Fire Along the Sky Fire Along the Sky

by Sara Donati

  “Uffff,” he said, and took a step backward, his heel catching on the door swell. His arms pinwheeled once and then he sat, heavily, his feet inside and the rest of him in the mud.

  “Oh,” said Lily, a hand pressed to her mouth. The sun was at his back but she could see a trickle of blood on his brow, and oil dripping down his face. His eyes were squinted shut, and his eyelashes were sticky.

  Lily laughed. It was a mistake, she knew it, but she could not help herself.

  Simon got up gracefully—some part of her noticed that, even now—and he used both hands to wipe his face, advancing on her as he did.

  She stepped backward until she came up against the big worktable. To her right was another table, and to her left the reverberating furnace, like a great squat toad.

  “You will tease me,” she said, and heard her own tone, half petulant, half laughing. “You know I have a temper.” And, pleading: “It's only rose oil, and the bottle was almost empty.”

  “Only rose oil, is it?” He was close enough now for her to see the small crescent-shaped cut between his brows, and the smear of blood.

  “Rose oil is good for the skin,” Lily said, leaning back.

  “Well, then,” Simon said. “Let me share it with you.”

  She flailed at him but he caught up both her wrists in one hand. The reek of the rose oil filled her nose and she coughed.

  “Simon,” she said. “Simon, wait. Wait, I have to say something.”

  “Go on, then.” He pressed a palm to her cheek and then began to rub the oil in with three fingertips. “What is it you wanted to say? I don't suppose you were about to apologize.”

  She tried to lean away from the oily hand, coughing out a sound that was meant to be a “no” but sounded more like a laugh.

  “Or maybe you just wanted to point out that you've got the better of me. Come in, you said, and in I came. So go on, then, say it. You got the best of me, Lily, and you always will. What else do you want? A kiss, is it?”

  She might have denied it, or tried to. She might have, but Simon had already grabbed her up against him and given her what she hadn't asked for. A kiss saturated in rose oil and a flare of temper that came from them both and ignited where their mouths touched.

  “What would my mother say?” Lily said.

  He bit her lower lip and kissed her again.

  She said, “You're to call on me on Sundays. We're to have a chaperone.”

  Between kisses she said, “She might come up the path and see us, just like this. You with your hands on my—”

  He groaned against her mouth, wrapped an arm around her waist. Then he stepped backward pulling her with him, kissing her as he went, until he was at the door. With a kick of his heel it slammed shut, and then he leaned back against it with her pressed all along the length of him, in a fog of rose oil and frustration.

  “Lily Bonner,” he said, leaning down to look her directly in the eye. “I made a promise and I'll keep it.”

  “Which promise are you talking about? The one you made to me, or the one you made to my mother?”

  He shut his eyes. “Be sensible.”

  She did the only thing she could think of doing: Lily grabbed Simon by the ears and pulled his mouth to hers and kissed him. She kissed him until he began to give in and then she kissed him some more. Then with a great groan he took her shoulders and held her away from him. Breathing as if he had just run a mile uphill, and how that pleased her.

  “Come to dinner now,” he said. “And Sunday I'll call on you.”

  Then he opened the door and went out, and left Lily in the dim, dusty laboratory.

  Noses twitched and brows were raised, but nobody said a word about the fact that Lily came to the dinner table smelling just like Simon did: as if they had been rolling around in Missy Parker's rose garden in the full of the summer.

  It was not like Curiosity to let such an opportunity go, but the subject was a somber one: tomorrow was the day that the bodies that had been waiting over the winter would finally be set to proper rest. In the ice shed behind the barn there were three coffins and in the village there were more.

  “You going to start today?” Curiosity asked Black Abe.

  “I don't know,” he said. “I smell a change in the weather.”

  Curiosity looked up at him, her brows pulled down into a sharp vee of disapproval. “Why, Abe, I'm surprised at you. Wouldn't get much done at all if we let a little rain stop us, this time of year. Why, I seen Simon there hauling logs in rain so thick the oxen was almost swimming.”

  “I'm a Scot, aye.” Simon grinned at her. “Bred to the rain.”

  Lily made a neat pile of her pickled cabbage and then moved it to the other side of her plate, to keep herself from looking up.

  Curiosity said, “I'd surely appreciate it if you got started today, Abe. We need to tend to our folks.” She was looking at the girls.

  “Why, then,” Abe said. “I'll do just that.”

  Suddenly everybody seemed to have something worth saying. They talked among themselves about the weather and graveyards and wasn't this stew tasty, Lucy's dumplings had turned out just right and pass them down, please, there was a little hole in Abe's belly that still needed filling.

  Then Callie found her voice all at once. “But what about my pa?” she said. “My pa has to be there too.”

  There was a small, shocked silence.

  “But of course,” Elizabeth said. “Of course he must. We wouldn't go ahead without him, Callie.”

  Tears were streaking over the girl's face. She sobbed, just once, but it was a sound so riddled with pain that Lily's own throat closed in sympathy. Martha looked just as stricken, and for a moment they looked to her like two little glass dolls ready to shatter.

  “Callie,” Curiosity said. “I'ma go speak to your pa just as soon as I get up from dinner. You can come with me, if you like.”

  “No.” The girl shook her head so hard that her plaits jumped. Next to her Martha had begun to weep too, but silently.

  “Well, then I'll go on my own,” Curiosity said in her gentlest voice. “Don't matter none, child. Not a bit.”

  “I'll go with you,” Elizabeth said quickly. “Would that be a comfort to you, Callie, if I went to see your father too?”

  The girl drew in a long, shaky breath and closed her eyes. By the time she opened them again her expression had calmed, and she nodded.

  Then Simon reached over and put a hand on the back of the girl's head. She started at first and then leaned into his cupped palm.

  Simon said, “It's right tae weep for her, lass. You must never be ashamed tae weep for your mither. I still weep for mine, betimes.”

  “Now that's a pure truth,” said Black Abe, smiling kindly.

  Lily was close to tears too and so she closed her eyes, just for the moment, and still she saw the two girls.

  Callie was just now realizing that tomorrow she would have to stand next to her father while the coffins were lowered into a muddy hole: her mother, and Cookie Fiddler, a woman she had known and loved all her life. Tomorrow she would go to those new graves and her father would be there, most likely with his new wife, or maybe she would come uninvited and there would be hard words said. It was months since Dolly Wilde had died, but to these young girls it must seem fresh every day.

  As young as they were they had borne up under sorrow and loss and all the meanness of spirit the village could think to dole out, and they had done that without complaint for these many weeks. While Lily was worrying about getting the best of Simon Ballentyne, they were watching the weather and counting the days until graves must be dug.

  Lily said, “Martha, Callie, if you girls don't have any other chores this afternoon, I could use your help at the meetinghouse, mixing up pigments.”

  Callie blinked at her, blinked hard to see through tears.

  Martha cleared her throat to say, “May we, Curiosity?”

  The old woman picked up a bowl that needed filling and got up from
the bench. On her way past Lily she paused and, leaning down, put a noisy kiss on the top of her head.

  “Of course you may,” she said to Martha. “Cain't think of a blessed thing to keep you busy otherwise. Unless you can, Sally? Lucy?”

  “No, ma'am,” said Sally solemnly. “Nothing I can think of.”

  “I was planning on going over to see my ma,” Lucy said. “I promised to warp the loom for her.”

  “Elizabeth? These girls got studying to do that can't wait?”

  Lily's mother had a smile she didn't use very much, a smile that started with her mouth but shone out of her eyes too; a smile that said words couldn't describe just how pleased she was. Over the years Lily had tried to draw her mother when she smiled like that, but she had never quite been able to catch it on paper. Right now she thought she might be able to, if she were to get up from the table while it was fresh in her mind.

  But that would mean walking away, and she couldn't do that, just now. Somehow she had managed to do just the right thing; she had pleased her mother and Curiosity and all the people who had had cause to be disappointed in her. She wanted to hold on to that for the time being.

  Black Abe said, “You look like your ma just now, Miz Elizabeth. I never knowed anybody who could smile quite like her, but she passed it on to you.”

  “Lily smiles like that too, sometimes,” said Simon. His voice was a little hoarse, but his gaze was even and kind and filled with understanding and something else, something like pride. “I've seen it.”

  “You a fortunate man, Mr. Ballentyne,” said Black Abe with a wink to Lily. “Fortunate indeed.”

  Later, on their way to the orchard house, Curiosity stopped in the middle of the path and bent over, her arms crossed against her belly. At first Elizabeth thought she was weeping, overcome by the sad scene at the dinner table; Elizabeth might have started too, but then she caught sight of Curiosity's face: she was laughing so hard that she was convulsed with it.

  “What?” Elizabeth said, alarmed and irritated too. “What is it?”

  Curiosity pulled a kerchief from her sleeve to wipe the tears from her face and chuckled. “I was just remembering that rose stink, and the look on Simon's face when he come to table. I thought I'd just about bust, keeping a straight face.”

  Elizabeth heard herself giggle. “And then Lily. Do you think she threw the pot at him?”

  “Oh, ayuh,” Curiosity said, her mouth twitching. Then she started to laugh again. “The man got a great bruise coming up between the eyes.”

  “She always had good aim,” Elizabeth offered, and then they were both laughing so that their shoulders shook.

  “But they made up,” Curiosity said finally, hiccupping softly. “Somehow or another. He got her to come to table. I never thought I'd see the man who could deal with our Lily when she got to feeling stubborn, but it look like Simon got the knack. He can talk to her.”

  “If he said anything at all,” Elizabeth said.

  Curiosity straightened suddenly and shot her an amused glance. “You sounding more like Missy Parker every day, girl. I'm surprised at you.”

  Elizabeth put her knuckles on her hips and shook her head. “Oh, no. Not you too. Nathaniel said the same thing to me, this morning. But I don't understand, I really don't. They are two responsible adults, and I asked them to act accordingly. How is that unreasonable?”

  Curiosity linked her arm through Elizabeth's and pulled her along. “Listen now, ain't that thrush got a pretty song?” And then: “Sometimes you get all wound up in that rational thinking you like so much, and you forget what it was like to be young. You got to let those two make they own mistakes.”

  Overhead the trees were stirring in a rising wind, branches clicking together like bones. Elizabeth saw a flash of red, and then another: the birds were coming back and bringing the spring with them.

  “I don't know what else to do,” she said. “Should I send Simon away? That would be another kind of injustice, and I think it would do more harm in the long run. She cares for him, and he for her.”

  Curiosity shrugged her agreement. After a moment Elizabeth went on.

  “All I want—all I'm asking for—is that they don't rush into anything. And I have to point out that Simon seems to actually like the arrangement, let's not forget that.”

  “I ain't telling you what to do,” Curiosity said. “But I got to remind you, since you seem to have put it out of your mind, stolen honey tastes twice as sweet.”

  Elizabeth huffed a small laugh. “You're saying that I've set them a challenge—”

  “Not both of them. Just Lily.”

  “Just Lily, then. I've set Lily a challenge that she must rise to. Which means . . .” Her voice trailed off. “What, exactly?”

  “What it mean is, Simon got himself between a rock and a hard place. Lily going to be working hard to make him forget what he promised you. Now he a good man, and I like him. But he ain't nothing more than that and I don't know how long any man could stand up to Lily when she's in a mood to ask, pretty like, for what she want.”

  Elizabeth sniffed. “You make her sound like . . . like some kind of seductress. As if she had no self-control, or common sense.”

  Curiosity stopped and turned to face Elizabeth. She peered at her, squinting so that her brows drew together. “I'm thinking just now of another time you and me went walking in these woods, all the way up to Lake in the Clouds. About twenty year ago it was, I know you recall.”

  For all of her life, Elizabeth had cursed her inability to hide her thoughts. At moments like this she had no chance at all of dissembling, not with anyone who knew her as well as Curiosity.

  A carpet of anemone under the sugar maples, white birch not yet in leaf, beech and maple and wild cherry. Yellow-flowered trout lily with its spotted purple leaves. The mountains and their spotty canopy of evergreens, and thousands upon thousands of trees touched with the first tender green. And Nathaniel, angry at her and wanting her too. In her anxiety and confusion she had challenged his lack of reasoning.

  “Maybe I ain't rational,” Nathaniel had said. “But maybe rational ain't what's called for right now.”

  And he had been right. They had done the irrational, they had acted out of love and wanting and the need to be together when everything in Elizabeth argued against it. And it had been the right thing, in the end.“Yes,” she said quietly. “I do recall.”

  “Good,” said Curiosity. “Now maybe you should have a talk with the girl, and own up to some things. It might get you where you want to go. You do know where you want to go?”

  “Why, yes,” Elizabeth said. “I want her to make a good choice. I want her to be happy. I would like it—” She hesitated.

  Curiosity smiled at her. “Go on.”

  “I would like it if she didn't go so far away as Montreal, but if it is what she must do . . .” Her voice wobbled and then faded into nothing.

  “They'll make pretty babies, the two of them,” Curiosity said. “Pretty babies with a stubborn streak wide as the sky.” She laughed at that idea, and Elizabeth found herself laughing too.

  They came to the edge of the orchard and paused. The sky had begun to darken, filled now with scudding clouds like churning fists. Elizabeth pulled her shawl closer and straightened her shoulders.

  “This might be messy,” said Curiosity.

  “No doubt,” said Elizabeth. “But I have an idea.”

  Curiosity sent her a startled look.

  “Don't worry,” Elizabeth said. “Just follow my lead.”

  In Elizabeth's experience, good manners and forbearance were far more effective tools in dealing with difficult people than slaps and hard words. In her life she had had ample opportunity to test this theory, and rarely had she been disappointed. Drunken trappers, rude clerks, and condescending patroons were most manageable when they were slightly off balance, and the easiest way to bring that about was with a smile and a truly kind word.

  She reminded herself of this when the do
or opened to their knock. Jemima's expression was thunderous, but Elizabeth put a hand on Curiosity's arm to calm and quiet her and met thunder with light.

  “Hello, Jemima,” she said. “You are looking very well. Do you have a moment for us?”

  Some uncertainty flickered across the girl's face, and then was replaced by a reluctant shrug.

  “I'm as well as can be expected. What do you want?”

  “Just a word with you and Nicholas.”

  With her mouth pulled into a tight circle and her eyes narrowed, Jemima looked so much like her father that Elizabeth was always taken aback. She felt her own smile falter, but managed to rescue it.

  “Come in then,” Jemima said, stepping away from the door. She had yet to say a word to Curiosity, but neither did she object when the older woman followed Elizabeth into the dim cabin. “He's in the barn. I'll fetch him.”

  They were left alone in the main room of the cabin, dim and cool. There was no fire laid, but the ashes were swept and the pots polished and hung neatly. There was something oddly empty about the place, perhaps, Elizabeth told herself, because there was so little furniture. A table, a few chairs, a rug on the rough floor, a sewing basket. There were two dented pewter plates in the dish rack on the wall, but there was no pottery anywhere that Elizabeth could see. She had thought the rumors circulating in the village about Jemima's tempers were exaggerated, but now she must wonder if all the missing things had been sacrificed to a fit of anger.

  “Feels deserted,” Curiosity said.

  And that was it exactly. The cabin was clean and ordered and empty of all sense that people lived here.

  Nicholas came in, his cap held in front of him as he ducked his head.

  “Is it Callie?” he asked. “Is Callie all right?”

  Behind him Jemima snorted softly, her mouth turned down hard at the corners. She had crossed her arms and rested them on the swell of her stomach.

  “Callie just fine,” said Curiosity. “Healthy as a colt and just as frisky. Martha too.”