“Fire!”
“What?”
Fire? Huh. That would explain the smell. And Linus looked really panicked. Part of me was reacting and reaching a state of high alarm, but the rest couldn’t be bothered and was convinced this was all a dream. I stopped as Linus led me to the door and resisted his pull.
“Wait. My ukulele!”
It was in my bed, under the covers.
“Are you crazy?” he yelled. “We don’t have time!”
He yanked on my arm, and I followed. We went through my bedroom door. Thick smoke billowed at the other end of the corridor, and suddenly, I woke up at last.
“Sam?” I cried out. His room was on that other side. Linus and Thom slept on the second floor beneath us.
“They’re both outside already,” Linus said. “I went back to get you. Downstairs! Now!”
I followed him to the staircase. The air was stiflingly hot now under the roof, and low on oxygen. I swayed on my feet, feeling light-headed. There were two flights of stairs to get downstairs, the first one very steep, more a wooden ladder than stairs really. As I started going down, I glimpsed beneath my feet and shrieked. The flames were devouring the ladder already. I bent and craned my neck to glance down at the second floor. Everything was ablaze. There was a little nook on the staircase between the first and the second flight of steps, with three armchairs, a small table, a bookcase, a small window. Huge flying flames were devouring everything from the carpets to the curtains and the upholstery on the furniture.
I hurried up again.
“Too late!” I yelled at Linus. “Can’t go through.”
“Oh, shit, shit, shit.”
We traced back our steps to my bedroom—it seemed to be the only part of the house that was still intact.
“Balcony,” I suggested, moving to open the windows.
“Wait!” Linus called and closed the door behind us. He grabbed my towel from the bathtub and crammed it at the foot of the door.
“Open it now.”
The window flew open. I’d been so tired when I’d gone to bed that I hadn’t put the shutters on. This was probably going to save our lives, I thought, grabbing my ukulele from the bed while Linus stepped outside.
“Hurry, Vic.”
And then we were both standing on the balcony. The cold winter air made me suddenly realize how hot the furnace inside had been. Smoke was invading the room now, big fat ugly clouds seeping in from the spaces between door and wall, despite the towel. And soon, the flames would be here, too.
“It’s just the third floor,” Linus reminded himself calmly, leaning on the edge of the stone balcony, gazing down as in fascination.
It was the third floor, all right, and it looked very high to me. High enough to make me dizzy. And if we jumped from here, we would be landing on a large slab of concrete. I didn’t like that, either. Thom and Sam were outside beneath us, yelling at us to get down.
“Jump! Jump now!” Thom screamed. “There’s no time! Do it do it do it!”
“Maybe on this side?” I suggested, showing Linus the thick wisteria tree that grew against the wall. From where we were standing, we’d have to walk around on a very narrow ledge, hugging the building, for a good ten feet.
“Argh,” Linus commented and went over the railing to try this escape route.
Two seconds later, he was already halfway to the wisteria tree and called to me.
“Good call, Vic. Come on, you can do it, too. It’s easy, I swear.”
I was nowhere near as fit as he was, had none of his experience with rock climbing, but I did trust his judgment. I stepped over the balcony, cradling my ukulele against me.
“You’re going to have to make a sacrifice, though!” Linus called. “I know it’s hard for you, but you’ll need both your hands to climb. Leave the instrument. Come on, Vic.”
I knew that. It was hard, parting with my beloved ukulele, knowing that the flames were going to swallow it. I sighed, kissed the cheap little instrument that Dora Vinok had wrongly called diminutive, and rested it gently on the stone edge of the balcony.
“Goodbye, my sweet.”
“Vic! Hurry up!”
I glanced back to my room: it was lost to the flames now. The fire was crackling and thundering and destroying everything I owned, even my muddy left sneaker.
I followed Linus, but he’d lied to me. It was a much more difficult climb than anticipated. In fact, two seconds in, I slipped and only held on because I was still very close to the balcony.
Seeing that, Linus started coming back to help me.
“Here, take my hand!”
I thought this was a very bad idea.
“It’s okay,” I yelled. “I’ll take my chances jumping.”
“No, Vic, don’t do that.”
I was sitting on the balcony ledge now, looking down between my feet. I tried to lower myself as much as I could and soon found myself standing outside the balcony with my hands on the railing and my feet on the edge.
“Wait!” Thom called. “I’ll bring the car right under you, so that you land on something soft!”
That made me laugh despite the panic.
“You’re so chivalrous.”
“Oh, no,” he added, almost instantly. “I don’t have my car keys. They’re inside the house.”
And likely molten into a puddle by now, I thought. Oh, we were really screwed.
“Just jump on us,” Sam yelled.
“No.”
That was a really stupid idea. One broken bandmate was enough. I’d been in a weird accident before. I could fall again, from the third-floor window this time, and land on concrete twenty feet below, no problem.
Except I really didn’t want to.
“Just let go, and remember to roll when you touch the floor,” Sam advised, yelling from below.
“I can’t!” I was too afraid now. Maybe I shouldn’t have thought about that freaky elevator accident. As a result, I found myself frozen and afraid to fall again, remembering the endless two seconds I’d spent trapped in that steel cage as it fell down the chute to crash down in a centuries-old basement. Somehow, in that very short time, I’d remembered to get flat on my belly and put my hands over my head. How on earth had I managed that kind of reflex?
“I can’t!”
“Vic, you need to!” This from Linus. He’d managed to climb down the wisteria and land safe and sound in the garden.
“Can’t!”
“We’ll catch you. Come on.”
“No!”
As I screamed again, a window exploded somewhere below on my right. The smoke was coming out of the house now, from everywhere, out of the door, even through the roof. It was a hell of a fire, and the old balcony wasn’t a safe place to hang on to. I knew that.
“I’m so sorry, guys, I really can’t!” I cried, tears streaming down my face, sad and angry that I was letting them down like that.
The window in front of me had been ablaze for a minute or so. And suddenly a spark jumped and my beloved ukulele caught fire. This is when I knew I was toast. My lucky ukulele was burning.
“Vic, jump!” Thom yelled again.
I could hear in his voice he was doing his damnedest to remain calm, but it really wasn’t working. I had lowered myself so that I was hanging from the edge of the balcony now, with my feet in the air. This had not been a good move, fear-wise. I felt even more terrified now.
And then, there was another voice, a calmer one.
“Come on, Victoire. You can do this. Listen to me closely.”
“Tristan?” I couldn’t believe my own ears. I couldn’t see him from where I was, but it was his voice, all right. What was he doing here in the middle of the night?
“Listen, and do what I say. On the count of three, you will let go. Your body will be completely relaxed. You will bend your knees and land on the balls of your feet; this is critical. The ground is very hard, and it may hurt, but remember: as soon as you can, protect your head with your arms, and roll
on your side when your feet touch the concrete.”
“Jeez, is that all?”
“Yes. Relax, protect your head, bend your knees, fall on the balls of your feet, roll. Understood?”
“My ukulele is burning.”
“I know. Don’t think about it. We will get you another lucky ukulele. Ready? One…two…three.”
I relaxed. I jumped. I did everything he’d just said. Unbelievable pain shot through my feet and legs. I felt a sharp sting in my arm and a shock that rippled through my shoulder. At least I supposed that meant I must have rolled to the ground.
I was most likely lying on concrete. Everything seemed upside down for a second, and it took some concentration to confirm that I’d managed to jump and land and that I was still alive but hurt. My leg felt really wrong, and I’d managed to crack a tooth somehow, and something warm was leaking profusely from my left arm. Then, there was a terrifying crashing sound as something heavy fell to the ground, really close to where I’d landed.
“Dude, hurry, the balcony is falling apart,” Sam signaled.
Cold and warm hands grabbed me, making my shoulder and my leg scream in agony.
“You’ll be fine, it’s okay,” Tristan said.
Standing brought incredible pain to my left leg, the one that had taken the worst of the shock, and I crumbled into Linus, who caught me into his arms. Pain shot through my left shoulder. Things were broken; I had no doubt about that. Looking down at my feet, I could see the sharp stone I must have landed upon. Another piece of the balcony hit the ground behind me, and Linus pulled me forward. The pain sharpened to a piercing point, and I cried out, nearly blacking out.
“Here,” Tristan ordered.
Linus half carried me before helping me lay down in the muddy, cold, and wet winter grass, with a dried-up apple digging into my neck. What a weird detail to notice. Sirens blared in the distance. Thom was on the phone with someone and sounding very preoccupied. Linus was crouching beside me, looking panicked and unsure of what to do.
“They’re calling an ambulance,” Tristan said from my other side, “and the fire department is on their way. That was a very nice jump right there.” He touched Linus’s shoulder briefly. “Can you go get Thom’s coat from him? She needs warmth.”
Linus nodded, got up, and left me alone with Tristan. Tristan bent to whisper something into my ear, and I froze.
“Listen to me, Victoire. You have a sprained ankle and a big hematoma on your upper left arm, and it doesn’t hurt.”
Hunh. No, I was pretty sure my arm was bleeding like hell and my leg was broken and it hurt like death. So I shook my head and opened my mouth to protest, but he insisted.
“No, you’re mistaken. Everything is fine.”
“Is this like when you’re telling us that you’re another guy named Clovis? Because it’s not working on me.”
He rolled his eyes.
“Well, humor me for once, please.”
“Okay. Sprained ankle, blue shoulder. Got it.”
It was weird: as soon as I’d said it, the pain subsided, and I felt like sitting up. With a hand to my shoulder, Tristan prevented me from doing so right away.
“No, you’d better rest for a minute. Please.”
The grass was cold and gross, but I did as he’d told, while trying to make sense of what had just happened.
“Tristan, did you just heal me?”
He looked away, at the others in the courtyard, or at the burning house, and didn’t answer.
“Tristan. How do you do these things exactly?”
Again, I got no answer. Linus was back with Thom’s coat, and he proceeded to roll me in it, like the mother hen he was, although he was half-naked himself in the cold winter night. Tristan was only wearing a light shirt himself, but the cold didn’t seem to be bothering him.
Soon the firetruck arrived. The fire brigade quickly gave us thermal blankets and quickly confirmed that I hadn’t sustained any life-threatening injuries.
For the house, it was too late. The inferno had turned it into a darkened, gaping, screaming skull of a building. Soon the fire hose was fighting the flames, a losing battle in my humble opinion. There would be very little to save. And my ukulele had met its untimely ending. The balcony had crumbled, and I didn’t have the heart to go check the debris to try and spot the remains of my sad little instrument.
When the ambulance arrived, Linus rode with me to the hospital.
We were both lightly burned. I had a sprained ankle, like Tristan had told me. The doctors congratulated me on my incredible luck. It could have been worse, they told me. I could really have broken my leg, landing on concrete like that, from the third floor.
11
The acrid stench of smoke wouldn’t leave me alone. It permeated everything. Coming out of the hospital in Moulins on Linus’s arm, I felt as though the whole town was still burning. At least, we were warm now. Tristan had met us at the emergency room with a bunch of clean, warm clothes. I was wearing a woolen sweater in a dark shade of green over my dirty clothes. Linus had on another sweater of Tristan’s that was a little too tight but otherwise fit him okay. My new boss had also lent him trousers to replace his pajama bottoms, tennis shoes, and warm socks.
“My car’s this way,” Tristan announced, herding us towards a side street.
We piled into the black sedan with Linus sitting in the back and me in the front passenger seat. I turned to Tristan as he started his car.
“Thank you for coming to get us.” Thom’s car keys had disappeared in the fire and we had basically nothing now. Not even the clothes on our backs. No music instruments, nothing.
“I set your bandmates up with some camping stuff in the backroom of the bar,” Tristan explained. “I hope it’ll do for now. I’m driving you there. You can stay as long as you need to.”
It was a very kind offer, and I told him so.
It was almost eight in the morning now, and very soon the sun was going to rise. Tristan was a very fast, but precise, driver. The fields on each side of the road were almost completely drowning in mist now. It gave them an air of mystery that I hadn’t perceived up until then, and for the first time since winter had swallowed us in its cold embrace, I thought that maybe I’d misjudged this place.
In the far distance, a deer crossed the road, turning its head briefly to look at us, and Tristan slowed down to leave it some time to cross over to the woods on the other side. It was eerily beautiful.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “your car is probably going to smell like smoke for months now. Maybe forever.”
Tristan shrugged. “Don’t worry. I’m just glad the whole band made it out of that awful fire in one piece.”
I wanted to ask why he’d been the first to arrive at the house and rescue us. And how exactly he’d managed to heal me. But I’d agreed not to make his “quirks” into a subject of public conversation, and I had an inkling he wouldn’t like my broaching it in front of Linus. Now was probably not the time to talk. I’d have to wait.
At the bar, Thom and Sam had been busy setting up cots for all of us in the room behind the stage. There was a tiny bathroom there that we could use, Tristan explained.
“I hope you can make yourselves comfortable. I need to go home now, but we’ll discuss logistics tonight when we’ve all had some sleep. We’re still opening on Saturday.”
I wanted to object that our instruments had been destroyed and that we’d probably have to bail on him, but I sensed it wasn’t the time. So we just parted.
In the little bathroom behind the stage, I showered to get rid of the smell of smoke, trashed my ruined clothes in a hermetically sealed plastic bag, and put on the clothes Tristan had lent me, an oversize T-shirt and sweatpants that seemed too luxurious to really be designed for sports. And then, I went to bed.
I blacked out instantly, again.
12
I didn’t sleep well. Despite the meds and the unbelievable healing act that Tristan had performed on my leg, my ankle was s
till killing me. After a couple of hours, I had to get up and quietly hopped out of the dark room while my three bandmates were still asleep.
In the light of day, of course, I was very happy to still be alive. But it was now the third of February, the Thursday just before the bar’s grand opening, and we had no musical instruments, no clothes on our back, no money, no phones, no home, no papers, nothing. My lucky ukulele was gone, and I realized with a sharp pang that my notebook and my green pen had most likely all been turned into ashes, too.
Feeling a confusing mix of depression and gratefulness, I slowly made my way to the bar, using a succession of chairs and tables to support my weight. My ankle was still tender, but much better already than the previous night. I made myself a delicious cup of coffee and soon felt almost ready to come back from the dead.
And then the phone rang. It was the head of the fire brigade, who doubled as a farmer and was also the mayor of Dompierre. I’d never met him, but his name was Roland, and he sounded nice enough.
“I’m sorry,” he told me over the phone, “but there was almost nothing to salvage from the house. Had we been alerted earlier, we could maybe have done something. I already called Lydia to tell her about the fire.” Lydia was our landlady. She’d inherited the old house from her parents but had been living in the city for years now.
“Thanks for keeping me posted,” I said, feeling a lump in my throat.
“We did manage to save a couple of things, though. Had Mr. Rentier not called us when he did, the house would really be a pile of ashes now.”
“Oh. Was he the one who called you? Tristan, unh, Mr. Rentier?”
“Yes. He also told me you’d be staying at the old theater. Can I swing by to give you your things?”
“Unh…yes, thank you very much.”
He said he’d come during his lunch break. Since Tristan hadn’t left any instructions for me, I decided to follow up on the current affairs of the bar, as much as I could. After a couple of phone calls to suppliers, who all complained to me—again—about Tristan’s refusal to go online and use emails as everyone else, I was left without anything to do, so I settled in a chair with a sheet of paper and a pen. Inspiration didn’t come, though, and at eleven o’clock, Roland Marnier, the mayor, walked in carrying a cardboard box.
Moonlight Binding Magic Page 6
