Mortal Fire

by Elizabeth Knox

  That’s what Canny did. She left the path and went around the edges of fields, creeping along on the shady side of hedges and windbreaks. It was a long, crooked course, and it took her past several derelict houses, all weathered and windowless. The houses were at a similar stage of decay, as if the families who had owned them had left the valley around the same time. The sight was sad and made Canny think that the hidden house was like one of those big flourishing trees that stand in a circle of bare ground because nothing is able to grow in its shade.

  Canny finally settled in a stand of trees about half a mile from the guesthouse. She kept watch, but for over an hour she saw only Zarene children coming and going. One group of older kids trailed in looking very tired. Canny recognized Lonnie among them. He had a pair of binoculars around his neck.

  A few minutes later Canny spotted Susan, standing by the children’s garden beds gazing up the river path, her hand shading her eyes.

  Susan wasn’t Sholto, but she’d have to do. Canny got up and hurried through the field. She went as fast as she could. Her heels were bruised from walking a long way barefoot, and each footfall jarred her sore head.

  Some kid looking out a back window of the guesthouse was the first to see her. Canny heard a cry, and then a moment later a woman ran up to Susan and turned her. The woman was one half of the hiking couple. Susan started toward Canny. They met by the children’s dormitories. Canny let Susan enfold her. She pressed her head into Susan’s shoulder, only wanting to hide her face and collect her thoughts—but it was nice to be held, and she was so very tired.

  * * *

  SUSAN KNELT ON THE FLOOR of Iris Zarene’s kitchen and lifted Canny’s feet into an enamel basin Iris had filled with warm water. Susan covered her hands with soap suds and washed Canny’s legs. She dried them and applied iodine to all the scratches, and Band-Aids to the worst of them. She took a seat beside Canny, reached out and tucked Canny’s hair back behind her ear so that she could see Canny’s grubby cheek and downcast eyes.

  Iris Zarene removed the basin and put it on the bench. The light hit the slivers of Canny’s eyes as she raised their lids a little to glance sidelong at the bench. When Iris left the room, Canny got up and emptied and rinsed the basin.

  “I hardly think little gestures of tidying up after yourself are going to get you out of trouble,” Susan said. “Sholto will be back soon with someone from the sheriff’s department in Massenfer—unless Mr. Cyrus manages to turn them away.” Iris had sent her brother off to the bottom of the valley and start of the road to wait for Sholto.

  “I’m all right,” Canny said. “Sholto didn’t need to get the sheriff.”

  “At first light we were out searching the riverbank, Canny. We were looking into all the underwater willow branches.”

  Iris Zarene said from the doorway, “She must have wanted her brother to worry. It must please her to worry him.”

  Canny dropped her head and kept her mouth closed.

  Susan said, “We’re sorry for all the trouble, Miss Zarene. But I think this is a private family matter.”

  Iris Zarene gave a derisive snort and went out again.

  Susan turned back to Canny. “Is this your way of making us take you back to Castlereagh and your friend?”

  “No, Susan. I like it here.”

  “That’s what I thought. So, what happened to you?” Susan paused, then added, “Did something bad happen to you?”

  * * *

  SHOLTO CAME IN WITH THE OTHER HALF of the hiking couple. They’d gone together to Massenfer to talk to the sheriff. A deputy followed Sholto’s Austin back into the valley, but their cars were met at the end of the road by Cyrus, who explained that the girl had been found and was all right. Sholto asked the deputy whether he’d like to talk to Canny, just to make sure. Sholto really wanted to scare his sister and impress upon her how seriously he took his responsibility for her—seriously enough to summon the law if she went missing overnight. Sholto also hoped that the deputy might bring up the matter of the missing tents with Iris Zarene. Sholto had told the Massenfer Sheriff’s Department about the tents.

  But the deputy had accepted Cyrus Zarene’s story. He and Cyrus shook hands, and Sholto watched the deputy’s gaze flicker down to the marks tattooed on Cyrus Zarene’s left forearm.

  The deputy set off back the way he’d come, only saying in passing that Sholto should from now on probably keep his sister under his eye at all times.

  * * *

  SHOLTO DREW CANNY OUTSIDE and sat beside her on the steps. He said, “Look at me.”

  She was pale and drawn. Her clothes smelled of compost and had big blotches of rotted vegetable matter on them. There was eggshell in her hair, as well as leaves and twigs, and a wilted sprig of lavender. Sholto pulled out the lavender. She took it from him and began to rip it into crumbs.

  “Okay—spill,” Sholto said.

  “I didn’t want to talk to any of them.”

  “Zarenes?”

  She nodded. “I’m mad at them.”

  “All of them?”

  “No. But—how can you trust people who…” She trailed off and lowered her head. The black curtains of hair closed around her face.

  “Come on, Canny. Before I leap up and start throttling Zarenes indiscriminately. At least tell me which one I have to throttle, and why.”

  She was quiet, collecting herself, Sholto thought, so he stayed still and chewed his lower lip.

  “You know how I found that trapped lamb?” Canny said. Her voice quavered.

  “Yes?” said Sholto.

  “Mr. Cyrus and Mr. Lealand said they went up and dealt with it.”

  “Yes?”

  “They didn’t. They’re horrible, heartless, lazy people. They just wandered a little bit off along the river trail and shot the rifle into the air and then sniggered at one another about the silly, sensitive city girl. I should have known. That boy Lonnie, he was sitting with me on the porch of Orchard House and he knew what they were going to do. He was teasing me about being a sentimental city girl.”

  “Okay, okay,” Sholto said. “You’re leaving the important things out—like why you vanished!”

  “I’m trying to explain why I was so upset,” Canny said, raising her voice.

  Sholto was very distracted by the gushing floods of relief pouring through him. His sister was angry. And she had a cause. But nothing terrible had happened to her. “All right, just tell it your way,” Sholto said. “Take your time.”

  “I waited till I saw Susan before I came back.”

  “Didn’t you hear me calling last night? I went up and down the valley.”

  “I hiked all the way up to Fort Rock,” Canny said. “Then, when I was only partway down it got dark. I stayed put because there were ravines, and I thought it was safer to stay put. I saw your lanterns. I felt terrible, Sholto, but I think it was the right thing to do. That it was better to worry you than break a leg.”

  “But it’s two p.m. now. Sunrise was five a.m.”

  “I was cold all night. Shivering. I went to sleep as soon as the sun came up. Sorry.”

  “You haven’t told me why you ran off.”

  “They didn’t shoot the lamb!” Canny shouted. “I was walking up that way and I could hear the lamb and its mother. I didn’t believe it, but I went to look anyway.”

  She clapped her hands over her face and put her head down on her knees. Her hair tumbled to cover her lower legs, so that all Sholto could see of her was her back and shoulders and the nape of her neck, and her toes peeping out from the shawl of hair.

  “It was still alive,” she said indistinctly. Then she moaned. “I had to hit it on the head with a rock.” She moaned again. “I had to hit it over and over.” Then, “Oh, Sholto!” she cried, and threw herself against him and burrowed her head into his chest.

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING Susan and Sholto hurried Canny out of the guesthouse at seven. She barely had time to brush her teeth. She wasn’t even properly awak
e till they got to the car. She sat in the back of the Austin, her stomach growling. As the car wound through the gorge, she had to concentrate on looking past Susan and Sholto’s shoulders at the road ahead, because she always felt carsick when she traveled on an empty stomach. Her brother and his girlfriend were murmuring at one another, but she still managed to catch some of what they said.

  Sholto was saying that it was somewhat inconvenient that the Zarenes he had to interview were the same lazy brutes who had neglected to see to a suffering animal, then lied about it.

  Susan leaned so that her head was between Canny and that vital view of the road. Susan whispered, “Just because you promised Canny to have a word with them doesn’t mean you have to straightaway.”

  “I should postpone it?”

  “I don’t see why not. Canny has spent the night out. Hopefully she learned a lesson about not letting emotional turmoil get in the way of sensible self-preservation. So what’s the harm in waiting?”

  “I can hear you,” Canny said.

  “You have very sharp ears, miss,” said Susan. She sat back and kept quiet. Canny concentrated on quelling her nausea and no one spoke again till they were in town.

  Sholto pulled in by a small stucco building just before the center of town.

  “Why are we stopping?” Susan asked. “Isn’t this a Scout hall?”

  “It’s not open,” Sholto said. “I was wondering whether we could borrow some tents from the Scouts.”

  “That’s a thought,” said Susan.

  “No,” Canny said.

  Sholto swung around, hooked his elbow over the seat, and stared at her. “I don’t want to make you feel bad, Canny, but you must see how awkward all this is. We skipped breakfast to avoid Miss Zarene. We’ve accused them of stealing from us. We’ve had them out searching for you. We’ve brought a Massenfer deputy into the valley. And I’d arranged to be around at Mr. Cyrus’s this afternoon with the recording equipment—and you expect me to tell him off!”

  “Don’t then!” Canny said.

  There was a moment of shimmering silence, then Sholto turned back, let out the clutch, and they drove on.

  They stopped at a café for breakfast, during which no one said much more than “Please pass the salt.” Sholto and Susan kept their eyes cast down. Canny understood that they were angry with her—Sholto because she wouldn’t make any effort to make him feel more comfortable about failing her, and Susan because she resented having to babysit Canny and had from the start. But they seemed to be angry at each other too, and Canny was having a hard time figuring out why. She looked at them and felt her resolve soften. She had meant to keep on lying. She wanted freedom—freedom to do what she wanted, and the way she saw it, keeping those three Zarene adults on the back foot was the best way of securing that freedom. She wanted Sholto to confront them, be indignant, accuse them of putting his sister in a position of having to euthanize livestock because they were too bone lazy to walk up the hill and do it themselves. It wasn’t as if they could explain that the buried lamb was only an illusion. And they’d have no reason to believe she was lying. By talking to them, Sholto was supposed to make her story seem completely credible: how she killed the lamb then ran off weeping and wringing her hands, away from people—heartless, untrustworthy adults. How she’d sat alone on the hill, crying and nursing a bruised heart. How she’d been caught out in the dark and had huddled shivering all night. Sholto believed her story, so he’d be convincing. His fury, his protectiveness, his performance of her story, all of it was Canny’s free pass to come and go as she pleased. To climb the hill. To visit the hidden house. To talk to its prisoner again.

  Now that Sholto wasn’t going to perform his part in her play, Canny no longer felt guilty about deceiving him. She glowered across the table at him. So her feelings were inconvenient? How dare he think that, even if she was lying about them.

  Sholto got up to pay and went outside and waited, leaning on the car.

  “Bugger him,” Susan muttered, and tipped the last brackish brown dribbles of tea into Canny’s cup. “He can just bloody wait for us to finish.”

  “Why are you mad at him?” Canny asked.

  “Well,” Susan said, then paused and thought for a time. “I guess because he stops short all the time. Sholto is great at managing people whenever it doesn’t matter much, but once he’s opposed, he caves in and then starts going on about other people’s unreasonable demands. It’s all because he can’t please the Professor.”

  “But the Professor is mild. He never makes a fuss.”

  Susan snorted. “The Professor is a man who likes being disappointed. He’d rather feel let down and long-suffering than actually ask for what he wants or argue with anyone. Which, I have to say, isn’t very manly of him.”

  Canny gazed at Susan in wonder. “You can’t be right.”

  “You wouldn’t notice because you spend all your time worrying about your mother. Splitting icebergs off her ice floe and floating off on them waving your little Canny flag, a flag with some kind of math symbol on it—nothing pretentious like the infinity symbol but, say, that proportionality one that looks like a fish. You’re so busy trying to figure out how to be Sisema Afa’s daughter that you never think about Sholto being his father’s son.”

  “The Professor is nice,” Canny said.

  “To you. You he doesn’t take personally. If you ever get married and ask the Professor to give you away he won’t be able to, because he already has.”

  Canny covered her mouth with her hand.

  “Oh God!” Susan said, “Don’t mind me. I’m only trying to help. I really care about Sholto, but it drives me crazy that he can’t stand up to his dad, or any other man. To me—yes. To your mother—in a pinch. To you—every time. But all men are like the Professor, and Sholto’s nuts try to climb into his stomach every time he has to stand up to one.”

  Canny uncovered her mouth and just stared at Susan till the woman reached out and gently pushed her jaw up so that her teeth met with a click.

  “I keep forgetting you’re a schoolgirl,” Susan said. “You’re so tough-minded.”

  They were startled then because Sholto came and banged on the window by their heads.

  “Hey!” said the man behind the counter. “Cut that out!”

  Susan apologized, not very convincingly, and as a nice gesture cleared their table for him.

  Canny went out to her brother, who opened the car door for her and waited to do the same for Susan.

  * * *

  CANNY SPENT MOST OF THE MORNING sharing a long library table with Sholto, Susan, and two giant binders of yellowed newspapers—the Massenfer Messenger for the year 1929. She sat with her shoulders hunched and one arm curled protectively around her writing set. She used up almost her whole store of fancy paper writing to Marli. She told Marli everything that had happened in the last three days, starting with Fort Rock and her first glimpse of the hidden house. She wrote about the valley with its few adults and many children, and how the children were tattooed, and how she’d seen spells in a tree, like a gathering swarm. She told Marli about her own experimentations and the invisible tents. She wrote about the forested hill, the illusion of the trapped lamb and its miserable mother, the strange alphabet in the schoolroom at Orchard House. Finally she told Marli about the prisoner in the house on the hill.

  Canny felt as if she were making a dash over some dangerous ground—like an ice floe, the ice floe Susan had talked about. Only momentum would get her safely across.

  She left off only when she’d finished the story. She put her pen down and shook her cramping hand.

  “That can’t all be complaints about Sue and me or nasty Zarenes,” Sholto said. Then, “If you want to stretch your legs you could go get me a newspaper.”

  “I’d have thought you had enough newspapers.”

  Sholto fished in his pants pocket and tossed her a coin. “I want a copy of today’s Clarion,” he said.

  Susan said, “He wants to se
e what bands are playing at the Honeypot. What we’re missing.”

  “Go. And come back,” Sholto said, and followed this with a stern look.

  The newsagent had sold out of the Castlereagh Clarion but sent Canny on to the railway station, which had a vending box.

  The station was possibly the grandest building in Massenfer. It had a huge portico, decorated cornices and pilasters, and tall ornamental urns on the roof, everything constructed of cement made to look like masonry. There were several cars parked by the grand steps and one pony and trap. Canny patted the pony, and it huffed into its nosebag, blowing oat dust up into its eyelashes. Canny hurried into the station’s cool, tiled interior and looked around, squinting as her eyes adjusted. She couldn’t see where she was going and ran into Lealand Zarene. He put a hand on her shoulder to steady her. She hadn’t seen him partly because he was moving so fast—striding through from the platform. And she hadn’t recognized him because he was wearing a suit and hat.

  “Sorry,” she said, before remembering she was supposed to be treating him like a villain.

  “Agnes,” he said, stepped around her, and went on his way. She heard him talking to the horse, his normal terse voice warmed and softened.

  Canny located the Clarion’s vending box and fed Sholto’s coin into it. She grabbed a newspaper and tucked it under her arm. She wasn’t going to leave the building till Lealand Zarene had gone. She sidled out of sight of the main entrance then, skirting its walls, went onto the platform.

  There were a number of people waiting. The board said the Westport Express was due in half an hour. It was families waiting, and they’d already piled their luggage into the porters’ cart. School was out, so they were mostly men seeing off wives and kids and handing over last-minute presents—comics and coloring books and money to spend on the train. There were a few solitary businessmen; a grandma who was being kissed and hugged by a very large family; and one boy, on his own already, sitting on the farthest bench, stooped over with a cardboard suitcase between his feet and his knuckles pressed into his eye sockets. It was Lonnie Zarene, who, it seemed, had been left with half an hour to wait and no loving fuss of farewell.