Of Honey and Wildfires

by Sarah Chorn

It all came to a head after I’d been in the house for a few months. Dinner had been served and cleaned up after, and Annie bid her children to get out their boards and start working on their sums. I sat at the other end of the table, fingering the pages of a book, marveling at the way the letters seemed to float and flit around the page before my eyes. I did not know then what a hardship that would become.

  The shine lamp was on the table beside me, lighting the pages of the book nicely. “Cassandra,” Annie said, “can you move the lamp this way so we might all share its light?”

  You must understand, a fearful respect of fire had been drilled into me from a young age. The mountains and scrubland get very dry in the summers. One spark and the entire landscape could be set to blaze. My father always bid me stay well away from flame, and do not, under any circumstances, play with it. And so, I had not yet touched the shine lamp, and I had a great fear that upon doing so, I would somehow light the house on fire.

  “It’s okay,” Annie said, “I’m right here. Nothing will happen, just be careful.”

  I reached out and touched the well the shine oil sat in, thick and rainbow-hued as it rubbed against the glass. It was beautiful, almost hypnotic. The second my finger met the lamp, however, the fire went out, casting the room into a darkness lifted only by the embers in the fireplace at my back.

  “What in the world?” Annie asked. She moved to my side, grabbed the lamp, and shook it a bit in an attempt to re-light the lamp. Then, she grabbed a taper from near the fireplace and lit it, bending her focus to the shine lamp, and its wick. It sprang to life again. “Touch the lamp, Cassandra,” she said. Her voice was stiff, her body rigid. The moment seemed to grow teeth.

  I touched the lamp, and instantly the flame went out again. My shoulders slumped as I curled in on myself. Annie was radiating tension the way fire gave off heat, and I knew I was the reason. I didn’t like the silence that filled the room or the way their eyes were fixed on me. Like an animal, I was already protecting my soft parts in anticipation of an attack, though I had no reason to fear one. Not really.

  I heard Jack mutter something, and Harriet chide him. I peered through my lashes and watched as she bit her lip and clasped her hands together. Beside her, Jack looked positively irate. He was normally jade in color, like his father. With his anger, however, his coloring darkened until it reminded me of the deepest part of a forest, shrouded in shadows and hiding untold dangers.

  “Let me get Jasper,” Annie said. I knew what was coming next. She would bring Jasper in from the fields so they might all inspect what happened when I touched the lamp. So they might study what made me different, in all ways, not just blood. “Behave yourselves,” she admonished, and then she was gone.

  “Cassandra,” Harriet began. She looked so much like her mother with her violet hair and broad shoulders, it sometimes caught me unawares.

  “She’s worthless,” Jack hissed.

  I flinched as though he’d slapped me and hot tears stung my eyes. Worthless. I felt stabbed.

  “Jack!” Harriet said. “Stop!”

  “Stop what?” The boy shouted, standing suddenly. “She’s worthless, Harriet. She’s come here, one more mouth to feed, and now this with the lamp. She can’t even touch shine. Why keep someone else’s problem?”

  “Jack, you’re being horrible!”

  I hated my tears. I did not want to give him the gratification of my pain, but it was impossible to hold back. His anger poured out of him like a waterfall, drowning me just as surely. He was focused on everything that I worried about, everything that set me apart, poking his fingers in each one of my insecurities.

  This was not my house.

  This was not my family.

  This was not my world.

  I didn’t know what to do, so I clenched my fists, averted my eyes, and sat, still as stone and just as cold, tears rolling down my cheeks as the fissure inside of me grew wider, and wider still.

  “You’re as strange as your pa,” Jack said, ignoring his sister, who was grabbing onto his arm, trying to get him to go up into the loft or outside and cool off. “You came here with your strangeness, and you’ll ruin us. Why should we protect you?”

  “He’s not strange,” I finally whispered. My voice was a shaking thing, a lonesome dove crooning in an icy thicket. Lost. “My da is a good man. He loves me. He’ll come back for me.” Even to my own ears, it was obvious I was trying to convince myself this was true. I wrapped my arms around my chest in an effort to protect my heart.

  “Bet you don’t know why he left all those years ago,” Jack sneered.

  There is a certain way children look when they know they’ve sunk their teeth into the weakest part of a person. It was in the glint of Jack’s eyes, and his knowing smile. I knew that whatever he said next would rip me apart.

  “Jack, don’t,” Harriet whispered. Her eyes darted to the door as though wondering if she should get her parents. “Please don’t. Let Ma and Pa tell her. Don’t do it this way.”

  “Ma never speaks of it, but I heard her once, late at night.” He spoke as though he hadn’t even heard Harriet. Didn’t even know she’d said a word, his attention fixed completely on me.

  But even wounded as I was, even facing this certain cruelty, I had to know. “Why did he leave?” I finally asked, hating myself for even asking the question. Hating my father for not having told me.

  “Ma was talking to Pa, telling him about how Chris got run off because he blew up a refinery near Freetown and killed some people. Got in too deep with some anti-company group, terrorized a town and made a lot of people bleed before setting an entire warehouse of good shine on fire.”

  “No,” I whispered. I was shaking. This couldn’t be right. My soul shattered, and all I felt were the thousands of tiny cuts as all those jagged edges spilled through me.

  Jack smiled, a cruel twist of his lips. He had me and he knew it. “Chris went into hiding. That’s probably where he found your ma. Only a certain kind of woman can love a man like that. Ma said everyone he worked with was found and hung.”

  “Stop,” I whispered, the word quivering on my lips. This was the worst kind of pain because everything in me knew he was telling the truth. I could see that he relished the moments his barbs struck true. Harriet looked away, her eyes downcast, arms folded over her chest as though hugging herself.

  I was dizzy. Suddenly, it seemed as though I’d ever known about the one man who meant most to me in the world was a lie. How could I possibly reconcile that?

  “Your pa ran into the hills and hid. Ma said the heartbreak of it killed our grandma, and that’s all on your pa, too.” Jack paused, a sneer curling his lips.

  His words dug their way beneath my skin and hollowed me out.

  I couldn’t picture the man I knew terrorizing anyone. I remembered the days he’d spent with me, teaching me how to read the story the forest told us, and how to survive on what the earth gave up. He was kind and gentle, and while he aimed true and always felled what he set his eye on, he was never one for making anyone or anything, suffer. He didn’t have a frightening bone in his body.

  I realized then that like the moon, I only knew one of my father’s faces. The soul is such a fickle thing. Easy to bruise. Easy to wound. No wonder why we protect ourselves with this careful camouflage. All of these meticulously cultivated aspects of ourselves we drag with us through the years. Our costumes are heavy, of course our spines are bent.

  Jack moved closer, hands on the back of my chair, his lips caressing the shell of my ear, “You’re the daughter of a murderer and a coward.” His words sliced their way into the world, turning the air around them into a storm. That is what language is. Weather raging, then dissipating, leaving behind nothing but barren landscape covered in bones.

  That was when the lava of my anger rushed to the surface, burning through all my sorrow. How dare he say these things about my father. How dare he stand there, heaping his abuse upon me. I had been hurt enough. I was already tormented, and
lost, thrust into a world I did not know, trying to make my way as best I could. This was one insult too far, and there he was, his face so close to mine while I was boiling, boiling, boiling.

  I stood and spun in one motion, catching him off guard. My chair went toppling to the floor, a clatter in the quiet of the cabin. My fist, small but with all the force of my righteous indignation, met his jaw squarely. Pain radiated from my fingers, up my arm. Jack cupped the side of his face, eyes flashing. He lunged, clenched hand nearly reaching me when the door to the cabin opened, banging loudly against the wall.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Jasper shouted. His presence instantly chilled the heated air. Annie stepped in behind him, hands wringing her dress, knuckles white.

  “Is anyone hurt?” She asked, gaze sweeping over me to fix on Jack.

  “Jack called Uncle Chris a liar and a coward. He was pushing her, and Cass punched him,” Harriet said. I stiffened, shocked that she would say as much. I was her cousin, true, but Jack was her brother. She hardly knew me. It would have been an easy thing for her to put me at fault. “I’m sorry I didn’t stop them.”

  “It wasn’t your job,” Annie said, she reached for Jack, grabbing his chin with her thumb and forefinger and turned his face toward the light. “You’ll be well enough. What were you thinking?” I let Annie and Jack whisper at each other while Jasper rounded on me, crouching low to meet my eyes.

  “You’ve got quite a punch,” he said. “But you mustn’t hit, Cassandra. We do not solve problems with violence. If something unkind is said to you, you must find an adult. You will go to bed without supper tonight as punishment. You know better.”

  Even as he said this, I could see the subtle surprise that someone as small as myself could beget damage upon a boy a few years older, and so much larger than I.

  I learned something that day. There are different forms of grace. I was not graceful like a dancer. I was graceful like a mountain lion, newly formed and full of teeth.

  Jack got the same punishment as me. He also had to tend the horses and was assigned the morning milking for two weeks.

  Jasper handed me a wet rag to wrap around my knuckles and I cradled my hand to my chest. Jack was sent to the loft to cool off, and I was told to sit on a stool in the corner. I let the soothing cadence of Annie’s voice was over me as she whispered with Jasper across the table. I was thinking about my father, and the mountains, about the way things used to be. Now, I wondered if perhaps our years in the woods, so far away from civilization, was because he was hiding, not because of his love of the wild. Suddenly, our time together seemed to be colored by a different light.

  I wanted to speak to him. I yearned so intensely, my soul fairly quaked with it.

  “Is it true?” I finally asked. I hadn’t realized I’d spoken out loud until I felt them study me, bodies going stiff and still. Wary. Heat flooded my cheeks, but I wouldn’t back down. I deserved to know. “Did Jack have the right of it?” I pressed, louder. I would not let them escape this conversation. Not now. Not after what had happened.

  The lamp and the shine that had started all this were forgotten as our attention turned to more pressing matters. My father was not with us, but he loomed large in the room.

  “Cassandra, come outside with me for a spell,” Jasper said, and for a moment the cabin filled with tension, subtle undercurrents between man and wife I couldn’t begin to puzzle out. “She deserves to know,” he said. Annie made a noise that seemed to stick in her throat.

  I followed Jasper outside. Winter was blowing down from the north, its breath hanging in the air between us. Above, the stars seemed sharp enough to cut the dark and make it bleed. The moon was nothing but a slice of sky, a frozen smile. I wrapped a shawl about my shoulders and stamped my feet.

  “I’ve known your family for a long time,” Jasper finally said. He wasn’t looking at me. His hands were shoved deep in his pockets, his face pointed at the sky. Somewhere in the distance, a wolf howled and another replied. I loved their mournful song. It was the cry of a soul in need, and I felt my own answer. “I was best friends with your pa and fell in love with Annie when I was a teenager. I was too stupid to know what I wanted to do with my life, but I knew that whatever it was, I needed her to do it with me.

  “Anyway,” he sighed. “Your pa… he got involved with some people. He needed a cause, I think. Maybe he just needed a place to put his anger. He did some things, Cassandra. Some things that he’ll have to carry with him forever. He’s a criminal, you understand? A wanted man. If he comes back here, and people know it, there will be trouble. He would hang. Shine Company has wanted to string him up for a very, very long time. They own this entire territory, they just let us live here. There’s no way around it.”

  He crouched down and looked me in the eye. He was no longer speaking to a child, but an equal. “I want you to know something, and I want you to carry this with you into forever. Only you get to decide who you want to be. You do not hold your father’s sin.”

  I understood. My father had committed crimes. He had doubtlessly done exactly what Jack claimed, and that hurt. It cut me deep. I couldn’t picture the man I loved and trusted doing any of those things. But here, at this moment, Jasper was giving me absolution. I might carry my father’s blood, but I did not carry his crimes.

  “This is good country,” Jasper said. “Depending.”

  “Depending on what?” I asked.

  “Depending on who you are.”

  All these years later, I still look back on that night with fondness. Jasper was a good man.

  He did not deserve what happened to him.

  The next day, they boarded the train, heading for Grove. He was excited to leave Freetown, excited to see what lay beyond, in the wide west. All those untamed places he’d spent so many years of his life dreaming about, all those rough-cut people who filled it up. Yes, he was ready.

  The train itself was larger than the one they’d taken into Freetown. This one was six cars long, only the first of which was reserved for company officials. They settled onto the plush, leather seats. The car was empty, as they were the only two people with the company traveling. The air smelled like freshly brewed coffee, and there was a tray of food near the doorway, all of it for their taking. A conductor appeared, offering to serve them, but Elroy and Arlen dismissed him to do other things, elsewhere.

  Outside, Freetown was a buzz of activity as families parted on the platform, workers in tattered, torn clothes, with hungry, drawn faces boarded the cars behind them, piling on in record numbers, leaving their families behind. It was horrible to see, all those strong emotions and tears, pulling on the threads of Arlen’s heart.

  He turned his face from the windows as they settled in, sitting across from each other. Elroy looked so put together in his brown pinstripe suit. He took off his wide-brimmed hat and rested it on his knee. Within a moment, the train started its ponderous journey. The sweet scent of burning shine was almost overpowering. Was this another thing no one else could sense? Or was everyone else just used to it?

  He kept the question to himself, remembering the advice in his father’s letter.

  “What’s wrong?” Elroy said as soon as they’d left the station. His brown eyes were penetrating. The city was fading, and the countryside started to roll out. Green hills dotted with cows, horses, and sheep. Quaint, almost romantic.

  “Nothing,” Arlen replied with a shrug.

  “Oh, come now. I’ve been with you for weeks. Something is wrong.”

  How could he put it into words? How could he make this man understand? There was no simple explanation for any of this. He wasn’t sure if he trusted Elroy, but he knew he wanted a friend, someone he could bound his turmoil off of, and help him make sense of the wreckage left behind. His whole life had been one elaborate lie.

  “I think it’s just being out here. It’s different than I expected,” Arlen said. He stared out the window at the passing countryside. He was finally doing it, moving further in
to the territory and seeing all that untamed emptiness for himself, not by reading about it in a copper-piece story, or from the window of a train, but by actually planting his feet on the earth and experiencing it.

  He understood what drove settlers west. He could feel it in his blood, the urge to travel beyond the horizon and live a life beholden to no one. Not even to his father. Sure, it would be hard, but more importantly, it would be his.

  What an intoxicating dream.

  “My father mentioned a factory in his letter. I’m supposed to scout locations for it,” Arlen said, switching the topic.

  “Ah yes, the textile mill. Matthew has mentioned that a few times. He’s moving forward with it?”

  “Apparently so. Shine makes things so colorful. Textiles dyed out here would likely sell for a high profit in the finest marketplaces back east.” Arlen said though the memory of those drawn, dirty faces and weeping families at the train station made him wonder just what the cost of that sort of exploitation really was.

  In truth, the plan had a cold, cunning feel to it that smacked of Matthew Esco. Once cloth dyed in Shine Territory was seen, the world would want it, and with the company’s control over the land, there would be no competition. They could charge whatever price they wanted, and people would pay.

  “I have a few ideas of places to show you,” Elroy said. “Some are along this route, some outside of Grove. It will keep us busy while we wait for Sterling.”

  Arlen listened with half an ear to Elroy while he focused on the landscape speeding by.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Elroy asked suddenly.

  The train was moving through a stretch of farmland, cows foraging in large fields to either side, a tranquility he had only imagined, punctured only by the train slicing through it. His mind drifted to the cars behind them, noisy, even despite the clatter of the tracks under them, packed with workers wearing tattered, worn clothes. Wrinkled faces and weather-beaten skin. Likely, they were heading to the shine fields out past Grove, out, where the work was hard but steady.