Mortal Fire

by Elizabeth Knox

  Canny was listening to her mother, but every joint in the track the train clattered over was a number. Canny was counting backward, away from the sum. It wasn’t a simple process of subtraction. All the numbers and symbols were being obliterated. A storm was coming, and it was snowing on the graph paper. The signs, sines, and cosines grew dim. The grid was fuzzy, furred with white, and then the page was blank. She was losing something. It was leaking out of her. It was as if she were bleeding to death.

  “Anyway,” Sisema said. “The house was in great shape, super clean and tidy, and it was obvious to me that the boy’s family were only off for a week or so and would be back any minute. That made me nervous. I kept washing the dishes and mopping the kitchen floor.

  “The one night we were there was very hot, though it was still a month off high summer. It was the kind of weather when it’s really difficult to sleep. Anyway, when I did finally, I had a dream in which I was trying to make a cord for a very complicated whalebone carving. The carving didn’t have a hole drilled in it, so I had to weave a kind of cradle for it. You know how I taught you to make thread from combed flax and beeswax? Well, in the dream I had honeycomb, but I had to use my own hair instead of flax. In the dream, my hair was long, like it was when I was a young girl, and like yours is now. I was plucking long strands and tying them to a chair leg so I could wax and plait them.

  “My hair wasn’t strong enough by itself, so, in the dream, I took off my blouse and began to search for a loose thread. I couldn’t find one, and when I looked again the hair was gone too. So, in the dream, I unclasped your grandfather’s fob chain and compass from around my neck and tried to use that. That must have been when I lost it. I think I took it off in my sleep. In the dream, I got up and went around the room trying to peel the decorations from the walls. They came away like corn silk, sleek and strong, and then turned brown and shriveled up, like withered corn silk. Anyway, I was so long at it—trying to find thread for a cord—that I lost the carving. I was standing stupidly looking about when I realized I was awake, and the young man was in the room too, asleep on the rug.

  “I went out to check on the marine boys. They had started drinking again. James hadn’t even slept. They were hatching this plan to tie the young man to our jeep and pull him down the hill. They said he had to stop telling stories and making excuses. They were half mad from booze and bennies and the things they’d seen, and they meant no real harm. They thought they’d only yank him off the terrace garden. He was going to make a big leap. At worst, if he lost his footing, he’d land in the bushes—big rhododendrons smothering some fruit trees. It was going to be a laugh. The young man thought so too, when he woke up and we put it to him. Then he had half a jar of whiskey for breakfast, chugging it down like it was cider.

  “James was the one to tie the boy, with some clever seaman’s knot. He and Alex went down to the jeep and I tossed the other end of the rope to them over the bushes. They fastened it to the jeep and started its engine.

  “All the men were carrying on like it was hilarious. And James and Alex only got more wild and amused. When the rope went tight and nothing budged, all they thought was that I’d untied it and then attached it to something they couldn’t shift, like one of the trees. But that wasn’t what happened. This is hard to explain.”

  Sisema rubbed her forehead. “There was an invisible wall. Really—there was. We could pass through it, but that kid couldn’t. He didn’t seem surprised by it. He just kept shrieking with laughter. Then—I heard later, because he told me—Alex kicked James’s foot off the clutch and the jeep leaped forward and, before it stalled, it dove right off the road and ended up wedged against a tree, bumper down, on an almost vertical slope. It fell, and stopped suddenly and—”

  Sisema went quiet for a moment, and then continued in a strangled voice. “James broke his neck. And that boy—his arms were pulled out of their sockets. They were torn off.

  “I couldn’t think. I just rushed downhill and dragged Alex out of the jeep, and we ran away through the forest. We left everything. Hiked down from the summit to that little town, Oatlands, and caught a bus. We didn’t report what had happened. And Alex went back to the camp outside Castlereagh, early, to the astonishment of his friends who couldn’t imagine why anyone would waste their leave.

  “And I went back to Castlereagh too, and my job. I saw Alex only once more, shortly after, when the rumor went around that the marines were all shipping out—the whole division. There was the strike on the waterfront—the waterfront workers were out for more pay, and the wharves were locked. The marines were loading their own supplies, so some of them were still on land, not already on the ships out in the stream. There was a blackout, of course. So, there was a thin new moon, the dark harbor, and ghostly gray ships, and all these people, mostly women, crowded at the big iron wharf gates waving messages and whispering to the marines doing the loading up—whispering names, and have you seen this one or that one. Alex found me and we hugged through the gates. We didn’t say much because he was so wrecked by what we’d done.

  “This isn’t important for you to know, Canny, but I’d like you to anyway. What I thought about myself changed so much in such a short time. I’d had to keep it secret—the brave thing I’d done for those airmen. But I’d known I was a hero, so I was hero in my own heart too. I had a kind of steadiness about myself. But it wasn’t public, and by the time it was, and people wanted to know me, I’d left those two men dead on that hill. Then when the Shackles were liberated and my story came out, people made a fuss of me. But by that time I was starting to show, starting to bust out of my clothes, so I went home.

  “Then, three months after that, when you were a little baby, I found out that Alex was gone too. Killed at Tarawa. I read about it in the newspaper. The navy had the wrong maps of the atoll and put some of those boys out of the boats in full battle gear in nine feet of water.”

  Sisema pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and touched it under her eyes. “Alex died, and there wasn’t anyone to tell on me. Or anyone to talk to either.”

  Canny tried to think—think and speak. “You said my father was a marine who died at Tarawa. You also said his arms came off. Ma, which one of those men was my father?”

  Sisema thumped her hands on her thighs and cried, “I don’t know! I didn’t do anything. I ran away from the married man. James and Alex were honorable and treated me like a little sister.”

  There was a horrible sensation of loosening in Canny’s head, as if someone were gradually severing every anchoring strand of a great web in her mind, so that it was drifting in and sticking to itself and becoming not a gleaming catchment of light, but a dusty, clumped cobweb full of desiccated insect bodies. Desiccated bodies—that should mean something. There was a reason those particular words had come to her, only she couldn’t recall what the reason was.

  “What about the boy in the house?” Canny said.

  “I did kiss him once,” Sisema said. “I was in the bathroom and he came in behind me and I told him he was cheeky. But he wouldn’t say anything, so I kissed him to get a reaction. But it wasn’t like kissing a boy. His lips had no flavor, and his body no smell, and all I could hear was this twittering, like birdsong. Or like a hearth fire when the flames have gone from the coals and they squeak and tinkle. That sound. And I’ve heard it ever since. The doctors say it’s tinnitus, but it started back then. It’s why I sometimes talk too loud—because I have this endless tweeting and buzzing in my ears.”

  Canny jolted, as Ghislain had when she spoke her grandfather’s name. Her mother put a hand on her to quiet her. “Darling, you have a fever, so don’t throw the blankets off.”

  But Canny was trying to throw herself off, her body, so she could go back and be with him. “Ghislain!” she thought, shouting his name in her mind. In her mind’s eye she saw the other one—the one who looked like Ghislain, but wasn’t Ghislain—the one Ghislain had seen on the shores of an island in the drowned valley. The one who had tos
sed the ball of dead bees at him. The one—she knew now—who had helped her down from the veranda roof when she’d climbed out a window while Ghislain, the real Ghislain, was around the front of the house saying to Cyrus, “What would I do with a girl?” The one who had smiled at her, before shutting the door of the Spell Cage. She remembered how, both times, on the veranda, and in the locked room, she’d been eye to eye with him. She could still see his hard, inhuman, mineral black gaze. Black like coal. Black like a sealed mine shaft. Black like the windows of a house gutted by fire.

  And then the train plunged into the Palisade Range, entering a tunnel. And as it went in, the lights momentarily failed. They flickered, and the carriage went black. When, only seconds later, the lights came on, Canny looked about her and wondered where she was, and what she’d been thinking. She freed her hands from the blankets and raised them to her face. They were hurting. She unclenched her fists, slowly and painfully pulling her fingernails from her palms. The little shuteye shapes filled with blood.

  “Canny!” Her mother snatched a towel from the rail by the basin and folded Canny’s hands into it. “I’m sorry,” Sisema said. “You shouldn’t listen to me.”

  Canny let her wounds be stanched. She gazed at her mother, puzzled. “Was I listening?” she said. “What were you saying?” Then an invisible ax struck the top of her skull, cracking her head and letting the cold air in on her brain.

  The pain was so great she thought it would kill her.

  * * *

  THE CURTAINS WERE CLOSED, but there was a strip of light between them. The light was a blade that kept coming for her. Then, whenever the blade withdrew, she could see what the gap illuminated—a patch of lemon yellow paint. So, she was in her own bedroom. She’d been trying to sleep somewhere strange and it hadn’t worked, and someone had had the sense to get her home.

  The light beside her trembled. It was a water glass. “This will help,” someone whispered. It was her mother. Her mother was being uncharacteristically muted.

  Canny thought she should try to manage some last words at least. But she couldn’t think what to say. After all, what do you say to your own mother when you’re about to die? But her mother eased her upright and tilted the water glass to her lips. The water was wonderful, but she threw it all up again. Her mother washed her face with a warm flannel and folded a clean towel over the spill of bile on the quilt. Then she went away and Canny was able to stay still—to quail at the sight of a hoop of light that rotated, blazing, before her closed eyelids.

  Later—she knew it was later because she couldn’t see the strip of light anymore—someone came in and turned on the pink-shaded lamp on the vanity. Its soft radiance was magnified by the vanity’s three angled mirrors.

  A man sat down on the edge of the bed. He opened his big black bag and produced a stethoscope and a thermometer.

  Canny tried to cooperate with the doctor. She thought that if she was good and helpful and gave the right answers, perhaps she’d live. But it turned out there were many questions she couldn’t answer, because the answers were simply unavailable to her.

  “When did you last eat?”

  “…”

  “Have you been sleeping?”

  “…”

  “Have you had a lot of sun?”

  After the last question the doctor said to Canny’s mother, who was craning over his shoulder, “Does she seem sunburned to you?”

  “No,” Sisema said, then in irritation, “Dark skin shows red too, you know.”

  “Mrs. Mochrie, I served in the Pacific, and I know very well what sunburn looks like on all shades of skin. I only mean that Agnes is your daughter so you should know how she usually looks.”

  “I’m sorry, doctor. The fact is that Canny’s never had enough color. She’s not sporty, and she has been an indoor girl since her friend went into the hospital. What I can see is that she has lost some weight.”

  “Much?”

  “No. A little. Her stepbrother is held up by the flooding on the Peninsula. He’ll be able to tell us if she’s been skipping meals.”

  Canny tried to say that she thought she’d been doing a lot of running. She remembered running, climbing, scrambling.

  The doctor pulled the covers all the way back and began squeezing her legs and arms. He had her move them for him. Tears came into her eyes.

  “Does that hurt?”

  “My head,” she said. When he moved her body her head was jostled. “It’s only my head,” she said, with effort.

  “She hasn’t a temperature. It isn’t polio, Mrs. Mochrie. I know that’s your concern.”

  “They’re only immunizing the small children so far.”

  “Soon everyone will be immunized.” The doctor put his palm on Canny’s face and prized one eye wide open. He shone a light into it. She thought he would see only a cavity. She was empty; something had smashed its way out of her.

  The doctor held his hand up before her face. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

  Canny could see his fingers, quite clearly. They were a number. But she couldn’t even say the number. Numbers were her air, and her air had turned poisonous. “I can’t say the number,” she said. She had to tell the doctor that. It was important.

  “Have you forgotten the word for the number?” He sounded perplexed.

  The number related to other things, and it wouldn’t let itself be thought, or named. How to explain that?

  The doctor tested the grip of both her hands. He asked her what day it was. She didn’t know. He had her say “Around the rugged rocks the ragged rascal ran,” and “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.” She did that without any trouble, but for a moment wondered if she’d have managed the second tongue twister if she’d known how much a “peck” measured.

  “You know what,” the doctor finally said to Sisema. “I think we’d best treat this as a migraine. Migraines can present like strokes when they’re very bad. But she’s a healthy young girl, and there’s nothing wrong with the grip of either of her hands. So I don’t think there’s any reason for us to suppose she’s had a stroke.”

  The doctor gave Canny a sleeping pill. He moved off with her mother and gave his instructions.

  Canny was on a rail and was traveling slowly backward away from the door to her bedroom, till the doorway was only a little slot, like a keyhole with light shining through it.

  * * *

  SOMETIME LATER THE OPEN DOOR ZOOMED IN AGAIN. The light was blazing in the hallway, and Sisema and Sholto were having an argument in ferocious whispers. Canny tried to catch some of it, but only managed to hear Sholto say, “We have to tell her.”

  * * *

  SOMEONE WAS STROKING HER FOREHEAD. Their hand was heavy and warm. The curtains were open. Canny found her own hands under the covers and made them move. She shoved the other hand away and covered her eyes. The hand returned to her hair.

  There was perfume, farther away than the hand. Canny told the people in the room that she couldn’t open her eyes until they closed the curtains. A moment later there came the hawking noise of closing curtains, and the clamorous brightness went away.

  Sholto was sitting on the edge of her bed. He was wearing a jacket and tie, and his hair was darkened with hair cream and combed into a sleek quiff. Sisema was standing by the window. She was wearing a dark gray dress, high-heeled pumps, and a hat with a half veil.

  Sholto said, “We have some very bad news.” He sounded tender, but self-conscious. He waited a moment. For Canny to prepare herself, she supposed. But she didn’t need to hear him say it.

  After he had said it, Sisema said, “There’s a vigil. For the traditional period. She was home for one night with her family. Now she’s at a community hall in Congress Valley, and her schoolmates are being encouraged to visit.”

  Sholto stroked Canny’s hand. “We know you’re family, Canny, not a schoolmate. But you couldn’t have moved last night.”

  * * *

  WHEN CANNY HAD REACHED the Austin
in the soggy meadow at the end of the Zarene Valley, she had thought, “Now I can sleep. And, at the other end, I’ll go straight to the hospital.” Marli would be there, in her iron lung, smiling insouciantly, like the magician’s assistant about to be sawn in half. There’d be a nebulizer fizzing away near her head, like there was the last time she had a cold. And, really, there’d be nothing to be alarmed about. There would be the smell of menthol, and Marli’s whispering voice telling her how the doctors and nurses had all made such a big fuss, and how she was going to be fine. Just fine.

  * * *

  THE HALL IN CONGRESS VALLEY was one Canny had been to before, once to play badminton and once to listen to a pipe band. It was cold, the building was in the shadow of a hill and there was an unseasonable anticyclone messing up the summer for the whole Southwest.

  Marli’s family were ranged along the wall behind a low barricade of floral tributes. They were sitting on mattresses, their backs against the wall. They had coats or blankets over their legs. There always had to be a respectable group of watchers sitting with Marli, so they weren’t free to move about and get their blood going.

  Marli’s casket was in the middle of the group, its head against the wall and two mattresses abutting it. Marli’s mother was on one side of the casket, with Sione and his daughter, her first grandchild, pressed against her. Marli’s father was on the other side, leaning over, his elbows on the edge of the casket and his hands inside. He was gently stroking his daughter’s cheek.