Of Honey and Wildfires

by Sarah Chorn

  He gave Chris his privacy and focused on the locket. It was engraved, the letters C + L on the front. He worked his nail in the groove and the heart opened, exposing a tiny portrait of his father on one side, some twenty years younger but unmistakably him. On the other, a photo of a woman stared back at him. She wore a stern expression, her full lips pulled tight. She had a heart-shaped face, and long, dark hair. He squinted at the person who had given him life and tried to imagine what she would look like now, so many years later. Tried to imagine what it must have been like to have a mother.

  It came to him suddenly, a vague memory of a portrait that had been in Matthew’s office. It was small, a black and white photo gone brown around the edges. The girl in the picture had been younger, with long black hair and a coquettish smile. Her dress had been well made. Her hands rested on a book. Arlen had asked after it once, and Matthew, instead of answering, had taken the portrait down and Arlen had never seen it again.

  His mother.

  He set the locket down and looked at the last thing in that box, hidden until now. A lock of black hair, tied with a satin ribbon.

  He laid out each of the objects on the table. The bonnet. The shoes. The locket. The hair. Laid them out in a row, and ran his fingers over them. Chris turned, his eyes moving over Arlen, before studying each one of those objects Arlen had laid out.

  The naked torment on Christopher’s face almost undid Arlen. “You are in so much pain,” he whispered. He hadn’t meant to give that thought voice, hadn’t meant to call all that agony into the room like an uninvited guest, a haunting presence. “Part of you is always here, isn’t it? Part of you is always watching me leave. Watching Lila die.”

  “My heart has broken into as many pieces as there are stars. I imagine that is why this hurts. It is not an easy thing, being torn so.”

  They stared at each other, eyes meeting, holding. The moment turned his soul into a lonely wolf’s cry, a rage against all that aching emptiness. The setting sun broke through the clouds and spilled between them like honey. Like fire.

  “I have buried so much of myself, I have turned my garden into a graveyard.”

  He didn’t know what to say to that. Didn’t know how to fill the quiet. Finally, the question just poured out of him, unexpected, with the edge of an accusation. “You blew up the shine wells two years ago,” Why was he poking at this wound? Hadn’t the man bled enough? But he had to know. He had to know what kind of person Christopher Hobson was. Had to know what kind of blood ran in his veins.

  Chris blew out a breath, covered his face with his hands, rubbing them over his eyes. “Had a man on the inside. He gave me the schedule. Some of the people who work on the wells move over to the mines every two weeks on a rotation. These wells were supposed to be empty. They were set to be serviced.

  “I hid in a workgroup for a few weeks, some sympathizers. We hijacked the wells, backed up the shine. On the last day, all it would take was a spark. One spark, and all that shine would,” he made an explosion sound. “I knew that destroying these wells would diminish the shine output enough to likely topple the company. No lives lost, and the company gone. How could I lose? It took a lot of planning, but I had the time to do it.

  “What I didn’t know was, a day before the explosion, there had been a collapse in one of the mines which blocked off one of the primary arteries. Luckily, no one was trapped down there, but with one of the main tears sealed off, they didn’t need more bodies in the mines. The rotation was put on hold. Men didn’t get moved off the wells until the blockage was cleared. By the time I realized what had happened, it was too late.”

  “You killed so many people,” Arlen whispered.

  “I lost some very good friends. I did not mean for that to happen. My goal, my only goal, is to get rid of the company. To give us our land back. We moved out here to be beholden to no one, not to be under the company’s thumb. I didn’t mean to lose people in the process. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. That was never my intention.”

  “That’s a pretty big mistake.”

  “Shine Company speaks the language of money. That’s all they know. I wanted to say something using words they understand. Instead, I caused a tragedy. I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I was a great liberator. I didn’t realize I was the villain in my own story until it was too late to change anything.”

  Arlen let Chris’s explanation sink into him. Night had ripened and the cabin was dark, save for the glow of the shine fire. Arlen fiddled with the lace on the bonnet, rubbing his thumb over it before sitting back in his chair. “Why am I here, Chris? I’m…” what was he? Lost? Confused? Overwhelmed?

  “My son,” Christopher said, sitting back down in his chair. “You’re my son.”

  “It’s time to speak plain,” Arlen said.

  “You want the truth, Arlen? You want to know why I dragged you all the way out here? Haven’t I already told you? I had to see you. I had to know if you were mine. Lila would have demanded it of me. She would have wanted me to lay eyes on our son, to see that he was alive and well, if not ours. Not anymore. I took you out here because it was time for you to come home, to meet the other side of yourself, to shake hands with your past.” He ran his hand through his hair; violet and messy, it fell around his shoulders. “I did this because no matter what else, I never stopped hoping, and I never stopped loving, and sometimes it really is as simple as that.”

  Arlen sighed. He didn’t know what to do with all of this. It was too much. It wasn’t enough. He was lost. Adrift. Deadwood floating in a foreign sea. He had no idea what waited for him over the next curve of the earth. No idea where the tide would pull him.

  “We need to eat,” Chris said. “Got some meat in the cellar.” He got up, and left the cabin, the door closing quietly behind him. Finally, Arlen was alone with the dark, with his thoughts. Just alone. The weight of it pressed down on him. Who was he?

  Chris came back with some meat, which he cut up and threw in a pot with some potatoes, sticking it over the fire to cook. Within minutes, the cabin smelled like stew, spices, and all things good, but Arlen wasn’t hungry. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever be hungry again.

  Neither of them spoke. There was a certain relief he found in the quiet.

  “Eat up,” Chris finally said, tucking into his stew.

  “Chris,” Arlen said. He hadn’t picked up his spoon yet. Hadn’t looked at his bowl. Just watched while the other man ate, juice dripping down his chin, catching in his beard. “What are you going to do now?”

  The outlaw sat back in his chair, wiped at his chin with the back of his hand, and grunted. “Don’t rightly know, son. I didn’t think I’d live this long, truth to tell. The future is full of nothing but horizon. Kind of like it that way. Let’s just eat our dinner, and greet tomorrow when it gets here.”

  The healer, Edward, is helping me lie back on my pillows after a breathing treatment.

  “How is she doing?” Cassandra asks from the doorway.

  Edward studies me, but I am too tired to speak. Too weak to form words. I watch, as he shakes his head. It is enough.

  Strange, how one simple motion can so completely undo someone. Cassandra grips the doorframe like it’s the only thing holding her up. Grips it, and then sags, all the air going out of her.

  Edward leaves, gives us our space. Then, it is just the two of us in a room that suddenly feels like a mausoleum.

  “Ianthe,” Cassandra whispers. She cups one of my hands in both of hers, and brushes her lips against my knuckles.

  She has stolen sunlight, and with it, crafted her tears.

  Sorrow pours from her, echoing with the silvery music of distant star songs.

  I want to say, Queens are not crowned, they are forged, like diamonds.

  You are sacred, I ache to tell her, because I have made you so.

  She wraps her arms around me. Her heartbeat is the sweetest lullaby.

  I had a certain romance with the night. I gloried in the onyx sky, sho
t through with starlight. The moon, bright in her celestial kingdom, revealed the beauty of the dark. I cherished these evenings spent with Ianthe, wandering across the land so I might get to my father’s meeting stone. I learned to love them as much for the journey, as for the destination.

  Ianthe was with me, as always. On this night, however, she was coughing just enough to concern me. I had argued with her, begged her to stay home so she might rest. I urged her to not brave the dark if she was taking ill, but she would not hear of it, and I had given up on trying to persuade her.

  We walked slowly, our fingers twined together, our arms brushing with each step. We spoke of silly things, of dreams we’d had, of things we longed to do.

  My heart was singing with the beauty of it all.

  Ianthe perched on a fallen log when we got to the meeting stone. It had been struck by lightning a few years before, and I knew she was exhausted so I bade her wait there and catch her breath. I tried not to show her my worry, but she was coughing more frequently, her kerchief never quite making it into her pocket before she would need it again. “Stay here,” I told her, before darting to the meeting stone.

  It was really a massive boulder squatting under a sprawling willow tree. I dashed between its branches, and circled the stone, seeing nothing at first. “You were here,” I mumbled, as though my da could hear me. “I know you were.” Usually, he left something in plain sight, but this time I saw nothing, and worry, cold as melted snow, filled my veins.

  There was a small lip on the rock, an overhang that cast a shadow on the ground beneath it. The grass was high and thick in this place and I did not relish the idea of reaching in there, lest spiders dwelled within. I drew in a deep breath to sturdy my nerves and pushed my hand in. Instantly, I felt it. A thin band of cloth. I smiled. The idea of him not showing up to leave me some trinket set a great fear through me, now, however, relief followed in its wake. He had come.

  I thought no more of it than that.

  It was too dark under the boughs of the willow tree to see just what he had left me, so I brushed the grass and dirt from the ribbon and made my way into the moonlight.

  “What did you get?” Ianthe asked, coughing after the last word left her lips, bending double with the force of it. I ran to her, rubbed her back, tried not to see the flecks of blood on the kerchief she’d pressed to her lips.

  She should not have come with me. I should have fought harder to keep her home.

  “I’m fine,” she said, waving a hand in the air. “It’s nothing. What did he leave you?”

  Even then, even at this moment with blood coloring her lips and her breath bubbling in her lungs, her eyes danced with excitement.

  “I’m not sure,” I admitted. I held up the scrap of cloth, about a foot long and two inches wide, now free of all the grass and dirt that had covered it. How long had it been lying there, hidden under that rock?

  It was Ianthe who noticed the color first. “It’s red,” she whispered. “Cassandra, it’s red.”

  Red.

  It had been so many years since we had talked about what a scrap of red cloth would mean. It took me a moment to remember. “Da?” I asked. Then, “Da!” I screamed it over and over again while I circled that willow tree, while I poked my head into any shadow, heedless of the danger that might lurk within. “Da!” I called again, my voice rolling over the landscape like a bell.

  “Cassandra,” Ianthe said, her hands landing on my shoulders, stopping my relentless, panicked search. “Cass, stop. He’s not here.”

  “Da!” I screamed, falling to my knees. “Where is he? He could be injured. He could be…”

  I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t even finish that thought.

  “He’s not,” Ianthe said. “He wouldn’t have left this here if he had been.” She took the cloth from me and tied it around my wrist. “We need to go home.”

  I was cold, and suddenly everything seemed so dark and I was but one person lost in the folds of it. The stars overhead glittered like knives. All I wanted to do was go back to Annie and Jasper, throw the door open, and demand they help me find my father and fix whatever danger he was in.

  It was Ianthe who stopped my headlong tear into danger, though. She cupped my face with her hands and held me in place. “Cassandra, if we don’t go home, then someone will discover what we are about, or we will be seen by the lawmen who watch your house. We must go back to my house. We must pretend that everything is normal. You cannot go home right now. It would attract too much attention.”

  “But—“

  “Cass,” she pressed her lips to my cheek, first one, then the other. “If he was in mortal danger, he would not have taken the time to leave a red cloth here.”

  She started coughing again. It seemed to come from a deeper place now, and it frightened me. Here we were, two headstrong teenagers lost in the wilds of the small hours, and Ianthe was getting sicker the longer we were out. We still had a two-hour walk back to her house, and I feared what it would do to her.

  When we got back to the house, I was taking most of Ianthe’s weight. She had gone sallow, and her eyes were yellow, rolling about in their sockets. The sun was a blush in the eastern sky by the time I bundled her into bed. I fetched a ewer of water, soaked a rag in it, and pressed it against her brow, tears burning my eyes as I did so.

  Helplessness is its own unique form of torture.

  I longed to slip her soul from the ravages of her body and cradle it in my hands as I would a butterfly in summer. I would have stolen the dark off a raven’s wing and created with it an eternal night if she but wished it.

  The shape of her laugh was stuck in my throat, shivering through the temple of my body. She wove her fingers through mine and squeezed. I broke then, under her touch, and found myself in the pieces she left behind.

  I did not love her. Not yet. I was too young for something as powerful as that. I do think, however, it was my first foray into matters of the heart.

  Perhaps that is why it hurt so much.

  “Shine,” Ianthe whispered. “I need some shine.”

  I couldn’t get it for her, though. If I touched it, it would cease being what she required it to be. I went to Imogen’s room, rapped my knuckles on the door twice before pushing it open. She was asleep in her bed, blue hair spilled across her pillows like silken threads of sky. I saw a lot of Imogen in Ianthe, from her high cheekbones to her long, elegant neck, and the brows that curved like the wings of a bird over her large, expressive eyes.

  “Cassandra?” Imogen asked. Then she blinked and seemed to fully wake all at once. “Ianthe. What’s wrong with her?”

  She knew. Of course, she knew.

  “She needs shine,” I whispered. “She’s very sick.”

  I cannot explain how terrible the guilt was that filled me up. It choked me like a poisonous vine. Ianthe was too good for the likes of me. I had been so concerned, so set on my own path, I excused her needs, and now she was coughing blood. I did this to her, and I was incapable of giving her any relief. It tore me up inside. Shredded me.

  I watched while Imogen made Ianthe comfortable. Watched as she put a heaping spoonful of shine in her daughter’s mouth, and then waited for Ianthe to swallow it down. The relief was instant; Ianthe’s whole body relaxed as sleep overcame her.

  It is strange, is it not, how the very things we crave end up destroying us in the end. It’s as though we desire the shine of the knife, but only feel satisfied once we see our own blood.

  Imogen pressed the tips of her shaking fingers to her lips and stared into the distance. I have never seen a person look as ruined as she did at that moment. She did not so much shrink as disappear, her despair taking her over.

  I sometimes think of Imogen then, her face pinched, her body trembling as tears traced down her cheeks to fall like rain to the floor. Love is not gentle. It is not soft. Love is the wildfire, and we walk into it over and over again, offering up our souls, and thanking fate when we get them back broken, sharp, and covered
in char.

  Imogen, on that day, did not ask why this illness came upon Ianthe so suddenly. Did not ask why I had a red ribbon tied around my wrist. She was lost in thought, and I left her to it. My shame drove me out of the house, made me thank Fate that it was light enough to make my way home. My guilt kept me away.

  Ianthe had been sick before, but, as I would later learn, this was her longest illness yet. It was the one that would destroy much of her lungs. It was the beginning of her long, torturous end.

  Guilt is a terrible weight for a person to carry, and I have never been able to put mine down. I went home, full up with worry, not just for my friend, but also for my father. I was nearly sick with it. Under all that, though, was my relief to be out of my friend’s house, away from the albatross of Imogen’s worry, and I hated that I felt that way.

  I have never forgiven myself for that, and I am sure I never will. I will take it with me into the grave.

  Jasper was the first person I noticed when I got back to my homestead. He was standing in the clearing before our cabin, his stare turned toward the horizon. “The shine fields,” he said, not looking away from where he’d pinned his eyes. “They’re burning.”

  His statement made no sense to me at first. The shine fields were always burning, at least a little bit. It was part of the process, as I understood it. I could always smell the shine in the air, and see wisps of dark smoke clogging up the distant sky. I turned my gaze, and froze.

  I’d never seen anything like it. The smoke wasn’t just dark, but black, and there was no break in it. One thick wall of the stuff blotting out the sky, hiding the sun. I could feel it burning my throat, feel it settling in my lungs. The smell came next. I don’t know why I didn’t notice it before, perhaps because I was so full of worry for Ianthe, but now, with nothing but Jasper beside me, I realized the smell of shine was strong enough it nearly made me sick. I covered my nose and mouth with my sleeve.