Mortal Fire

by Elizabeth Knox

  Then Sholto was there. He grabbed Canny’s wrist. “What the hell are you doing? Leave the kid alone.”

  Canny let the boy go and Sholto smoothed him down and apologized. The boy went ahead of them into the house and Sholto rounded on Canny, glaring. “I have never, in my life, seen you lay hands on another child,” he said. “What’s wrong with you? No wonder your school called in Sisema for a talk! Do you want to know what they said? ‘Canny isn’t a good mixer’—which is a politely coded way of saying you don’t give a stuff about people. They called you ‘impervious to the point of rudeness’ and ‘full of secretive habits.’ Shall I go on?”

  “Just shut up!” Canny shouted.

  Susan stepped in. “I know you’re tired, pet. We all are. Let’s just all simmer down.”

  Canny opened her mouth to tell Susan to shut up too and then felt the cloud of pressure that she’d not been consciously aware of suddenly burst apart and yield. Her head had been in a vise—but wasn’t anymore.

  She looked about the dark hallway and saw the boy. He was perched partway up the stairs and smirking at her. When she held his gaze, his smirk twitched and disappeared. Canny looked away and began to massage her temples. She told Susan she had a headache. “Lack of sleep,” she said.

  “We’ll have a room soon. And you can lie down.”

  “We skipped lunch. And you have a small fuel tank.” Sholto touched her arm. “Sorry I was sharp with you.”

  * * *

  SHOLTO FELT BAD. His sister was sometimes stubborn, but she almost always argued using logic and remained reasonably polite. Everyone was entitled to lose their temper occasionally only—

  —only there was a second there, when his sister had hold of the kid by the back of his shirt, that Sholto was really afraid for him. Canny’s face had been calm, as usual. And she really did seem only to want her question answered. But still, she’d reached and taken hold and wasn’t even scowling, but something black and adamant was there inside her, or behind her—

  —“Or in my imagination,” Sholto told himself. He didn’t know why he was all of a sudden having these weird apprehensions about Canny. It was true that he’d never actually been in the position of having day-to-day responsibility for his sister, but why would his worry manifest as hallucinations, like imagining that something sinister was standing behind her right now, or, only the other day, seeing her hurrying toward his parked car when she wasn’t actually there?

  The sunlight in the door was blocked momentarily as their hostess came in. She was a very tall woman, taller than Sholto. She was big and womanly like Sisema, but whereas Sisema even in her most majestic moments had something theatrical in her grandeur, something even of comic theater, this woman was simply grand. A plain, bony country woman who stood drying her hands on her apron—and looking like an empress. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting.” She offered her hand. “Iris Zarene.”

  “Sholto Mochrie,” said Sholto. He took her hand and felt both its strength and the thick pads of scar tissue on the back of it. “This is my fiancée, Susan Miller, and my sister, Agnes. We’d very much like to stay a night. Do you have two rooms?”

  “One double,” said Susan, then had a nervous outbreak of French. “A chambre matrimoniale.”

  The woman didn’t answer immediately. She edged between the desk and stairs and took a seat on the too-small chair. She opened the register. “Let me see.”

  Sholto glanced at the row of hooks above the desk. There were five keys hanging there, and one empty hook. “Or I suppose we could all squeeze into one room, if you have bookings already,” he said.

  The woman looked up at him. She had large, clear, slightly protruding brown eyes. “So—your name is Mochrie. Mochrie of where?”

  “Castlereagh,” said Sholto.

  “Sholto’s father is Professor Mochrie,” said Susan, “who wrote the new general history of Southland.”

  “And Sholto’s mother?” asked the woman, in a light and playful way. “What was her pedigree?”

  Susan laughed. “That I don’t know. And I should.” She turned to Sholto. “What was your mother’s maiden name?”

  “Tiebold.”

  The woman went still. She said, “Not those Tiebolds who married Hames?”

  “No, the Tiebolds of the navy. My grandfather was an admiral. Even my mother served in the women’s auxiliary during the War.”

  “Fascinating,” said the woman, neither sarcastic nor sincere. She looked at Susan. “Are you also of Castlereagh?”

  “Yes. My father is the Miller who is moderator of the Methodist Church, and my mother, whose maiden name was Berry, was a radio broadcaster.”

  “Janet Berry?”

  “Yes!” Susan smiled. She was enjoying the game. She turned and pulled Canny forward too till they were all standing crammed and slightly hunched under the angle of the stairs. “But Canny here has the finest pedigree of us all. Her dad is Professor Mochrie—very respectable. But her mother is Sisema Afa.”

  Sholto looked at Canny. He supposed she must be used to this, but he did feel for her every time the veil of her mother’s fame dropped down over her own real person.

  “Goodness,” said Iris Zarene. She was now only being polite. She had lost interest. She turned the register toward Sholto, put a pen down on the page, and selected two room keys. Sholto stooped and wrote their names, and his and Canny’s address. He handed the pen to Susan to sign.

  “Lonnie!” Iris called. The boy thumped down the stairs and stood, still smirking.

  Iris Zarene frowned at him. “Lonnie. I remind you of the rules of my house.”

  He pouted.

  Iris went on. “Now, be a good boy, and show our guests to their rooms.” Then, to Sholto, “Dinner will be in the dining room in forty minutes.”

  * * *

  AFTER DINNER SHOLTO CAME into Canny’s room to show her how to light her oil lamp and how to shut it off when she was ready for bed.

  “It’s a bit different than our hurricane lamp.”

  “We had these in Lost Link when I was little,” Canny said. “Though I wasn’t allowed to touch.”

  Sholto lit the wick and replaced the chimney. The room filled with pinkish radiance. “All right, are you comfortable?” said Sholto, already halfway out the door.

  “Perfectly.”

  “Well, enjoy that bed, because we’ll be back in our tents tomorrow night.”

  “Here? Or Massenfer?”

  “Massenfer makes more sense. Tent sites are free in both places but we’ll save on gas by staying there. And apparently there are no phone lines here, and Sue and I have interviews to arrange.”

  Sholto left, and Canny immediately emptied her bag onto the bed and found a pen and paper. She knew she should be writing to Marli. She’d only written one letter so far and had dropped it into a mailbox that morning on their way out of Massenfer. She’d written the letter after she was slapped in the paddock on the far side of Fort Pass, and had reported that, but only in haste and on the last page. The rest of the letter was complaints about the heat, and Susan’s putting on airs, and Sholto’s pandering to Susan’s airs. Canny knew that the longer she went without trying to explain Fort Rock, the bewitched Sholto and Susan, and the streamers of Extra, the harder it would be to start. But as soon as she had her pen in hand she realized that she wasn’t going to write to Marli. What she was going to do instead was try to formulate her own spell. A spell made up of the order “Look at me!” and the discouragement she thought she’d read in the swarm of symbols in the pear tree—“Stay away” or “Don’t settle here,” probably directed at codling moths, whose larvae would burrow into the cores of apples and pears and grow there in soft nests of gray mildew.

  Canny didn’t know how long she sat and thought, and figured, and tried different formulations of the signs. When she finally had something she thought would work—something much simpler than the components she’d used, a scribble that seemed to blaze at her—she discovered that hours had gone b
y. She was stiff and sore. She got up and stretched her back. Then she washed her face. She was going to go back down to the end of the valley and write her formula on their tents. She would try it and see if anything happened.

  Canny got her flashlight and returned to the dresser where she’d left the paper with all its crossings-out and the final successful line.

  The paper had vanished.

  She checked the floor. Got down on her knees and peered under the dresser. There was no sign of the paper. Then she had a thought. She shut her eyes and put her hands on the top of the dresser. She ran her palms along it, searching. Her hand met the edge of a sheet of paper, and she picked it up. But, even then, when she had it in her hand, she found she couldn’t look at it. The feeling was like when she was angry at someone—someone she cared about and expected not to hurt her, like Sholto, with whom she sometimes quarreled. When Canny was angry with Sholto she couldn’t look at him. She’d have to make a real effort. This was like that. She tried to look, but she felt too uncomfortable. It was like acute embarrassment. Then, as she tried harder, it was like disgust—piteous disgust—as if the paper were one of the blind, pink, trembling nestlings her old cat used to bring in and leave on her bedroom floor.

  Canny crumpled the paper and tucked it under her pillow. She didn’t need it. She was pretty sure she remembered how the line ran.

  * * *

  IN THE MORNING, when Sholto came out of the guest bathroom, he noticed his sister’s door was open. He put his head around it and saw her neatly made bed. It didn’t occur to him that the bed hadn’t been slept in at all. He spotted a note sitting on top of her bag:

  Sholto—I’ve gone for an early-morning walk. I’ll be back by nine. I’m sure you don’t mean to leave before then.

  Sholto went to tell Susan that the bathroom was free. And that Canny was going to miss breakfast.

  7

  IT WAS ABOUT ONE in the morning when Canny wrote her spell on the tents, with the same fountain pen she’d used for her figuring. She couldn’t begin to imagine how someone might write a spell on the air, or on something airy that was then set free to collect somewhere, like the signs in the old pear trees. A good downpour and her spell would wash out and the tents would be apparent again. But it had worked. She hadn’t been able to look at the tents once she’d written on them. She’d think she was looking straight at them, but all she could see was the purple lilac. But when she glanced down at herself she could see the color of her shirt and shorts. The nearly full moon was behind her, but the canvas of the tents was before her, throwing back the light of the moon.

  Canny stretched out her hand and touched the cold cloth. She found she couldn’t bring her own hand into focus while it was in contact with the tent.

  “It shouldn’t be this easy,” she thought. She was more troubled that it had worked at all, than that it had worked on her as well—though surely you’d think the person who produces a charm should be immune to it. It had been hours of work, and she’d had to concentrate more fiercely than she had on anything, ever. But somehow it still seemed too easy; as if it was something she could simply turn around and teach the next person who came along. Mr. Grove always said, “There is nothing so difficult that it can’t be taught to someone willing to learn.” But how could that be true of this—this magic?

  When Canny got back to the guesthouse she discovered she was hungry but not tired. She’d had very little sleep the night before, and this night was rapidly shading toward morning. The sky was pink behind the Palisades. There would soon be enough light to see under the trees on that forested hill. Canny went inside, wrote a note to Sholto, then set off up the valley.

  The path Canny followed veered left once it reached the base of the forested glacial moraine. Canny continued along it. After a time she saw that the path was going to circle the hill, without at any point heading up its slope. Still, Canny kept on walking till she reached the east-facing base of the hill, where she sat down and waited for the sun to come up. When it appeared, it lit the crowns of the trees and threw rays of light—golden and filmy with morning mist—into the forest.

  Canny stepped off the path and into the trees. She began to clamber straight up the slope, clutching at ferns and stepping over tree roots. At first, the ground beneath each woody root would make a solid step. Then the shadows thickened, and the hollows between the roots became treacherous. Eventually, Canny’s foot broke through a crust of dead leaves and plunged into a deadfall. Her ankle turned, and a branch scored a long scratch on her calf. She struggled out and looked at her leg, saw blood trickling through the black scabs of leaf mold.

  After her fall, Canny abandoned her straight course for one that took her along and up, and not quite so close to the tree trunks. The forest was dark, the day not yet warm. Her palms burned from cold and being scraped. The going was still difficult, but easier than it had been. She began to have the impression that she was on a path, or what was left of one. She stopped using her hands and was now ascending a series of natural terraces, probably formed by the retreat of prehistoric ice. It was an easy climb, and she had a pleasant progressive sense that she was going the right way.

  The sun was climbing the sky, so there was more light. It struck the broad-leaved epiphytes on the tree trunks and green ribbons of vines.

  Canny paused and took her bearings. When she’d begun up the hill, the rising sun had been shining directly on the back of her head. Now it was on her right. She realized she was still circling the hill, not going up it. Or, she was going up it, but at such a shallow angle that she’d have to wind around it ten times before reaching the summit. She’d be well and truly tired by then, and the day would be over.

  Canny took a good slow look around. She continued to feel that, yes, this was the way. That she would achieve her goal. That this was a nice walk. That she was safe on this path.

  Canny closed her eyes and cleared her mind by calculating pi to a challenging number of places. Then she opened her eyes again and took a proper look around. And there it was, shining like ground mist, Extra, around her ankles and tugging at her like the current of a gentle stream.

  Canny stepped straight out of it and, once again, began to forge her way directly up the slope. It was very hard going; her hair caught on branches, her feet slipped, and her shins were scraped; handholds and footholds kept giving way. Once she pulled out a whole kidney fern and brought a log the size of her own torso rolling down on her. She only just twisted aside in time to avoid injury. She waited till the forest was quiet again and continued on up, shunning every easy passage that presented itself. Her hands were savaged by hanging on for dear life as the bank crumbled behind her, but she forged on, tenacious and bloody-minded.

  A heavy body crashed through the bush near her, past her, downhill. Canny glimpsed a boar, its bristly hide, and the breath smoking white through its jagged tusks. She stayed motionless as it rushed away through the undergrowth—a real thing, and a real danger.

  It took her some time to muster her courage to go on. She was exhausted and her limbs were trembling. She crept, scared she’d startle another boar or bring the first back her way. Wild pigs had paths, she knew that. She must be near a pig path.

  Then Canny had a thought. The pig was real, and pigs had paths, so perhaps rather than avoiding it she should try to find its path, and see if that would offer her an easier way up the hill. She made her way back to the place where she’d spotted the animal. Going downhill was surprisingly easy, as if, in her struggle, she’d beaten a proper path. To test this she tried turning back momentarily, but as soon as the upward slope was before her again, it was as gnarled an obstacle course as ever.

  Canny couldn’t locate the exact place she had been when the boar blundered by her. Instead, she struck out from the general area, looking carefully at the ground and the trunks of trees. Eventually she found a trunk where all the bark was splintered down to pith. A boar had sharpened its tusks there. Under the tree was a muddy slot—a track
that rambled away uphill. It was partly concealed; ferns curled over it. But it was deep, packed down, and printed by sharp trotters.

  Canny followed it. She crept along, looking behind her all the time, her ears attuned to the scuffling, thumps, and grunts of pigs.

  The pig path wriggled its way up and around the hill, shaped by obvious obstacles, like a vine-hung escarpment and a very old fallen tree. But then, all of a sudden, it swept out in a long curve, deviating from its general course, which was counterclockwise around the hill. There was no obstacle to explain the path’s deviation, or the shape of it, a perfect half circle. Canny stopped and stared. Her heart sped up. She looked through the trees the track had skirted and saw sunlight on ferns and fallen leaves—a clearing.

  Canny left the boar path and pushed through the branches. Before long she heard the sound of a lamb calling to its mother. She realized she’d been hearing the sound for a few minutes, but had assumed it came from a pasture down the valley and was bouncing back from one of the rock faces on the hill’s southern slope. But when she broke into the clearing she found the sheep, up to its belly in bracken. It plunged away from her and then abruptly turned, as if yanked back by a rope it wore. But it wasn’t tied; it was only unable to leave its lamb.

  The lamb was bright-eyed, urgent, bleating—and half-buried in a slip. The clearing was part of a man-made terrace. The roots of trees had rotted and displaced the terrace’s boulder wall, and that wall had ruptured, letting out a flow of thick, wet clay. The slip had caught the lamb, which must have been grazing there. The lamb lay, its front legs bent, the clay beneath it marked where its hooves had cut grooves. It had been trying and trying to drag itself free. Its neck was stretched out, face turned to its mother. The fleece on its back, chest, and chin was clotted with clay slip.

  Canny hurried to help it. It was frightened of her and tried to twist itself away, scrabbling toward its mother. Canny dropped onto her knees beside it. She jammed her fingers into the slip above it and tried to scoop the clay away. But the clay was dense, heavy, and sticky. Grit jammed under Canny’s fingernails, and when she pulled her hand free it was with a painful tugging in her nail beds. She got up, found a stick, and tried again. The stick bent uselessly and only made a smooth conical hole in the clay. When she pulled it out, the hole filled with water. The clay might be pliable, but she could only mold it, not move it.