Yesterday started out much the same. Except this time, I had a few uncomfortable minutes to spare. They bothered me because the black-and-white movie routine permitted me to disassociate from my body, my mind, the world, allowing an autopilot to prevent thinking. In those moments of deviation from the carefully crafted new norm, I found myself staring at walls, close to tears, close to breaking, close to the emotions I tried so hard to avoid. Even with the antidepressants, the grief seeped through the dangerous cracks in the scaffolding holding me up.
I work in the center of London, in a building housing one of the world’s tech giants, which for some reason that I regularly forget, is named after a tree fruit. People always get excited when I tell them where I work, asking me all about the amazing products we make. The way they speak of these things, you would think that the faeries themselves had whispered them alive into the creator’s mind before he built this company, Merlin-like lore shrouding his public persona. But that light in their eyes dissipates when I tell them I’m not a coder, or a designer, or anything even remotely interesting. All I do is solve back-office finance issues, calculator in hand. My job is safe, well-paid, and mind-numbingly dull.
Six months ago, I woke up in the middle of the night, shook James, and announced, “I’m quitting.”
James’s angular features were highlighted by the moonlight and he smiled, saying nothing of how I had interrupted his sleep. He got that soft look in his eye, the one I’d catch him giving me from across a room when he thought I wasn’t looking. He patiently patted my hand and yawned. “That’s a good call. You’re unhappy there, love.”
That patience was one of the reasons I fell in love with him. We’d met when I had almost set my flat on fire trying to prepare a rather ambitious recipe. James was my new neighbor, muscled, amber-eyed, with a face as beautiful as a Renaissance statue I once saw in a museum. He made short work of the flames, working amazingly fast, leaving little behind but a slightly scorched wall, telling me afterwards he was a firefighter. He had lingered well into the evening, after I had ordered cartons of Chinese food to thank him for fixing my silly mistake. He told me kindly it could have happened to anyone, and we were inseparable from then on.
In fact, until he died, I don’t think I remember spending a day without him.
After the night I woke him, I thought it prudent to keep my job for the short-term, but I began planning my new life goals. I would trade my calculator for a pencil. He laughed with me as I declared myself a work in progress. For weeks, I spun somewhere between panic and extreme self-assuredness like a sailor lost in a stormy sea, through which James was both a lighthouse and dry land. He placated me, reminding me how smart I was, how I just hadn’t come into my own yet. He helped me apply to evening courses on copy writing at a local university. There was a new skip in my step when I went into work.
When the university acceptance email finally arrived, James brought home champagne and the most unusually beautiful bouquet, an array of purple, blue, and pink leaf-petal flowers that I swore changed colour every time the light hit them.
“Rudy and I are so proud of you,” he declared as he lifted his glass, amber eyes sparkling, head tilting towards the sleeping iguana. Of course the iguana was James’s idea; I had never wanted a pet, let alone something that looked like a small version of something villainous from a faerie tale. “This is going to be hard, but I don’t know anyone else who has your determination. You will make this happen.”
We had gone to bed slightly drunk, a zest for life warming my bones.
The next morning, I found a hurriedly scrawled handwritten note. “Had to run, fire in the southeast. Home for dinner. Love you, always.”
He never texted; he absolutely hated it. It was the first thing we had discovered we had in common. Handwritten notes had become our thing. There was a sort of charm in the ritual of leaving them for each other to find. There was no gratification of knowing when or if the other had found it. It harkened back to an older time, when love existed between fingertips and parchment. Before technology became so advanced we could have entire relationships over mobile phones.
So, when he did not come back in time for dinner, I didn’t expect a text or a phone call. I did not worry. His job often kept him out at late hours; firefighters kept their work and private lives separate and were fiercely protective about both staying that way. I had never even met any of his coworkers. That secrecy was likely the appeal of the firefighter: the strong, quiet hero who saved the day, just like in the stories. He told me once that the fires had lives of their own, and the time it took depended on when and how they beat the beast back. Some were easily tamed, coaxed back with little effort. Others took days to bring to heel. I had marveled at his way of speaking of the fires, as if they were entities with souls. He would get this rapt look in his eyes, like someone daydreaming of a faraway land, and something farther away still. There was a love there for his work that I would never truly understand.
I was drinking a glass of wine, curled up on the sofa watching a horror film, and the lasagna was starting to dry out in the oven. The doorbell rang and I startled, drops of red wine blooming on my jeans. James must have forgotten his key.
Cursing softly and trying to blot the drops, I walked over to the door and threw it open, ready to chastise James for ruining dinner, and my jeans. A man and a woman in police uniforms looked back at me.
Have you ever had an out-of-body experience where you see yourself fall apart in slow motion? Where you can see the shatter marks as a stranger says the words you never thought you would hear? And there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop them or to make them take the words back? The world shifts on its axis so abruptly between the second when everything is fine and the one where you descend into an abyss, that you have no chance to plan an escape.
I do not remember the rest of that evening. Everything from that point to the funeral is a blur. I do remember how soft the earth felt between my fingers where he was buried. The strange flowers his parents brought, just like the ones he had given me. The closed casket. I do remember hands holding mine. Soft skin, calloused fingers, children’s hands. I remember resting my head on my mother’s lap, later, but being unable to cry.
I liked to imagine what happened to him was swift, that he died as he lived: fairly. But the way he had spoken of those fires told me they were not known for being fair.
I was drunk for a month. My mother was the one to frog-march me to the doctor. She hammered on my door until I answered, drunk and hungover all at once, and forced me, protesting, into my coat, propelling me to the doctor’s office for the sleeping pills and antidepressants, which I gobbled with relief, permitting me to go back to work.
I walked into my office yesterday morning and Sabrina, my manager, was at my cubicle waiting for me. “Good morning, Rita,” she said brightly, making me wince. Ever since I had returned to work, everyone had taken to talking to me like that: overly nice. Either that, or they would avert their eyes and ignore me, because they just didn’t know how to behave. Sabrina, who I had always known for her brusque manner and no-nonsense attitude, was being so sugar-sweet and soft it made me cringe. As though I was so fragile I would break. She didn’t realize that you can’t break something that’s already broken.
I forced a smile and tried to match her tone. “Hi, Sabrina. How can I help you?”
“Just wanted to see how you were getting on. If the workload is too much for you, simply say and I’ll get Oliver to take some of it off you.” She ran her hands down her skirt, smoothing it, probably keen to get back to being herself and leave the facade of sweetness at my table. Oliver, who was eavesdropping, looked worried.
I shook my head, trying to muster a reassuring smile, “I’m good. The workload is fine.” In my periphery, Oliver breathed a sigh of relief. With that, I switched my machine on and typed in my password at the login screen. Noticing she hadn’t left yet and was still hovering, a decidedly un-Sabrina-like thing to do, I looked at h
er again. “Is there…anything else?”
She hesitated. “Well, yes. I received this letter and I’m not sure what to make of it.”
I raised an eyebrow. “A letter?”
She shrugged. “Yeah, strange, no? It asks about you.”
A chill settled in the palms of my hands. I took the letter from her and studied it. It was a thick, old, parchment envelope, held together by a red wax seal that Sabrina had broken. I pulled out the letter. On heavy cream paper in swirling calligraphy someone had written:
To whom this may concern,
I am writing to ask if a certain Rita Smith, nee Singh, is in your employ. If in fact such a person exists, I would be grateful if you would give this letter to her, as I must meet with her regarding a private matter.
Yours obligingly,
Rowena Armitage
I was flummoxed. Turning the letter over, I noticed the same swirling hand had written an address in careful, smaller script. I looked up at Sabrina, but saw that she was distracted into a conversation about workload with Oliver.
Carefully placing the letter back in the envelope, I put it inside a drawer. All day, I felt it staring at me through the drawer, as though it had eyes. On three separate occasions, I pulled it out and studied it, thinking it would give me some clue, some idea about its origins. But neither the paper nor the handwriting revealed anything other than what was written.
For the first time in a long time, I started watching the clock, waiting for it to strike six so I could leave. The anticipation to leave work was such an alien feeling—normally I was just going home to my wine and Chinese-food cartons. But I knew what I was going to do: I was going to the address on the envelope. It was close to Hyde Park, and on the way home.
A brisk walk to the tube and two changes later, I was walking out of the musty underground into the blur of busy, damp streets full of people heading home, going out, doing all the things people do after work.
I pulled out my phone and the letter, and punched in the address. What was I doing? It was nearly the end of winter, already dark, and I was on my way to a stranger’s. But what did I have to lose? I had disassociated from so much of my life already. I blindly followed Google Maps to my destination.
It led me down a narrow cobblestone street to a door between a realtor and a wine shop. There was no sign or placard, but from the rows of books I could see through the thick glass pane in the wooden door, I could tell it was a bookshop. I took a deep breath. My heart was in my teeth, my reptilian brain on full alert. A jingling bell above the door heralded my entrance as I pushed against the brass doorknob.
Highly polished floorboards creaked underneath my feet. This place was certainly old, but it appeared well loved and well kept.
Stacks of ancient-looking leather-bound books lined the shelves. Gold plaques clearly marked their categories, etched in a familiar-looking hand. The shop was larger inside than it appeared from the street. I approached the shelves, and ran a light finger over one of the gold plaques: “Dragons—Wild Born.” The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I withdrew. As nervous as I felt, it was as though I had opened a door to a place I couldn’t leave. I walked through the wide aisle to the oak desk that sat before a large navy-blue door marked, “Office—Private.” The desk bore no decoration, save a tiny bell that sat right in the middle.
I raised my hand to ring it, but as I did, I noticed tendrils of smoke creeping from underneath the door. The smoke was purple. Unease crept in, but I dumbly stood still, blinking.
I walked around the desk, felt the door for heat—James had taught me well—and jostled the handle. It didn’t yield. I shook it harder and pushed, and it opened, pouring forth a huge cloud of smoke from the darkness, momentarily blinding me.
I don’t understand why I didn’t just leave, but I didn’t. I had come this far.
I realized I just didn’t care anymore. My grief had made me stupidly and numbly brave. The kind of brave where playing Russian roulette wasn’t a risk, because each outcome, the empty chamber or the full, was equally acceptable.
The smoke dissipated. Blinking from the sting, I stepped forward, my eyes trying to adjust to the darkness of the room. The door slammed shut behind me.
I fumbled around for a light switch, to find there was no wall where a wall should be. Only air.
And then I heard a sound. A snort. Not far from me. Not human.
Oddly, fear wasn’t my initial response. Instead I felt a weird sort of anticipation, coupled with the knowledge that I was experiencing something no one else had.
The snorting grew louder, until I could feel the heat of breath on my arm. As I looked down to where I thought the unknown creature might be, a large burst of flame erupted above me.
Hobbled first by dark and smoke and now by intense light, I thought I saw a yellow reptilian eye, the size of my torso, in a huge, red-scaled face. I screamed, and the creature itself roared so loudly I felt my eardrums would burst, its hot, ashy breath a sandstorm against my face.
“Igneous!” A woman’s sharp voice cut through the din.
The roaring turned into an annoyed snort. My desire to dally with death effectively ended and pure panic took over. I scrambled back in the direction of the door, blindly groping for it, stars exploding in my eyes.
A small hand brushed mine as I reached for the doorknob and I almost screamed again, but the door swung open.
As the soft light of the shop enveloped me, I smelled singed hair and saw tiny wisps of smoke rising from my jacket. I looked to my unlikely savior, a tiny, elderly woman who peered over her glasses at me with startling green eyes, almost luminescent, completely incongruous with her obviously advanced age. She wore a dark green dress that hung down to her ankles, and a timepiece necklace. Her sleek grey hair was pulled tightly into a bun.
“Are you quite all right, my dear?” She sounded worried. “Igneous is mostly harmless, he’s just a bit shifty around strangers.” I swallowed and nodded; I looked for words but when they refused to form, I withdrew the letter from my satchel and laid it on the oak desk between us.
She picked it up and adjusted her glasses. “Oh. Yes.” She looked back at me more closely. “You would be Rita, then?”
I nodded.
“Well, my dear, this has been quite an evening for you so far, has it not? Why don’t you join me for a nice cup of tea?”
Fifteen minutes later—or I think it was—I was seated on a comfortable high-backed sofa on the second floor of this odd shop, sipping shakily from a delicate, robin’s-egg-blue china teacup. The room gave the impression of someone’s living room, done up in hues of soft greens, with wooden floors and timeworn oak furniture. Like the shop below, it was well kept and obviously well loved.
“You have likely already guessed that I am Rowena Armitage, the person who sent this letter.” She held up the parchment. I noticed a brooch on her lapel, a gold lizard-like creature with emerald eyes. I shivered.
Rowena put her cup of tea down and again peered over her glasses. “So my dear, you must have some ques—”
“Why am I here?” I knew I sounded rude, but I was singed, tired, and confused. My teacup clattered against the saucer as I put it on the coffee table.
She stared at me. The discomfort of being studied so closely made me pick at the burned bits on my pants. “You’re here because of James, of course.”
At the sound of his name, something inside me recoiled in pain. It was always the same feeling: when his name came from someone else’s lips, I felt like my muscles were being ripped from my bones.
“What about James?” My voice sounded high-pitched. “And what on Earth was that thing in the back of your shop?”
She studied me in the way someone studies a child who is about to throw a tantrum, then stood and walked downstairs into the shop. My mouth felt dry and my legs itched. I wanted desperately to leave but I stayed, rooted to my seat. James… I needed to know what this was about.
Rowena returned, skirts swis
hing as she placed a book on the coffee table: big, blue, leather-bound, and quite old. She sat back down and picked up her tea. She didn’t say anything, just kept looking at me over her cup and glasses, gauging my reaction.
I reached over and opened the book. A photo album.
It opened to an image of a smiling James. Next to him was a pair of scaled legs that glistened red and gold. The rest of the creature’s body continued out of the shot, well above James’s head.
Rowena could see my confusion. “That’s James with Igneous. The dragon you met downstairs.”
I stared at the photo. James. My James, looking right back at me like he was there in the room. Like he was alive. I could see right into his amber eyes and for a moment I felt like they were sparkling, telling me I was going to be okay. Those eyes had always reminded me of the fire that helped us meet. It was painful to think I would never, ever look into those eyes again. I lost myself for several moments as our life together flashed in a reel of full colour—vivid, beautiful.
My chest aching, I pulled myself out of my reverie and my gaze settled on Rowena’s brooch, a dragon. I looked at the large painting behind her, a dragon. The books in the shop, all to do with fire and dragons.
“I am the person your husband was working for when he…” She swallowed hard. “Moved on.”
My mind began to spin. “No, my husband was a firefighter, he—”
“Your husband was the best damned dragon trainer in the business.” She knew the truth couldn’t be eased into, so she unmasked it quickly, like ripping off a bandage.
Suddenly, in the movie of my life with James, little details I had ignored came into full focus. The privacy of the firefighter. His descriptions of the fires. The way he just knew me. The unusual flowers he and his parents favoured. The way the cops who gave me the news didn’t have badges, and I had been in too much shock to query them.
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