Fire Girl, Forest Boy

by Chloe Daykin

  We hear voices, then see Charles and Rosa are coming down the passageway that links the rooms to the courtyard.

  My dad’s behind. I want to call out to him, but I don’t.

  The fire shakes its head and leads us out of the door. Down steps through to cold stone tunnels we have to bend to walk through, lit by flame-torch lanterns that are flickering.

  I look either side of the tunnel. There are holes in the floor full of bones. Hip bones and leg bones and skulls look back up at me. Brown without the bodies attached. The church’s catacombs.

  We stop underneath a grating. Daylight comes down like a shaft and lights up columns of dust. Music from somewhere else in the cathedral drifts through. Singing like whispers.

  Then I hear my dad’s voice. I freeze.

  We look up through the slats in the grating. He’s standing on the floor we’re looking up through.

  Matias points at the man he’s talking to. ‘Juan Carlos,’ he whispers.

  The head of JVF stands in a beige suit. Black hair slicked down. Stubbled chin. His sleeves rolled up and hands imploring my dad.

  ‘You promise proof!’ Dad yells. ‘You promise a meeting, finally a meeting, and you give nothing!’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Juan Carlos says. ‘After, I promise.’ He puts a briefcase on a lectern and unlocks it. He takes out the contract and holds it. Offering it out like a gift. ‘You sign first, then things are easier. You sign and we have the money. Once we have the money the officials see your point of view. They set your wife free.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’ Dad yells. ‘Always tomorrow. You give me nothing. I’m a scientist, for God’s sake. I need proof. I need facts.’

  Juan Carlos throws his arms up. ‘We are in the house of God. You cannot lie in the house of God!’

  And I realise that’s why we’re here. Not in an office. Dad doesn’t believe them. His heart wants it to be true. His head knows it isn’t. JVF can’t produce facts so they produce faith. I wonder what happens to people who lie in the house of God. I wonder what spirits do to someone like that.

  I think about Raul and Matias’s families, their lives split apart. How many others has it happened to and we don’t even know? I think about the holes in the forest, opening up like wounds. People and animals cowering from the slaughtered empty space. The spirits angry with nowhere to go.

  My insides burn and the fire grows hotter behind my neck. And bigger. I feel the anger and injustice burn up in me till it’s white-hot.

  I focus my eyes.

  And focus.

  And focus.

  I draw up everything inside myself and scream it out into the fire. The ball bursts through the grating. The metal melts and glows red and bends and clatters on the floor.

  I pull myself out of the hole with my elbows and pass a hand to Raul.

  He shakes his head and stays hidden.

  ‘Maya!’ Dad yells and backs away.

  The fire grows. As tall as the ceiling and so bright everyone has to shield their eyes with their arms.

  I ball my fists by my side and look at him. He has to hear me. This time he has to hear it.

  Rosa and Charles try to charge at us, but the fire makes a ring around me and Dad that no one can get through. We stand in the centre of it.

  ‘It’s a trick, Dad,’ I say. ‘A trap. They’re tricking you. You know that, don’t you?’

  He looks at the light, glowing around us.

  ‘The fire’s here because it wants you to listen to me.’ I dig my nails into my hands. ‘Are you listening?’ I look at Dad. At his lost face.

  ‘They don’t have Mum. She died,’ I say. ‘You know that, don’t you? In your heart you know it. She died and she isn’t coming back.’

  The fire turns into white heat, flickery vapour like a mirage, a heat haze.

  And a woman steps out.

  A woman with my nose and hair and half my face.

  A woman like the photo.

  Maya

  She walks over and lays a hand on our heads.

  And we stand there.

  Holding each other and not saying anything.

  She puts her arms round both of us and we hold her tight back. Our backs glow in the circle, time stops, the world melts away and nothing else seems to exist.

  I don’t know how long we stay like that.

  I just know I don’t want it to end.

  She looks at Dad and they raise their fingertips to each other. ‘Your daughter is your light, Handi,’ she says. ‘How could you be so blind?’ Dad looks at her. Tears fall down his face. ‘Just because I was gone you could only see darkness.’ She sighs. ‘Stop searching the world when what you’re looking for is here on your doorstep. What you need is love. Catch it before she grows up and goes.’

  Dad hangs his head.

  She pulls back to look at me. There’s so much I want to say, but nothing comes out. She strokes my hair like she knows it. ‘Nice spirit, Maya.’ She smiles. ‘Strong and proud and true.’ She puts a hand under my chin and lifts it up. ‘I’m so proud of you.’ We look at each other with an intensity that I try to soak up and hold on to. The heat starts to cool.

  She starts to fade.

  She points to the hole in my T-shirt. ‘I live in here now,’ she says. ‘Don’t let me go out.’

  ‘Don’t go.’ I bite my lip and hold her tight.

  ‘It is time.’ She closes her eyes. ‘This is the end of it,’ she says.

  Hot to warm, to cool, to a soft breeze.

  The fire dies.

  And we stand there, Dad and me holding each other.

  Raul

  I look up at Maya and her dad through the gap in the floor. I look at the metal grating warped and fading from red to black. I look at Juan Carlos as he walks over and puts a hand on Maya’s father’s shoulder.

  ‘Leave us!’ her dad roars. ‘Leave us!’

  Juan Carlos steps back. He takes out a lighter and flicks it and burns the contract on the lectern. I don’t know if he’s burning the evidence or if it’s a sign that the deal between them is broken. ‘Very well,’ he says. In a way that sounds like it hasn’t ended. That he hasn’t finished with Maya’s dad at all.

  A flaming piece of ash falls on to the floor. The wind blows down through the tunnels. Up from the bones. An invisible puff of air flutters the paper on to the man’s trousers, back into life.

  They catch immediately.

  Juan Carlos shakes his leg and smoke drifts up to his waist. I watch with horror as fire starts up his leg, getting higher and higher, crawling across his chest and over his body. Charles and Rosa shrink back up against the wall, Maya and her dad are turned away with no idea. He screams. I feel sick, but I can’t look away.

  A thought sparks in my head and I stop it. Without him, what would happen? Would JVF even exist? The flames rise. Covering his trousers, his arms, his face. It’d be fair, wouldn’t it? A life for so many lives. My stomach says to let him burn. My heart says I can’t.

  I jump out of the grating.

  Matias grabs me. ‘Leave him!’ he yells.

  I shake him off. ‘Water,’ I scream. ‘We need water!’ There is none.

  I take my shirt off and start hitting the flames. But each flap fans them. Smoke alarms go off and guards come running. Yelling. I run to the wall and rip an extinguisher off it. Matias follows dragging his bad leg behind him but it sticks in the grating. He falls to the floor. And doesn’t get back up.

  I pull the plug out of the extinguisher and spray. The foam puts out the flames. Juan Carlos drops to the floor. ‘Matias!’ I yell but his eyes are shut and he says nothing. The cathedral guards run in. What if they catch me. What if they think I did it? I pull Matias up off the floor. His arms over my shoulder and lift, limping along to the grating and jump down, crumpling under his weight.

  Raul

  Maya and her dad jump down through the grating. Maya’s dad lifts Matias off me and hauls him over his big broad shoulders. Maya offers a hand and pulls me up and we run. N
o time to talk. Clattering down the labyrinth of tunnels past the bones towards the light.

  We run and time seems to slow. I think of all the spirits in here. How spirits pass between this world and theirs through stone. How you can call them up with objects. Something precious to them. How Papi Rosales used to say that when babies cry you take them to the cave to call back their spirit guardian to make them stop.

  We reach the end of the tunnel. The sun shines off a small yellow window.

  Maya and her dad run out.

  I freeze.

  The shadow of a small body squats behind the window waving at me, beckoning. I wonder how long till the guards are here. I hesitate. I see two pigtails and shiver. I go towards it. I have to.

  Two hands press up from the other side. A nose presses up against the glass. A face I know. I feel the necklace pressing up against my leg in my pocket as I lean into the wall.

  ‘Alessa?’

  She pushes her nose on to the glass so her face is squashed. I press my forehead up against it too. Put my hands up so our palms touch either side. We stay like that. Touching and not. Close and apart.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I say. I know it’s simple. Too simple. But somehow there’s power in the words.

  I am sorry.

  The shadow of guilt sits on my back. Heavy and listening. I can’t set it free on my own.

  ‘Love you, Alessa,’ I say. Pressing my fingers into the glass. My breath steaming it up.

  I wish I’d said it more.

  ‘Love you, big brother,’ she whispers. ‘Not your fault,’ she says, and shakes her head and giggles. Like she always did.

  Alessa was like rainbows. She had joy that turned up when you weren’t expecting it.

  The guilt shadow clings on and won’t let go. You can’t forgive yourself for what you’ve done. Only the people you’ve wronged can do it. Maybe that’s not true though. Maybe that’s just thoughts not facts.

  And I need to let it go.

  ‘Love you, Alessa,’ I say.

  ‘Not your fault big brother,’ she says and draws a smiley face in the window steam.

  I smile as the tears flow. And let her words sink in. They’re like light. The shadow loses its grip. Like a flame on a leech. ‘Not your fault,’ she says and shakes her head and it falls away. And scuttles into the dark. I feel lighter. Like I can breathe. I wipe my tears with the back of my hand and grin back at her.

  I draw a smiley face on my side and she smiles.

  And our hands touch either side.

  I hear footsteps down the tunnel.

  I have to run.

  I can’t.

  I can’t leave her again.

  ‘Raul!’ Maya turns and yells.

  Maya

  We run to the car and Dad props Matias into the passenger seat. I root round in his pockets for the keys, chuck them to Dad and look around for Raul. Raul?

  I run back through the courtyard and grab him. I don’t know what’s got into him, but he looks totally freaked out. And he’s crying.

  ‘Come on!’ I grab his hand and pull him along, away from the yelling and the footsteps coming from the other end.

  We run. We run like firecrackers are tied to our butts, through the courtyard, past the music man who plays and grins, and into the car. Dad’s started the engine. We slide into the back. Matias sits slumped in the front.

  ‘Is he OK?’ Raul looks at Matias.

  Matias squirms and groans.

  ‘He’s breathing. He’ll be OK,’ Dad says and looks in the rearview mirror.

  A fire engine screeches up. Blocking the road. An ambulance pulls alongside it.

  Dad pulls his hair. ‘Where to? Where do we go?’

  ‘Just go.’ I look out the back windscreen at the guards with batons and guns swarming out.

  Dad reverses down the street.

  Raul grips Alessa’s necklace in his hand. ‘Go to the sea,’ he says.

  And we go.

  Raul

  We drive through town. Looking out the back window, listening for sirens.

  Cars pile in the road from all over, honking and music pounding out the windows. Sirens come and go, but none are on our tail.

  We pull over by a park on the cliff and jump out of the car. Maya’s dad carries Matias and we push through the swarms of tourists milling round the giant statues and sitting on the mosaic walls drinking cool purple chicha morada.

  We carry Matias down the cliff steps to the sea. Just the sound of it makes my skin prickle. I want to take Alessa back to the water. I want to set her free.

  I’ve never seen the sea. It takes my breath away.

  The salt dances on my tongue and catches in my throat.

  The water pulls and pushes the shingle rocks in and out and the voices from the crowds above drift away soaring with the gulls.

  We prop Matias’s head up on a rock and I bring water in my cupped hands from the sea to pour over his face.

  ‘Matias?’ I blow air into the water and rub his forehead.

  He sits up and rubs his face.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.’ Maya’s dad squats next to us and cries, like the enormity of everything hits him and the pain needs to come out.

  We all just sit, staying like that for a bit.

  ‘You didn’t sign the contract though.’ Maya puts a hand on his back. ‘You didn’t.’

  He shakes his head, pulling himself up and offering a hand.

  ‘Matias,’ Matias says and takes it.

  ‘Raul,’ I say, and he shakes both our hands.

  ‘Maya,’ Maya says. ‘Remember me?’

  He throws his arms round her and they sit there and hug and the sound of the water pulls the pain out of all of us for a while.

  Maya

  Me and Dad go to the edge of the sea to be alone and talk for a while.

  ‘Why’d you never tell me about her?’ I shove my hands under my armpits.

  Dad sighs. ‘You were only three.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So. I loved her and thought she’d come back.’ He puts an arm round my shoulders. ‘I couldn’t stop her coming here. I couldn’t keep her safe. So I didn’t really tell anyone. Then it got too big to tell.’

  ‘You can’t stop everything from happening, Dad.’

  I think about him trying to keep me safe. About our rows.

  ‘I know,’ he says, and shakes his head. ‘I know.’

  ‘You should’ve said.’

  ‘They never showed me the body and I never believed them,’ he says. ‘I couldn’t tell you ’cos I didn’t know. I couldn’t tell you something I didn’t believe.’

  ‘You could’ve just told me the truth.’

  ‘When they didn’t find the body, I thought …’ Dad hangs his head. ‘I thought maybe she hadn’t died. Maybe she just left us. All I could see was darkness. So I put everything into my work. Looking for light. Looking for something to believe in again.’

  ‘Then JVF sent you a letter, right?’

  ‘They came to a lecture I did on climate change. It was contentious. I was arguing that the world adapts and restores. It was meant to be provocative. They took it literally.’ He rubs his face. ‘It was stupid. They met me afterwards and offered me money to endorse their project. A collaboration. I wasn’t interested. When I refused they sent the letter.’

  ‘Saying they could help you find her.’

  He nods.

  ‘When you want something so badly your heart takes any hope anyone gives. You were growing up and started looking and acting so much like her it was too hard to bear. You needed her. I needed her.’

  ‘I need you too, Dad. But you shut yourself away. You don’t talk to me. Or listen.’

  ‘I know,’ he says. ‘I know. I’m so sorry.’

  We stand there for a minute and I put a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘You’re so much like her,’ he says.

  ‘I guess.’ I think of her spirit. ‘But I’m also me. I think you need to get to know me
again,’ I say. ‘I think you’ve got some catching up to do.’

  Dad ruffles my hair and breathes in a big long breath. ‘True that,’ he says and wipes his nose on the back of his hand. ‘So what do we do now?’

  I look at the sea and the sky, the paragliders taking the risk to jump off the cliff and float down. ‘You switch sides. You do what Mum did and work with the alliance. You back up Carlos.’

  Raul

  We sit on the beach watching the water going on forever.

  ‘I just want everything to go back to how it was, you know,’ Matias says. ‘I want our old life back. Don’t you?’

  ‘Even if we went back it wouldn’t be the same.’ I hang my head. We take turns throwing pebbles. Seeing who can get them furthest. I hold one up. ‘It wasn’t our fault, about your dad, about Alessa,’ I say. ‘It wasn’t our fault.’

  ‘It was mine,’ he says and throws one right out to sea. ‘I know it. It was mine.’

  ‘I never knew you thought it was yours?’ This revelation jolts me. I drop all the stones through my fingers, watching them fall. ‘It was JVF’s,’ I say, ‘not ours. We couldn’t stop it. It’s just how it was.’

  I can’t get over that he thought it was his fault too. All this time. All this time I’ve been carrying it on my own.

  If only he’d said.

  If only we’d talked about it.

  But the words stayed deep in us. Too deep and raw to take out.

  ‘I think we just have to let it go,’ I say and take Alessa’s necklace out and hold it up. ‘You got a minute?’

  I stick my finger under his armpit till he smiles.

  ‘Sure,’ he says.