The Fire Blossom (The Fire Blossom Saga)

by Sarah Lark

  Cat glared at him “No. Just a little bucket of water that God dropped. Where’s Ida? We have to get out of here!”

  Ottfried snorted indignantly and waded to the window. “Are you going to start with that again? The ditches—”

  Cat ran past him and tore open the bedroom door. “Look outside. There aren’t any more ditches! Everything was washed away hours ago. If the water keeps rising like this, nothing will be left.”

  Ida was awake and trying to put on her dress. Her hand was mostly healed, but the fabric had already gotten wet, and she was struggling with it. Cat tore the worn garment out of her hands.

  “Take the good one!”

  She pulled the Sunday dress out of the wardrobe and helped Ida put it on. When Cat and Ida left the bedroom, the water in the house was already up to their knees. Even Ottfried could see the futility of trying to save the village now. He quickly put on a shirt and trousers.

  “Go, I’ll catch up!” he called to Cat and Ida.

  The women attempted to hitch up their skirts as they fought their way through the mud and rising water to the missionary station. The rain fell in buckets and was blown horizontal by the storm. Ida’s loose hair slapped her face as she fought her way forward with her head lowered. She couldn’t remember one day in the last year when she hadn’t put it up properly. At least Cat’s hair was bound in a braid. She hadn’t loosened it for the night.

  Ottfried appeared behind the two of them before they’d reached the main path, towing Elfriede Busche behind him. She held her baby in her arms and was crying desperately for her husband.

  Robert Busche was behind them, but he couldn’t stop looking back at his house as it collapsed. The river washed away the beams and walls as though it were playing with paper boats.

  “This—this can’t be!” Elfriede paused now, too, straining to pull away. “I have to go back! All my things! My dowry!”

  But Ottfried kept a firm grasp on her until Robert caught up with them and put his arm around her.

  “Calm down, Elfriede. We have our child and our lives, we have—”

  “We have nothing! We’ve lost everything!” Elfriede broke into suffocated sobs. “It’s gone, all gone.”

  Robert spoke comfortingly to her, and her distress ebbed slightly. Then, after the two men conferred, Robert left his wife with Cat and Ida and hurried ahead with Ottfried to try and save the homes on higher ground.

  “You will join me as soon as Elfriede and the baby are safe!” Ottfried ordered the women. “We will need every hand if we want to save anything at all. You, at least, Cat, will make yourself useful. Ida, with the child—” He seemed to be torn between the worry for his “son and heir” and the preservation of the settlement.

  “The devil we will!” Cat said explosively as soon as he was out of earshot. “We’re going to the missionary station, and we’re going to get dry. Hurry up, Frau Busche. Can’t you see that the river is rising?”

  Ida, already out of breath, turned her pale, rain-washed face toward Cat. “If we work with them, work very hard, maybe we’ll lose the babies!”

  “Shh!” Cat hissed, pointing at Elfriede Busche, who was staring at them blankly. If she’d heard what Ida had said and repeated it later, things would be bad for them.

  Ida bit her lip.

  “You can’t dig all day or drag sandbags,” Cat told her quietly. “In the end, not only will the baby die, but you’ll die with it. And today . . . Ida, I don’t think today will be about hard work. It’s going to be about not drowning. If Lange, Brandmann, Ottfried, and the rest of the stubborn men get that through their heads, then they’ll survive. They can all swim. But your wet dress is already dragging you down. Forget it, Ida.” She smiled with difficulty as she remembered Ida’s new favorite expression. “We’re going to play hooky.”

  The women finally reached the main path and turned to see the valley transforming into a gray cauldron full of teeming rain and roiling water. They met more refugees while making their way up to the station. The terrified, half-dressed women and children whose husbands were still fighting to save their homes had already realized the futility of the situation. Cat found it rather ominous. All these tough women who never went out without starched bonnets were now stumbling through the rain with loose hair and wrongly buttoned dresses. They were followed by a group of panicked animals. The settlers’ cats and dogs and a considerable number of rats were rushing to safety side by side.

  The refugees fought their way along the muddy path, some crying and others praying. The older women, whose families had primarily settled higher on the hillside, watched in disbelief as Sankt Pauli Village was finally destroyed. Frau Brandmann, supported by Erich, was sobbing as she approached the women. Elsbeth and little Franz followed the Brandmanns. Ida embraced her sister.

  “Is everything going to wash away now?” Franz asked in shock.

  “Of course not!” Gudrun Brandmann said, consoling him. “The water will be gone again tomorrow, if God wills, and then we’ll clean everything up, and—”

  “Yes, Franz,” Elsbeth told her brother. “Thank God, everything is going to wash away now! Everything, every single house. This time it’s over. This time we aren’t going to rebuild this cursed village.”

  “But it can’t get as far as my house,” Frau Brandmann whimpered. “It can’t . . .”

  And then, as the women reached the overlook where Ida had gazed into the sunny valley the day before, Frau Brandmann’s sobbing climaxed in a tortured scream. They all looked back just in time to see the church be consumed by the flood. Only the steeple could be seen above the water as the raging river swept away the foundation of the house of worship and it slowly collapsed.

  “The apocalypse,” Frau Brandmann shrieked. “God is punishing us!” She began to murmur prayers.

  Moments later, the men rushed up the hillside after their women.

  “Don’t stop now!” Jakob Lange scolded. “Go up to the station. We could all drown here!”

  The three pastors were standing in front of the mission house and gazing at the maelstrom. This time, they’d immediately rejected the idea of blocking the flood with sandbags. They still had shovels in their hands but hadn’t begun in earnest to fill the sacks. As the settlers arrived at the station, they immediately began to pray with them. Sobbing, Elfriede Busche sank into her husband’s arms.

  Little Franz clung to his father. “Will God fix everything? God fixes everything, doesn’t he?”

  Cat and Ida didn’t wait to hear his answer. They didn’t want to pray. Cat took her friend by the hand and pulled her onward past the mission house, and Elsbeth joined them.

  “Is there still a hut here?” she asked. “I have to get dry. The water rose so fast in our house! It never came so high before. And Father refused to believe it! When it was up to Franz’s chest, Father wanted to go back to the drainage ditches. As though that would have made any difference! I ran away with Franz alone, and we only just made it. We were just lucky that the Brandmanns were coming too. If Erich Brandmann hadn’t carried Franz, he would have drowned.”

  Erich, Brandmann’s younger son, generally seemed to be quite adroit. He had also driven his mother and sister out of the house even when his father had still believed he could control the situation.

  Now the three of them arrived in the lee of the mission house. Exhausted, Ida clung to a fence post for support. The two horses were trotting around nervously in the pen behind the mission. At least they had been brought to safety, and one of the clergymen had wisely put them in the pen before the creatures could run all the way to Nelson. Waiting by the horses, like after the last flood, was Chasseur. There was no trace of the cows.

  Unfortunately, Ottfried and his men had not only used the destruction of the old huts as a pretext for drinking but over time had also actually torn down all the old housing except for Ida’s hut. The women hurried toward it, in spite of the fact that Cat and Ida found it abhorrent to revisit the scene of their debasement.
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  “Can’t we go into the mission house?” Ida asked quietly.

  Cat shook her head. “It’s not easy for me either,” she whispered to her friend. “But we have to see what’s there before the others come; there might be something we can use.”

  “Use?” Ida whispered. “Use for what?”

  Cat went to her side. “Ida, the water is still rising,” she said quietly so as not to further upset Elsbeth. The younger girl pushed open the door of the hut in relief; she obviously thought she was safe. “There’s no guarantee that we’re safe here.”

  “But, the mission,” Ida whispered. She couldn’t believe that the nightmare still wasn’t over.

  “What about the mission?” Cat asked, her voice ironic. “Do you really believe God will spare it from the water, in honor of all the prayers being said? I know the mission house hasn’t flooded before, but that hardly means that it won’t happen today. The snow is melting in the mountains, Ida. Don’t you remember how we were happy about the beautiful spring weather yesterday? And now this rain came on top of it. Maybe it was just never this bad before.”

  “Either that, or they rebuilt the station each time!” Elsbeth interjected. The girl had good ears. “We know how that works. And what do we have here?” She looked around the hut, which seemed completely different than it had that terrible night six weeks earlier.

  The men had continued using the hut, which was a considerable distance from the missionary station, as a place to relax and drink. Cat realized that the furnishings the men had built resembled those of Barker’s Pub in Piraki Bay: rough stools around rickety tables, which were adorned with sticky rings from whiskey glasses.

  “Gross,” Cat remarked. “Let’s look around and see if we can find any food or blankets.”

  “Oh yes, I’m hungry too!” Elsbeth said, and immediately began to search the old kitchen cupboards. “But first we should light a fire.”

  “No, first we should pack anything useful that we can find,” Cat ordered while Ida sank onto a stool in exhaustion. “Just think, the whole village washed away! All that’s left are the missionaries’ supplies. And let me guess, the wagon for the horses was in your father’s barn again. So everyone will have to walk to Nelson in the rain, without food or tents.”

  “Here’s some whiskey!” Elsbeth announced with pleasure. Now that she was somewhere dry, she was almost enjoying the adventure.

  “Good!”

  Cat took the bottle from her and ignored Ida’s shocked face as she put it to her lips. She took a long swallow and then passed it to Ida.

  “Here, drink some. It will awaken the spirits in you. If you don’t overdo it, that is.”

  “I’ve never had whiskey,” Elsbeth said, reaching for the bottle eagerly after Ida had taken a half-hearted sip. She took a large swallow, only to spit it out immediately. “That tastes awful!” she said, and coughed. “Why do the men like it?”

  “Apparently, you get used to it,” Cat remarked. “Drink a little more, Ida. It will warm you from within; you’re still completely white around the nose. Think of it as medicine. Te Ronga liked to steep herbs in it when she was able to get a bottle. But we usually drank it right away. Don’t look at me like that! Didn’t anyone make schnapps in Raben Steinfeld? It was very rare that our tribe got a bottle or two. When we passed it around to everyone, we all got a little more cheerful, but no more than that.”

  “I’d like to drink wine someday,” Elsbeth said dreamily. “Or champagne.”

  The two women couldn’t help themselves; they had to laugh in spite of their misery. “You should have been born in the squire’s house,” Ida said, teasing her. “You don’t fit in with Raben Steinfeld at all.”

  “I’m not there anymore either!” Elsbeth declared contentedly. “And Sankt Pauli Village just sank. You said it yourself, Cat, we’re going to Nelson tomorrow. And then, everything will be different.”

  Chapter 37

  They found two more bottles of whiskey in the hut, and no food. But Cat found all kinds of tools, and two sheets of waxed canvas.

  “These are good, we can make tents out of them!” she said happily.

  “Without poles?” Elsbeth asked. She had sold tents in the Partridges’ shop.

  “We can take the ax with us and cut branches along the way,” Cat told her. “That’s much better than not having any shelter at all. And now, let’s get a fire going in the stove. The rest of the settlers will be finished with their prayers soon, and then they might come up here to get dry. At least the children should have some shelter.”

  The German settlers’ final night in Sankt Pauli Village was a nightmare. The river didn’t rise as far as the missionary station, but the mission house and one old hut didn’t have enough space to protect over seventy soaked, desperate people. A few terrified and demoralized families started on their way to Nelson that night. The others squeezed into the houses as best they could. Ida and Cat left quickly. The air in the crowded hut had fast become dense and sticky with the odor of stressed human bodies and the smell of stew that a few courageous women made using the pastors’ meager supplies. There wasn’t enough for everyone, and Cat and Ida would have declined anyway. Both of them were nauseous. They set up their improvised tent a little ways away and spent the night huddled together for warmth. Chasseur, too, added his body heat. The dog had been sitting directly by the fire in the hut and had gotten comparatively dry before the rest of the settlers arrived. Now Ida and Cat nestled against his soft fur. The river didn’t rise any farther, but the rain kept falling heavily, and the canvas wasn’t completely waterproof. And it wasn’t quiet either. None of the settlers were able to sleep. Some were still debating whether they should give up Sankt Pauli Village completely, while others cried and prayed.

  Cat felt destroyed as she crawled out of the tent the next morning and lost the contents of her stomach. To make things worse, she discovered she wasn’t alone behind the rata bush that she’d staggered behind to relieve herself.

  Elfriede Busche had also been using the bush as an improvised privy. She didn’t say anything, but her inquisitive glance spoke volumes. If she’d remembered Ida’s remark from the day before . . .

  “I must have eaten something bad,” Cat said, even though she could see very well that Elfriede didn’t believe her.

  But whatever Elfriede suspected, every scandal and all gossip was forgotten at the first sight of Sankt Pauli Village on the day after the catastrophe. Even Elsbeth, who had hated the land at first sight, went silent. The view from the missionary station was a picture of destruction. Only half of the water had drained from the valley, and the condition of the houses and fields that it had left in its wake gave an indication of what they could expect from the rest. There was nothing but rubble left of the Langes’ house. The Brandmanns’ had been washed away completely, and on the field between them lay the corpses of the two drowned cows. The fragments of the church were no longer recognizable, and the steeple lay on its side, half-buried in mud. Under the mud, the ruins of more houses could be discerned, but there was certainly nothing that could be salvaged. The flood had brought masses of rich, fertile soil into the valley, but this time not even Farmer Friesmann mentioned it. Higher up, the receding water had carried away soil. The path from the missionary station to the village was completely washed out; it looked like a canyon. There wasn’t the slightest possibility of navigating it with a horse and wagon. Even on foot, it would be more of a climbing expedition than a walk.

  “This is the end,” Jakob Lange whispered, and crossed himself. “We have to go back to Nelson.”

  “Yes, and give Wakefield hell!” Peter Brandmann raged. “Beit too. They knew about the flood danger. They knew exactly what was going to happen to us.”

  “You knew it too!” Ida exclaimed, unable to control herself. “Karl Jensch told you, but none of you wanted to listen to him!”

  “Wakefield should have told us himself,” Peter Brandmann said and stamped away. It was clear he preferre
d self-righteous anger to hopelessness. “He has to give us new land!”

  “He won’t really do that, will he?” Elsbeth asked her sister worriedly.

  She and Franz were already prepared to leave, while many other women were still crying and lamenting, and the men were deliberating about whether it would make sense to search the ruins of the settlement for anything useful or of sentimental value.

  Ida shook her head. “I don’t believe he will. Of course Wakefield didn’t tell us the truth. But basically, we were begging him to betray us. Father and Brandmann wanted to settle on the Moutere, and they told him so. That will be his excuse. Besides, he had promised us land, and we got it. It still belongs to us—we just can’t do anything with it. The Maori shouldn’t have sold it to Wakefield in the first place.”

  Cat made a face. “The Maori told Wakefield exactly what he told you. They gave him what he wanted, and he bought it after having seen it. Te Rauparaha is no liar, but he’s—how do you say it? He’s a bit of a rascal. Come, let’s go. The journey will take long enough. We should leave before it starts to rain.”

  It was a sad band of hungry, ragged survivors who finally reached Nelson three days later. The road was in much better condition than it had been a few months earlier when Cat had made the trip with Ida and Ottfried. Wakefield had sent street-building crews to improve it. But still, the women and children, who weren’t accustomed to walking so far, reduced the group’s pace. The weather remained inclement, and sometimes it rained so hard that the families didn’t want to keep walking, preferring to rest in the shelter of the woods. Some of the women, such as the broken Frau Brandmann, had to be coaxed to take every step. They knew that they couldn’t stay in Sankt Pauli Village, but they didn’t want to go back to Nelson either. Frau Brandmann clung to her husband and Ottfried. During the journey, Ottfried spent more time with his old family than with his new one. He couldn’t stand to be near Cat; her eyes shot daggers at every opportunity. And as far as Ida was concerned, Ottfried was afraid of her remonstrations that the disaster had been predictable, and he was also afraid of his own violent temper. If Ida mentioned Karl Jensch one more time, he would hit her.