Alaskan Fire (62 page)

Then she had a new thought.  The
coldness at her throat was
gone
.  She was
free
.

Buoyed by that realization, she
felt her body shifting, fire rippling outward, stretching into long, rolling
filaments down her arms, down her tail. 

Her…
tail
?

The woodpile beside her lit up in
shimmer of light as Blaze twisted her head over her shoulder to look, spreading
the long, diamond-shaped hackle-feathers on her neck. 

…
hackle-feathers
?  Blaze
blinked at that.  Under the rolling waves of fire, she had
feathers
. 
Tentatively, she spread her wings, almost twelve feet in either direction, and
marveled at the red-orange-yellow flicker, the flames dancing upon every
curve.  She made a tentative flap of her wings, saw the fire course outward and
engulf the woodpile.  She giggled, watching it lick up the eave-supports,
dancing against the roof.

Turning, she looked out over the
yard.  Her animals were hiding in clumps against the barn, as far away from her
and the helicopter as they could get.  Immediately upon seeing the open space
of the lawn and the pasture beyond, Blaze’s heart leapt. 
Fly,
a part of
her sang. 
Spread your wings. 
And, instinctively, she started hopping,
wings out, pummeling the air, aiming for the treetops.

Almost immediately, she was
airborne, gliding over the first pasture fence, setting it ablaze beneath her. 
Gravity, she found, didn’t seem to tug at her as it had before, and all she
really needed was the thought of
up
and she was soaring.  She slammed
her wings in glee anyway, rising above the open ground, climbing, veering in a
half-circle, spiraling above the Sleeping Lady, joy rising in her like an
ocean, flooding all of her senses as long tendrils of sunfire twisted and
undulated in the air current behind her, caressed by her flight.  She felt the
sun racing through her feathers, felt her energy spread outward, infusing the
land, and laughed.  It came out as an eagle’s scream.

Startled by that, Blaze let out a
nervous little giggle, which translated as a smoky chirp.  All around her, the
sunlight rippled and played on melting snow, on trees, on ice, and she could
feel it
all
.  The further up she went, the more she could feel.  Happiness
lifting her in a tide, the Sleeping Lady’s green cluster of roofs growing
smaller and more distant, Blaze soared away from Lake Ebony, gaining loft,
aiming for the sun.

She surged upwards, until the sky
became darker and darker blue, and then black and filled with stars, a wispy
blue haze in any direction—through the
atmosphere
, Blaze thought,
startled.  Her fires had dimmed, now, but she continued to soak in the light of
Sol, every feather glowing like it was made of liquid sunfire.  Turning, she
looked down at the Earth, spinning beneath her.

Like a cerulean gemmed globe, it
twisted against a backdrop of stars, taking her breath away.

Oh
wow
,
Blaze
thought.  On a whim, she decided to start following the curve of the Earth,
seeking out that hemispherical shadow that cast half the world in darkness. 
Awestruck at the way the Earth itself seemed to disappear against the backdrop
of the Universe, Blaze ducked down to flit with the enormous shadow.  Taking
great joy in the breathtaking beauty below, dancing across the land that was
even then meeting that stunning half-light of dusk, Blaze was completely
unprepared for the way her wings suddenly abandoned her the moment she
submerged herself in the darkness of night.

Like a meteor plummeting back to
Earth, Blaze screamed and flailed in the horrifying fall that followed.  Blaze
had a brief, sickening moment of realizing she was
not
going to be able
to stop, then her rational side kicked into gear.  She tucked her arms and
tilted her body and tried desperately to aim herself for a large, moonlit lake
that was growing bigger by the second, frantically thinking that water would be
an easier impact.

She didn’t make the water.  The
last thing she thought before she impacted the sandy
bank
of a
continental lake was the disgusted realization that she had missed the water by
four feet.

Blaze woke sometime later as the
foreign land—she thought China??—waited in strange, total darkness around her. 
Unlike springtime in Alaska, the darkness of midnight here was all-consuming,
utterly complete.  She felt it closing in around her like a void, and it left
her feeling numb.  Groaning, Blaze lifted her head.  She had hit hard enough to
put a three-foot-deep human-shaped impression in the ground, into which ran a
trickle of water from the nearby lake.

The first thing Blaze realized,
once she regained consciousness, was that she was remarkably still alive, and,
from the looks of things, relatively unscathed.  The second thing that came to
her attention was just how much space-to-ground impacts
hurt
.  Like
flinging oneself in front of a Mack truck, taking every one of the massive sets
of double-wheels down the spine, then pausing so the driver could hit reverse.

“Oowwww,” Blaze managed, as water
started sizzling over her body, surging upwards in pillars of steam all around
her, draining her energy into a golden puddle around her.

Draining her…energy?

Blaze sat up with a groan,
surprised she was able to sit up.  Sure enough, the water around her knees was
shimmering like sunlight itself, and she suddenly wasn’t feeling so good.  Her
whole body was a bone-deep ache, she realized, that had nothing to do with the
fact she’d just plummeted from the stratosphere like a six-foot-four meteor,
and had
everything
to do with the way the water was glowing brighter and
brighter gold around her feet.

Weakly, Blaze crawled out of the
hole she’d made and slumped to the ground beside it, peering in a daze over the
edge as more water rushed in from the lake, diluting the golden glow, which was
even then lighting up the dark lakeshore around her brighter than the moon
overhead.

Even more disorienting, bolstering
the light cast off by the glowing puddle was her
hair
.  Even now, Blaze
was actually having trouble seeing
past
her hair, because it was
floating around her head like little orange neon tendrils, making it hard for
her eyes to focus to the darkness beyond.  Brushing her hair out of her eyes,
Blaze tried again to regrow her wings.

Nothing.  Just frustrating
emptiness, and a world that no longer sang to her with light.

It was then that Blaze realized
how alone she really was.  And, she knew, this time it had been of her
own
making.

“Jack,” she whispered, shivering
as the heat of her re-entry started to bleed off of her, leaving her exposed to
the chilly air.

Thousands of miles away, the
wereverine was well out of range to tell her everything was going to be okay.

Naked, cold, stranded on some
unknown lake on an unknown continent, Blaze forced herself up into a seated
position and dragged her knees up to her chest, biting her lip back against
tears as she glanced at the alien foliage around her, trying not to think of
what could be lurking in the forest, watching the glowy Scottish chick that had
just plummeted out of the ozone layer.  She would
not
cry.  She would
not
leave herself helpless in the wilderness.

But it was hard when she was
feeling a wall of grief from the link.

Jack
, Blaze thought,
anguished.  He thought she had abandoned him.

And…she had.  Just like he had
feared, just like he had told her when he laid his heart bare.  He had
told
her
that the first thing he thought she would do when she took back her feather was
grow wings and fly away and leave the cranky little wereverine to putter around
in the woods alone.  She had assured him, repeatedly, that she wouldn’t.  That
she would stay with him.  That she would never leave him.

But she
had
.  Without even
thinking
.

She just, she realized in agony,
hadn’t
thought
.  There was no
thought
.  It had just been joy. 
Fiery, passionate
joy
.  Feeling the sunlight around her, bounding upon
the land, it had taken every care and swept it completely from her mind,
leaving her bathing in
joy
, in
creation
.  Her every movement had
been one of awe and respect for the life around her, for the dance of light
playing across the world.  She just hadn’t
thought
.  And now Jack was
suffering for it.

Ashamed, Blaze looked up at the
moon and listened to the strange sounds of insects around her, feeling Jack’s grief
over the link.

Jack, I’m so sorry,
she thought. 
I’ll be back.  Please understand…

The torment on the other side
never ebbed.

* * *

Jack watched the phoenix rise and
depart, and his stomach twisted on itself as he felt the link sail away with her. 
Groaning, he sank to his ass in the slush, despair clawing gashes through his
chest as he stared at the vanishing orange blot on the sapphire sky.

Stupid.  He had been so
stupid
. 
He’d sealed the link, knowing
full well
she wasn’t going to hang
around.  That Blaze didn’t understand how permanent it was.  That she was going
to someday grow wings and fly away.

Above him, he heard her shriek,
felt the blast of overwhelming joy down the connection before it was once more
muted by distance. 

Stupid.  Just a lonely, foolish, cracked
little crankcase, trying to hoard the Hope Diamond.

Out in the yard, his eyes located
the stripe of lawn and fencing she had set afire in passing.  Beyond that, he
saw flames crawling up the side of the shop, weaving through the woodpile.

She set the shop on fire and
she doesn’t even care,
he thought, as a greater wave of despair sank in his
gut.  He had
felt
that joy, that freedom.  She wasn’t coming back.  She
didn’t
need
to.  She could go
anywhere
.

He watched the flames lick at the
tin roof, climbing slowly over the pile of wood under the eaves, towards the
rest of the structure.  All that remained of his mate, Jack realized in misery,
was a cluster of frightened animals, an abandoned lodge, and a smoldering
woodpile.  Jack couldn’t find the strength to stand, so he let it burn.

All the years of hardening
himself, all the decades of trying to prevent his heart from opening up to
another girl, all of his attempts to keep Blaze at bay, and here he was
watching her soar away, leaving the stupid, hairy little wereverine to guard
his lonely little patch of woods on his own.

Jack watched the flames lick up
the eaves of the shop, up the rafters, towards the main structure.  His chest
was in anguish, each breath unbearable.  He watched the fire spread from afar,
not really able to bring himself to care, yet some distant, practical part of
him knowing he had to
do
something.
 

Somehow, Jack dragged himself
slowly to his feet, not bothering to brush the slushy snow from his shredded
pant legs as he stood.  It was more out of a reluctance to see something useful
burn than any real hope that the phoenix would ever return that Jack went to
the pile of wood crackling under the eaves and swatted the whole thing out into
the half-melted lawn, then spread it around until the fire went out.  Then he
grabbed the bucket, went to the spigot, filled the bucket, and doused the
tentative flames under the eaves that were even then sputtering, without the
heat of the woodpile to keep them growing.

Then, tossing the bucket aside,
he went to the lumber-pile under a tarp behind the gas shed, yanked the plastic
back, drew out a couple nice four-by-fours, and carried them into his shop.  Getting
out his tape, Jack marked the boards to the proper length, cut them, drilled
the bolt-holes, and carried them out to the fence with a wrench.  Dropping them
at his feet, he un-bolted the charred remains of the fence, tossed the blackened
chunks aside, and began installing the new pieces.

Once the fence was repaired, Jack
stood there.  He watched the animals milling.  Smelled the charred wood and the
blood.  He looked down at the wrench in his hand, then over at the dark and
quiet lodge, then up at the empty sky.  From his location, he could see the
slim edge of a rotor-blade, sticking past the front wall of the lodge.  A
single black body lay in the yard, a few hundred feet away, the snow smeared
with red.

Dropping the wrench onto the
ground, he went to fire up the bulldozer. 

He bulldozed a brand new pasture
out in the woods, then got the backhoe and dug a huge trench.  A distant,
detached part of himself then dragged all the bodies to the massive trough in
the earth and threw them inside.  After that, he began carefully dismantling
the helicopter, taking it apart, piece-by-piece.  He found the two trapped
feylords that had been powering the rotors, forced into a kind of stasis in an
enchanted box in the ceiling, drained for their magics.  When the tall, slender,
too-pale fey tentatively sat up from the box, holding their arms up to shield
the light, babbling their gratitude in their silver tongues, Jack told them to
get the fuck off of his property.  He drained all the fluids from the
helicopter’s engine and put them in buckets in the shop, to be disposed of
later.  He then dumped every particle of the Inquisition, from the guns to the
headsets to the rotor blades, into the pit, and covered it all up with the
bulldozer. 

It was well past dark by the time
he was finished.  Still in that thoughtless fugue, Jack shut off the bulldozer,
right on top of the pit, and went back inside the Sleeping Lady, ignoring the
scattered firewood and the smell of char as he passed.  He went and lay down
and spent several hours staring at the ceiling, smelling her in the pillows,
the blankets, the sheets, the
walls
…

Jack got up and went out into the
dark and fed the animals.  Most never even stirred from their slumber as he dumped
buckets of fruit and grain into their troughs, instead of the scoops that they
were accustomed to.  He let one drowsy-looking goat eat out of his hand for a
few minutes, then went to the shop and started the generator.  He sat there,
watching the little lights on the inverters, until one switched to FLOAT, then
shut the generator off.  When he stepped back outside, dawn was rising on the
horizon.  Seeing the first rays of sunlight dancing on the treetops, Jack
swiped his arm across his eyes, then started out towards the greenhouse.

A glint of light-eating black lay
in the fluff of ash outside the shop door.  He hesitated, then bent and
retrieved the dread horn.  He watched the shadows drip from its curves, falling
to the ground like black dye through water.  His hand fisted around it and he
carried it to the greenhouse with him.  He still had to pick fruit.  Blaze
always picked fruit in the morning, because if she didn’t, they would fall off
and start to rot on the ground by midday, with more growing to take their place.

Jack stepped inside the
greenhouse, dropped the dread horn on the nearest bench, yanked the door shut,
grabbed a bucket, and went to start picking.  He hadn’t gone more than three
steps before he stopped and stared at the wilted, ruined fruit trees.  Dead. 
Leaves brown and twisted.  Because she’d
gone
.  Because she’d yanked her
energy from the land and
left
.  Unable to avoid it any longer, Jack sank
to the bench and let the tears come.