Fire Along the Sky Fire Along the Sky

  He had cause. Not sufficient cause, he now has come to see, but to him it seemed so at the time. It has to do with the death of Hannah's husband, Strikes-the-Sky. More than that I cannot write down here. It is Almanzo's place to tell that story, for Hannah's sake, and for his own, and for yours.

  I have told him of his father's death, and he is much shaken but now more determined to come home to you.

  Thus this news: your son should be with you in Paradise a week or ten days after you receive this letter. It is time to butcher the fatted calf, Curiosity my dear.

  Your true friend,

  Cornelius Bump

  “My God,” Daisy said, and she pressed her hands to her mouth. A great sob escaped anyway, and then a laugh, and then half the room was crying and laughing together. Chairs were pushed out of the way as people made their way to Curiosity, who had read the last part of the letter with tears streaming down her face.

  “I'ma feed that boy up good,” she said between sobs. “And then I'ma beat him black and blue. Or maybe the other way around.”

  Lily wrapped her arms around herself and rocked back and forth. She caught her father's eye and saw many things there: happiness for Curiosity, whose son had been restored to her. Resignation and some relief at the news that confirmed, finally, that Strikes-the-Sky was dead. Confusion and worry and doubt too, all those things wound together.

  Simon just looked somber, and a little confused. “It's a long story,” she told him. “I'll tell you sometime.”

  “You can tell him this afternoon, daughter,” Nathaniel said. “If he's still planning to call on you.” It was more a question than a statement.

  Simon said, “Aye, I am.”

  It was the look the men exchanged that caused Lily to flush with embarrassment and irritation. She said, “I am going to the meetinghouse,” she said. “There is some work I must finish.”

  “I'll call for you there at four,” Simon said. “And see you home.”

  “Cobbler for supper,” Nathaniel said. “From the last of the dried apples.”

  Elizabeth, who had been listening but staying out of the conversation, drew in a sharp breath and then turned away.

  “Another long story,” Nathaniel told Simon. “But not one you'll ever hear.” He was grinning in the way that men sometimes grinned at each other, when there was a woman at the heart of the matter.

  Lily bit her lip. She had promised herself that she would cause no trouble today, for Callie's sake and Martha's. But there was a limit to even the best of intentions, and she slipped out of the room before she found herself standing on the other side of it.

  Inside the meetinghouse, with the woodstove stoked and her wet boots set in front of it and her hooded mantle draped over a chair to dry, Lily sat down to lose herself in work. The storm robbed most of the light out of the afternoon and so she soon had to stop and light the candles. Any other time she would have simply given up for the day and gone home, but she did not like the idea of climbing the mountain in the driving rain. She might have gone to see Joshua Hench at the smithy and borrow a horse, but with her poor luck she would most likely find herself mired before she got very far.

  Lily blew out all but one of the candles and found an old blanket that she had wrapped her canvases with. It smelled of dust and camphor and cloves, but it was warm around her shoulders. She settled on the floor near the little stove, and fell to sleep without thinking much about it at all.

  When she woke, sometime later, many things occurred to her at once: there was a cramp in her neck; the fire still burned in the oven, but the room was much colder; and the storm had stopped. In its place was a strange twilight glow that filled the room.

  The mantle she had spread out to dry felt good when she wrapped it around herself, so good that she might have gone right back to sleep. But the golden-red twilight would not be ignored, and so she padded over to the window in her stocking feet. At first she did not quite understand what she was seeing.

  One of the things Lily remembered most clearly from the little time she had spent with her uncle and aunt Spencer in Manhattan was the chandelier that hung in their front hall. As a child she had been so enchanted by the way it caught light and spun it into colors that she sat under it for long periods of time, just watching. Aunt Spencer had taken note, and when they left for home she pressed a small package into Lily's hand: hard and uneven in shape, wrapped in a piece of silk and tied with a ribbon.

  Inside there was a note: “To hang in your chamber window.” The crystal was one of Lily's most precious possessions.

  Now she saw a world that looked as if it had been carved from the same clear, many-faceted substance. One part of her mind told her very primly that what she was seeing was nothing more than the results of a sudden freeze on the heels of a hard rain. The other part, the part that was an artist, was not satisfied with such a simplistic answer.

  Every twig on every branch, every pine needle, every nail head stood out from the next, ablaze in the twilight. It was dazzlingly bright, so bright that Lily's eyes began to water and still she couldn't look away.

  As she watched she realized that there was a sound just as odd as the sight of the icy world before her: a low groaning, like a hundred women in travail. It waxed and waned with the wind, and rose and fell and then rose to a scream. With a sound like bone breaking a great branch cracked and crashed to the ground, shedding great sheets of ice that cut through the clear crust that had been laid over the snow.

  Another branch fell, out of sight, and then another. Lily watched, fascinated and horrified as the world began to shatter. The wind lifted its voice, a wayward child with a hammer in a house with a thousand windows.

  The clamor climbed to a roar that went on and on. With a report as loud and sharp as a rifle shot a birch that stood by the porch of the trading post broke in half.

  “Have you ever seen the like?” Simon Ballentyne said behind her, and Lily's heart leapt so that she must put a fist to her breast to quiet it. She struggled to compose her face before she turned.

  He said, “I fell a dozen times on my way here from the doctor's place.” There was a bloody gash on his forehead, and a tear in his breeches.

  “I see that,” Lily said.

  “Curiosity said to bring you back to her, there'll be nobody going up the mountain this night.”

  There was no sense in arguing with something so obvious, and so Lily nodded. Then she noticed that Simon had tucked something under his arm.

  “What's that?”

  “A courier came a few hours ago, from your brother. I stopped in the trading post and he gave me letters to take to Lake in the Clouds.” He held them up to show her.

  “He's put off by the ice,” Lily said.

  “Aye,” said Simon. “A sensible man. Anna and Jed are making up a cot for him.”

  From outside there was a series of loud cracks that made Lily jump.

  “I just have to put on my boots,” she said.

  He waited patiently and did not bother her with talk, for which Lily was thankful. She yawned widely and then, too late, covered her mouth.

  “It's been a long day,” Simon said, and opened the door for her.

  It was no more than a hundred feet from the meetinghouse door to the foundation of the new school, and another hundred feet to the trading-post porch. Lily had walked the path a thousand times or more, but she had never seen it looking as it did now, like polished window glass.

  Simon took her elbow, or tried to. “I'll manage,” she said, and fell, hard, to land on her bum. A branch broke off the oak that stood in the graveyard at exactly the same moment, as if to scold her.

  Lily shot Simon a warning look and helped herself up, only to fall again. He shrugged when he saw her accusatory glance. “Hobnailed boots,” he explained. “But even so I had a hard time of it. Come, lass, take my arm.”

  Lily pushed out a great breath and then, finally, nodded. Simon pulled her to her feet without any effort at all and they stood
there, face to face, breathing hard.

  “You're laughing.” Lily frowned at him.

  “It's laugh or weep, lass. Now hold on.”

  They took five small steps without mishap, and then another five. Lily glanced up at him, pleased, and put her foot down wrong.

  Later, she wondered what it must have looked like to a casual observer. Two people fighting for purchase, feet flying, clinging to each other and laughing like loons.

  Even after they landed, she on her stomach and he on his back, they laughed for a long minute, and then Lily was overcome with hiccups, which set her back to laughing.

  “Ach,” Simon wheezed finally, wiping tears from his face with a gloved fist. “I fear we'll not get very far. Shall we go back?”

  With her nose pressed to the cold ice, Lily considered. There was enough firewood in the meetinghouse to keep them comfortable for a good while, even overnight if need be. She had a small store of food; there were two chairs. She lifted her head to look at the trading post, which seemed ten miles away.

  As if she had been called, Anna McGarrity appeared on the porch wrapped in shawls, her hand shading her eyes as she looked in their direction. Then her voice boomed out over the distance.

  “It's no use!” she shouted. “Back to where you came from!”

  That was enough for Lily. She scooted all the way back, refusing to let Simon help her to her feet.

  “My mother will accuse me of planning this whole thing, ice storm and all,” Lily said later. They had eaten the little bit of dried venison and cornbread she had stored away, and now they sat in front of the stove in the light of the candles. Very comfortable, and at ease. Lily realized that she was tired of arguing, and content to sit with him like this, talking as they used to.

  “Your mother means well,” Simon said.

  “I am just starting to feel a bit more generous toward you,” Lily said. “But that could change quickly.”

  He smiled into his cup of tea, this time without milk or sugar. “Very well. I'll not mention your mother—”

  “Or my father.”

  “Or your father, if you won't.”

  “Agreed.”

  They were quiet for a moment, listening to the wind. In a conversational tone he might use with a stranger on the street Simon said, “The weather's shifting again.”

  “Hmmmm.”

  And then, when she felt she could keep her eyes open no longer, Simon said, “You haven't asked about the letters.”

  She sat up straight. “Is there one for me?”

  He pulled them out of his coat and squinted to read in the dim light.

  “One in your brother's hand addressed to your father. One in your sister's addressed to the family, and a thin one from Jennet. ‘To my cousins,' she's written.”

  “I'm her cousin,” said Lily. She felt Simon's gaze on her. “I'm sure they wouldn't mind if we read it.”

  Simon made a sound that might have been disapproval, or complicity. He grinned.

  “Gabriel will be aye furious if you read it first.”

  “Reason enough,” Lily said, holding out her hand. “The little monster has been far too cheeky of late.”

  The seal on the letter broke with a soft crack. It was a single sheet, closely written. Lily handed it back to Simon.

  “You read it.”

  He cocked his head at her.

  “Go on,” she said. “I've never heard your reading voice.”

  “A test, then.”

  “One test, yes.”

  He grunted softly and took the letter, his eyes running down it. Then he hitched his chair closer to the table where the candles stood.

  “‘Dear Cousins,'” he read in a clear, clipped voice. “‘Today a dozen fat pigs broke through their pen beside the cookhouse to escape the butcher's knife. It was my good fortune to be close by, for I'll never see the like again: a herd of swine leading His Majesty's finest men-at-arms on a mad chase while the colonel's cook watched from the ramparts, waving his arms in the air and shouting in a lovely broad Scots.

  “‘Now, the spring mud is very deep and slippery, which pleased the pigs far better than the men. Mud showers drenched each and every one of them from hat to toe. Oh, and the cursing and the shouting. I was put in mind of the Pirate Stoker.'”

  “She does love that pirate,” Lily said, delighted. “She never misses a chance to tell a story about him.”

  “Fabricated out of thin air, no doubt,” said Simon with a frown. “It's been twenty years since she saw the man.”

  He went on: “‘Now, just when it seemed the men had lost all patience and would soon end the fun by means of their muskets, the porkers seem to realize that the river was their only chance of escape. All at once they turned and stampeded for the shore and launched themselves, every one, onto the bit of ice that still remains. Of course it could not hold their weight and they all fell through. The last we saw of them were rosy pink rumps bobbing their way toward Halifax.'”

  Lily was laughing with great appreciation, but Simon only stared at the letter in his hand.

  “What is it?” Lily said. “Go on.”

  He cleared his throat. “‘And all the while the cook shouted crossly for his porkers, as if they were naught but playful children sure to come home for tea once they had had their fun.

  “‘The best part is this: the prisoners had been set to wood-chopping nearby and thus saw it all, from muddy beginning to watery end. It was aye good to see them laugh. Yours aye, Cousin Jennet.'”

  Lily laughed until tears ran down her face but all Simon could produce was a weak smile.

  She said, “You're not feeling sorry for the redcoats?”

  “Ach, ne,” Simon said, and gave a chuckle that convinced Lily only that something wasn't quite right.

  She watched him for a moment and then, leaning over quickly, snatched the letter from his hand. He made a grab for her wrist, but Lily was already up and away.

  “Give it back,” he said, advancing on her with a thunderous expression.

  “Not quite yet.” When she glanced at it he took the opportunity to leap at her, but Lily wiggled away neatly and ran to the other side of the room, trying to scan the page as she went.

  She whirled around to meet him, holding the letter between her back and the wall.

  “Simon Ballentyne,” she said severely. “Why is it you don't want me to read this letter for myself? Did you leave something out?”

  That stopped him. A thoughtful look came over his face, and then resignation.

  “Suit yourself, then,” he said, holding up both hands as he backed away.

  Lily narrowed her eyes at him. “This isn't a trick? You'll let me read it.”

  “I see no help for it,” Simon said. “If not now, you'll read it later when you're home.”

  Lily considered him for a moment, consumed by curiosity and vaguely concerned too. What could Jennet have written to put him in this state? She thought of her brother, and tried to remember when she had last seen him look as Simon was looking now.

  “Is it some story from home?” she said. “Something you did as a boy she's teasing you about?”

  His mouth contorted. “Just read the letter, Lily, and have done with it.”

  “I'll burn it, if you like. Just ask me and I'll put it in the oven. If it's that important to you.”

  That took him by surprise. He started to say something and stopped himself. Then he ran both hands through his hair and shook his head.

  “Read it.”

  The paper was crumpled from mistreatment and the ink had run a little, but Lily's eyes ran down the page quickly.

  “Today a dozen fat pigs . . . soldiers-at-arms . . . lovely broad Scots . . . drenched each and every one of them . . . Stoker . . . muskets . . . stampeded . . . rosy pink rumps bobbing their way toward Halifax.”

  She glanced at Simon, who was looking at her evenly, as a soldier might look at an officer who was considering an appropriate punishment for some foolish prank
.

  “Finish it,” he said.

  Aloud Lily read, “‘And all the while the cook shouted crossly for his grumfies, as if they were naught but playful children sure to come home for tea once they had had their fun.

  “‘The best part is this: the prisoners had been set to wood-chopping nearby and thus saw it all, from muddy beginning to watery end. It was aye good to see them laugh. Yours aye, Cousin Jennet.'”

  Lily paused, and read it again. She glanced at Simon and at the letter and then into the shadows at the far end of the room.

  Simon blinked at her, his expression wary. Lily read the last two paragraphs once more, and then she saw it.

  “Ah,” she said. “The grumfies. That's it, isn't it. You never did tell me what the word meant.”

  She gave him a small smile, a bit brittle.

  “So you called me a pig, is that it? And you were hoping I wouldn't find out, or I'd forget.”

  A small explosion of air came from his mouth. “I did no such thing. I said—”

  “You said I squealed like a grumfie.”

  He shoulders slumped. “Aye. It was an unfortunate turn of phrase.”

  “Unfortunate.” Lily turned her back on him, not out of anger, but because she did not want to laugh, just yet. His expression was a odd mixture of regret and irritation and disgust; she could not look at him for long and keep a straight face.

  “Unfortunate indeed,” she echoed, trying for her mother's most disapproving tone.

  Behind her he was silent. “I've apologized, and I'll do it as many times as you like.”

  “For calling me a pig.”

  She heard him shift, and when he spoke again, there was some new tension in his voice. “I didnae call ye a pig.”

  Lily went to the window. The last of the light was gone, but the moon was rising bright enough to throw a shadow.

  “Lily,” he said, closer now. “Be fair.”

  “Fair,” she said. “What would you consider fair?”

  Another longer silence, and she turned.