by Joe Hill
She turned his hand over and looked at his palm. “And it didn’t hurt?”
“Not even a little. It isn’t so hard to understand. Not really. The Dragonscale will burn a host to the ground if it has to, but it won’t destroy itself. I taught it to stop thinking of me as a host. I hacked the code and reprogrammed it to forget there’s any difference between me and it.”
“I hate when you explain things. By the time you’re done explaining something, I always feel like I know less than I did before you started talking.”
“Look at it this way, Willowes. You know it’s in your brain. You know it feels, just not in words. Feed it stress and panic, it’ll read that as a threat, and will burst into flame to start its reproductive cycle and escape. Feed it harmony and contentment and a sense of belonging, and it will read that as security. It doesn’t just sense your pleasure, but amplifies it. It provides you with pleasurable feedback, gives you the world’s cheapest high. But in both cases, it’s not acting, it’s reacting. What Nick taught me—”
“What?” Harper said. “Nick? What Nick taught you?”
He blinked at her, flustered, losing his way. “Yes, well, Nick—Nick won’t—doesn’t—I mean, obviously not anymore, not after—” He shook his head, waved a dismissive hand in the air. “Why are you bringing Nick into this, anyway? You’re throwing me off.”
I didn’t bring Nick into it, she was going to say. You did. She even got as far as opening her mouth. Then she shut it again and let him go on.
“When you’re all together in church, you sing to it. It likes that. That’s how you pacify it. But you’re still mucking about with words and it doesn’t care about words. There was some writer who said language is no way to communicate, and the Dragonscale couldn’t agree more. All those words in your head are constant reminders that you’re a host. You have to think about what you want the Dragonscale to do for you without words. Imagine what it must be like to be deaf, to think deaf thoughts, with sign as your first and primary language.”
“Like Nick,” Harper murmured.
“Yes, if you like,” he said, waving a hand in the air again, as if brushing off an irritating midge. “Nick can feel the thump of a drumbeat in his bones, and if you teach him the lyrics to a song, he will sing to himself, but in the wordless words of the deaf. If you can sing to the Dragonscale without words, then, then you’re speaking its language. Then it no longer looks at you as separate, but as the same. That’s all I did. That’s all I ever do. I sing it one of my favorite songs, but without words. I sing for my coat of flame and my sword of fire, and the Dragonscale produces them.”
“And Nick taught you how? Nick can do it too? Cast flame, like you?”
He gave her a bleary, baffled, miserable look. Then, in a voice so soft she hardly heard, he said, “Quite a bit better than me, actually.”
She nodded. “But not anymore?”
The Fireman shook his head. She absorbed that, decided they could return to it later.
“What song do you sing to it?”
“Ah. You don’t know it.” Waving the hand again and looking away. She thought, though, he was relieved to be off the subject of Nick. “Although I thought when I met you—well, one of the first things you said to me was a line from the song. For a half moment I thought I had encountered someone who loved Dire Straits as much as myself.”
She stepped back from him. Swayed in the frozen air. Shut her eyes, inhaled deeply, and began to sing, in a soft, low-pitched, tuneful hush.
“A lovestruck Romeo
sings the streets a serenade
laying everybody low
with a love song that he made
finds a streetlight
steps out of the shade
says summin’ like:
‘You and me, babe—
how ’bout it?’”
She opened her eyes. He stared at her with his mouth hanging open, eyes bright and watery, as if he might start crying.
“You’re glowing,” he said. “You’re singing my favorite song in the world and you’re glowing like a diamond on an engagement ring.”
She looked down and noticed it was true. Her throat was a collar of coral light. She was shining through her sweater.
He leaned toward her and kissed her then—a warm, affectionate kiss that tasted of rum and coffee and butter and pecans and cigarettes and Englishman. He drew back, looked at her uncertainly.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I hope not.”
“You taste like a candy bar.”
“A spoonful of sugar, I understand, does make the medicine go down.”
“Is it medicine?”
“An important part of your recovery. Take two and call me in the morning.”
“Two?”
She kissed him again, then pulled back and laughed at his expression. “Come on now, John. Your turn to shoot. You’ll be good at it. You’re English. You have the blood of Robin Hood coursing in your veins. Here.”
She gave him the bow. Showed him where to put his hands, kicked at his feet to make him spread his legs.
“You pull the cable to the corner of your mouth, like this,” she said, miming it for him. “Practice without an arrow for a moment.”
He practiced, swaying in the bitter cold, his nostrils red and the rest of his face the color of pale wax.
“How’s that? Do I look like Errol Flynn?”
“You are a dashing motherfucker,” she told him.
She picked an arrow off the rocks, held it in one fist, closed her eyes, and frowned in concentration.
“What are you doing there?”
She didn’t look at him, but felt his gaze upon her and was glad. In that moment she knew she was going to do it. It was like knowing you were going to hit a bull’s-eye before the arrow left the bow.
Harper saw it in her head, the way she would move her hands in sequence to say you and me, babe, how ’bout it, without using any words at all. She saw it all and in that moment she knew how easy it was. You didn’t have to do anything to connect with the Dragonscale. In that way it was just like being pregnant. She felt the song in her tendons and nerve endings, felt it flow like blood, without a sound, without words, without even the memory of words. You and me, babe, how ’bout it?
She lit up. Harper opened her eyes to see the cup of her hand spurt a heatless flame—a blue, mystic flame—all around the arrow, and she cried out in shock and dropped it.
The Fireman snatched at her arm and clapped her hand under his turnout jacket to extinguish the blaze. Red freckles appeared high in his cheeks. His eyes strained behind his glasses.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“What in God’s name do you think you’re doing? Do you want to die?”
“I—I just wanted to see—”
But he had turned away, his coat flapping, and began to lurch back up the dune.
She caught up to him at the top of the ridge, the highest point of the island. The shed was below, built right into the side of the slope. Moss and sea grass carpeted the roof. She tried to take his shoulder, but he spun around, throwing her hand off him.
He gave her a bewildered, bookish look, eyes straining behind his square glasses. “Is that what this was all about? Get me drunk and make out with me to see if you can trick me into teaching you how to burn yourself to death?”
“No. John. No. I kissed you because I felt like kissing you.”
“Do you know what happened to the last person who decided she wanted to pull a burning rabbit out of a hat?”
“I know what happened.”
“No, you don’t. You have no idea. She turned to cinders.” As he spoke he was backing unsteadily away from her.
“I know she died. I know it was terrible.”
“Shut up. You don’t know anything except I have something you want and you’ll do whatever you need to get it: booze me up, flounce around, fuck me if necessary.”
“
No,” she said. She felt she was caught in nettles. She couldn’t struggle free and everything she said was another step deeper into the thorny tangle. “John. Please.”
“You don’t know what happened to her. You don’t know what’s still happening to her. You don’t understand a thing about us.” He threw the bow over the side of the roof, which was when she realized he had retreated out onto the top of his shed. He reeled back another step.
“Get away from me. And never do what you just did again.” He held out his hands. Golden light throbbed in his Dragonscale. His palms became shallow dishes, brimming with flame. “Unless you want to burn like this forever.”
“John, stop it, stop moving. Just stay where you are and—”
He wasn’t listening. He took another step back and spread his arms. Wings of brightest fire spread in a cape from his hands, down to his sides. Black smoke gushed from his nostrils.
“Unless you want to be in hell for the rest of your life,” he said. “Like m-m-muh-muh—”
His eyes widened with surprise. He began to whirl his arms around and around for balance, drawing flaming hoops in the air. His right foot slid out from under him and down the roof. He dropped to one knee, lunged, and grabbed a fistful of grass. For one moment of perfect stillness he hung at a crooked angle. The long tough grass turned to threads of copper and burnt away in his hot hand.
“John!” she cried.
He dropped, banged down the tin roof, off the edge and into the night. She heard him hit the dune with a thud, a thump, a gasp, a soft whump.
Silence.
“Nothing broken!” he called. “Don’t worry! I’m all right!”
He was quiet again.
“Except maybe my wrist,” he said, in a suddenly disconsolate voice.
Harper closed her eyes and exhaled with relief.
“Ow,” the Fireman said.
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 lie 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 transmit
ted, 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.”
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 the 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.
