Mortal Fire

by Elizabeth Knox

  Canny went and sat on the far end of the bench from him. She laid the newspaper down between them.

  Lonnie’s head snapped up, and he glared at her with reddened eyes, then turned his head and wiped his tears. “Piss off,” he muttered.

  She waited while he pulled himself together, then said, “You don’t want to go?”

  “To Middleton?” He sniffed. “Who would?” Then he rounded on her. “I didn’t take you for a busybody.”

  “No? The other day I grabbed hold of you because I wanted to ask you about the so-called orphans. That was busybodying.”

  “I mean I didn’t think you’d pry about a person’s feelings.”

  “It’s sympathy, not prying.”

  “How can I tell? Your face is blank.” He was glowering at her, but the stare wasn’t just to push her away, it was a hard scrutiny too.

  “When I grabbed you, you gave me a headache,” Canny said. “You got sick afterward and were lying about on the veranda of Orchard House, being babied. I figure you’re the family darling. So I’m surprised your uncle has just left you to wait all by yourself.”

  Lonnie looked wary.

  “How did you give me the headache?”

  Lonnie held his breath a moment then let it out in a huff. He said, “Didn’t you feel me scribble on your hand?”

  “No. Sholto was grappling me.”

  Lonnie laughed. “Yes.”

  “So there are sigils for headaches?”

  Lonnie stopped laughing. The wariness returned, doubled. “What do you mean by ‘sigils’?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Why should I tell you anything?”

  Canny looked away. The air was wriggling over the steel rail lines. It was going to be a scorching day. The sun was striking up from the rust-brown concrete beneath the bench and her legs were uncomfortably warm. But on her right side, the side opposite where Lonnie sat, Canny’s arm and shoulder and cheek were cool, as if in shadow. But there was no shade there, nor anything to cast one. Canny probed the moment. The moment was strange for a reason. It was like other moments so far back in her life that she couldn’t remember them properly. For some reason her mother’s story about the hermit crab came into her mind, and she started to look about her for a sign—some real thing that was also a sign.

  But there were only the people waiting for the train, and Lonnie waiting on what she had to say, and the newspaper lying between them, so fresh its ink was still sleek.

  It was one of those skinny holiday editions they’d get in the weeks around Christmas, when editors favored happy stories. The main headline said, “Heroine Honored.” Below the caption was a grainy wire photo of the prime minister of the Shackle Islands standing by watching the vice president of Southland pinning a medal onto her mother’s impressive chest.

  Canny gave a little laugh, then said to Lonnie, “You don’t want to leave Zarene Valley, and they’re making you go. That’s why you should tell me. You should talk because it seems you don’t get to have a say.”

  “As if you’re going to be able to change anything.”

  “I might.”

  Lonnie made an explosive, scornful noise. Then he leaned forward to look past her. Canny saw he was reading the clock.

  “All right,” she said. “You gave me a headache for about forty seconds. It was meant to settle in and make me sick for hours.”

  “Days. I’m good at pain.” Lonnie was boasting.

  None of it made much sense to Canny, but she didn’t expect it to—she just waited for more pieces. She wondered how many pieces she’d need before she saw the pattern.

  Lonnie slumped. “But when I get on that train none of it is going to be any good to me. I leave most of my magic behind. I’m the strongest Zarene in fifteen years—Iris says. But I can’t keep what’s mine.”

  “Why won’t they let you stay if your talent only works here? Did your parents say you had to go?”

  Lonnie snorted. “Whenever my parents came to visit me they’d never come any farther than Massenfer. They never dared to set foot anywhere near the valley. They’d get a room in the Palace Hotel, and we’d go for walks and sit in that nasty little park behind the library and watch the poor birds in the aviary plucking the wire. Or they’d take me to the diner and they’d always sit opposite me in our booth—and they’re not small people. They’d sit with their mammaries on the tabletop and take turns to touch my hands and say, ‘How nice it is to see you, son.’” Lonnie perfectly imitated his parents’ forced warmth—and their fear. “My parents don’t want me. But they don’t have any say. No one respects them. Bonnie’s ma and da have some claims by showing they care. They’d do things like get the steamer to tow a houseboat all the way up the Taskmaster to Pike’s Landing. They move into it for the summer holiday and she gets to live with them.”

  Canny suddenly understood what Lonnie was telling her. He was saying that once Zarenes were adults, they couldn’t come back into the valley. This was the bit of information inside Lonnie’s story that it was vital for her to know. To test that she’d got it right, she said, “So that’s why there are no teenagers or younger adults in the valley.”

  “No one over thirteen. Puberty used to be when we Zarenes got strong—if we were ever going to, that is. Now it just means we get sent away.”

  The crossing bells began to clang.

  Lonnie jumped and looked at her, wide-eyed.

  “Go on,” she said. “Quickly.”

  But he didn’t. He went back to an earlier subject. “I scribbled the pain ideogram on your elbow when you grabbed me. The pain went to your head because that must be the part of you most prone to pain.”

  Canny thought of the migraine she’d endured in the hidden house. Perhaps when Lonnie cast his spell he had made a suggestion to her whole system, weakening something, or opening a door.

  “I didn’t realize right away that you’d thrown it off. I can’t think how you did.”

  “Show me what you wrote,” Canny said. She tapped the newspaper. Her fingernail made a dent in its surface, and a little crescent of shadow on her mother’s cheek.

  Lonnie hesitated. Then, with his right index finger, he slowly inscribed a series of signs.

  “Do it again,” she said.

  He repeated the gesture.

  The train slid into the station and made a wall of shadow before them.

  “Again,” Canny said.

  Lonnie repeated his gesture once more. It took six seconds to complete. There were seventeen separate movements.

  “They’re not letters,” she muttered.

  “They’re combinations. They blend,” Lonnie said. “We call it the Ideogrammatic form of the Alphabet. It’s very advanced. Hardly anyone gets taught it.”

  He got up and grabbed his cardboard suitcase. He asked her whether he could take the newspaper, he had nothing to read on the train.

  Canny nodded. She probably looked gormless. Her jaw felt loose.

  “I’d better get on.”

  “They have to load up the luggage,” Canny said.

  The porter on the platform was making a great show of carefully passing bags to the man in the baggage car. They went about it as if they were moving egg cartons.

  “I can’t believe I’m leaving,” Lonnie said. His eyes and nose grew red again.

  “What has to happen to make it possible for you to come back?”

  He shook his head. “It’s too hard.”

  “Give me something,” she said.

  “Uncle Lealand, Uncle Cyrus, and Aunt Iris put a very powerful spell—an imprisonment spell—around an older and even more powerful spell, and the two spells changed each other. Now they suck up all our magic. Cyrus, Lealand, and Iris are immune because the imprisonment spell is their work. Do you see?”

  “Yes, but…”

  Lonnie backed away toward the train. The last of the other passengers bounded up the steps, kissed his hand, and threw the kiss to his wife. He went on in to find his seat, and
the porter, suddenly possessed by a demon of spite, began hurling the remainder of the bags onto the train.

  Canny followed Lonnie. He mounted the steps and turned around. “Oh, that’s what I should ask,” he said. “Can you see sign?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?” he asked. His face twisted. “I can’t, unless it’s properly written out in chalk or ink.”

  “I don’t know how I do it.”

  “How good is your memory?”

  Canny laughed.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  The train guard came up beside Canny. He’d obviously chosen to board by that door so that he could herd Lonnie safely into the carriage. “The train’s about to depart, so stand back, miss,” the guard said to Canny.

  Lonnie looked thunderous. He put his suitcase down and flicked his right arm so that a long smooth length of bare skin slid from his too-short cuff. He showed the guard his tattoos. To Canny it looked like a reflex—something the boy might do in the schoolyard or the streets of Massenfer if some other kid was giving him trouble.

  The guard glanced at the marks, looked bemused, and said, “Go on, son. Best to find your seat now.”

  Lonnie seemed shocked. Then he said, more to himself than Canny, “Oh God—how will I be able to do this?”

  The newspaper slid off his suitcase and Canny caught it and returned it to him. The guard picked up the suitcase and stepped onto the train. He planted the bag firmly against Lonnie till the boy took it. Lonnie looked gray and defeated. He turned around and went into the carriage.

  The guard blew his whistle, waved, and the train began to move off.

  Canny hurried along beside the carriage. She saw Lonnie take a seat and bump his head on the window. She sped up, came alongside, and slapped the glass. He looked at her, then picked up the newspaper and brandished it—saying, “Thanks for this.” Then he glanced at it—frowned—and held it up, tapping on the picture of Mrs. Sisema Mochrie. His mouth made words. “Is this your mother?”

  Canny mouthed, “Yes.”

  The train picked up speed, and Lonnie’s pale face and the pale rectangle of the newspaper glided away, then were wiped out by a reflection of the blue sky.

  * * *

  SHOLTO FORGAVE CANNY FOR GIVING AWAY his newspaper when she told him who she’d given it to. He said, “That was a thoughtful thing to do.” And Canny realized that Sholto thought she’d given Lonnie Zarene a peace offering. She let him think it.

  They had lunch in Massenfer then headed back to the valley. On the way, Canny mentioned that her mother was on the front page of the Clarion.

  “We should have picked up another copy,” Susan said.

  “I’m going to have to put in a call to Sisema and the Professor anyway,” Sholto said.

  Canny was astonished. Toll calls were a great trouble and expense. Sholto would have to make his call from one of the private phone booths in the Massenfer post office.

  “I was told to call collect if anything happened.”

  “But nothing has happened,” Canny said.

  “I think if your mother discovers you were outdoors overnight in a strange place and that I didn’t tell her about it, she’d have my guts for garters. If I confess she’ll just be delighted to have my incompetence confirmed.” Sholto grinned at Susan and waggled his eyebrows. “Confession is good for the soul, you know.”

  “When will you call?” Canny asked.

  “Soon. I have to do it before they start back. Tomorrow maybe.”

  * * *

  WHEN IRIS’S GUESTS, the two young scholars from Castlereagh, arrived at the apiary, Cyrus was changing the frames in one of his beehives. The young people were carrying a big box—the recording equipment. Fortunately it had two handles, and they were about the same height, the woman tall, the young man average. The girl, Agnes, trailed after them with a bag Cyrus learned later held the tapes, power cords, microphones, and junction box.

  Cyrus waved to let them know he’d seen them and would be along shortly. They didn’t need his help setting up the equipment—they’d soon see there was only one place that would work. For the next little while he concentrated on soothing the hive, getting the bees to voluntarily abandon the dripping frames. He never had to brush them off. He only wrote in the smoke, “Sleepy. Go down. Wait. Patience.” The smoke eddied around his gloved fingers.

  What the family called “warm sign”—signs meant to act in the moment—would never work for Cyrus unless he amplified them with something like smoke. The molecules of smoke carried the magic, momentarily, and lent it some strength or staying power. Without smoke, or steam, or dust, Cyrus had to be in contact with what he wished to spell. The best of the younger Zarenes—two women who lived in Westport, and one man who lived in Founderston, and Lonnie of course—all of them had needed to be in contact with what they spelled. They’d needed to write on the thing, indelibly if possible, to get the results Cyrus could get by inscribing messages in smoke. They couldn’t do what he could, and Cyrus was never quite sure why. Perhaps it was because they were too clumsy and left too much space, too many seconds, between one series of movements and the next. Certainly one of the women in Westport had written to him saying that she’d realized that what was required of them when he was teaching them was like the grace of the Balinese dancers she’d seen. The dancers’ gestures were just about as intricate, though not nearly as speedy. It was as if Cyrus’s best pupils were always making a translation in their minds from the sign they knew, the layers of Tabular Alphabet that, knitted together in different ways, made up the Ideogrammatic form of the magic. His pupils’ fingers just wouldn’t dance. Signs for them were always planned, pondered upon, double- and triple-checked. Even Lonnie, who remembered what he was shown once he’d been shown it only half a dozen times, still hadn’t mastered warm signing without contact. He and Lealand and Iris had all done their very best for Lonnie. They’d given him every possible advantage. Lealand had even thought to send Lonnie to tap dancing classes in Massenfer to—as Lealand put it—“shake his memory out of his brain and into his limbs.” Two years of dance had done nothing for Lonnie’s magic. And five years of piano lessons. None of Lonnie’s teachers’ efforts had produced someone who could help them with the spell—the spell they’d put together thirty years before, one that, at first, they’d had to pour all their strength into and constantly repair. A spell that finally settled and ran itself, but that was now so faultlessly strong that it’d begun to wind away into itself all the magic in the valley.

  Cyrus put the full frames in the honey box. It was a warm day and honey oozed out of the wax cells of the combs to pool in the bottom of the box. Cyrus blew more smoke and once again inscribed calming signs before slotting in fresh frames. As he eased the last one into place, he happened to glance up.

  The dark girl was standing a short distance away, watching him.

  Cyrus finished up and went over to her. “Hello, Agnes,” he said.

  “They sent me to ask if it was okay to set up the recording equipment in the parlor. It seems to be the only room with two power points.”

  “Tell them the parlor is fine, and I’ll be with them as soon as I’ve put the honey in my cool store.”

  She gave a little nod and took off. Her hair fanned out in a dark, static cloud and, without touching Cyrus, threw a waft of warmer air against his face. He blinked in surprise and watched her lope back to the house.

  * * *

  “WHERE SHOULD I BEGIN?” Cyrus said, and peered at the microphone. It looked like the hood ornament of a fancy car.

  “A bit of background, I thought.” The young historian settled back, clutching his notepad. He squared his jaw and then flushed up to the roots of his gingery hair. “So—why did you choose to go and work in the coal mine?”

  “Money,” Cyrus said.

  Sholto made a come-hither gesture, asking for more.

  Cyrus watched the light moving silky on the big reel of tape in Sholto’s machine. “Zaren
es generally give short answers,” he said.

  “For the purposes of this interview you might like to give longer ones,” Sholto said. “It’s better if I don’t keep directing you. I don’t want you only telling me what I already know. I want you to expand a bit. Though you’ll find I can persist with questions. Believe me, my sister has trained me to reel in whatever is behind any short answer.”

  “Because she gives them?” Cyrus said, and glanced at the girl.

  Her brother had posted her at the door so she could listen for the whistle of Cyrus’s kettle and get to it before too much whistling ended up on the audiotape. She was making tea. She’d asked him if she could pick a lemon off his lemon tree. Apparently the girl student—Susan—didn’t take her tea with milk. Agnes had explained all this to Cyrus when he was in the kitchen washing his hands, so he wasn’t at all sure about this description of her giving short answers. What she gave was a series of peacefully ordinary requests and explanations, all framed in short sentences. She was simple and civil but there was an alertness burning out of her, as if everybody she ever was, from infancy till now, and everybody she ever would be, from now until her death, was looking at Cyrus out of her warm brown eyes.

  The kettle began to whistle and the girl hurried off to silence it.

  Cyrus said to Sholto, “But she’s not your sister, is she?”

  “She’s my stepsister.”

  “Canny’s mother is Sisema Afa,” Susan said. “The war hero.”

  “So she’s not a Southlander.”

  The young man looked irritated. “The Shackles are a protectorate of Southland.”

  Cyrus thought, “Any minute now he’ll accuse me of bigotry.”

  “Shackle Islanders have citizenship,” Sholto went on, then added, “whether you like it or not.”

  Cyrus laughed. “I didn’t mean any offense. I was only curious. I hope my amateur curiosity is acceptable to you, as opposed to your professional one.”

  Sholto flushed again. Then he apologized. “I’m sorry, Mr. Zarene. I realize that this interview is going to touch on personal tragedy.”