing so. My father would have never allowed it. I wondered if Juliette would want to even speak to me again, let alone take me in her arms as she did the night before. Shortly after the sphinx clock on the mantel struck five, my aunt slipped in.

  “Are you finished sulking?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “You don’t have to be.” She smiled. “Juliette is a spoiled, simple thing, and she will just have to understand your moods. I didn’t think she would move so fast on you.”

  I smiled sheepishly, not sure what to say.

  She sat with me before the Victrola. “I thought I had gotten rid of that god-awful thing.”

  I shrugged. “So no one is mad at me?”

  “No, Tinsley. Juliette is upset, but she knows her place.”

  “Her place?” I asked.

 
Quinn sighed. “In a few days, you will take a high place among the Sisterhood. She knows that, and so does Sophie.”

  “Juliette says the others will not be happy with my initiation―”

  Quinn narrowed her eyes. “She was not to discuss those things with you. I should have spoken to her myself instead of trusting Sophie.”

  “Please,” I said. “I don’t want to get her into trouble.”

  My aunt sighed. “Well, what’s done is done. The others will come soon. You must be strong, Tinsley, or they will try to rob you of your birthright.”

  I nodded though I was still unsure what that birthright was. After Quinn left the library, I ventured out to find Juliette and ran into Sophie. She caught hold of my wrist sternly, and we walked out to the front porch, where she let go of me and stood staring at me.

  “I’m sorry,” I blurted, not sure what else to say.

  She grinned, her teeth in startling contrast with her complexion. “What for?”

  “Juliette, I, didn’t mean to be improper—”

  Sophie laughed. “You apologize, the cat who has gotten the cream, or should I say the kitten.”

  I looked away from her, off to the west and the last of the sun sinking low.

  “I suppose Juliette has had her heart set on you. She has been mooning over you for some time now.”

  I looked at her, puzzled. “She’s never met me.”

  Sophie smiled and walked to the railing. “You are the last Tinsley. Everyone has made a fuss over you since the day you were born.”

  I stood there for a moment, shocked at this bit of information.

  “Your father turned out to be a problem,” Sophie said. “He despises the Tinsleys for good reasons. They are everything his people are not, wild women with no strong man to guide them.”

  That certainly sounded like my father.

  “Is that why the Sisters don’t trust me?” I asked.

  Sophie smirked. “Quinn didn’t tell you that.”

  “No, it was Juliette.”

  “You’re lucky to have my niece as your lover and confidante. She is a staunch devotee of the Sisterhood,” she said, her tone full of pride. “I’m sure you would be as well.”