Cross My Path

by Clea Simon

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Augusta says, her conviction clear. ‘There is no other choice.’

  ‘There has to be.’ Care’s voice is rising with concern. ‘They have Quirty. He might be in there.’ She stops and swallows. Fear of fire is ingrained for a reason. ‘He might be trapped like I was.’

  She stops, as if surprised by her own words. ‘You knew that might be possible. At the pen – when I went in. Tick wouldn’t. He might have thought it a distraction, but he’s a boy. A child. You knew that we – that people could be killed.’

  ‘People will be killed.’ The old woman doesn’t deny the accusation. Barely reacts at all. ‘I need to save as many as I can.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Care shakes her head, so caught up in this confrontation she cannot sense what has become increasingly obvious. The smoke is catching. Spreading. Soon, it will be too late to smother or contain. We must flee, not only from the conflagration soon to come but from the men who will muster here to fight it. We must—

  ‘Help.’ A voice so soft as to be little more than breath. ‘Help me.’ The words followed by a cough.

  I cannot restrain myself. I move by instinct, the small cry of something underground exerting its primal lure, urging me to focus on the bulkhead, on the opening from which the cry emanated, and the woman marks my shift. I should have expected her to notice, uncanny creature that she is, and she pivots too, turning from the girl, who follows her gaze to see that I am in my hunting crouch – snout extended, whiskers forward toward that tantalizing sound. Too late, I recall the reason for that cry – the stink of smoke. I catch myself and draw back, opening my mouth to take in what I may. But even as I breathe it in, doing my best to gauge the extent of the fire beneath us, Care is upon me. Kneeling beside me, by the bulkhead.

  ‘What is it, Blackie?’ She sees the smoldering twig and knocks it back. It rolls across the cobbles to land harmless several lengths away. And then she sees it: a thin white line snaking from the crack.

  ‘Is someone there?’ The voice again, and once again, a cough. Now that she has been alerted, the girl hears this – or hears enough. She crouches by the bulkhead, her mouth to the cracked door.

  ‘Hello?’ She cannot help inhaling after she speaks, and that close to the bulkhead she gets a mouthful of smoke. She gags, choking, but recovers quickly. ‘Is someone in there?’

  Another cough from within, and the girl sits back on her heels. It isn’t the bad air. Nor that voiceless hacking. No, she’s thinking. Planning how to proceed. I know the set of her mouth, the way her brows pull together. As she pulls AD’s knife from her pants, I know she will seek entrance. Will endanger herself to free the trapped, whoever he may be. I recognize her determination, and see in it the end I have long feared.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know—’ The woman starts to speak, only to be cut off.

  ‘You didn’t care,’ the girl barks back. She throws herself down again by the bulkhead. Works the knife into the worn place and begins to lever it, back and forth.

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ The woman is preternaturally calm. ‘I am sorry, but it doesn’t. One life in the balance …’

  ‘Hello?’ The voice, faint, from below. ‘Help me, please!’

  ‘It’s Quirty,’ cries Care. And at that moment, the board cracks further. She drops the knife and grips the edge, pulling with all her might.

  ‘You can’t go in there.’ Augusta has caught on to her actions and reaches for her. ‘Please, hold off. There may be another way.’

  She doesn’t even look up, so intent is she on widening the gap. ‘I can’t wait,’ she grunts.

  She doesn’t, of course. Once she has decided to act, the girl will not hesitate. Scraping her hand inside the narrow opening, she clutches the outer board and pulls. I retreat – the violence of her action alarming – and as she braces herself, feet against the brick and pulls once again, I hear it – the harsh crack that I feared. Even with my ears flat, the sound is assaultive. Worse, it signals success. Bracing once again, the girl attacks the second board, and with another sharp snap, it too is fractured. The opening she has created is narrow, fit only for a creature such as myself, but the smoke it has released is spur enough. Sliding one leg in and then another, she pushes her way through. I hear the rasp as clothing rips, and smell the blood springing up where her skin has been torn as well, her slender hips still a squeeze for that tight space. Her face betrays no pain, her grimace only sets harder as she raises her knife in a fist above her head before squirming the rest of her slim body through. For a moment, I wonder if she will drop it, her hand already scraped raw. But she holds it tight. And then she is gone.

  The thud as she drops down hard, the stairs below removed or ruined, brings me forward. I peer inside, concern overcoming my distaste for the noise. For the bitter fumes. But that smoke obscures what light may remain, defeating even my superior sight. All I can sense is movement. The girl righting herself, I will myself to believe. But either that movement or the improved ventilation of the broken boards has fanned the smoldering embers. A billow of smoke rises up, causing me to step back, eyes smarting. More coughing – from two throats this time. And the telltale crack and snap of flames, as the fire springs to life.

  As I watch, a spark rises from the opening. Wafting on the heated air, it climbs uneasily. A firefly that I could swat down in a moment.

  ‘She made her choice.’ The voice behind me sad but calm. ‘She’s smart enough to have understood the risk.’

  That spark enthralls me. I stare at it as it rises.

  ‘The chance to come again is not given lightly, and it must not be sacrificed without reason.’ The voice would have me turn. Would have me join in. ‘Not when there is another, higher purpose, and not when debts are owed.’

  Debts. I think of a young girl, distraught and alone. Homeless and hungry, who shared her meager meal with a dying feral creature. Above me, the spark wavers and burns out, and I dive into the dark opening. I will not abandon the girl.

  TWENTY-NINE

  The smoke is thick and oily. I feel it on my fur and whiskers, even as it stings the wet leather of my nose. Unlike the girl, I have landed quietly, my innate agility and sense of depth combining with my memory to help me gauge my leap. Not that I did so with conscious thought. For surely, any higher reasoning would have stopped me from such commitment, such foolishness. I love this girl, and more, owe her allegiance for my life. But there is little I, a cat, can do in such a hell as this.

  A hell it is. I am lucky to be so low and hold my position until I can reconnoiter. Before me, I hear a roar. A monster has sprung to life, devouring the air let in from above. Down by the hard-packed dirt, some oxygen remains. The moment I raise my head above my paws, I too shall start to succumb. Already, my eyes are burning, my ears flick back. The fiend before me howls with rage at being so restrained, and I crouch mesmerized before it.

  ‘Mr Q.’ A crash and I jump – too close to the flicking flames. The heat stings my paw pads, it singes my whiskers. But it is just the girl, off to my right, who has startled me so. Bent double, she is working – one hand holds a piece of her torn shirt over her mouth. With the other, she grabs a packing crate. Pushes it aside. ‘Please.’ Her plea, half smothered by the cloth, would be inaudible to any but my ears. Certainly, the small man slumped before her hears her not.

  ‘Come on. Wake up.’ She kneels beside him, shaking his thin shoulder. But his collapse has served him well. Down on the floor, he must have had a chance to breathe, and now his eyelids flutter, open, and then focus.

  ‘Care?’ The word provokes a coughing fit. The girl responds by ripping free another strip of shirt, which she ties around his head, covering his mouth and nose. At least she pauses then, to affix her own rough mask.

  ‘Can you walk?’ Even as she asks, her voice muffled by the cloth, she tries to pull him to his feet. He stumbles, and she pulls his arm over her neck. Her eyes – and mine – rise to the narrow moonlit opening where, finally, we both
can see Augusta’s hands, pulling to widen the gap.

  ‘It’s no use.’ Augusta calls down to us. Her round face obscures the hole, blocks what little light there is. ‘I’m going to try to find something that I can use to break the lock.’

  She disappears and, too late, I recall Care’s knife. In the restored moonlight, I see her glance around, doubtless with the same object in mind. She must have dropped it in her fall, or when she reached for the prone and coughing man. She pats the ground, seeking it now, but the smoke is too thick, and she cannot find it.

  ‘You should save yourself.’ The keeper gazes up at his would-be savior. ‘My leg.’

  ‘No.’ She clasps him to her and half drags him toward the hole. At least, the air here is breathable. If only it were not also farther from the stairwell. From the door.

  Of course. I whip around, willing my eyes to function through the smoke. The girl has never been down here. She does not know about the stairs and cannot see them through the ash and grit. I pause to get my bearings – and feel my whiskers with my spirits sag.

  The stairwell is behind us, back where the fire burns the brightest. And even without seeing it, I can tell from the pooling of the smoke that the door at its top is closed tight.

  ‘Hello! Augusta?’ The girl has gone to shout up through the bulkhead. I see her balance on the ruined stairs and reach up for the door. ‘I have a knife. I just – hang on!’

  The moon illuminates her filthy face, striped with ash and sweat and beautiful to me. ‘I just have to find it,’ she calls out. But rather than resume her search, she waits there for an answer, wreathed in oily smoke. If I could boost her through, I would. If I could leap up past her and find a rope, I’d do so, returning to her here even if it meant the fire took me whole. But the gap is too high, and I too small. I hate this helplessness more than I fear death, unable even to explain.

  ‘Augusta?’ she calls out once more, before she staggers back, her body sagging in defeat. It is no use. The woman is gone.

  I go to her, for comfort if naught else. And then I see it – dim but clear. The blade of AD’s shiv catches the last bit of light, not a body’s length from where she stands. If only I could tell her.

  ‘Go.’ The man is dragging himself forward. ‘Maybe I can boost you up. Or you can stand …’ He collapses choking.

  But I’ve seen my move. I dart past him to the girl. Stand on my haunches, imploring with my paws.

  ‘Oh, Blackie.’ Sadness suffuses her face, and pity too. ‘You didn’t …’ A sigh that sets her coughing once again. ‘Hang on.’

  As I had hoped, she bends for me. She would save me, lift me up, as the man would do for her. Only I am quicker. I dart away – just out of range – and hear her heart-felt sob. ‘Blackie, come here.’

  She stumbles forward, toward me. And I dart again. Only this time, as she reaches for me, her hands find the metal on the floor. Her fingers run along the blade. Grasp the handle. Raise it. Good girl! She has the sense to follow, as I lead her back – not to the blaze but near it. And then she sees what I would have her see: the stairwell, still intact, up to the ground floor.

  ‘Mr Q, come here.’ She rushes back, but this time I do not follow. Again, she drapes the man’s limp and bleeding arm around her and half carries, half leads him forward. His head lolls, and I do not believe him conscious, which may be just as well, for as we near the fire, something catches with a crack as flames shoot out. But she is brave, this girl. Doubled over from her coughing and eyes streaming, she drags him, drags herself up one step. Two. And then to the top, where indeed the door is shut.

  At first, in frustration, she bangs on it. I hear her sobbing and it breaks my heart. But then the cooler processes of thought prevail and, settling her companion against the wall, she fits the knife – its edge now pocked and dulled – into the frame and pushes. It does not budge. She sets it again and tries once more. The coughing has grown worse and she must pause to spit and wipe her eyes. A final time, she slams the metal in, pounding on it with a hand that must be raw and burned. And then with a cry – half yell, half groan – she throws her full weight on it, pushing against the stair frame. Against fire, against death. And with a crack, the blade snaps off.

  She falls back, as do I. There comes a time …

  But low creature that I am, I find it hard to simply surrender. Indeed, I feel my whiskers tickle. Could it be? Yes. I scramble to my feet. Paw at the door where – yes – that last desperate push has cracked the frame and a breath of cleaner air slips through. I stretch and scratch. I yowl, rousing the girl. And, coughing, she rises to throw herself against the door. Against all odds, it gives. She stumbles forward gasping and then reaches for the man beside her, dragging him up onto the floor. I wait till they are clear, my whiskers shriveling in the heat, and then I leap beyond them to land, blinking, in a room lit only by the moon.

  ‘Mr Quirty, please.’ She shakes the man, who lies beside her on the floor. Slaps him across the face. ‘Please.’

  I lash my tail, impatient. We have escaped the blaze below, but it is an insatiable foe. Although she has closed the door behind us, already, the air around us grows thick with smoke. The warmth unwelcome even after the evening’s chill.

  ‘Wake up,’ she pleads. The window, near at hand, offers an option. It is closed, and I cannot in this form operate its latch. But the girl could – or could break it – easily enough, and then we would be free of this place. If only she does not hesitate too long.

  The man beside her stirs. He groans and coughs and struggles to sit up.

  ‘Hang on.’ She reaches round him, propping him with her body.

  ‘Care?’ He blinks up at her, his voice a rough rasp. ‘I thought it was a dream.’

  ‘No.’ She shakes her head and, as if wakened from a reverie, takes in the room. It is as I recall, a clerk’s space of desk and paper. ‘Can you stand?’

  He tries, and stumbling they make it to the window. A crash from down below is all the spur I need. I leap up to the sill and wait.

  ‘It’s locked.’ The girl’s hands slip and fumble at the catch. ‘Well, nothing for it.’

  She turns back toward the desk – and hesitates, her face perplexed. The smoke, I think. The fumes have gotten to her, for she is seeking not for a weapon or a tool but for a paper. A printed sheet that lies atop the surface, one of many I recall.

  ‘AD’s report,’ she says aloud, her attention caught by her onetime colleague’s name. His fate is history, I would remind her. Sad, perhaps, but not undeserved. I would she move. Respond. Make haste to leave this place.

  ‘Miss Care.’ The man slumped against the wall exhorts her too. She doesn’t listen.

  Instead, she picks it up. Her lips move as she reads, softly to herself.

  ‘It took a while,’ she says. Her voice, distracted, sounds puzzled and yet calm. ‘We—’ She winces and keeps reading.

  ‘He wouldn’t change his story though. Said he’d followed her for days. “The scat,” he kept on yelling. Only after he was broken did we realize we’d misheard him. “This cat,” he meant, when asked about her contacts. “This cat.”’ She turns toward me. ‘Blackie?’

  How can I respond? What is there to say? Our lives are intertwined, but none of this will matter soon. Her human ears are dull to it, but I can hear the floorboards creaking – the joists are giving way. And so I do all that I can: I throw back my head and howl, caterwauling all my pain and loss and fear.

  It works. She starts as if newly woken and, hoisting up the chair, she swings it, smashing through the glass and muntin both. The air that rushes in intoxicates. I almost close my eyes to savor it. To drink it in. Only, we are not the only creatures fed by it. A roar below, and the door behind us buckles.

  ‘Go.’ She pushes the man through and pauses. I would not have her wait for me, but I am in no position to argue or use reason, and so I lead. With one leap, I am through and stand, rigid, on the damp cobblestones, until I see her, too, emerge, coughing and st
umbling as the room behind her bursts into flame.

  THIRTY

  Slinging his arm over her shoulder, Care props her companion up. Together they hobble across the cobblestones, across the open space. But if she feared the breaking of the window would call attention to their flight, she need not. Already, as they make their way, the remaining windows begin to crack and burst. From one the smoke has started to billow. Soon flames appear. The hue and cry will soon be raised.

  ‘A little farther,’ she is urging him, his body bent by wracking coughs. ‘Just – to the alley.’

  He nods in response and they make it past that first building – over toward the wharf where the black ship looms large – and back into its neighboring alley before his strength is spent. The keeper slumps forward. The ordeal has been too much for him, but once she drags him, panicked, into the dark, he starts to stir again.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She stops him when he would start to rise.

  ‘No, rest.’

  He nods, but he would speak, I see. ‘They wanted to know about the old man,’ he says. ‘They think there’s someone still—’

  ‘I know,’ she says. ‘They don’t believe the trouble that I’ve caused them.’ A rueful smile. ‘They’re certain I have help.’

  The two are quiet, and I would give much to know their thoughts.

  ‘First they set AD on me,’ she says. ‘They didn’t like his answer. Then, I think, maybe that redhead who came to you.’ She shakes her head and sighs. Almost a laugh, but there is no humor in it.

  ‘I found him honest,’ says the keeper. ‘As far as I could tell. And I – I have some sense of such things.’

  ‘Maybe.’ The smile returns, if a bit forced. ‘It doesn’t matter now. I’m sorry I got you into this. I think that – Rosa, a girl I knew. I think she spoke to them.’