Firehorse (9781442403352) (31 page)

In all my life I'd never felt such raw power. I was terrified and thrilled at once. The Girl's huge shoulders lifted and sank, building speed, eating up the ground in great, rolling strides. She headed out to the street and instinctively veered toward the fire station—which was the wrong way. Desperately trying to maintain my balance, I pulled on the rope and kicked her in the opposite direction. In a couple of thundering heartbeats we were turned around and galloping toward the Common. When the street opened up in front of her, the Girl lengthened her stride. I looked straight through her ears, concentrating. The sharp clang of her iron shoes hitting the cobblestones told me any fall would be fatal.

Up and down the street, people began calling out to their neighbors and pounding on doors. Some stared at the fierce orange skyline in mute stupidity, while others began sprinting toward it. Like a runaway locomotive, we galloped past them all.

The commotion at the south end of the Common slowed our careening enough to let me catch my breath. To my astonishment, the green expanse was already jumbled with furniture and merchandise of every description. Trunks and cabinets and crates teetered in massive piles; animals were leashed to trees; people ran hysterically toward the flames and back, filling their arms and carts with salvaged goods, filling the night with their panicked cries. Like a fine gray snow, ash coated the battleground.

The Girl shook her head and reared, sliding me backward. She was impatient to be moving and I pulled her in circles, trying to remember which street Mr. Stead and I had turned down to get to McLaughlin's Livery.

A pathetic clanging sounded above the tumult. The tinny ring moved closer and closer until, prodded by shouts, the crowd parted. Here came a lone steam engine, dragged by half a dozen weary firemen whom I didn't recognize. They paused just long enough to push their helmets off their sweat-glazed foreheads and gaze at the hellish scene. Joined by a few bystanders, they leaned into their work and struggled on, like so many Davids coming to fight an awesome Goliath.

The Girl kicked out at someone who'd come too near. She pinned her ears at another and began pushing through the crowd on her own, ignoring the otherworldly screeching that ripped the
night's fabric. All faces, including mine, lifted to watch a huge granite building crumble in slow motion. Blocks fell through the sky like playthings; splintered molding stitched orange threads that frayed before our eyes. The final, violent explosion shot red sparks high into the air.

In the brief silence that followed, I heard horses screaming. The Girl pricked her ears. Eyeing a likely-looking street leading off the Common, I nudged her in that direction. I half expected her to resist charging toward another fire, but she bravely broke into a canter, scattering people right and left as we proceeded.

There was the corner florist's shop that I'd remembered, and we raced down that street and then onto Washington. We were making progress until we found ourselves behind another throng. Like a tenuous dam, a line of policemen held back a flood of frantic, crying onlookers. Over their heads I saw a desolate street heavily shrouded in a haze of smoke. Snapping flames licked windowpanes like fiery serpents, and right before my eyes I saw them dart out and entwine themselves around the next building, devouring its contents at will. A huge glass pane plummeted to the street with a nerve-shattering crash.

“Please!” a man shouted at an official, “just let me get my tools. They're my livelihood.”

“No!” came the adamant reply. “It's not safe.”

Somewhere in the night another horse screamed, and the Girl whinnied an answer. She bucked once and spun to the left, and I barely held on. Another official came running up to the barricade, waving his arms and shouting, “Get these people away
from here. The fire's spreading by the second.” Joining arms, the police began pushing us backward. At first the mare was a solid white rock in the stream, but then the crush of people began forcing her to move, little by little, along with them. Bumping her with my legs and tugging on the rope, I managed to edge her out of the retreating mass and into a store's recessed entry. She tossed her head impatiently, flicking foam onto my face.

To my surprise, the lady journalist who'd worked at the
Argus
was hunched next to the store's window, madly scribbling away in her notebook. She kept glancing out at the disaster, then back at her page, not even noticing the restive horse and rider almost climbing on top of her. “Pardon me.” She couldn't hear me over the din. “Pardon me!” I yelled.

“What?” She looked up with that same wild-eyed expression she'd worn outside our house.

“I have to get to McLaughlin's Livery on Kingston Street. Is there another way around?”

“Are you mad?” she exclaimed. “The entire business district is on fire.”

“I have to get there.”

She squinted, considering. “I know you,” she said. She gripped my knee to study my face. “We've met. When?”

“I'm Rachel Selby,” I replied loudly, feeling my cheeks flush with guilt. “My father was your—”

“Matchstick!” she shouted in a voice so shrill that I wondered if she was the one who was slightly mad. “Now I remember.”

“Matchstick?”

She tossed aside the question. “Some other time. What are you doing here?” And then, as if it had suddenly struck her, “Do you know where your father is?”

It gave me a start that she sounded as if she already knew where he was. And that I ought to know as well. I shook my head. At the moment I had other worries. “Please,” I begged, “can you tell me if there's another way to get to Kingston?”

“Why?”

“I told you: I have to get to McLaughlin's Livery. The fire started near there and the horses might be trapped. I don't know the city well. Is there another way around?”

“Not tonight,” she shouted. “Take a look for yourself.” She nodded toward the chaos of smoke and flames, of people screaming and whistles shrieking. “It's Dante's Inferno come to life. Why … granite buildings are crumbling like … like sandcastles … like sandcastles beneath the tide of a fiery ocean. Wait a minute!” She flipped open her notebook to scribble the words. “That's good.”

“But I
have
to get there. Some of the horses are sick. One of them belongs to a veterinary friend of mine.”

“Really?” Her pencil paused, then waggled furiously. “‘Veterinary's Own Horse Burned in Livery Fire.' That
might
be another interesting story. Is it one of the sick horses?”

A scare gripped me. “I hope not. But I know there are a lot of sick ones there. Please, just tell me which street to take.”

She peeked out toward the policemen and back at me— sizing me up, it seemed—then motioned me to follow her into
the crowd. We obediently retreated with the others a ways until, without warning, she darted down a narrow alley. I reined the Girl after her.

The passage was barely wide enough for a person, let alone a big horse with a rider, and the rough-edged bricks clawed at my skirt. The outline of the woman hurrying ahead of me quickly melted into the inky blackness, and I wondered if I should be following her with such trust. Before we'd gone twenty steps, another ominous rumble vibrated the air. It ratcheted louder and louder until it exploded in a nearby
boom!
that rocked the very walls pressing on us. The Girl flinched. A hot wind blasted my face, lifted my hair, and vanished. In its wake, luminous specks of orange spiraled downward like dying fireflies. I brushed them from my sleeve with a growing panic that we were walking
into
the fire rather than around it. And what would we do when it descended on us? There was no easy escape from this suffocating chasm. Sweat began prickling my neck, my underarms, the backs of my legs. Oddly enough, the Girl waded forward with renewed spirit.

An orange light beckoned us; whether it was heaven or hell, I wasn't sure, but by then I was ready to welcome either. When we stepped out onto the desolate street I saw cobblestones glowing red beneath swirling embers. A sucking heat snaked down my throat and parched it raw. It burned my eyeballs in their sockets. Deafened by the fire's howling, I recalled the words of Ezekiel, one of Grandmother's recent favorites:
An end is come, the end is come. It watcheth for thee. Behold, it is come
. Choking and blinded, I let the Girl carry me on.

The suffocating confines of the next alley seemed a haven after the firestorm. Again we were moving through a narrow black chasm with no end in sight, but this time I didn't care. As my eyes adjusted to the sooty walls and the scattered debris, I noticed shadows flickering across the cobblestones. I thought they must be rivulets of water and wondered if a pipe had broken somewhere, although I didn't hear hooves splashing. As my eyes cleared even more, I saw that the shadows were rats, legions of them, swarming in the opposite direction, desperate to reach safety. They came poking through vents and squeezing out of cracks and pouring down rainspouts. One leaped onto my shoulder, trailing its naked tail along my neck and then my arm before clawing its way down my skirt. My throat was too dry to scream.

When we came into the open again, smoke churned all around us. I heard more glass shattering. The journalist turned to say something, but the fire's roar ate up her words. Chunks of ash and cinders pelted our shoulders with increasing fury. A live ember burned right through my sleeve, and the flashing memory of flames consuming my arms nearly knocked me off the Girl. My heart banged against my tightening chest.

I knew we were on Summer Street because I could make out C.F. Hovey's store through the smoke. We weren't alone this time. Men and women and even a few children ran the length of the street, many pushing wheelbarrows loaded with papers and books and files, and anything else that could be grabbed from the jaws of the flames. Others smashed through windows and
emerged with bulging sacks. Some had only their arms to measure what they could carry. A desperate-looking man, blackened with soot, came running toward us, kicking a rat out of his way. He hugged a wrapped bundle close to his stomach.

Another explosion shook the ground. The journalist pointed, and I followed her down a winding, smoke-filled street. She was running now, and the Girl picked up a trot. We rounded a corner, kept going as fast as we could through the haze, and rounded another corner.

There was the metal horse head, shimmering an eerie orange. We'd arrived at the livery from the opposite direction!

“Here you are,” she said while gasping for breath. “Now give me a story worth writing about.” She ducked beneath an overhang and opened her notebook.

TWENTY-NINE

T
HE CHAOTIC SCENE BEFORE US HAD BEEN RIPPED STRAIGHT
from the onionskin pages of Revelation, the last book in the Bible. Judgment Day truly had arrived—at night. Through the livery's partially collapsed roof, an unseen red dragon spewed his smoky breath. Orange flames snapped and hissed at every opening. Pinned against the shrouded sky above, winged creatures glowed with an unholy fire. A closer look proved them to be wild geese reflecting the blaze on their pale underfeathers, but in the shifting haze they could easily have been the seven angels, robed in white, trumpeting our doom.

That trumpeting was echoed in horses' screams. Hundreds whinnied from inside the burning livery. Tied to the walls of their stalls, they cried and kicked in growing panic. Men were in there too. I heard their shouts above the crackling flames and the ominous groans of burning timbers.

From out of the mayhem, hooves clattered on cobblestone, and four horses with ropes dangling from their halters rushed
past. The Girl tensed, poised between her instinct to flee with the herd and her calling to save lives. Her entire body vibrated with a piercing whinny as she lunged forward, carrying me toward the burning livery.

At its smoky doorway we ran smack into a stableboy leading out a pair of frightened horses. A boy behind him led two more horses. They dropped the ropes and waved their arms, shooing the horses away. The Girl shied sideways, nearly unseating me. Scared out of their wits, the horses hurled themselves mindlessly at each other. They spun and reared and trotted in circles until one, a hammer-headed bay, bolted back inside the livery. The herd scrambled after him. The Girl shook her head, fighting my hold. She reared, too, and whinnied again. For a chilling second I thought she was going to carry me into the burning building.

Our path was blocked when one of the stableboys returned. He was leading out another frenzied horse and Mr. Stead was with him, leading two more.

“Rachel! Thank God!” Mr. Stead shouted. “Here! Take these horses to the depot yard. It's down that street there. Just turn them loose and come back.” He tossed the ropes to the three horses across the Girl's withers and I barely had time to grab hold of them all before he disappeared.

The Girl pranced fretfully, ready to bolt. To make things worse, the three excited horses were straining in opposite directions. They bucked and spun and tangled their ropes until I became the Maypole in an impending disaster.