The Fire Chronicle

by John Stephens

  She saw perhaps twenty children, girls and boys, most around the age of Jake and Beetles. And as she and her two guides walked between the lines of cots, it struck Kate that the other children, despite being neither especially clean nor well dressed, all looked fed and happy. In their lives of going from orphanage to orphanage, Kate and her brother and sister had learned to read the mood of a place almost instantly. Was it happy, sad, desperate? Were the children or adults vicious or generous?

  She knew right away that this was a good place.

  In the center of the church, a group of girls and boys stood at a large table sorting through a pile of objects—watches, silk handkerchiefs, rings, necklaces, earrings, small ornamental boxes, fur coats and wraps—while a boy with a ledger carefully wrote down what the other children called out.

  “What is all that?” Kate asked.

  “They’re doing the day’s take,” replied Beetles.

  “What do you mean, the day’s take?”

  “What was brought in by all the different teams. That’s a pretty good haul, that is.”

  Kate realized what they were saying, what the huge pile of loot was—

  “Wait, you’re—thieves!”

  “That’s right,” Beetles said, proudly hooking his thumbs into his suspenders. “Best thieves in New York City.”

  “Or Brooklyn,” Jake said.

  “Or there,” Beetles said. “Though we never precisely been there.”

  Kate knew that it was unreasonable of her to be angry with the children, but she couldn’t help herself. “So that’s your gang? You’re a gang of thieves?”

  “Yep,” they said happily. “Everything we learned, Rafe taught us.”

  “He’s the best, Rafe is,” Jake said.

  “The very best,” Beetles affirmed.

  “Great,” Kate said, biting her tongue, “that’s just great.”

  After agreeing that it was indeed great, Jake and Beetles asked where to find Rafe and were told he was in the teaching room.

  “What’s he teaching?” Kate asked. “How to pick pockets? How to break into houses?”

  But the boys only laughed and led her away. The room was down a hallway at the back of the church, was well lit, and had a wood floor and a large fireplace. When Kate and her companions entered, the boy called Rafe, the one who’d saved her in the alley, was stoking up the fire so that it blazed and crackled furiously. A dozen children, all of them younger than Jake and Beetles, sat on the floor, facing him. A thin-shouldered, nervous-looking girl stood at Rafe’s elbow.

  There was an unlit candle, Kate saw, positioned close to the fire.

  “You ready?” Rafe asked the girl.

  She nodded, though she was clearly scared. None of the other children spoke or moved.

  “What’s going on?” Kate whispered.

  Beetles shushed her. “Watch.”

  Rafe placed his hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Go on then.”

  And the girl reached out her small, trembling hand into the fire—

  “No!”

  Kate ran forward and yanked the girl back. She’d been fast enough: the girl wasn’t burned, and Kate hugged the startled child to her, as if afraid the boy might try and steal her away.

  “What’re you doing?” she cried.

  Rafe looked at her without expression.

  “Heya, Rafe!” said Beetles brightly. He and Jake stood at the door. “We watched her just like you said.”

  “She didn’t run off ’cause she’s in love with you,” Jake said.

  “Obviously,” Kate said, “that’s not true.”

  “Yeah.” The dark-haired boy turned to the children. “We’ll finish later.” The children, including the small girl, who had squirmed out of Kate’s arms, hurried from the room. Rafe set the poker against the hearth. “The boss wants to talk to you.”

  “Answer me—what were you doing to her?”

  “Teaching her. Trying to.”

  “What? How to get burned?”

  The boy looked at her for a long second. Then he bent over and calmly placed his own hand directly into the fire. Kate gasped, but to her amazement, the boy’s hand didn’t burn. The skin remained unmarred. Then he reached out his other hand and touched the wick of the candle. It burst into flame.

  The boy took his hand from the fire and touched Kate’s wrist. His skin was cool.

  “I wouldn’t have let her get burned.”

  He blew out the candle.

  “Now come on, the boss is waiting.”

  He led her to the bell tower, at the base of which a large iron bell lay on its side, its shell cracked open and the stone floor beneath it smashed to rubble. A wooden staircase curled upward along the wall.

  Kate said, “Wait—”

  The boy stopped on the second step.

  “I don’t understand—are you … a wizard?”

  The boy laughed. “Wizards read books. Know all sorts a’ spells. I’m no wizard.”

  “But that thing you did—with the fire—”

  “Just something I can do.”

  “So the others, the children, are they—”

  “Every kid here has magic. It’s why they’re here. We teach ’em to use it, is all.”

  He started to turn, but Kate stopped him once more.

  “I wanted … to thank you. For saving me in the alley. From those things.”

  “The Imps.”

  “Yes.”

  “Jake and Beetles were gonna try and save you themselves. I only did what I did to stop them.”

  He stood there, his hand resting on the wooden banister, and Kate searched his face for some sign of recognition, some sign that, in whatever way, he knew her.

  But there was none.

  Kate felt self-conscious and drew her coat more tightly around herself. She didn’t understand what was happening, who this boy was, who these children were, but she told herself that it didn’t matter. What mattered was getting to Cambridge Falls, locating Dr. Pym, and finding her way back to Michael and Emma.

  “Look, I appreciate what you did—”

  “You said that.”

  “But I have someplace I need to go. It’s a long way, so the sooner I get started, the better.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Up north.”

  “How’re you gonna get there?”

  Kate shifted nervously. “I don’t know. I’ll take the train.”

  “You got money for a ticket?”

  “No, but—”

  “You probably got no money for food either, huh?”

  Kate said nothing.

  “It’s gonna be dark soon and a lot colder. Even with that coat, you’re not dressed right. How’re you gonna stay warm?”

  “I don’t know, but—”

  “Seems to me you don’t know much. ’Cept how to go out and freeze to death as quick as possible.”

  Kate opened her mouth to argue, but the boy said, “You need to come see the boss,” and started up the tower. A few moments later, an annoyed Kate followed.

  The tower was tall, and neither spoke as they climbed. At different spots along the way, the stairs had been smashed, and boards hung splintered and loose and some were missing altogether. The gaps had to be leapt across, and when she jumped, Kate sensed both the gulf yawning below her and the boy above, watchful, ready to catch her if she slipped. She made sure not to. She had no intention of thanking him again.

  The higher they went, the colder the air became, and the more the wind blew through cracks in the walls. Kate felt light-headed and hollow. She’d had nothing to eat since the potato she’d shared with Jake. And before that? What had been her last real meal?

  At the top of the tower, dozens of pigeons were strung along the belfry ropes and cooing softly, their feathers ruffled against the cold. There was a large, uneven hole in the middle of the ceiling, and Kate could see a wedge of gray winter sky.

  A ladder slanted up through a trapdoor.

  “Wait—”
<
br />   The boy turned, his foot on the first rung. “What now?”

  He was looking at her, and Kate felt a sudden trembling in her chest. The feeling wasn’t new. She’d felt it in the room downstairs when she’d stood next to him and he’d placed his hand in the fire. But now, with the two of them alone in the tower and him looking directly at her, the feeling was stronger, and it confused her even more.

  “In the alley. You acted like you knew me. How is that possible?”

  The boy seemed to study her face. It was like being stared at by a wild animal; there was something so fierce in him. Kate willed herself to hold his gaze.

  “I was wrong,” Rafe said. “You just look like someone I know.” He headed up the ladder, and Kate stood there, taking long, slow breaths, till the boy called down:

  “You coming?”

  She climbed up through the trapdoor and, a moment later, was standing in the open air. The top of the belfry was a large, rectangular space, crowned by a peaked dome that was supported by columns running around the edge of the tower. Standing there was like being in a house with a roof but no walls. Three enormous iron bells, identical to the one at the base of the tower, hung above her, and she saw the space for the missing bell, like a smile where a tooth has been knocked out.

  It was bitterly cold, but Kate hugged herself and looked out to the right, up the long avenues, to the open expanse of the park, winter-dead and white in the distance. She looked the other way, taking in the maze of buildings and streets that made up downtown. Glancing behind her, she saw that the church was perched beside a wide gray river, and that there was ice creeping in at the edges of the water.

  Then Kate turned and looked across the belfry.

  Twenty yards away, a woman sat at a desk, writing. She was hard at work, and the desk was covered with stacks of weighted-down papers that fluttered in the wind like a fleet of tiny sails. She seemed completely untroubled by the cold or the wind, and remained focused on her task.

  Kate supposed her to be in her early fifties. She had gray hair cropped short like a man’s, and she wore a high-necked, long-sleeved black dress and had a black shawl wrapped around her shoulders. Her posture was stiff and unbending. Kate couldn’t see her right hand, but the woman’s left hand, the one holding the pen, displayed no rings or jewelry of any kind. Nor did she wear a necklace, a cameo, or earrings. Kate had the sense of a person of pure will, as if the woman’s own internal fire not only warmed her, up here in the cold and the wind, but had burned away everything about her that was not essential.

  Kate felt a weight settle on her shoulders. The boy had placed a long, heavy coat over her own.

  “That coat a’ yours ain’t worth much. This here is bear.”

  The coat had thick black fur and was very warm and very heavy. The boy tugged it forward so that it hung on her like a cloak. He made a point, it seemed, of not meeting her eyes. Kate thought of the blanket that had been put over her feet while she’d slept, and she knew that that also had been him.

  “Come on.”

  He turned and headed across the belfry, skirting the hole in the center, and Kate followed, her bearskin coat trailing on the floor.

  Rafe stopped her a foot from the desk, and they stood there, waiting for the woman to notice them. Finally, she set down her pen and looked up.

  “So”—the woman’s voice was like someone striking flint—“you’re the girl who’s causing so much fuss.”

  She stood and came around the desk. She was not tall, only an inch or two taller than Kate, but the way she held herself, as if she had iron fillings in her bones, made her seem much taller. She had sharp gray eyes, and the skin of her face was lined and weathered, suggesting she had spent much of her life outside. Kate could imagine her on the deck of a ship, or on the Great Plains of the West, as if the woman required those wide-open spaces to exercise the full extent of her will. The gray eyes studied Kate, and while the gaze was not unkind, there was no mercy or softness in it.

  “What’s your name, girl?”

  “Kate—Katherine.”

  “I am Henrietta Burke.”

  She held out her left hand, and it was then Kate saw that the woman’s right hand, which she’d thought was tucked inside the shawl, was missing. The arm stopped at the elbow, and the sleeve was sewn over the stump. Kate already had her own right hand extended, and she awkwardly switched to her left. The woman gave Kate’s hand a quick, hard clench. It was like shaking hands with an eagle.

  “You observe I lost my right hand. Ten years ago, it was cut off by a pack of fools and degenerates in St. Louis. They accused me of doing witchcraft. Which, of course, I was. And they somehow thought that taking my right hand would stop me. They soon learned the error of their ways. It was tedious, learning to write and perform spells with my left hand, but one can do anything if one sets one’s mind to it.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Kate wasn’t sure what else to say.

  “Forgive our meeting up here. But I find the cold sharpens my thoughts. Is it true you’re from the future?”

  Kate was taken aback. “How—”

  “I know because it is my business to discover what people are saying. And I would ask you to answer my questions quickly and to the point. I have little time and less patience. So I’ll ask again, do you come from the future?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you wish to go back there?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you need the help of a powerful witch or wizard. It was for this reason that you went to that witch in the bazaar who sold you to the Imps, is that correct?”

  “Yes. Can you—”

  “Send you back? No. Though I am an adequate witch in most respects, what you require is beyond me. Bring down Scruggs.”

  This last was said to the boy, and Rafe went to the edge of the belfry, took hold of a rope, and quickly climbed up and out of sight. A moment later, Kate heard his footsteps moving over the rooftop.

  “Scruggs,” Henrietta Burke poured herself a cup of coffee from a pot on the desk, “was once a formidable wizard. But he overreached and cast a spell that broke him in two. Still, he has power. He placed a concealment over this church. The police and the Imps could walk right past and never see us. Now he spends his days talking to birds.”

  More footsteps above, and the boy reappeared, sliding down the rope. There was something fastened to his back. Kate saw that it was an old, bony-limbed, grizzle-haired man, wrapped in a tattered brown cloak. Once Rafe’s feet were safely on the floor, the old man unwrapped his legs from around the boy’s middle and his hands from Rafe’s neck and, taking no notice of Kate or Henrietta Burke, settled himself into a chair beside the desk and began to chew his nails.

  “Scruggs,” the woman said, “this is the girl. Can you help her do what we talked about?”

  Scruggs, Kate thought, looked like he needed help himself. The skin of his face was slack and gray. Both eyes were bloodshot. His hands were twisted and swollen. His long, scraggly hair was greasy and windblown. He needed help, she thought, or maybe a bath.

  The old man stared at Kate and grunted, still gnawing on a fingernail.

  “She has the power. She’s fighting it; but I can pull it out.”

  “Thank you, Scruggs.” Henrietta Burke turned back to Kate. “Do you know what tomorrow night is, child?”

  “The … Separation?” Kate managed to recall the word used by the creatures who had bought her from the witch.

  “Yes. On New Year’s Eve, the magical world will go into hiding. It is an event that has been decades in the planning. Can you imagine the scale of such a thing?” As she spoke, the woman walked to the edge of the belfry and looked out over the city. “A spell had to be devised to alter the memories of every nonmagical human on the planet. Large swaths of land had to be made invisible. Agreement had to be obtained from each magical community that its members would abide by the Separation and not reveal themselves to those on the outside. Foolishly, there are some who yet oppose it,
but even they have been brought to heel. The Separation is key to our survival.” She turned back to Kate. “I mention all that only to say that until the Separation is accomplished, I will require Scruggs’s full attention and powers. The next day or so are sure to be perilous. After that, he will send you home. Can you wait that long? If not, you are free to go.”

  Kate was about to thank her and say no. She had no intention of entrusting herself to Scruggs, despite anything the woman might say about his abilities—the old man had just discovered a bowl of soup on the desk and was trying to eat it with his fingers—but she paused. What, then, was her plan? To reach Cambridge Falls and contact Dr. Pym, but how? The boy had been right. She had no money; she was still wearing her summer sandals. How was she going to pay for the train ticket, food, warmer clothes?

  “And what do I have to do for you?”

  The woman smiled, if it could be called a smile: the narrow line of her mouth became an eighth of an inch wider. “So you’ve learned that nothing in this world is free. Good. I’m glad that young girls of the future are not complete fools.”

  “I won’t steal anything—”

  The woman laughed; it was like a dry clap. “And yet you have the luxury of scruples! The truth is, I don’t know what the price will be. I will ask it when the time comes, and you can choose to pay it or not. Is that acceptable?”

  Kate glanced over to where the boy, Rafe, still stood at the edge of the roof. She had not looked at him for several minutes. When she looked at him now, he quickly turned away. But in that moment, Kate saw in his face the recognition she’d been searching for. He’d lied; he did know her.

  “I need an answer.”

  Still looking at the boy, Kate said, “Yes.”

  Mrs. Burke instructed Rafe to find Kate warmer, less noticeable clothes, and to get her something to eat and a place to sleep. Tomorrow, she said, they would talk more. When Kate and the boy reached the main hall of the church, Rafe called over a girl who was perhaps a year or two younger than Emma.