Strange Fire

by Tommy Wallach

  As she passed by the campfire, Garrick noticed her and jumped to attention. “You look like you could use some help,” he said. Though Gemma was well aware of the boy’s amorous aspirations, he still treated her more respectfully than most of the other soldiers. Besides, a second set of hands meant half the work.

  “Much obliged, Garrick.”

  The Ivan was only a short walk from their campsite. The water was frozen at the edges, cracked in crazy patterns, speckled with tiny air bubbles like the eyes of little fish trying to break through to the surface. Garrick knelt down on the bank, picked up a smooth river rock, and smashed a hole in the ice. Vapor rose up from the black as the cold air met the slightly warmer water. “Hand me those,” he said.

  She passed him the pile. “You don’t want to do this alone, trust me. I’ll help.”

  “And risk those beautiful fingers of yours? Don’t be crazy. What if one of them fell off? How would you ever play the fiddle again?”

  Gemma was taken aback. She couldn’t remember ever telling Garrick she played the fiddle.

  “I saw you at a gathering in the Anchor once,” he explained, “singing like an angel and sawing away like the devil. Gave me sweet dreams for a week.” He grinned, then immediately grimaced as his fingers met the water. “Daughter’s love, that’s cold!”

  “What did I tell you?”

  “It’s all right. I’ve suffered for love before.” He pulled the first shirt out and set it down on the rocks. “Of course, I wouldn’t say no to a little thank-you present.”

  “Cheeky boy! What do you think I am?”

  Garrick made a show of being offended. “Not like that! Just sing me something. It’ll pass the time.”

  Gemma hadn’t done much singing since that last gathering in Amestown. Part of it was because she’d lost her fiddle, but the real explanation went a lot deeper than that. Music hadn’t been just some pastime; it had been her whole life. When her father and Daniel and Ellen Hamill died, it was like the music died with them. “I don’t know what to sing.”

  “Well, hurry up and figure it out. My fingers are already numb.”

  She racked her brain, and finally an old ballad came to mind: “Dirt on the Grave.” It seemed a fitting accompaniment for the cleaning of dirty shirts.

  “I saw you first

  through the heat in my veins

  through the light in my eyes

  through the blood in my heart

  and I knew love

  I saw you next

  through the dust of the fields

  through the light of the stars

  through the dark of the night

  and I knew love

  I saw you last

  through the ice in the air

  through the chill in my veins

  through the dirt on the grave

  and I knew love.”

  She’d closed her eyes as she sang—and when she felt Garrick’s lips pressing softly against her own, she let it happen, ignoring the stubbly roughness of his chin and the icy fingers against her cheek. It was something, anyway—a scrap of solace on a lonely evening.

  The lips withdrew quickly, and she opened her eyes to reality. Garrick was on his feet, squinting upriver.

  “What is it?” Gemma said.

  “I heard something, out in the woods. Could be a deer, maybe.” He’d brought his bow along with him, but when he took it off his back and tried to nock an arrow, his hands were shaking. “Shit.”

  And now she heard it too—movement in the reeds just a couple dozen yards upstream. A flash of black hair between the stalks.

  “Don’t shoot!” someone said.

  A moment later she emerged from the reeds, like a phantom.

  “Irene,” Gemma said with quiet wonder.

  Garrick laughed as he put the bow on his back again. “Lord, girl, I almost skewered you. What the hell are you doing back here? Clover was a wreck over your going, the poor little—”

  “Take me to Burns,” Irene interrupted, her voice so serious that Gemma felt a prickle at the back of her neck. “We don’t have much time.”

  Gemma had petitioned to stay with the contingent, but Burns was adamant that “untrained girls got no place on a battlefield.” And that’s what this was now: a soon-to-be battlefield. Apparently, Irene had been on her way back to Eaton when she happened upon a Wesah encampment—the same naasyoon the contingent had clashed with before. She said that the warrior women looked to be preparing for some sort of attack, and that they’d mentioned Marshal Burns by name.

  “Gemma and I can hide out upriver until it’s over,” Irene suggested.

  “Good idea,” Burns said. “If we haven’t come for you by morning, head for home.”

  “You’re all gonna be all right, aren’t you?” Gemma asked the marshal.

  Burns gave a noncommittal sort of sigh. “Well, at least we’ve got warning. That’s something anyway.” He placed a fatherly hand on Gemma’s shoulder and gave it a little squeeze. “Stay safe, yeah?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Good.” He stared off into the distance for a moment, lips pursed in a manner that could have signaled either distraction or genuine emotion. “Good,” he said again, as if closing a door on something. Then he was heading back toward camp, and Gemma was left alone with Irene.

  They walked upriver, crunching over the hard-packed snow. Gemma fingered the annulus at her neck; though the hair had grown brittle since her sister first gave it to her, touching it still granted a measure of consolation. Where was Flora right now? Just sitting down to dinner at their grandfather’s house, most likely, scheming how she could get an extra slice of pie for dessert.

  And how would she get on if Gemma never came back?

  “We should stop here,” Irene said. They were passing beneath a picturesque willow, whose branches brushed the icy surface of the river. Only the thinnest layer of snow lay on the ground within the dome of its thousand drooping limbs, like a mantelpiece feathered with dust.

  “Do you think it’s far enough?”

  “Sure. And at least we’ve got some protection in here. It’s starting to snow again.”

  Gemma reached a hand out beyond the branches, catching one of the flakes in her palm, and brought it back just in time to observe it for a moment. “It sorta looks like candy, doesn’t it?”

  “Looks can be deceiving.”

  Gemma wiped the melt off on her uniform trousers, then sat down and leaned back against the trunk of the willow. Irene paced around the rim of the bower, occasionally stopping to glance out through the branches.

  “You worried about Clover?” Gemma asked.

  “What do you mean?” Irene looked genuinely confused, as if she’d just woken from a dream.

  “Well, because of the Wesah, obviously.”

  “Of course,” Irene said, though her voice was strangely devoid of emotion. “Of course I’m worried about him. And the rest of them.”

  Time passed. The only sounds were the soughing of the willow branches, the fluid hum of the river, the tread of Irene’s boots on the increasingly packed snow. Gemma watched the snowflakes dissolving on the surface of the water. Was that what a life was like? Just a tiny particle tossed around by the wind, lifted for a time, but doomed to drop into the darkness, to disappear, to drown?

  “Do you think there’s such a thing as a bad person?” Irene asked. She was also staring out across the river, her anxious pacing momentarily halted.

  “No,” Gemma said, though she hadn’t realized she’d believed that until she said it.

  “Not even whoever it was that killed your little brother?”

  Once again, Gemma saw Michael’s tiny silhouette sprinting toward the wagon. The flash and the explosion, the burst of blood. His tiny skeleton slipping into the grave. That first shovelful of dirt falling on what was left of his face.

  “Not even him.”

  Irene laughed, a laugh so inappropriate to their conversation that Gemma actually shiver
ed. “And what if it was me who did it?”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “Who’s joking?”

  Gemma felt an emptiness in the pit of her stomach. Why was Irene acting like this? Did she know what she was saying?

  A ray of light from the setting sun pierced their little bower, illuminating the glittering diamond of a tear frozen halfway down Irene’s cheek. Behind her, the branches of the willow tree parted, as if by some divine magic.

  “Irene—” Gemma began to say, but the words stuck in her throat as she saw the first Wesah warrior step through the gap. Another warrior followed the first, then another after that, until at last Gemma found the presence of mind to stand up and run.

  But there were other warriors behind her now.

  She drew a deep breath, preparing to scream, but was interrupted by a firm open hand across her cheek, knocking her to the ground. She shook the stars from her eyes and saw Athène standing above her. The chieftain’s copper bracelets sparkled gaily, tinkled like music. She spoke a few sharp words to the other warriors, and Gemma felt herself being lifted up by the arms and legs and flipped over like a pancake. When she landed again, it was to find the familiar warmth of a horse under her belly.

  A moment later, the animal began to move, swift and silent across the snowy ground. Gemma looked back, and her eyes met Irene’s. The girl from Eaton stood just outside the bower of the willow tree, entirely unharmed. She raised her hand in farewell, then turned away.

  Gemma began to weep.

  10. Clive

  THEY’D ARRANGED THE CAMP IN a bull’s-eye pattern, with a ring of personal tents surrounding Burns’s large command tent, where all of them were packed in tight as rats in a nest. The marshal was counting on the Wesah to initiate their attack on the outer ring; just as they realized the shapes beneath the blankets were just piles of dirty clothes and riding gear, the contingent would burst out of the central tent and fall on them.

  Crouched breathlessly in the dark, Clive felt a strange sort of giddiness, like back when he and Clover would stay up all night together, talking about nothing, playing a game of chicken with sunrise. He had to keep checking the impulse to giggle. Even stranger, as the minutes passed, and as the minutes stretched into hours, he realized he was hoping for something to happen. He’d made a sort of peace with the most likely future—charging out of the tent and immediately taking an arrow in the gut; it was only the interminable present that terrified.

  When he first heard the shouting, he assumed it was coming from a wild animal; the Wesah would never advertise their attack so brazenly. It was a while longer before he recognized the voice—the girl who’d run away and come right back again.

  His brother pushed past him and out of the tent.

  “What are you doing?” Burns said.

  “It’s Irene!” Clover said.

  The marshal cursed. “The rest of you stay here.” He followed Clover out of the tent, and Clive was right behind him. They made it only a few hundred feet toward the river before she appeared—sobbing, haggard, heavily favoring her right leg. She fell straight into Clover’s arms. “They took her,” she said between gasps. “They took Gemma.”

  “Who did?” Burns asked.

  “The Wesah. They said it was a trade for the warrior that Clive killed.”

  “How long ago?” Clive asked.

  Irene put her hands up against her temples, closing her eyes as if she’d been overtaken by a sudden bout of wooziness; Clive didn’t buy it for a second.

  “How long ago?” he said again, half shouting this time.

  “I don’t know! At least an hour. They used something to knock me out.”

  “An hour? A fucking hour?” He turned on Burns. “You’ve got to order everyone to move out now.”

  Burns put a hand on his shoulder. “You know I can’t do that.”

  Clive shook the hand off. “Why the hell not?”

  “The way the Wesah ride, an hour might as well be a week.”

  “So what? You’re just gonna let them have her? You’re too chicken to even try?”

  “Do you have any idea how lucky we are that she’s all they wanted?” Burns said, raising his voice to match Clive’s. “The whole contingent could be dead right now, including your brother. You oughta be down on your knees thanking the Lord, not shoutin’ at me!”

  “What’s there to be thankful for? Gemma is gone.” He pointed at Irene as if he were naming the devil. “And that bitch is still here.”

  Irene’s eyes flashed, but she said nothing.

  “Irene came back to warn us about the Wesah,” Clover said.

  “And what good did it do us?” Nobody had an answer for that. “Well, you’re crazy if you think I’m letting those savages have their way with her. I’ll go on my own.”

  But Burns was there now, blocking the way to the horses. When Clive tried to sidestep, the marshal grabbed him by the jacket and threw him to the ground.

  “I let you join this contingent because you told me you could be a man. And a man doesn’t leave a mission half-finished to chase some private grudge. Sometimes”—and Burns’s voice got quieter then, almost soft— “sometimes a man’s gotta sit back on his hands. And I think that can be the hardest thing for folks like us. But we still gotta do it.”

  Clive thought about the moment when Gemma had kissed him, just before he rode east to the pumphouse. He thought about the night he’d asked her to marry him. He thought about everything they could’ve had together. If he’d only done what his parents had wanted him to do, she’d still be here now.

  “You hearing me, Clive?”

  “Yeah. I’m hearing you.”

  “Good man,” Burns said. “So stand the fuck up.”

  Three hours later the contingent still hadn’t let up celebrating. Clive sat alone outside his tent, blowing the steam off a cup of nettle tea, trying to calm the churning in his belly.

  “Not enjoying the party?” Garrick asked, coming to stand beside him.

  “Look at them,” Clive said, gesturing out toward the soldiers singing their bawdy songs around the fire, laughing loud enough to wake the dead. Didn’t they care at all that Gemma was gone? She’d been cooking for them for months now, enduring their jokes and gibes and come-ons; couldn’t they summon up a bit of grief on her behalf?

  “They’re alive. They didn’t expect to be. So they’re happy.”

  “They shouldn’t be. We still got Sophia in front of us.”

  At that moment, Irene and Clover emerged from Clover’s tent. Though they at least looked appropriately somber, they still went to stand in front of the fire with the other soldiers, effectively joining in with the festivities.

  Garrick shrugged. “You know, I had this terrible flu once—lasted for a whole week. My fever was so bad, I thought my head was gonna melt right off my neck. Then one morning I wake up and poof: it’s gone, just like that. And I said to myself, ‘Garrick, don’t you ever forget what a blessing it is not to be exploding out both ends all day.’ But you know what happened?”

  “What?”

  “I did forget.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “These men just remembered what a blessing it is to be alive. But they’ll forget by morning. Let ’em have the moment.”

  Clive sipped at his tea; it scalded his tongue, but he kept drinking anyway. Garrick was right; the soldiers were doomed to forget their joy, just as Clive was doomed to forget his grief. Everything important would be forgotten eventually, and it followed naturally that the vast majority of the world’s injustices would never be made right. That was time’s greatest joke: to erase the memory of injury from the mind of the injured.

  Remember, Clive urged himself.

  He closed his eyes, dipped his nose into the cup, and inhaled the steam. They’d had a lot of nettle tea over the years, the Hamill family ministry. It tasted like spinach water on its own, but improved with a bit of honey or a squeeze of lemon; Flora had always preferred the latter,
because it turned the tea pink. Clive remembered Gemma bringing him a mug of the stuff just before that last gathering in Amestown. Oh, the way her eyes used to light up when she saw him, as if they shared some wonderful secret—but that wasn’t the memory he was looking for. In his mind’s eye, he passed over the week that had followed that gathering, landmarks flashing past—the pumphouse, the reunion with his mother, Eddie’s feverish writhing—until he found Irene again, standing outside the doctor’s house in Wilmington, almost as if she’d been waiting for him.

  The next day she’d appeared out of nowhere and agreed to ride with them, and only a few hours later, the wagon had broken down. She’d offered to go get help, but when she got back, she brought death and devastation along with her. And hadn’t the exact same thing happened today? She’d disappeared, taking Clover’s gun along with her, and almost as soon as she’d returned, tragedy struck.

  It couldn’t all be a coincidence. It just couldn’t. And that meant every second she remained here was another invitation to further catastrophe. What was it Burns had said, when they went to parley with the Wesah? Only a fool marches into trouble with trouble already breathing down his neck.

  “Garrick, I need you to do something for me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Distract Clover somehow. I want a few minutes alone with Irene.”

  “Daughter’s love, Hamill, why do you still have it in for her?”

  “Because she’s a liar.”

  Garrick made a big show of sighing. “Fine. Just keep my name out of it when you’re apologizing to Burns an hour from now.”