The Fireman (47 page)

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HarperCollins
Publishers

....................................

14

After she popped the lunate back into place—it went in with a meaty
thwack!
and a shrill cry—and retaped the wrist, she made him drink two ladles of frosty water and swallow four Advil. She forced him to lay down and then spooned against him in his cot for one, her arm around his waist.

“You asshole,” she said. “You’re lucky you didn’t smash in those ribs again.”

He put his injured hand over hers.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “About what I said.”

“Do you want to tell me about it? About what happened to her?”

“No,” he said. “Yes. Do you really want to hear?”

She thought she already knew much of it, but she squeezed his thumb between her fingers, to let him know she was ready to listen. He sighed—a weary, haggard sound.

“Now and then Sarah and I would paddle out here, you know . . . to the cottage on this little island, to be away from the others. Allie didn’t come with us—she had become almost completely nocturnal by then and slept most of the day, storing up energy for her night runs. Nick tagged along, but usually he’d nod off after a picnic out on the dunes. There were beds in the cottage, but he liked to sleep in the rowboat. He enjoyed the rock of the tide and the way the boat knocked against the pylons. There was a little dock then, out alongside the cottage. Well, that was all right. Sarah and I could have some wine and some fresh air and do what grown-ups like in the cottage.

“We had a sleepy romp in the sheets one day after a meal of cold chicken and some kind of salad with raisins in it. Just as Sarah was dozing off, she asked me if I would check on Nick. I went out in my bare feet and jeans—and saw a little gusher of flame spout up from the boat. I’m sure I would’ve screamed, only I was too scared to get any air. I staggered out onto the dock, trying to shout Nick’s name, as if he could’ve heard. All that would come out was a thin wheeze. I was sure I’d find him ablaze.

“But he wasn’t
on
fire, he was
breathing
fire. Every time the boat knocked against the pylons, he’d cough a mushroom cloud of red flame and then laugh a dozy little giggle. I don’t think he was all the way awake or really knew what he was doing. I know he wasn’t aware of me watching. After all, he couldn’t hear me, and he wasn’t looking my way, his entire drowsing attention focused on his work with the flame. By then I had dropped to my knees. My legs had gone all weak. I watched him for two or three minutes. He’d blow rings of fire and then wave his fingers and dash off a dart of flame to jump through the hoops.

“Finally I was able to get back to my feet, although my knees were still shaking. I made my unsteady way back to the cottage. My tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth and I needed a drink of water before I was able to speak. I woke Sarah gently and told her I needed to show her something and not to be afraid. I said it was about Nick and that he was all right, but she needed to see what he was doing. And I led her out.

“When she saw flame spurting from the boat, she got wobbly herself and I needed to hold her arm to support her. But she didn’t shout for him, didn’t cry out. She let me lead her to him, trusting me that there was no reason to panic.

“We stood over him and watched him play with fire for most of five minutes before she was overcome and sank to her knees and reached into the boat to touch him. She stroked her hand over his hair and he snapped out of the trance he was in and for a moment was coughing black smoke and blinking blearily. He jumped up on a gunwale, looking embarrassed, as if we had found him flipping through a girlie magazine.

“She climbed into the boat, her whole body trembling, and took him into her arms. I descended after her. For a long time we sat together in silent conference. He told his mother no, he wasn’t hurt, it hadn’t caused him any pain at all. He told us he had been doing it for days and that it never hurt. He said he always did it in the boat, because something about the sway of the ocean helped him get going. He enumerated his many accomplishments. He could breathe smoke, blow streams of fire, and light one hand like a torch. He told us he had made little sparrows of flame and set them flying and that sometimes it seemed to him he was flying with them, sometimes it seemed to him he was a sparrow himself. I asked him to show us and he said he couldn’t, not right then. He said after he lit himself on fire it sometimes took him a while to recharge. He said after throwing sparrows—that was how he described it in sign language—sometimes it was hard to get warm, that he’d have the shivers and feel like he was coming down with flu.

“I wanted to know how he was doing it. He did his best to explain, but he is only a little boy, and we didn’t learn much, not that day. He said you could put the Dragonscale to sleep by rocking it gently and singing to it like you’d sing to a baby. Except of course Nick is deaf and doesn’t have any idea what singing sounds like. He told us that he thought music was like the tide or breath: something that flowed in and back out again in a kind of soothing rhythm. He said he’d get that flow going in his mind and then the Dragonscale would dream whatever he wanted it to dream. It would make rings of fire or sparrows of flame or whatever he liked. I said I didn’t understand and asked him if he could show me. He looked at his mother and Sarah nodded and said it was all right, he could try to teach me how to do it . . . but if either of us ever hurt ourselves, we had to stop, right away.

“The next morning my lessons began. After three days I could light a candle. In a week I was throwing ropes of fire like a walking flamethrower. I began to show off. I couldn’t help myself. When Allie and I went on one of our rescue missions, I would make a wall of smoke to create an impressive getaway. And once when we were chased by a Cremation Crew, I turned on them and ignited, made myself into a great burning demon with wings to scare them off. They ran wailing!

“How I loved having my own legend. Being stared at and whispered about. There is no drug in all the world as addictive as celebrity. I boasted to Sarah that getting Dragonscale was the best thing that had ever happened to me. That if someone came up with a cure, I’d refuse to take it. That the ’scale wasn’t a plague. It was evolution.

“We often discussed my ideas about Dragonscale: how it was transmitted, how it bonded with the mind, how it produced enzymes to protect Nick and me from burns. I say we discussed my ideas. What I really mean is I lectured her, and she listened. Oh, I did like having an audience for all my insights and theories. That’s what should be on her death certificate, you know. Sarah Storey—talked to death by John Rookwood. In a sense that’s what happened to her.

“I remember the day after I first turned into a devil and scared off a crowd of armed men. I took Sarah out to the island for a picnic and a celebratory screw. She was quiet, off in her own head, but I was too full of my own greatness to really notice. We made love, and after I lay in bed, feeling like a rock star. A rock star at last. She got up and found her jeans and dug a bottle out of a pocket, a bottle full of white grime. I asked her what she had there. She said it was infected ash. Then, in front of me, she dumped it on the kitchen counter and snorted it. She poisoned herself intentionally. She did it before I had time to scream. She knew all about how to infect herself, of course, because I had told her just how the spore spread.

“Three days later the first marks appeared across her back. It looked as if the devil had lashed her with a burning whip. I was right about the method of transmission, but for once there wasn’t any pleasure in saying ‘I knew it.’ She was dead less than four weeks later.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins
Publishers

....................................

15

He grimaced, holding his right wrist in his left hand. “How’s your pain?” she asked.

“It’s not as hard to talk about as I thought. It feels good to remember her, even the bad stuff at the end. Sometimes I think I’ve spent the last nine months lighting fires because it feels so good to burn things down. Like: if Sarah burned, then so can the rest of the world. Arson is almost as good as Prozac.” He went silent, thinking. “Shit. You weren’t asking about psychological pain, were you?”

“Yeah, I was asking about your wrist.”

“Oh. Uh. Quite hurty actually. Is that normal?”

“After popping the bones of the wrist out of place for a second time? Yes.” He twined his fingers of his good hand through hers. He stared across the room at the furnace, the hatch open on a square of yellow leaping flame.

“I hate a little that this feels good,” he said.

“We’re just holding each other. We’re not even undressed.”

“I shouldn’t have kissed you outside.”

“We were drunk. We were having fun.”

“I’m still in love with her, Harper.”

“That’s okay, John. This isn’t anything.”

“It
is
though. It’s something to me.”

“Okay. It’s something to me, too. But we aren’t going to do anything you have to feel bad about. You haven’t been held since she died, and people need that. People need closeness.”

Firewood whistled and snapped.

“But she
isn’t
dead. She isn’t alive, but she isn’t dead, either. She’s . . . stuck.”

“I know.”

The Fireman turned his head to look back at her, his gaunt features drawn in alarm and surprise.

“I’ve known for a while,” Harper said. “I saw her once. In the fire. I know there’s
something
there, anyway, something in the furnace that you’re keeping alive. But whatever that is, it
can’t
be a person. It can’t be aware. Flame can’t have a consciousness.”

“The
spore
can. That’s how the Phoenix seems alive. It
is
. It’s a part of me. Like a hand. Sarah’s body burned, but the girl in the fire remains. As long as I keep the fire going, some incombustible part of her survives.”

“You should sleep.”

“I don’t think I can. Not with my wrist throbbing like it is. Besides. Maybe I don’t just need to tell. Maybe you need to hear. Before you go any further down the road you’re on and wind up killing yourself like she did.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins
Publishers

....................................

16

“She took to the Bright straight off. I’ve never seen anyone get
it faster. Four days after she developed visible marks, she was lighting up with us in chapel, brimming with brightness and joy. You know how the ’scale can be peculiarly beautiful? Comparing Sarah to the others was like comparing lightning to the lightning bug. It was exciting, and a little scary. She had more power than any of us. She’d play the organ, and after, no one could remember their own name—they could only remember hers. For hours after we joined together in the Bright, people would drift around, talking like her, walking like her.”

“Carol has that effect on people now.” Harper considered for a moment, then said, “Allie does, too, I think. To a lesser degree.”

“Sarah wanted me to show her how to light herself up, how to cast flame. She wanted to know how to send her consciousness out into fire. By then I was incorporating the Phoenix into rescue attempts, and Nick was making flocks of burning sparrows to hunt for the infected. I wouldn’t teach her, though. I was angry. I was so angry. Angry and scared. It was one thing to be contaminated by accident, and another to contaminate yourself on purpose. She wouldn’t let me off the hook, either. She threw every boast, every know-it-all lecture, every smug certainty back in my face. If casting fire was safe for her deaf nine-year-old and safe for her lover, it was safe for her. I had told her I wouldn’t trade the ’scale for anything, that I was
glad
to be a carrier. Didn’t we
all
say, in chapel, every day, how lucky we were? How blessed? She had seen us reeling with pleasure, with delight. How could I want that for myself and deny it to her? She had seen me fight for the sick and wanted to fight by my side. How could I refuse her?

“The more she talked, the more pigheaded I became. I hated her, myself, the world. I was ill with it, sick with malice. There was so much I didn’t know. Only two people could throw fire without hurting themselves, Nick and myself. I held back on trying to teach Allie, although she had nagged me often enough. I had sound reasons for reluctance. Consider this, for example: What if full mastery of the Dragonscale is only possible for those with a Y chromosome? I’m sure that sounds sexist, but nature has never had any great interest in gender equality. What if you need a certain blood type to make it work? What if it’s a quirk of DNA, like those who are immune to HIV because of a mutation that strips of them of the receptor the virus needs to infect them?

“So I wouldn’t teach Sarah. In the last weeks I was hardly talking to her. We shouted, we screamed at each other, but that wasn’t what I would call talking. I thought if I didn’t teach her, at least she wouldn’t be any worse off than anyone else in camp. At least she would be kept safe by joining the Bright. I thought I could protect her by shutting her out. Putting a wall up between us.”

If Harper listened very intently, she could hear the coals whistling softly in the furnace.

“So she turned to Nick,” she said.

“Yes,” he replied, in a listless tone. “Nick told me later that she very quickly learned to light candles with her fingertips, which was how I started. He said he thought if she could do that much, it meant it would be okay to teach her more. But he also said the first time she lit a candle she yelped like it burned, although she told him she only cried out because she was startled. Later he noticed she would always keep a glass of cold water on hand, and after lighting candles would grip it tightly, as if her fingertips were sore. Sometimes she even dipped her fingers into it. All this was done without my knowledge. They practiced at night, out in the cottage, when I was off with Allie, rescuing the sick and polishing my personal legend.

“Sarah wanted to learn how to push her consciousness into puppets of flame, as I did with the Phoenix and Nick did with his flocks of flaming sparrows. Nick thought that was like skipping basic addition and going right to fractions. He wanted her to try making her hand into a torch, first, or practice throwing balls of flame. But she teased and kidded and gamed him into it. Nick never had a chance. So he explained the general principles, just the basic ideas. He didn’t think she’d really—he assumed she was just curious—and—”

He fell silent again, staring at the furnace, its orange glow shifting over his features like a gentle touch.

“I was just back from one of my expeditions with Allie. We had returned to camp with a few refugees . . . poor Nelson Heinrich among them, I believe. I was already on my way out to the island when I saw the smoke, coming from the cottage. It was all over long before anyone in camp realized what was happening.

“I paddled to the dock at the southern end of the island—the dock that isn’t there anymore. As I pulled myself onto the planks, the roof of the cottage fell in. I flung myself in through the back door and a moment later the chimney collapsed on the dock behind me, crushed most of it into the water. The whole first floor had old, exposed beams. One of them had dropped onto Nick. He was unconscious, but I could see him breathing. Heat billowed, distorting the air. Everything was smoke and sparks. I saw him—and I saw
her
. What was left of her. Bones and ash and—and—” He swallowed, shook his head, pushed the memory aside. “I am sure if Nick wasn’t there I would’ve dropped. I was hysterical. In shock. But he
was
there and I needed to get him out. I tried to lift the beam, but I couldn’t. It had to weigh near on four hundred pounds. I strained against it, not budging it, screaming at God, screaming at Sarah, just screaming.

“Then she was there with me. On the other side of the beam, beside her son.” The Fireman spoke now in a hush, staring into the furnace with what was either awe or dread. “I shuddered to see her. In the middle of all that blazing heat, I shuddered like someone in a freezing rain. She was so lovely. She was the most lovely thing. She was walking flame, as blue as a blowtorch, her hair flowing ribbons of red and gold fire. She made a hatchet out of thin air—a hatchet of fire, you understand—and swept it through one end of the beam. Snapped it in two in one stroke. That hatchet was so hot, it would’ve sliced through the beam even if it had been an iron girder. I tossed the big piece of lumber off Nick and got the hell out of there with him. I only looked back once, at the door. She was still standing there, watching me go with him. She
knew
me. I could see recognition in her features. Her face was beautiful and—sad. Confused. I
knew
she was self-aware. She had been a woman one moment. In the next she was an elemental of fire.”

“The house fell in on itself. The fire burned low. I never left the island. I sat in the dunes and watched. People came to me to offer food or comfort. I paid them no mind. Allie sat with me for hours. The sun rose up hot and dry and baked the island beneath it and I didn’t move. The house was still burning when the sun set again, although by then it was mostly smoldering coals. I dozed off for a while. When I woke she was standing in what remained of the ruin, a ghost of pale golden flame. She vanished again almost as soon as I saw her, but by then I knew for sure. What remained of her consciousness was threaded in the coals, spread across a billion microscopic particles of Dragonscale that wouldn’t and couldn’t be destroyed. She was ash and flame. I have been on the island ever since and I have never let that first fire burn out. It’s still going, in the furnace. She’s still there. She’s still with me. I believe her consciousness is held in place by the energy produced by the fire and will only break apart if the flames die for good.

“And I suppose that’s all of it. Few people in camp have any idea what Nick can do. He doesn’t cast flame anymore. You can understand why. He holds himself responsible for the death of his mother. Can you imagine being nine years old and having that thought in your head? He doesn’t know she’s still with us, and I haven’t dared show him. I’m scared of what it would do to him. What if he thinks she’s suffering and it’s his fault?” He shifted about uncomfortably and his gaze drifted from the furnace to the door. He stiffened. “My God. You’ve been here for hours. You have to get back to the infirmary before sunrise. You’ve already stayed too long.”

“A minute more,” she told him. “Michael promised he could cover for me all night if he had to.”

He rolled halfway over to look into her face. “You have to take care of yourself, Harper. There’s a boy who loves you very much. You’re the one thing that keeps him going.” It took her a moment to realize he was talking about Nick, not himself. “He’s still got all that guilt on him. He’s trapped under it, as badly as he was ever trapped under the beam.”

“Look who’s talking,” she said.

For a moment he couldn’t meet her gaze. “You
see
why I don’t want you doing anything ever again like what you did with the arrow. I’ve already lost one woman I care about. You don’t get to burn yourself up like her, Nurse Willowes. I can’t lose you, too.”

She held him a moment longer, then kissed his whiskery cheek, and climbed from the bed. She arranged his sheets over him, tucked him in. Harper stood over him, looking down into his lean, tired face.

She said, “What happened to Sarah Storey isn’t your fault, you know. Or Nick’s. Neither of you have any right to blame yourself for her death. Harold Cross could’ve explained why. I love you, John Rookwood”—she had never said this to him before, but she said it now, firmly and calmly, and continued without giving him a chance to reply—“but you are
not
a doctor and you do
not
understand the nature of this infection. Sarah Storey didn’t die because Nick taught her badly. She didn’t die because she lacks a Y chromosome. Or because she was missing some necessary mutation. Or any other random reason you can think of. In between his horrible poetry and stomach-turning misogyny, Harold filled a notebook with solid research. The spore only penetrates the human brain very slowly. It takes about six weeks to reach Broca’s region, the area that processes communication. Even in the deaf. You said she had only been infected for—what? Two weeks? Three? She rushed it. That simple.”

He gazed at her in bewilderment. “You can’t know that. Not for sure.”

“But I
do,
John. You have every right to grieve, but I’m afraid your guilt is undeserved. So are your fears about my safety. I’ve been covered in Dragonscale for almost nine months. It’s in every cell of my body. There is nothing you know how to do that I can’t learn. You should’ve talked to Harold.”

The Fireman let out a long sighing breath and all at once seemed smaller, hollowed out.

“I—I didn’t have much to do with Harold in the last weeks before the poor boy died. He was grotesque to Allie and I was out here on the island in mourning. I hardly saw him. Actively avoided him, in fact.”

“What are you talking about? You’re the one who snuck him out of the infirmary. He said so in his journal.”

The Fireman shot her a surprised, wondering look. “Either you’re mistaken or he was keeping a diary of daydreams. In which case I’m not sure we ought to place much confidence in his medical information, either. I didn’t help him slip out of the infirmary. Not once. You can’t imagine what an odious little troll he was, Nurse.”

Harper gazed at him blankly, feeling wrong-footed and mixed up. She had looked through the diary plenty of times and was sure Harold had said John Rookwood had been his one ally in the last days.

“Enough of this,” he said and nodded at the door. “You have to go. Keep your head down and hurry right back to the infirmary. We’ll figure it out later. There’ll be another night for this.”

But there never was.