Pyromancist

by Charmaine Pauls

  Chapter Three

  When Clelia got home, it was dark. Erwan sat by the kitchen table smoking his pipe. This made her stop in her tracks. Erwan never smoked in the house. The last time he smoked between the four walls was when Tella, her grandmother, had passed away.

  “Erwan?” she said in an unsteady voice.

  Tripod looked up from his cushion by the stove and wagged his tail. From far away she heard Snow howl. A distant part of her distressed brain registered that it was strange that Snow wasn’t by the door to greet her.

  Without looking at her, Erwan said, “We need to talk.”

  She came around the table with her heart fluttering in her chest. “What’s going on?”

  Erwan’s gaze moved to her knees. He lowered his pipe slowly. “What happened, grandchild?”

  “I tripped over a rock,” she said, brushing his concern aside. “Erwan, what’s the matter?”

  “Do you remember the story I told you about your mother?”

  Clelia sat down in the chair opposite Erwan. She frowned. “Yes.”

  There was only one story Erwan told about her mother, and that was how a Japanese fishing boat had docked in the harbor and left a little girl behind, the girl Erwan and Tella had adopted and called Katik, her mother.

  Erwan looked at his hands. “Well, I didn’t tell you everything.”

  Clelia closed her eyes briefly. Instinctively she knew she didn’t want to hear what was coming, yet, a part of her had always known there was something Erwan had kept from her and that part longed for the truth.

  “Thirty-seven years ago a Japanese trawler docked in the Gulf. They were carrying a cargo of fish, and something very unusual.”

  Even if Clelia had heard this part of the story many times before, she sat quietly, realizing that Erwan needed this well-worn introduction to an old story so that he could tell her the part he had omitted. For whatever sinister reasons he had done that, it made her feel as if a thousand red fishing worms were crawling over her scalp.

  “The freight they carried and wished to offload was a girl. She was six years old. No one knew her name. She didn’t speak. They found her abandoned on a yacht in the middle of the ocean and had to assume that her parents, and whoever else she had been with, had drowned in some accident. There were signs of a fire on board, and it was a wonder that she was still alive. There was no clue as to her identity, no papers, no evidence of another soul on that vessel. What happened was a mystery they never solved. They took her aboard and sailed with her as far as Brittany.”

  He looked at the table and when he didn’t speak for a while, Clelia said, “And you saw her at the harbor and brought her home. You and Tella adopted her because you couldn’t have children of your own.”

  And we all didn’t live so happily ever after, Clelia thought, but didn’t say. She never knew her mother who died giving birth to her. She only suffered the insults about her mother, the merciless teasing and the exclusion from the close-knit community.

  Erwan glanced at her, but lowered his gaze again. “It didn’t exactly happen like that.”

  Clelia grew cold. “How did it happen?”

  He cleared his throat. “The men wanted to get rid of your mother because they said...” He paused. “They said she had brought a curse onto the ship.”

  “What curse?” Clelia’s mouth felt dry. She desperately wanted a glass of water, but she was too wary to interrupt Erwan’s story.

  “They said that since they rescued her, they didn’t catch one single fish. Overnight, their nets ran dry.”

  “And they wanted to leave her behind for that?”

  “An empty net is a very powerful omen to a fisherman, Clelia.”

  It couldn’t have been only that. “But there was something else, wasn’t there?”

  He lifted his pipe and took a puff. “They said they suddenly had a lot of inexplicable fires onboard, and they believed her to be the devil’s child.”

  Clelia gasped.

  “Of course the mayor at the time didn’t want to hear anything of a child being left behind with no passport and identity. And folks didn’t like the fishermen’s tales, but by sunrise, the boat was gone, and the girl was found in the harbor, alone, standing on the jetty. I took pity on her and brought her home, where Tella, who always loved children and could never have any of her own, fretted over the scrawny scrap. She bathed her and washed her hair, cooked a meal, fed her and bundled her into bed.

  “I immediately realized my mistake. By bringing the child here, I had given Tella a taste of what she wanted most but didn’t have, and I knew then that letting the child go, even after just one evening she had spent here, would be the death of Tella.”

  He took a deep breath. “While the town council was trying to sort out the legal and administrative red tape of her fate, someone had to take care of her. Tella did it gladly, seeing that all the other women were too superstitious, and the only other appropriate candidate would have been the priest, but he was almost seventy years old and living alone, barely able to take care of himself.

  “At first we thought she was deaf, or mute, because she didn’t react to anything we said. Tella was a clever woman, though,” he smiled, “and she persevered by talking to the child and reading books to her in both French and Breton. It took nine months, but one day she just opened her mouth and spoke a whole phrase in perfect French. For nearly a year she had only listened, observed, and when she finally spoke to us in our language, she didn’t even have as much as an accent.

  “By then she had gotten used to us and us to her, and God knows how, but we managed to get the legal paperwork done to adopt her. Tella’s family pulled some strings. Your grandmother’s father was, at the time, still very influential in government and business. Wasn’t easy, but we got it done. Tella was beside herself with joy, calling your mother a gift from God.” He kept quiet for a while.

  Clelia tilted her head. “You say that as if it weren’t the case.”

  “Things happened when Katik was around.”

  “Such as?” Clelia said softly when he fell silent again.

  “Accidents. Bad harvests. Dry fishing seasons. Dead animals. Stillbirths with the sheep and the dogs and the cows. The community wanted us to send her away, but Tella would hear nothing of it.”

  Clelia blinked back at her grandfather in shock. “Surely you weren’t superstitious enough to blame these things on a little girl?”

  “We didn’t. Not at first.”

  “What do you mean ‘not at first’?”

  “There was something else.” He battled to meet her eyes.

  “Erwan, what was it?”

  He looked up slowly. “There were fires.”

  The air was knocked from her lungs. “The stories the fishermen told were true? She could spontaneously start fires?”

  Even as Clelia said it and saw the pieces coming together, she didn’t want to believe it. The fires Clelia had started when she was a child made sense now.

  “Things combusted around her when she was angry or sad. Tella and I managed to keep it quiet, hide it from the people, and Tella taught her how to control her emotions until it stopped. It was never an easy road. The villagers don’t forget easily, and they didn’t forget what the Japanese men had said. Integrating her into the community was already tough. We didn’t need everyone to learn that their worst fears were true.

  “Besides, Katik didn’t do it maliciously. The firestarting was an involuntary response triggered by a strong emotional reaction. For four years, we practically lived in isolation. Luckily, when she turned ten, the fires disappeared, and we never spoke of it again. The bad omens ceased. Everything went back to normal. We never told a soul.”

  “Why? Why didn’t you try to find out what was wrong with her? Why didn’t you try to get help?”

  “We were ... Tella was worried that they’d take Katik away from us. She loved her more than any biological mother could ever love her daughter.”

  Clelia covered her
face with her hands. She was an anomaly. For years, she had managed to ignore it, to hide from it, even as people reminded her every time they called her ‘witch’, a title she had inherited from her mother, but she couldn’t hide any longer. Only little more than an hour ago, Josselin had asked her what she was. He didn’t phrase the question to ask who she was. He had said, ‘What are you’? Now she was asking herself that very, same question.

  She lifted her head and took a shaky breath. “Why are you telling me this now, Erwan?”

  “Because Josselin’s woman is going around the village asking questions about your mother. I wanted to tell you the truth before you hear it from someone else.”

  Clelia frowned. “Why would she want to know about my mother?” Suddenly, it became clear. “She thinks there is a connection between me and the fires.”

  She stopped breathing. The dream, Josselin’s return, the fires, and now Josselin’s woman asking about her mother...

  “What does Josselin’s girlfriend have to do with it?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, but if we stay here, we’ll soon find out. She came to the house tonight.”

  Her heart jolted. “She spoke to you?”

  He shook his head. “I was on the water. I saw her from the boat coming in and anchored in the cove, behind the trees.”

  “Did she see you?”

  “Nay. The dogs made quite a show of protecting the property. She was preoccupied with not getting her throat ripped out.”

  Clelia looked around. “Where’s Snow? She didn’t hurt them, did she?”

  “Nay.”

  “Why did she come?”

  “I don’t know, child. Maybe to ask more questions.”

  “You think she’ll come back?”

  “I know she will. She left a message on the phone, saying she’ll be back in the morning. And from the look of her I can tell you she’s not someone who’s going to give up easily.”

  Clelia didn’t particularly feel like facing Josselin’s girlfriend, or talking about her mother. Neither did she want to go to the police, but there was no other way.

  “Erwan, I have to turn myself in. It’s the only way to get to the bottom of this. They can do tests or something, monitor my brain or whatever it is they do to determine if I did it, if I’m capable of doing it.”

  “Nay!” He got to his feet so fast that his chair tipped back and hit the floor with a bang. “If you say anything about what I told you about your mother or about what happened only twice when you were just a toddler, you’re signing your own death warrant. You didn’t start these fires. Turning yourself in is not going to help anything. People fear what they don’t understand. The police don’t know you. They don’t know you’re incapable of hurting a fly. You’ll be blamed, no matter how innocent you are. Don’t you see what’ll happen? They’ll take you away from me. You’ll spend your life in jail or worse, an asylum. They’ll probe your brain and study you like a lab rat. And you don’t deserve that.”

  “How can you even say that? My mother did it. She started fires. I got it from her. Erwan, it could have been me. Without even knowing, I could have done it in my sleep. All of those fires were started at night, and we both know we cannot account for me having been in my bed, because I woke up all over the island.”

  “I want you to go to Larmor-Baden tomorrow first thing. Take my boat and go to Île aux Moines. Under the big tree by the ruins, there’s a box for you. I buried it by the protruding roots. There are money and things you’ll need inside. You have to disappear for a while. You’ll know what to do when you get the box. You can’t speak to anyone about this. Don’t pack. Don’t take a suitcase that will attract attention and look suspicious. If someone sees you take the boat and asks where you’re going, say I’ve sent you to Port-Blanc for oysters.”

  “You’re scaring me.” She jumped up and started pacing the room. “If I go, you go too. I won’t leave without you.”

  “I can’t go with you. No matter what happens to me, I want you to get to that island.”

  “Erwan,” she exclaimed softly, “what will happen to you? What are you not telling me?”

  “Brendan called. He wasn’t supposed to warn me, but he said the Paris police are asking questions about me. I’m suspected of arson. They have forensic evidence, and the only reason they don’t yet have a warrant for my arrest is because they’re missing a motive.”

  She covered her mouth with her hand. “No. No. It can’t be true. You’re innocent! I’ll go to them and explain everything.”

  “And what will you explain? What will you tell them? There’s nothing to explain. I’ve been to every burnt site, looking for clues, for evidence, for anything, but there’s nothing.”

  “But why do they suspect you? What evidence do they have?”

  “I don’t know, but I don’t intend on lying around on my old sodden bones to find out.”

  “No, please, the police will understand. Surely, they’ll see reason. It couldn’t have been you. Don’t make me leave you. Don’t worry about the police. We’ll handle them. We’ll get a lawyer.”

  Erwan rested his hands on the table, his shoulders hunched. “It’s not just them I’m worried about.”

  Dread made her feel heavy. “I don’t understand.”

  “There’s another part of the story about your mother that I haven’t told you.” He searched her eyes with a plea for redemption. “It’s about your father.”

  “You said my mother had a holiday romance with an Italian tourist and fell pregnant, but he left her when the summer was over.”

  “Yes,” he said, nodding slowly, “but that isn’t entirely true. He was a tourist, and he was Italian, but they didn’t exactly have a holiday romance.”

  She shook her head in confusion. “What then? A one night stand?”

  “No.” He averted his eyes. “He violated her.”

  “What?” Clelia said softly. She felt the strength leave her body and sat down again.

  “Katik went for a swim at the cove and spent the afternoon on the deserted beach. When she walked home early that evening, she was assaulted in the woods. The man waited for her and surprised her.”

  It took her a few seconds to find her voice again. “Did the police catch him?”

  Erwan picked his chair up from the floor and sat down laboriously. “We didn’t know. She didn’t tell us. Not at first. She only confessed what happened to her when she found out she was pregnant. She begged us not to tell anyone because she couldn’t stand the shame. She said the man promised he would kill her if she told the truth, and she believed him. She said he was the devil himself and she never doubted for a second that he’d know if she broke her silence. I tried to track down that bastard. I could never find a trace of him. He had long gone by then.”

  Clelia felt nauseous. She was the product of rape, the violation of her mother’s body, an unwanted baby, and the cause of her mother’s death.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “I didn’t want you to grow up feeling like your mother–abandoned. I wanted you to know you were loved. Are loved.” He looked at her with a new intensity burning in his tired eyes. “When Katik was three months pregnant I came home one afternoon and found a man standing on the beach. I had never seen him before, so I thought he was just another foreigner, a holidaymaker. But he watched me as I anchored my boat, and by the time I had my nets on land, I knew he wasn’t an accidental traveler, but that he was waiting for me.

  “Ay, he was waiting all right. The devil of a man told me he was your father, and that one day he would be back for you. He came to tell me if we harmed his baby in any way or gave it up for adoption, he’d kill us all. He said he came to tell me to take care of his child, to raise it, until the day he’d come for it. There was this thing in his eyes, this darkness. You just knew he meant every word. Katik was right. He was pure evil. I could feel it in my bones. I wanted to kill him, and God is my witness, I tried,” he said, his hands trembling, “
but he was too strong for me. He just laughed, and as he walked away, he turned and told me to be waiting. He said he’d be back to claim you when the fires started. I didn’t believe it. I pushed it out of my mind. Ay, I wrote it off to madness. I looked for him for days, high and low, but it was as if he had simply vanished. And God forgive me for not having enough strength to keep my vengeance alive, but I was glad. I wanted him to disappear, for the whole thing to vanish from my memory. I never told Katik or Tella about that day on the beach. Not a soul. Never thought of it again, until...”

  Clelia felt like fainting. Life drained from her body like the blood from her face. She stared at Erwan, but her mind refused to call up any words. Her lips felt like wood. She couldn’t move them to shape any sound.

  Erwan got up and placed his hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry it had to come to this. I tried hard to forget about that day, and for all the years of your life that you’ve made Tella and me the happiest grandparents alive, I did. I forgot about it the minute you were born and I laid my eyes on you. You’ve made our lives worth living. And I haven’t raised you for a jail, an asylum, or your crazy father. You have to go away.”

  Tears rolled down her cheeks. “And you, Erwan?”

  “I know how to take care of myself. I’m too old to go with you. I’ll only slow you down. Get to the box. Then leave. It’ll break my heart if you stay.”

  “But when will I see you again?”

  When he just stared at her, his silence his answer, she started shaking her head in denial.

  “Give me a date, Erwan. Give me something concrete. I won’t leave unless you give me that much.”

  “I can’t give you a date,” he said softly.

  “We won’t see each other again, will we? You’re not asking me to hide. You’re asking me to run, to...” A soft sob choked the rest of her words.

  “You’re a strong woman. You’ll be all right. Now, get some sleep. You have to leave at first light, before Josselin’s woman comes back.”

  She grabbed his hand. “What will you do?”

  “You know what they say. There are as many islands in the Gulf as days in the year. How many of those are inhabited?”