by Lucia Ashta
Something swept across Marcelo’s face that again I couldn’t identify. But I saw something.
“Very well. I agree not to tell them that you’re recovering. For now,” he added, somewhat menacingly.
“Thank you.” The thought that something good could come from all my suffering lifted my spirits immensely. In that moment, I didn’t even care that Marcelo was unpleasant. An outcome that didn’t see me married to Winston was enough to compensate for many inconveniences.
Marcelo tipped his head once and left the room. It was the closest thing to a farewell he’d given me yet.
He left the door open. I could hear him cross the house, leather-soled shoes slapping against stone tiles. Then, I heard a door close, shutting me and my questions out.
The sound was also a signal to Maggie. Within the minute, she rushed to my side. When I convinced her that I didn’t know what had happened in the bathtub—and that was the truth—she was disappointed and went off to prepare some more broth for me.
These were going to be long days.
The Undeniable Something Is Happening
I had no idea how intense the days were going to become. I couldn’t possibly.
I didn’t even make it through the week without more problems, serious problems. I was drowning under the weight of them.
I was still scheduled to marry into future unhappiness. Whether I married Winston or not largely depended on the good will of Marcelo, an insensitive magician I still knew next to nothing about. What I did know about him didn’t do much to put my mind at ease. If anyone were to find out that I was at Lake Creston with a wizard, it would be bad, very bad.
Nothing good had ever come of magic that I was aware of, yet here I was, secluded with a man who apparently dedicated himself to magic. And now things that not even he could explain were beginning to happen to me.
And things were about to get worse.
My skin was healing nicely, and the pain wasn’t as terrible as it had been at first, but my movement was still very limited. I hadn’t been outside in so long that I couldn’t remember when I’d last stood under the sun.
Marcelo was unwrapping my bandages, just as he did every day. It was an involved process. Maggie started by helping me up and over to the rocking chair. I sat gingerly on its edge until she stripped my bed of its sheets and fitted a clean one on the mattress. The soiled bedding sat in a pile waiting to be boiled. Marcelo didn’t want to risk infection of my burns. Then Maggie helped me over to the bed again and pulled my nightgown off. She tossed it into the laundry pile.
She helped me onto the bed, onto my stomach, where I tried very hard to pretend that I wasn’t laying naked in front of Marcelo. There was no alternative. He began the tedious process of unwrapping the bandages around my feet and legs. Then he unwrapped the bandages that protected my hands from infection.
“You’ve made great progress,” he said, while he looked me up and down. “I think I can say surely now that there will be no scarring once this is over. The swelling has gone down, and there are no boils or blisters on your skin.”
I picked up on subdued surprise in his voice. I turned my head to try to look over my shoulder at my back but couldn’t really make out much. I’d noticed that my pain level had diminished.
Perhaps if I just ignored things, they’d go away. It wasn’t a good plan, but it was a plan of sorts.
I was far out of my comfort zone.
I’d never been this gravely injured before. I couldn’t guess how long my skin would take to heal.
Obviously, Marcelo did. “It’s truly remarkable. Unheard of, in fact.” He seemed to be talking more to himself now than to Maggie or to me. “I’ve never seen burns like yours not advance to the stage of painful blistering. Now that I think of it, your incredible progress is almost as unusual as the situation that caused the damage in the first place. Clara, have you done anything to speed the healing?”
“Me? No. What could I have done?”
“Turn around and lie on your back.”
Maggie helped me flip over until I lay there as he asked, fully naked and exposed.
“It’s amazing,” he mumbled. “Does this still hurt?” I winced as he placed his hand flat against my thigh, expecting the searing pain I’d grown used to over the last few days. But I soon realized it didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would. I relaxed.
“Yes, but not as much as it used to.”
“How about here?” He touched the bottom and tops of my feet.
This time I didn’t tense in anticipation. “The same. It still hurts, but not as much.”
“And your private areas? Are they very sore still?”
I cringed inwardly at the fact that this man was even mentioning my private areas, but he had good reason to. The fire had burnt the parts of my body with particularly sensitive skin the most. The pain was dreadful.
“Yes, they’re still quite sore. But they too are better.” This was news I was very happy to report, even if I didn’t understand it. All of my body was healing rapidly, even those parts that had been most damaged.
“Maggie, begin spreading the ointment.”
“Yes, Sir.” Maggie moved to retrieve the ointment Marcelo had kept warming by the fireside.
Marcelo had the modesty to allow a woman to touch my body instead of him, but he hovered over Maggie to ensure she did the job properly. “Make sure the layer of ointment is as thick as before. We need her to continue healing at this speed if she can.”
But the ointment had little to do with my rate of healing. I think Marcelo suspected this even then.
“Can I sit in front of the fire for a while? It’s incredibly boring to be in this bed all day long.”
“I think that would be all right. But only for a little while. If you tire, let us know right away. Besides, I don’t think your bottom will like sitting in a hard, wooden chair for very long.”
He was right. I hadn’t thought of that. My bottom stung, bright red as it was.
Even so, bandaged and dressed in a fresh nightgown, Maggie helped me to the rocking chair. She had piled blankets on the seat as a cushion, and I sunk in. It felt good to have a change of scenery, even if my vantage point had only changed by a few feet.
“Thank you, Maggie.” I smiled encouragingly at her. These had been difficult weeks for me, but I knew they’d been for her as well. She was the one responsible for meeting my every need and keeping me safe. She was my friend and she had to watch me suffer. She was away from the home she’d known her entire life, away from her mother, with no one to talk to while I was unwell. None of it could have been easy for her.
I caught her eye. “For everything.”
She smiled. “You’re welcome, Clara. Shall I leave you alone for a bit to enjoy the fire in quiet?”
“Yes, please. That sounds wonderful.”
The fire rewarded my appreciation with a spectacular show of sparks as a log fell to one side. It settled down again, and the flames danced and mesmerized me as they always did. Just as water was hypnotic to me, so was fire. I could stare at it for hours—if my injured backside allowed.
I eased back into the chair and let my gaze blur. In seconds, my mind was ablaze with vibrant oranges, yellows, and even indigos. It was breathtakingly beautiful. I no longer distinguished the fire I was looking at from the fire within. It all made me feel content.
I leaned my head against the wooden back of the chair and closed my eyes. I was pleased to discover that the fire remained. It danced as brilliantly as before.
Somewhere, a part of my brain registered Maggie running toward Marcelo’s rooms, but I continued to enjoy the display uninterrupted.
When Marcelo rushed into my bedroom and closed the door behind him so that Maggie wouldn’t follow, I was at peace.
It was Marcelo’s frantic voice that shattered it. “Clara! Stop this!”
I opened my eyes. Despite his frenetic order, I was calm.
Then I saw that fire had sprung up all around m
e. It licked at the massive stone hearth, burning the wooden ledge that crowned it. Flames snaked across the stone floor, reaching for me with their wily, tantalizing ways.
I screamed. The fire would be at my feet in seconds. My skin stung, reminding me of the damage already done, warning me of the fire’s power. I screamed again.
“Clara, look at me. Right now.” Marcelo’s tone left no room for argument or disobedience. I looked at him.
“You’re doing this. And you need to stop it right now.”
As strange as his statement was, I found myself nodding and shifting back toward the approaching fire. I looked at it and tried to get it to stop. But I couldn’t. I was panicking. I wasn’t connected to it in the same way anymore.
“Do something. It’s about to reach me!” I was freaking out.
“Clara, make it stop.” But Marcelo had barely gotten the words out when he realized I wasn’t going to be able to stop it.
It would reach me in seconds.
Marcelo sped to my side, extended his hands, palms toward the approaching fire, and spoke.
“We honor you for your might, Fire. We thank you for your existence and for all that you do.”
The heat of the fire seeped through the bandages on my toes, while the fire continued its probing crawl toward me.
“But you cannot harm this girl. There is no call for destruction here. There is no call for harm. Put that side of you to rest. Stop. Now.”
And to my astonishment, the fire did.
It retreated as evenly as it had come. It crawled back, slithering across the hot tile floor and down the stone walls surrounding the hearth, until, progressively, it was nothing more than the flames one would expect to find in a lake house fireplace.
If not for the blackened wooden ledge above the hearth, smoldering, and a thin film of black soot that coated the stone of the hearth and the floor, I would have convinced myself that I’d imagined everything. Its implications were alarming.
I stared ahead at the modest fire, stunned and speechless. Then I brought my hands to my face and burst out in tears. My body shook uncontrollably.
I’d been a strong, relatively independent, private young woman. But since Marcelo came into my life, I’d swooned, screamed, and wept like a fragile girl incapable of caring for herself.
None of that mattered to me now though. I was more frightened than I’d ever been in my life.
It wasn’t just that the fire had almost burned me again, and it wasn’t that the firewater or whatever-it-was had burned me already. I wasn’t scared because of the fever that took me out of my mind for so long or because I was far away from home.
I was almost paralyzed with fear because I didn’t understand what was happening to me, and now I couldn’t deny that something was.
And the only person capable of helping me understand any of it scared me almost more than all of the rest put together.
Yet, I crumpled into his arms when he wrapped them around me.
Who or What Am I?
“Do you feel well enough to move back to the bed?”
My sobs had subsided and the inset of exhaustion weighed my arms down heavily around Marcelo’s waist. I nodded.
He helped me stand, and I limped awkwardly over to the bed. I rolled onto it and lay there, slack. Not a single question hampered my mind. I was too tired and too weak.
Outside, Maggie couldn’t take it any longer. Her place as a servant obligated her to be silent and stay out of the way unless she was called upon or expected. But she’d been the first one to see the fire spreading. And since Marcelo had closed the door in her face, she didn’t know what had happened. She’d heard me crying again.
“Sir!” she yelled through the door. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes, Maggie. You may come in.”
Maggie had the door open before he finished his sentence. She rushed to my side. For her, I opened my eyes. “I’m fine, Maggie. I’m fine.” I tried to smile.
Maggie threw herself on me, forgetting my burns. She hugged me before my groans reminded her of the situation.
“Thank you, Maggie. I appreciate you.”
What I censored was the last part of this statement, what I was truly thinking. I appreciate you even though I have no idea who or what I am anymore.
Another Way of Life
The days came and went, looking much the same. I lay in bed, where my only job was to heal, while Marcelo whipped around me like a whirlwind.
After the last incident, he didn’t leave the lake house again, anxious I might start another fire. Since I didn’t know how I’d done it either time, we couldn’t anticipate if or when it would happen again.
While I rested, Marcelo studied. He studied books and he studied me, and he stared off into the distance analyzing it all. Gradually, books piled up on one of the side tables. From the bed, I couldn’t see their titles, and I regretted it. Had I been well, I would have tried to peek inside the books. Their exteriors were dark and mysterious much like their owner. Marcelo had given me few answers, and I suspected that his books would tell me more than he was willing to share.
Whenever Marcelo wasn’t there with me, Maggie was. She slept on a cot, between the fire and me. I assumed this was Marcelo’s attempt at insulating me from the flames.
I hoped it would work.
On my end, while I allowed my body to heal itself, I focused on not thinking about the fire in the fireplace, or the fire in the water, or the fire anywhere else. But I quickly discovered the problem with not thinking about something: It seemed to make you think of it all the more.
It was late morning and already I’d grown bored of watching Marcelo pace back and forth across the room. He walked tirelessly, occasionally muttering to himself and sometimes stopping to reference a book. I knew he was trying to solve the question that I’d become, and I didn’t figure it was a good sign that it was taking him this long to discover the answer.
“Marcelo?”
He continued as if he hadn’t even heard me.
“Marcelo.”
He looked up, confused, as if he’d forgotten where he was. Then his eyes focused, and he stopped walking to face me, his shirt open around the collar. Everything about him was either distracted or tousled.
“Will you please talk to me?”
He scratched the dark stubble that marked a two-day old beard and resigned himself. “Yes, I suppose I should talk it over with you. I can’t make any sense of it otherwise. This just isn’t the way things are supposed to happen.”
He pulled up the rocking chair and sat on the edge of the seat, started to speak, then stopped. He rose to shut the door.
“Clara, I’m afraid that once I tell you what I’ve been considering all these days, you’ll never be able to go back to your life the way it was before.”
“I—”
“I know you think your life is already different and that you can’t return to the way it was anyway.” I tried to interrupt again but he held up his hand. “But it’s not really that different. I could teach you to prevent what happened here with the fire so that it never happens again. You could return to Norland and lead a perfectly normal, healthy life. I think that whatever we do here should consider that to be your goal. Which means I’ll have to be very careful of what I tell you.”
Before he even finished, I was shaking my head. “What kind of a life do you really think awaits me at Norland? The way you speak, dress, and carry yourself—you must come from a wealthy family too. You know what it’s like. What kind of a life do you think I lead, always being told what to do and when to do it? Continuously being told that I’m not and can never be as good as my dead brother because I’m a girl?
“If I’m not made to marry Winston, I’ll be forced to marry somebody else. I’ll go from being the obedient property of my parents to being the obedient property of my husband. Is it that surprising that I want more for my life?”
“No. I suppose not. But is this what you want for your life?
”
I didn’t know exactly what this was, but I had some ideas. I’d done everything possible to resist thinking of magic as the source of what had happened to me.
A life that magic touched in any way was undoubtedly a terribly dangerous one. As much as I didn’t appreciate how Father and Mother had raised me, I understood why they shielded my sisters and me from magic. Retribution for involvement in magic arrived swiftly, unannounced, and with a vengeance that brooked no forgiveness.
Yet, I had nothing to do while in bed this last week but lose myself between alternating thoughts and stillness. While Marcelo paced furiously, I eventually surrendered to the ideas that insisted on coming.
I turned the little I knew about him and what happened to me over in my mind. I had many theories, and every single one intersected with the dangerous M word sooner or later.
None of them led to a normal life. All of them would horrify Father and Mother.
Nevertheless, they were vastly preferable to the vapid life I’d just described to Marcelo.
“I prefer it to the life lined up for me at Norland.” I met his gaze. “Wouldn’t you?”
Emotion flared in his expression before it passed. I hoped someday I would learn what went on behind that façade. “Yes, I would.”
He slid back in the chair and crossed his arms across his chest. “You’re certain?” His eyebrows crunched a fraction of an inch higher on his forehead. He didn’t take any of this lightly. In fact, I hadn’t seen him take anything lightly yet.
I nodded in affirmation while my heart pitter-pattered furiously. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. I was scared again. But, in truth, I wasn’t as frightened as I would have thought.
The prospect of a different life excited me. There was little I would regret leaving behind.
Another way of life was choosing me.
Life and Death Serious
Marcelo sent Maggie away under the pretext that the errand was too important to entrust to Thomas. He told me she wouldn’t be back until almost dark and that was barely enough time to get started. I tingled in anticipation of discovering what my new life held.