Of Honey and Wildfires

by Sarah Chorn

  “I think that is a grand idea,” I told him.

  He smiled, the lines around his eyes easing. “You’ll spend each morning with Imogen, and midday, you will come home and help Annie. We will feel better knowing you are safe, and close, especially with all this going on.”

  And that’s what happened.

  I woke with the dawn and milked the cows with Jack before trudging with my board and some books to Imogen’s house. Imogen would inevitably have breakfast cooking, and fry cakes ready to eat. She’d slather them in syrup, and pour us tea, with drams of shine in hers and Ianthe’s. We would eat and speak of nonsense. Then we would clean up and begin our lessons.

  Lessons took place in the parlor. It was a large, grandly appointed room with huge windows. In the morning, light would paint the space gold. I loved those hours spent with our heads pressed together while we concentrated on our boards, our lessons. It was a brief respite from the tension that filled up our small cabin.

  As the days passed, I became aware of people poking about our property, which had us constantly on edge. They would stop by unexpectedly, sometimes in the afternoons, sometimes during the dead of night. We would hear them walking around, and would wake in the morning to Annie’s trampled herbs and fresh horse shit all over the clearing. I don’t think Annie slept much. I doubt Jasper did, either. At night, the company men could be anywhere and do anything. They could stumble upon our shine well, no matter how well Jasper and Jack hid it. They could learn our secrets.

  At night, we were not safe.

  I never understood why they were so obvious about their lurking. It seemed counterproductive to announce their presence and expect my father to wander on by as though nothing was amiss. They were fools.

  On some occasions, they would pull me aside, always different men, large and muscled, but never the same twice. This, I am certain, was so I would always be uncomfortable when they were around, always on edge, more prone to revealing my secrets.

  I kept myself away from the fields, which kept the lawmen from them as well. It was easy enough to do. Soon, this became a way of life. I’d go to Ianthe’s house in the mornings, and in the afternoons, I’d help Annie around the house, waiting for whatever the company men had planned for us this day. I almost forgot what it was to not be watched.

  While I bemoan how obvious the company men were, some of our visitors were sleuths. I would see footprints around the house, one in the mud, another under the eaves. I think the unpredictable nature of their watching was part of their goal. Keep us focused on the ones we could see and hear, so we might turn our backs on the real trespassers, the ones that knew how to caper about. Whatever it was, it kept me from easily going to the messenger stone each full moon to get the trinkets my father left me. It kept me from my only contact with him, and that I could not abide.

  My father and I exchanged trinkets at that stone once a month, come rain or shine, and we had done so for years. Neither of us had ever missed a month. Even when I had taken ill, I still made it out there with some treasure for him. Annie pointed out, the day after my first interview with the lawmen, that if I did not leave a bauble at the stone, Chris would likely think something was terribly wrong, and come out here to find out just what it was. That would be the worst possible thing that could happen. He’d walk right into the lawmen. It was exactly what they were expecting him to do. However, I could not sneak out of the house with them lurking around as they were. So, we had to devise a plan.

  It was decided that I should spend the night at Ianthe’s house. It would be easier to sneak away from there. Then, I could get to the stone, leave my trinket, and my father would not realize anything was amiss. He would stay hidden, and free, and so would the rest of us.

  I waited until it was well into the small hours before I snuck out. We shared her bed and had the curtains thrust open, silvery moonlight spilled into her room casting the darkness with its heavenly glow. I thought her to be asleep, and so I watched the moon rise, cutting away the night, until Ianthe’s steady breathing told me she was asleep. Then, I carefully slipped out of the bed and rummaged around in my pack until I found what I had brought to give my father.

  It was a small thing, but I put a lot of thought into it. I had picked some wildflowers from the meadow beside our house and pressed them within the pages of a book. I tied a violet ribbon around the stems, with a pretty bow. I wanted to give him a piece of the meadow I loved so much so he might carry it with him. I knew, as always, there would be another treasure left for me. I couldn’t wait to see what it was.

  So I crept across Ianthe’s room, careful to keep my feet from making any noise on the floorboards. “What are you doing?” she whispered.

  I stiffened. I did not want to lie to her. More, I could not lie to her. Even that young, I could not look into her eyes and keep anything from her. Ianthe was goodness personified. She shone. I did not want to diminish her. If there was anyone I could trust outside of my own family, it was her.

  I wrapped a shawl about my shoulders, and I told her what I was about, my words hushed and quick. I explained that this is why I had wanted to spend the night at her house. Instead of being hurt or upset with my revelation, with the fact that I was using her for my own aims, she clapped her hands.

  “An adventure! How marvelous! I have the terrible desire to do something positively audacious,” she said to me, her pale eyes dancing with mischief.

  “Why?” I asked, but I could not hide my smile. It was a night for secrets and recklessness. Even the moon wore a cat’s grin, and each of the stars seemed to be winking down on us.

  Ianthe shrugged. “What other opportunities will I have to run wild through the belly of the night? It is a moment, Cassandra. How many of them will I get? I must enjoy the ones presented to me.” We were young and so reckless. She stood, her sleep shift pooling around her feet. “I know how to get out of the house without alerting my mother.”

  “You will let me know if the walk is too taxing?” I asked, fear suddenly slicing through me. The walk was long, two hours each way. We would be gone most of the night, and with her illness, I was worried about overtaxing her.

  “Of course!” Ianthe laughed and waved a hand in the air. “Don’t worry about me, Cassandra. I am fine. This will be fun.”

  I followed Ianthe out of her house, creeping down the stairs on our tiptoes. We strapped up our boots, giggling behind our hands and listening for any sign that her mother might be awake. Then we slipped into the dark, running through the meadow with our fingers laced together, clouds of lightning bugs tickling our noses, and bullfrogs singing the dark away. In the distance, a wolf howled.

  It took a long time to get to the meeting stone, and I cherished every second of it. It was not the first time I had ever held Ianthe’s hand, but it was the first time I savored the feel of her and relished the squeeze of her fingers in mine. Every part of me was aware of every part of her.

  This is how I got around those who were set to watch our homestead. I looked forward to our adventure every month, those moments where it was just the two of us chasing each other, howling like wolves with aught but the moon as our witness. I cherished the journey as much as I relished the small baubles my father left for me at the stone.

  It wasn’t until I was fifteen that I saw the red cloth my father said he would leave in times of danger. It was not until I was fifteen that everything went so terribly wrong.

  Standing in front of that cabin’s door felt like something out of a dream. Christopher pushed the door open and stood aside, allowing Arlen to enter on his own volition. It took time. That doorway was a mouth waiting to swallow him whole. Inside, all he could see was black. The memory of yesteryear lay heavy in the air like perfume.

  “Take your time,” Christopher Hobson, the outlaw, and his true father, said. “We can stand here all night if you need to.”

  “Is there…” Arlen’s voice trails off. He had no idea what he’d been about to ask.

  “Place w
as nearly cleaned out when I left. Rose took most of it down to her house. You saw the paintings. There are some things, though, that I’ve kept. That I brought back here. Things I want to show you.”

  Arlen felt like a ghost, a specter haunting the memory of a past he had no notion of.

  Ultimately, it was the rain that made his decision for him. All that rain and night falling, casting a darkness that seemed to reach all the way into his soul. He was cold. Cold, and hungry, so he steeled his nerves, and crossed the threshold. Let the yawning mouth of yesterday swallow him whole.

  The cabin was one room, not large, but large enough. There was a small bed pushed up against the back corner, a wooden table, a shelf nailed to the wall with some cooking pots and a few plates and bowls. The fireplace was large, and Chris made his way to it, grabbing a rock of shine from his pack. He set it down in the hearth amidst some logs he’d brought in with him. In an instant, the fire was lit, and the place was bright, warmth chasing away the damp.

  Whatever Arlen expected to see, he didn’t. It could have been any small cabin, on any mountainside. He wanted to feel something, some connection to this place. He wanted to be able to plant his feet on the ground and feel the call of home rattle his bones. He heard nothing but silence, though. Nothing but all that aching emptiness.

  Chris put his pack down on the table. “Shine Company doesn’t send anyone out here. I think Matthew leaves it off all the maps, to be honest, so the place where his daughter rests is left alone. He powerfully loved her, and likely that love still echoes in him somewhere. Doubtless, he knows that I still tend this plot when my heart allows me. This is neutral territory. I come back here between times. When I’m not doing… other things.” He moved to the shelf over the window, and pulled a small, carefully made wooden box down and set it on the table. Something about that box jangled Arlen’s nerves. “This here holds all the stuff I kept that was yours. All the stuff we didn’t bury. This was all I had to mark you as part of this world.”

  Arlen pulled out a chair and sat. He was exhausted. No, exhausted was too tame a word for what he felt. He was hollowed out. There was nothing left to him. And that carefully carved oak box was staring at him, the lid closed firmly and held in place with one small latch.

  He felt like he was facing a terrifying creature, with claws so sharp they didn’t even need to touch him to wound.

  “What do you do when you’re not here?” Arlen asked.

  The question was desperate, carved out of a deep longing to delay this moment. To put off what he knew he had come out here to discover. To not have to see everything he’d never known he’d had. He squeezed his eyes shut and felt a tear carve a path down his cheek. It was too much, being here, in this cabin, sitting at this table, all those memories etched into these walls, and that box with all its secrets right there, glaring at him.

  “I try to help the people the company ignores,” his father said, his voice low and rough. “I work with a group of people who live on the edge of the law. We try to make things hard on Shine Company. Maybe if working out here is more trouble than it’s worth, they’ll leave. I like to think I peddle in hope.”

  Silence spread between them. The table between Arlen and Christopher suddenly felt large enough to hold an ocean. An entire world. An entire life.

  “Son,” Christopher said, his voice a whisper, wine spilling between them on a dark evening. He sat in the chair across the table and pointed at the wooden box. “It’s time.”

  Arlen was shaking. His whole body, quaking. The moment drew out, grew sharp enough to cut.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Chris whispered. “Not unless you want me to. Do you want to be alone?”

  “No,” Arlen said, and that word, those two letters held together by nothing more than the thread of his yearning, unleashed all the tears he never knew he’s held. He wasn’t even sure what he was mourning. Who he could have been. Who he ended up being. The people he’d never known. All these lives bleeding their pain into the world. It all rose to the surface, tore down his carefully constructed walls, and all he could do was weep at the wreckage.

  Chris didn’t hold him. Didn’t wrap his arms around Arlen. Just sat there, a calm presence, face stony and closed, arms crossed over his chest as though he was holding himself together. Belatedly Arlen realized this couldn’t be easy for him, either. He’d spent his life thinking his eldest child was dead. So many lost years. So many unknowns.

  Three graves. Seeing those had been hard enough, but now, facing this box that held all he used to be, felt like his true battle and he was so unbelievably tired of fighting.

  But he had to know.

  He closed his eyes, dragged in one halting breath and blew it out from between clenched teeth. His hands were shaking as he ran them across the edges of that box. That vault. Strange, how something so harmless held the power to completely destroy him. This moment held all the tension of an explosion. He could already feel its shrapnel tearing him apart.

  It was just stuff.

  That’s all it was.

  Maybe if he repeated that enough, he’d start to believe it.

  “Come on, Arlen,” he whispered to himself. “You can do it.” The small sound the clasp made as he flipped it up seemed to echo like a bell in a cathedral.

  Another breath. Another beat of his heart. His eyes squeezed shut against whatever he would see and then… and then…

  It was time.

  The first thing he saw was a lace bonnet, small, obviously made for a baby. It was white and frilly, the fabric starting to go yellow with age. It must have taken an eternity to make. He took it out of the box with care, ran his fingers over the intricate work, and then set it gently on the table. Next, he pulled out a pair of tiny knitted baby shoes, made with yarn, soft and yellow. He studied them for a moment, one on each of his forefingers.

  So tiny, these things, created with such yearning. A person doesn’t go through the effort of making a bonnet, lace, and small shoes for an infant they don’t want. He’d been dreamed about. Hoped for. Loved, before he’d even taken his first breath.

  “Chris,” he said, the name garbled, a hiccup rather than a word.

  “Lila was really good at knitting and making things. She had a skill, Arlen. I never understood it, she’d focus on all those tiny details. She’d just sit in the light from the window, and work, humming under her breath. I’d watch while she turned thread into art. It was…” his voice trailed off. Arlen looked up and watched as Chris cleared his throat, ran his hands through his hair. “She loved you. She loved you more than I knew a body could love. We gave you to Matthew because we thought we were doing what was best, and that just about killed her. She was too sorrowful to do anything for weeks. She’d lay on that bed and sob, day after day. I offered to leave the territory. I offered to take Matthew up on his offer and move back east, back to Union City to be a family, but she wouldn’t have it.”

  “Why?” Arlen asked.

  “She wasn’t a woman built for the frontier, but she did love it out here, after a fashion. She loved the mountains, adored the sunsets. I think she always thought you’d come back. This place, it’s part of you.” Another pause. “I think she also knew that the city would damn near kill me. I wasn’t made for buildings and carriages. She tried to stay true to all of us, letting you have a better life while staying out here where I was rooted. You’d come back every summer. There was no reason to think you’d not.”

  “Until I died,” Arlen whispered, fingering the lace of the bonnet. So delicately made. Had it actually fit him once?

  “Until you died,” Chris said, leaning forward, propping his elbows on the table. “What else do you want to know, Arlen?”

  “How did you meet?”

  “I blew up the shine refinery in Freetown. She watched me do it. She didn’t turn me in. I made to run, and she helped me. That is really the beginning and ending of it. Didn’t know who she was until she told me. Told her pa that she’d die before she left m
e, or turned me in. She wasn’t one for empty words, and Matthew knew it, so he let her be. I think he figured she’d grow out of it. We were together less than a year before she got with child. After that, Matthew knew she’d never go back, never leave. He came out to visit, left us two vials of tonic so we could cross the Boundary if we wanted to. Lila kept them in this very box, but never spoke of them. She just put them in there and walked away.”

  “Where are they now?” Arlen asked.

  “When Lila and the babe died, I… I couldn’t be here anymore, Arlen. I drank one when I took Cassandra and crossed the Boundary. Lived out there for a bit over a year, nearly two years, I think. Then, I took the last one when I brought Cassandra back in to live with Annie.”

  “Why didn’t you send Cassandra to Matthew?”

  “This land is in her blood too. It’s part of both of your stories, and frankly, I don’t like the idea of children being with that… man. I met him once before, after a fashion. When I was barely a teen, just a few months after my family had arrived out here. It’s really both of our love for Lila that kept us from finishing each other off years ago. Matthew Esco is not what he seems.”

  Hard and biting, those words. Each one precisely sounded out, the ends of them cut off. Defiant.

  There was something else in that wooden box. One last treasure. A golden heart-shaped locket. He picked it up by the delicate chain and palmed the heart. The color had diminished over the years, become tarnished, but it was still finely wrought, if simple. Chris made a choked sound. “I forgot about that,” he whispered. His chair slid across the floor and the big man stood, turning his back on Arlen. On the room. On the past. His shoulders were shaking, and Arlen knew he was crying.