Strange Fire

by Tommy Wallach

The other piece of information Clover had gleaned in the anathema stacks—that the first generation of men had been far more technologically advanced than the Descendancy would have people believe—was more interesting. It made Paz wonder how many of Sophia’s discoveries were new, and how many were simply reconstructions of past breakthroughs.

  Either way, she had to assume that everything Clover had learned would be old news to Director Zeno. More important was his disclosure that the Epistem had sent him to spy on Sophia. A dangerous stratagem, surely, but it wasn’t entirely without merit; Clover was intelligent enough to pass the academy’s entrance examination, and once inside, who knew what he might learn? Luckily, it wouldn’t matter, because Paz would be there to unmask him.

  Marry me. I love you.

  Some part of her had known it already, of course. Making him love her had been a necessary part of the plan. But to actually watch it happen proved to be more disconcerting than she’d expected: the difference between finding a dead rabbit in a snare and being there when it was caught.

  Perhaps that was the most disturbing of the day’s revelations. When she’d thrown herself into Clover’s arms just after the Wesah had retreated, it had only been half performance. Some shameful inner aspect of her had craved the comfort of his embrace, and by extension, his feelings for her. And earlier tonight, when she’d been in the tent with him, she’d glanced over at his sleeping face and realized she could no longer see the monster who’d murdered her father—just the poor boy she’d fooled into loving her.

  That was the strange thing about pretending to be someone else: you could only do it for so long before the character you were playing began to infect the person you really were. You became something new, a sort of hybrid of the real and the invented, which only made the invented part that much closer to real.

  Paz’s meditation was interrupted by a crunching sound from the woods. She turned around, half expecting to see a Wesah arrow screaming toward her head. But it was only Clive. He’d grown a light beard over the last few weeks that suited him.

  “Call of nature,” he explained gruffly.

  She turned around again, hoping he would go back to his tent and leave her in peace.

  “Beautiful night, isn’t it?” he said, sitting down next to her.

  “Sure is.”

  “Clover asleep?”

  “Like a baby.”

  “I’ll tell you, Irene, I know we got off to a bit of a, well, interesting start, but I’m glad you and my brother found each other. After he spent all those years pining after Gemma, he deserves a bit of happiness.”

  Paz was wary, but decided to take Clive at face value for the moment. “I’m glad you think I make him happy.”

  “Of course you do. And it’s good of you not to be jealous—of Gemma, I mean.”

  “Everybody’s got a childhood crush.”

  Clive scratched at his beard. “You mean Clover isn’t the only boy you’ve ever cared about?”

  Paz had answered a few personal questions over the past few months, but she’d avoided talking about herself whenever such reticence wouldn’t look suspicious. She’d also tried to cultivate a general air of absentmindedness on which any factual inconsistencies could be blamed. Lying in her sleeping bag at night, she’d ask herself random questions and then invent answers, knowing full well that at some point, her very life might depend on her ability to improvise convincingly.

  Clover had never worked up the courage (or the curiosity) to ask about her previous romantic experiences, but she’d had answers ready since day one.

  “There was one other boy, a few years ago.”

  “Oh yeah? What was he like?”

  “What are all boys like? Handsy.”

  Clive whistled. “And you found him right in your hometown? Lucky girl.”

  “I guess.”

  “How many people live in Eaton anyway?”

  “Round about three hundred, counting the farmers nearby.”

  “Farmers like your father?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Remind me, what crops did he tend?”

  She tried to sound playful. “You sure got a lot of questions this evening, Clive.”

  “Just making small talk.”

  She considered putting an end to the conversation—complaining of a headache or answering her own call of nature. But the truth was, some part of her thrilled to the challenge. She would’ve rather avoided the game entirely, but if Clive was going to force her to play, then she was going to win.

  “Well, it’s damned dull, Clive.”

  He laughed. “All right then. I got one more question for you. And it’s a lot less dull.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  “You planning on marrying my brother?”

  She could feel the surprise spreading across her face, making a fool out of her. “What makes you think that?”

  “Yesterday I asked him if he was broken up that you’d be leaving soon. And he said it might only be temporary.”

  Paz shrugged. “Anything could happen. Life is long.”

  “Not always.” He smiled when he said it, but not sincerely enough to dull the edge of the threat. There was no doubt now that he was probing her, but Paz wasn’t sure if he was doing it because he’d begun to doubt her story, or simply because he didn’t like the idea of a country bumpkin like her marrying his fancy little brother.

  She tried for a tone somewhere between impish and imperious. “And if I did marry Clover, would that be a problem?”

  “I suppose that would depend on why you were doing it. I’m just looking out for him.”

  “You sure? ’Cause this all sounds like a bad case of the green-eyed monster to me.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself.”

  “I’m not. You say you’re looking out for him, but everybody’s noticed where you’re really looking. Why else do you think Gemma threw you over?”

  As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them. Where she might’ve used this conversation to mollify Clive, now she’d gone and provoked him.

  He stood up. The dying embers in the fire pit reflected in his eyes—rings of bright orange around the black. “You’ve given me a lot to think about, Irene. Have a good night.”

  He left the circle of the firelight, disappearing back into the darkness.

  “Shit,” Paz said.

  5. Gemma

  GEMMA STOOD UP, ARRANGED HER hands on the hard leather of the saddle, and slowly raised her legs over her head. It was a trick she’d seen performed by a rodeo clown years ago, and one that had taken her more than a month to master. She held the headstand for ten seconds or so, then lowered herself back down again.

  “Bravo,” Burns said. “We oughta take this show on the road.”

  “I thought that’s what we were doing. Is this not the circus?”

  She wasn’t entirely sure how it had happened, but sometime in the past few weeks, she and Burns had become friends. It was a relationship born out of necessity: the last civilian members of their cohort had peeled off to the south after the confrontation with the Wesah (though not before Burns had requisitioned their horses and finally given Gemma a mount of her own), and as for the Hamill brothers, Clover was always off in his little world with Irene, and Clive spent most of his free time with Garrick and the other soldiers. This left Gemma with a serious dearth of recreational options.

  The last time she’d traveled the outerlands, it had been in the clement days of summer. But winter had come upon the contingent like a shroud, darkening the soldiers’ spirits as it shortened the days. Now that the sunshine was gone, conversation was the only thing that made the hours bearable. And say what you would about Burns, but the man sure had stories to tell. Up until he’d joined the Protectorate about ten years back, his life had been one harrowing adventure after another. (Or else he was just a really good liar. For her part, Gemma didn’t care much either way.)

  Mostly they just chewed the fat, talking
about whatever came up in the course of the day’s march, but they’d managed to get a little personal now and again, like the time she’d said something offhand about Clive’s “new girlfriend” Garrick, and Burns casually dropped the question he’d clearly been hankering to ask ever since they’d left the Anchor.

  “So what went on between you and him, anyway?”

  “Between me and Clive? What do you mean?”

  “Your daddy was dead sure that the two of you would end up married before too long. Now it’s like the thought never crossed your mind.”

  “It’s complicated.”

  Burns grunted. “Nothing’s all that complicated. Either you went off him or he went off you. No shame either way.”

  “I guess I realized I was never really on him in the first place,” she said. Then, seeing the beginning of a smirk on Burns’s face: “Don’t say it. You know what I mean.”

  “Sure I do.”

  They’d let the conversation drop after that.

  But even though she’d begun to enjoy Burns’s company, she wouldn’t have said she really liked him until a few days later, when a blustery evening in early December found the contingent on a narrow road that ran along the edge of a canyon. There was something familiar about it.

  “I’ve been on this road before,” Gemma said.

  “That’s right,” Burns replied. “It was a little out of our way, but we’ve got some unfinished business to take care of here.”

  “What unfinished business?”

  He didn’t answer, just looked at her, something like sympathy in his eyes, and at last she realized where they were, and what they were about to do.

  “Daughter’s love,” she whispered.

  It was just the four of them now, walking in a row—the last surviving members of Honor Hamill’s ministry (except for Flora, of course, blessedly safe back at the Anchor). Garrick and Irene had stayed with the rest of the contingent, just out of sight down the road. Gemma clung to Clive’s arm as they rounded the curve.

  It looked the same as when they’d left—a moment frozen in time. On their right loomed the large boulder where they’d made their last stand. To the left, the carcass of the wagon lay wasting, its canvas skin sagging and water-stained, braces protruding like ribs. And in the scrubby field between one and the other . . .

  “I hate to think they’ve just been laying out here,” Gemma said. The tears had already begun to flow, pouring down her cheeks like they had somewhere important to be.

  “There’s no shame in it,” Clive replied, taking hold of her hand. Clover was on her other side, so she grabbed hold of his hand too. The younger boy’s eyes were glazed and impassive, and Gemma wondered what was going through his mind. He’d kept everyone at a distance since the day he lost his parents, or everyone except Irene, anyway. Gemma hoped he’d at least managed to open up to her, to express the grief he hid from the rest of them. No one should have to handle so much pain alone.

  Burns had brought a spade with him; likely he’d carried it all the way from the Anchor with just this purpose in mind. He handed it to Gemma. “We’ll get the bodies. You start digging. One hole, unless you’ve got something against a common grave.”

  Gemma shook her head: in death as it was in life. Burns and the boys headed toward the back of the wagon, where her father’s corpse would be waiting. She was grateful not to have to touch him, to lift him, to feel the lightness he’d achieved in death.

  She cast about for an adequate location for the grave. At the edge of the road, a yucca tree reached its myriad of viridescent arms up toward the sky, as if in supplication; it would make a fine headstone. She stuck the spade into the hard earth at its roots and tossed the first half scoop aside.

  The boys returned and laid her father’s body down nearby, and though she didn’t want to look, she felt a strange responsibility to acknowledge it. The corpse had been preserved by the enclosed space of the wagon. A ghastly mantle of skin still clung to the bone, tufts of yellow hair waving delicately as cornsilk.

  That is not my father. My father is with the Lord and his Daughter in heaven. That is just an empty vessel.

  She turned away, dug in harder with the spade, placing her right foot on the back of the blade and using her weight to break through the frigid crust of the earth. She wept openly but quietly, imagining the tears softening the soil for her, consecrating it somehow. They brought Ellen Hamill’s body next. The framework of the woman’s beauty, the slim figure Gemma had always coveted, now lay starkly revealed—narrow hips and long legs, high cheekbones and those tiny, birdlike feet. Her husband came a few minutes later. His thick purple cassock had kept better than she would’ve expected; it looked as if it had only been outside for a week or two.

  “Was he really this small?” Clover asked.

  “I guess so,” Clive answered.

  Neither of them cried. Why was it men always seemed so concerned with coming off strong? Wasn’t there a sort of weakness in that—the fear of being seen as you really were?

  The hole was only a couple of feet deep, but Gemma’s hands had already been rubbed raw by the splintery handle of the spade, and she was soaked in sweat. Clive took over the digging, while Clover and Burns went to recover the last of the bodies. This was always going to be the hardest one to bear—her baby brother, lionhearted to the very end. Her breath caught in her throat when she saw what was left of him—scarcely anything—and she lost all semblance of self-control after that. Sobs racked her body so violently she worried they might trigger a fit. At some point Clover sat down next to her and put an arm around her shoulders. She just went on crying.

  When the digging was done, Clive and Burns used a canvas sling to lower the bodies as gently as possible into the cavity, then took turns replacing the dirt. By the time they were finished, the sun had traveled from high in the sky all the way down to the horizon line. Gemma was all out of tears by then, her eyes red and aching, her soul scoured clean by the sheer force of her grief.

  Burns went back down the road and summoned the rest of the company. Clive was the closest thing they had to an Honor now, so he spoke a few words from the Filia. Gemma sang the “Remembrance Hymn”—always her father’s favorite—then Clive and Clover duetted on “So I Came Me Down to Ground.”

  As painful as it had been, Gemma was glad that they’d come here. Something felt finished—some part of the past finally mounted on the shelf where it could be gazed upon from a distance, like an urn full of ashes. After dinner, she climbed up to the top of the big boulder and gazed down on the yucca tree and the gravesite, the soldiers’ campfire flicking fingers of red toward the half-moon.

  “You ain’t wearing shoes,” Irene said. She’d appeared out of the shadows, like a black cat.

  “I wanted to feel the ground beneath my feet.”

  “Oh yeah?” Irene took off her shoes and socks, squidged her toes around in the earth. “That’s not bad.” She began climbing up the side of the boulder.

  “Careful.”

  “I will be.”

  When Irene reached the top, she lay down next to Gemma. They stared up at the stars, so many it looked like somebody had sifted flour out onto the sky.

  “You think there are other folks like us out there somewhere?” Irene asked.

  “Probably. Hardly matters, though.”

  “I suppose not.”

  Something tickled at her hand. She was about to shake it away when she realized it was Irene’s pinky grabbing hold of her own. A curious bubble popped in her stomach, rising to a lightness in her head.

  “I’ll have to go home soon,” Irene said. “At least for a while.”

  “I know. Clover’ll be sad.”

  “He’ll survive. Anyone who can kill a man can handle a little heartache.”

  Gemma had almost forgotten about Clover’s lie; it seemed beside the point now. “He didn’t kill that man at the pumphouse. I did.”

  “Oh,” Irene said quietly.

  “I guess Clover fig
ured if we said it was him, I wouldn’t end up feeling guilty about it.” She laughed at how naive that sounded. “But it didn’t work. I think about that man all the time. I mean, what would I say to him, if I saw him in heaven?”

  “You think he’s in heaven? A heretic?”

  “I guess not. Or maybe. Who am I to say? I don’t pretend to understand much of anything anymore.”

  Gemma felt Irene gently unhook her pinky. “You know, I’m feeling pretty tired. I should get to sleep.”

  “You don’t wanna talk some more?”

  “No. Tomorrow, maybe.”

  Irene stood up and began clambering back down the boulder. Gemma felt terribly sad all of a sudden—as if she’d lost something precious—and couldn’t quite understand why.

  6. Clive

  IN THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED their makeshift memorial service on the old mining road, the weather took a turn for the worse, and the spirits of the contingent followed suit. Clive went to bed with a gnawing in his belly most nights, which made waking up all the more difficult; it felt as if sleep had lost its restorative powers. Their pace slowed to a crawl, which only made everyone more spiky and ill-mannered.

  But slow progress was still progress, and after close to two months on the march, the contingent finally reached the pumphouse.

  The door was open when they arrived, swinging ominously on its hinges. The whole place had been cleaned out since Clive had been here last—no pump, no telegraph machine, no Riley. Already nature had begun to reclaim the interior. Thick-legged spiders perched in the corners, and the pellet droppings of mice were everywhere. All that remained of the room’s original purpose was the ineradicable stench of Blood of the Father.

  “So this is where it all started, eh?” Garrick said.

  Clive nodded. For most of the contingent, the pumphouse was just the setting of a story they’d heard. But for him, it represented a turning point: the birthplace of his new self. His memories of that day had faded over the past few months, but, being there again, it all came rushing back: sitting outside, talking with his father about Kayin and Hevel; Riley appearing in the doorway, inviting them inside in his folksy outerlands accent; the bowl of ripe red cherries; the howl, and the horsemen, and the certainty that death was only a moment away . . .