Touched by Fire

by Gwyneth Atlee

  Feeling nothing but a tiny corpse, its clothing now alight. Malcolm jerked his hand away, for some reason, more affected by this death than any other.

  Dear, God. Had Hannah led him into Hell itself?

  o0o

  Another gust of wind cleared the air long enough for Daniel to catch a glimpse of the mayhem by the river. Homes along the riverside shot flames, and the bridge was jammed with panicked men, women, children, and cattle, each desperate to reach the other side. The bridge timbers themselves were beginning to burn, as was the wooden dam’s base.

  Daniel hesitated, staring at dozens of people who stood frozen with fear along the riverside. A few white faces showed above the darkness of the water, but many more stood stupefied by fear, only feet from safety.

  Lucinda moved blindly forward toward the bridge, but Daniel held her back. If people were crowding across the bridge from the east side, that meant fire raged there, too. They had no better choice than to jump into the water.

  Daniel used his shoulders to shove their way past those who would not move. “In! Into the water!” he bellowed at a woman who clutched two little children. Taking fright, she hauled them further up the bank.

  “We’ll drown!” Lucinda screamed.

  She might well be right, thought Daniel. He’d swum here as a boy, and he remembered how the bank sloped gently into deeper water. But tonight, cattle milled about, driven by the same instinct that had brought so many people. Logs as well, some in flames, had floated down from the woodenware factory. Either could bump a wader and take him in beyond his depth.

  Despite his misgivings, Daniel shook his head. “I won’t let us drown!” he shouted.

  That was when he realized how limp Amelia felt against him, beneath the coat he’d used to shield her from the motes. Dear God, had his child suffocated from the smoke? With an anguished cry, he hauled his aunt into the water.

  They waded until Lucinda was chest-deep. Daniel uncovered Amelia’s face. Her eyes were closed, and ashes smudged her pale cheek. Sparks and cinders fell like burning snow around them, but Daniel hardly noticed as he splashed the girl with water.

  Nothing. He fully dunked her, then brought her to the surface.

  Amelia couldn’t die! She was all he had of Mary.

  With the dunking, some reflex made the child gasp deeply, taking in the fresher air. Her arms jerked spasmodically, and she sputtered. Then she looked up and began to cry. Her blue eyes reflected flame.

  “Daniel, you’re afire!” screamed Aunt Lucinda.

  He felt a burning at his shoulder, which she quickly doused with splashing. The two of them unfolded the quilt his aunt had brought along, and they wet it. The three used it as a sodden shield, a frail defense against the flames that leapt between the banks above their heads.

  o0o

  Buffeted along by the panicked crowd, Hannah found herself in the crush approaching the river bridge. Maybe she should cross it with the others. Surely, the fire on the other side wouldn’t be so monstrous, and she feared the dark waters almost as much as flame. Hannah turned to ask Faye what they should do —and choked on her own horror.

  It wasn’t Faye whose hand she held.

  Instead she peered into the grimy face of a young boy, no older than twelve or thirteen. When she’d fallen over the body in the street, she’d reached out and grasped at the wrong hand. She’d led this boy instead of Faye! Then Faye —Hannah’s mind lurched —Faye probably was dead.

  As she hesitated, a man wheeled his cart into Hannah’s side, knocking her off of her feet. She rolled down an embankment toward the river, her ribs flaring agony.

  A man, a priest by his dark robes, hauled her up and pushed her into the cool water. Hannah waded deeper, stumbled, and then plunged beneath the surface, suddenly in water well over her head.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The mill had caught for certain, and the bridge as well. Daniel moved his family further from the latter, lest they be killed by its collapse.

  “Judgment Day!” croaked Lucinda in his ear. “This sinful world will perish, and we’ll all stand before God.”

  “I’m not ready yet,” said Daniel. “I’ve got amends to make. So let’s just plan on living unless the Lord insists.”

  Above their heads, the quilt steamed and smoldered, so they doused it once again.

  Daniel held Amelia close, mindful of the way she shivered. If the fire didn’t get her, pneumonia and shock might exact the same cost in the end. He’d give anything to have a place to take her, warm and dry and free from flame.

  A gust of wind carried away the roof of the woodenware factory. Blazing buckets and tubs exploded through the opening and then splashed into the river all around them. Daniel heard screams and wondered how many had been struck.

  The mill fire guttered noisily, lighting up the scene as bright as day. Peering across the river’s surface, Daniel saw hands fluttering, splashing water to keep both cloth and hair from igniting. Glowing cinders rained continuously, making the air difficult to breathe. Some yards away, he saw arms reaching through the water, splashing more frantically than any others. A woman’s face broke through the surface, a woman’s face he knew.

  “Hold her just a minute,” Daniel passed Amelia to his aunt.

  Beyond them, the woman floundered and then sank.

  “Don’t go!” screamed Lucinda at her nephew, but still, she took the child.

  Daniel leapt away and swam toward the drowning woman. A flailing arm struck him. He grasped it. Though she struggled, he managed to pull her beyond danger

  Still, she fought, her panic slow to die.

  “Hannah!” Daniel screamed.

  She paused to look at him, then sobbed, and threw her arms around his neck. “I can’t —can’t swim! And Hank and Rosalind are dead! And —And I lost Faye, and —”

  He splashed water on her to cool her clothes, which were already steaming. “Don’t talk! Help us keep from burning!”

  Hannah peered around at the hands, each splashing or dousing. If she wished to live, she couldn’t spare her horror at the inky water another thought. Instead, she joined the strange fellowship of bathers. If Lucinda noticed, she said nothing. All past squabbles had to be set aside. For now, survival ruled unchallenged.

  Daniel took his daughter and heard her coo “Mercy!” in his ear. As he watched a ceiling of flames roll above their heads, he wondered if God had any mercy left for them.

  o0o

  Hannah didn’t know how many hours they spent splashing, like pathetic birds trapped in a puddle. No one spoke, yet they worked together to survive: passing Amelia to another embrace when one’s arms became too tired, wetting down a spot on another’s clothing when it smoked, and always, always showering their small group with river water.

  Sharp pain in her ribs flared whenever she lifted arms above her head or took Amelia’s weight, yet this barely registered against the bone-numbing exhaustion that soon set in. Beside her, Daniel’s eyes glazed over, and Lucinda’s face starkly reflected the lurid firelight. Hannah never thought of stopping; indeed, she soon quit thinking altogether. Some primitive part of her brain worked her muscles ceaselessly, distant from despair as well as hope.

  She could not think of any future outside their desperate struggle. Nor could she remember any past. Instead, she toiled with the others, hour after hour, mindlessly.

  Finally, a hand grasped her arm firmly, made her stop. Released from her trance, Hannah blinked and glanced upward, to the sky. The black of night soothed her sore eyes, and she realized the fires were burning down. Along the river’s bank, she still saw scattered flame, but only a bit of ash fell, like soft, gray snowflakes.

  They had survived the worst.

  She looked to Daniel, who kept Amelia pressed against a shoulder. The child’s eyes were closed, her hair and face dark with water-streaked soot. He released Hannah’s arm and took his aunt’s. Then they waded toward the shore, as others around them began to emerge as well.

  Befor
e they reached it, Hannah heard Lucinda’s teeth chattering, and her own jaws took up the rhythm. While they’d worked, Hannah hadn’t felt the water’s chill, but now she shivered with it.

  They staggered toward a heap of coals and glowing metal —the twisted bands from the burned buckets. All around, people lay on the hot sand, some writhing and moaning, others still as death. Perhaps they were dead, Hannah thought, but she had no strength to care. Right now, Amelia’s fate concerned her most.

  Daniel sank to the warm dirt at his feet and laid his daughter on it.

  “Is she — is she breathing?” Hannah asked.

  He nodded slowly and then lay down, his arm draped protectively across his child. His eyes blinked once and then closed.

  Lucinda fell beside him, her arms tightly curled across her chest. Even in the poor light of the narrow moon, Hannah saw huge blisters on the old woman’s bare legs. Swollen flesh wept where some had burst. As gently as she could, Hannah covered her with the remnants of the damp quilt.

  “Mercy,” breathed Lucinda.

  Hannah leaned close and took her hand. When Lucinda didn’t speak, she gently prompted, “What is it, Mrs. Pangburn?”

  The gray head shook almost imperceptibly. “You can —you can always call me Aunt Lucinda. I forgive . . .”

  “Thank you, Aunt Lucinda. Shall I —shall I wake Daniel?”

  “Let him sleep, child. I’ll be fine. So warm here, nice. Just —I’m just so glad to rest.”

  Trembling with both fear and exhaustion, Hannah stooped and kissed the woman’s forehead. The corners of Lucinda’s mouth twitched, and she let out a rattling sigh. She did not draw breath again.

  Tears blurred the edges of the scene, but not of Hannah’s pain. She felt as if Lucinda had been entrusted to her while Daniel slept. How could she have let the woman die when he had kept her safe all through the fire?

  Quiet sobs shot pain through Hannah’s injured ribs. She wept for Aunt Lucinda, and for Faye, who must have died tonight with her whole family. She wept for Peshtigo.

  And what of Daniel and his family? Had his brother perished too? Had their home and their animals all been reduced to cinders? A wave of sympathy renewed her tears.

  She knew exactly how it felt to lose a family and a home.

  o0o

  His upper body draped across a floating log, Malcolm shivered violently. The left side of his face felt as though a stiff brush scrubbed it raw. Each time the log bobbed in the river, bark scraped his throbbing flesh. He roused enough to shift position slightly and noticed that the night was finally fading.

  Through bleary, swollen eyes, he took in the log that saved him. Most of it had burned down to the water line. He hadn’t fared much better. Both hands were red and blistered, and half his face sang a stinging lament to a similar condition.

  Only luck kept him alive. The log he rode had caught on a snag. If it had rolled instead, he surely would have drowned.

  Malcolm stared at the smoking rubble along the shoreline. Could this be Peshtigo? The remains of a tin roof and jutting pipes offered mute testimony. Though he didn’t have a good view from this angle, he would wager not an inch of the village remained unscathed. Nothing could survive that fearsome holocaust.

  In the distance, through a haze of bluish smoke, he saw evidence he had been wrong. Two men walked along the bank in his direction. He waved weakly and hoped they would spot him. He lacked the voice to even call for help.

  So others had survived. An old reflex, not yet unlearned, made him worry for the safety of his former wife. As a stranger in this town, would she know where to run? Perhaps someone told her, just as the man at the hotel had pointed out his way. Malcolm tried to picture Hannah leaping into the river, just as he had. Parched laughter rattled through his cracked and scabby lips. Hannah would never go into the water. As a child, she’d nearly drowned in a Shelton Creek swimming hole. Since that episode, she hadn’t even learned to swim.

  Desolation ebbed through him, almost as painful as his burns. He hoped she had survived. Because he didn’t want his wife killed by a random natural act. Oh, no. When Hannah Shelton finally met her maker, he didn’t want it to be an accident at all.

  o0o

  He was surely going to have to give up drinking, Daniel decided. The cannon in his head no longer barked, it howled. He could barely lift his cheek from whatever gritty floor he slept on.

  He felt fine hair beneath his fingertips and remembered with a start. Amelia! She lay here beside him, breathing peacefully. This was no saloon. He tried to force his eyes open, but they refused to heed his brain’s command. Gingerly, he felt the lids and found them swollen shut.

  Fear leapt in his chest, a fear he had never known in battle. How could he care for Amelia, his aunt, and Hannah now that he was blind? Would he, the strongest, have to be the females’ charge? He wondered if the sparks and cinders that had burned him hurt them too. Dear Lord, if they all were in this state . . .

  He shivered with the chill, but he felt some warmth on his left side. The east, he reckoned. The sun had risen after all.

  He turned his attention to the howling he had heard as he was waking. Not of dogs, of men and women, of small children. Together, their moans rose wolf-like to the morning after . . . After what? The world’s end, as his aunt predicted? Had last night been Armageddon? Or was it possible such a fire could have been raised by Nature’s hand?

  He would have put his money on the latter, though right now it didn’t make much difference. They survived, at least so far, and he would have to see that they remained alive.

  “Papa?” Amelia’s voice rasped as if she had a cold.

  “I’m here. I’m here.” He drew her nearer.

  “That noise is scaring me. Why are all those people crying?”

  “They’re sad, and they’re afraid. Probably some of them are hurt. Are you all right?”

  “My throat’s sore,” Amelia said. “Papa, what’s wrong with your eyes?”

  It would be ridiculous to lie, yet he hated to admit it, as if mere words would make his blindness real. “They’re very sore. It hurts to open them. Could you be my eyes today? We need to find Aunt Lucinda and Miss Mer— Miss Hannah.”

  “They’re here. Miss Hannah’s lying next to Aunt Lucinda. I think they’re both asleep.”

  “Here, take my hand,” said Daniel. “Show me where.”

  He let her lead him a few steps, as if he were the child.

  “Watch out. Don’t step there. It’s too hot.” She yanked him to one side. Then he felt the tug as she knelt down. “Aunt Lucinda?”

  Amelia let go of his hand. “Aunt Lucinda?” she repeated, her voice rising like a piping bird’s.

  Daniel squatted down and reached out. His fingers brushed the dampness of the quilt. The flesh of his aunt’s face, when he found it, was every bit as cool. Far too cool for a living body.

  “Oh, God.” He hung his head, and his eyes burned even more intensely. “Oh, God. Not her.”

  “Aunt Lucinda? Wake up!” Daniel felt the corpse jerk as his daughter shook it.

  Moisture forced its way through Daniel’s swollen eyelids. “She can’t wake up, honey. Aunt Lucinda’s gone away.”

  “No! She’s not. You can’t see her, but she’s here. She’s just asleep.”

  “No, Amelia. She’s not breathing. Aunt Lucinda’s gone with Mama. Mama will keep her safe for us.”

  “You were s’posed to keep her safe!” his daughter accused. “I want Aunt Lucinda to come back.”

  “She would if she could. But now she wants us to help each other. Amelia, where is Hannah?”

  “Over there.” His daughter’s voice was sullen.

  “Where?” he asked, frustrated.

  Amelia didn’t answer. When he reached out, he felt her huddled beside the woman who had raised her these last three years. The girl’s frail shoulders shook, and her cries came hoarse and quiet. He laid his hand across her back. “Sh. Sh. You say goodbye to Aunt Lucinda. It’s all
right. I know she’d like that. I’ll check on Hannah now.”

  With no other option, he blundered about on hands and knees until he brushed against the gritty cotton of a soiled dress. Please God, he prayed for the first time in three years. Please don’t take her, too.

  He felt along an arm, and then a shoulder. She didn’t move at all. His breath hitched in his throat. He thought he’d saved them all.

  Her neck, when he felt it, was warm beneath his touch. Or was that just the heat of the new sun? No, not only that, for her throat worked as she swallowed, and then she lurched to wakefulness.

  “Daniel! Thank God you’re alive. Your eyes —” A fit of coughing interrupted her. She groaned and fought it back. “What’s wrong with your eyes?”

  “Swollen shut for now. I’ll need your help if you can do it. But Aunt Lucinda —”

  Hannah grasped his hand and squeezed it. “I know. I was sitting with her when she died.”

  “Did she say anything?”

  She hesitated for several moments. “Your aunt said she forgave me.” Hannah’s voice broke, and she softly wept. Then she added, for his sake, “And she said how much she loved you all, you and John and Amelia. She lived for you, you know.”

  He felt tears sting his eyes. “Are you —are you hurt, too?”

  “Maybe some cracked ribs, but I’ll be fine. We have to get Amelia out of here. Daniel, there are dead bodies.”

  “But we can’t leave my aunt here.”

  “We’ll cover her with the quilt,” said Hannah. “We’ll come back. We have to go. We’ll need to find fresh water.”

  “The river?”

  “No,” she said. “We can’t drink here. The water’s filled with ash, and fish are floating. There are bodies, too, up against what’s left of the bridge. I can lead you, Daniel, if you’ll take Amelia’s hand. We need to look for help.”

  “Do you think —do you think John might have survived?” asked Daniel.

  She hesitated once again. “I don’t know. Last night it seemed the whole world was afire.”