Robin McKinley - Fire - Tales of Elemental Spirits

ʺIt wasn’t right,ʺ Leslie said, and Miri realized she was near hysterics, near breaking down completely. ʺThe lightning struck as if it was aiming for us. Twilight bolted—and that tree reached down and knocked Mal off. . . .ʺ

ʺLeslie,ʺ Mal said again.

It wasn’t the tree, thought Miri . . . and then she thought, how do I know that?

Flame was standing beside them, at the end of the path, staring toward the graveyard as he had stared into the forest while he waited for Miri to tack Balthazar up and follow him. As he had stared up the path a few short weeks ago, when Miri and Leslie had come this way.

ʺI ran Peggy’s stirrups up and—and knotted her reins,ʺ said Leslie.

ʺShe did that all by herself,ʺ said Mal. ʺI didn’t tell her to. I was so proud of her.ʺ

And Miri saw that he was crying too.

ʺAnd led her onto the path and pointed her toward home and told her to go and she went,ʺ said Leslie. ʺAs if she knew. I didn’t dare leave Mal. I—In case of concussion, you know. You mustn’t leave someone alone if they might be concussed, in case they fall asleep or—or go into shock. . . .ʺ Her voice cracked on the last word.

Miri was horribly aware of the inert hand she was holding. The fingers lay limply in hers; she had to hold on with an effort to prevent the hand from sliding away from hers and flopping back to the ground. She saw the two riding helmets and the remains of the picnic piled up behind where Leslie and Mal were. In the middle of the crisis that little heap of human gear—Mal’s useless helmet, which had not prevented what had happened—suddenly seemed the saddest thing she had ever seen.

She laid the hand down gently and stood up. She had brought blankets and the useless first-aid kit and a thermos of instant coffee with half a bag of sugar in it. She was embarrassed by the first-aid kit, by her adult-ed emergency training, by her ability to splint a broken bone on a healthy unbroken volunteer at the adult-ed center, while an EMT with a clipboard watched her. She’d never had to do more than put a Band-Aid on a graze, and once she’d created a sling for a sprained wrist. She unrolled the blankets and retied the first-aid kit to the back of Balthazar’s saddle. She uncapped the thermos and made Leslie and Mal each drink some of the hot too-sweet coffee; Leslie drank a few sips mechanically, and then held the plastic mug awkwardly for Mal. She does it better than I would have, Miri thought. They didn’t teach us that in the first-aid course. She laid one blanket over Mal as he lay, and tucked the other one around the sitting Leslie. Neither of them seemed to notice.

It had stopped raining, and the wind had died, but the feeling of tension and fear didn’t ease. Almost as if they were in the eye of a hurricane.

ʺI’d better go tell the ambulance crew where to come,ʺ she said. She paused. She had to say something, but the words didn’t exist. ʺWill you be okay?ʺ

Leslie looked up, an expression on her face not unlike the one that had been on Flame’s, that day at the pound. She didn’t bother to try to smile, but she understood what Miri was saying. ʺYes,ʺ she said. ʺWe’ll be fine.ʺ And Miri clearly heard in her voice that she wouldn’t break down or have hysterics while Mal needed her.

But when Miri turned away, to go back to Balthazar, to mount up and ride back as quickly as she still could—dusk would be black dark soon, and if they were following a flashlight she’d have to dismount and both of them walk—there was Flame, standing in her way. She tried to brush past him, but he wouldn’t let her. ʺFlame,ʺ she said, ʺwe have to go back—well, I have to go back. If you want to stay here and—and guard them, that’d be good. But I have to go.ʺ And she reached over him to pick up Balthazar’s reins.

And he bit her.

It was, briefly, as if the world had ended. The world, in some ways, had already ended; although she was still able not to think about what had happened to Mal, to her little brother, to one of the three people she loved best in the world, the awareness of it was horribly near. Still without really facing what had happened, she told herself that doctors were miracle workers these days, that hospitals had machines that could do everything, that Leslie, wonderful Leslie, had kept her head and wisely refrained from trying to move him, so that anything any doctor or any machine could do for him could still be done. But the encroaching darkness of this evening still felt like her own life closing in, as if, after this, there would be no dawn.

And then her dog bit her.

She looked down from what felt like a very long way away, as if she were floating up among the treetops somewhere . . . as if she might float away entirely. He had bitten her swiftly and decisively—but, she now realized, gently. He still had hold of her arm; she could feel his teeth, but they weren’t hurting her. She thought, I’m a balloon and he’s holding my string. Slowly she floated back down from the treetops, till she could feel her feet on the ground, her breath going in and out. Her dog’s teeth in her arm. She let Balthazar’s reins drop back on his neck and said to Flame, ʺWhat is it?ʺ

He let go her arm and turned away, trotting straight back to the path to the graveyard. Slowly she unfastened Balthazar’s tethering rope, and looped it around a tree—a smaller, innocent tree, a little distance from the path, and from Leslie and Mal. Then reluctantly she followed Flame.

ʺWhat is it?ʺ said Leslie.

ʺI don’t know,ʺ said Miri. ʺBut he brought me here. He brought me a lot faster than I’d’ve been able to find the way myself, in this weather. I’d like to see what he wants. It won’t take long. I promise.ʺ

As soon as she set foot on the little track into the graveyard she knew something was terribly wrong. It was like . . . she couldn’t think of anything that it was like: that was part of the wrongness. She felt dizzy and sick, and as if she was no longer sure which way was up and which down; it was an effort to pick up each foot and think where to put it down. Especially because her feet kept wanting to go backwards; the one in front kept trying to pick itself up and move it behind the one in back. She concentrated on Flame’s tail. She had been following Flame’s tail for a very long time; leagues; centuries; all the way from the barn to here, somewhere on the journey unknowingly crossing a boundary to this other country where this awful thing had happened to her brother. . . .

The path itself was short. When they reached the end of it and the sky opened out before them she was astonished to discover that there were streaks of sunset lighting up the retreating storm clouds in gold and pink and pale orange, and the sky above them was a glorious deep blue. There was a huge pale amber moon just above the trees. She was dumbfounded that such beauty could still exist, in this foreign country where her brother lay twisted and helpless where he had fallen.

The trees around the edges of the graveyard were black, and the crooked, leaning tombstones were black. All the rest was washed in the rose-grey of the sunset. Flame himself was a deep vivid russet, like a maple tree in October.

No; one other thing was black. There was a tall, hunched, half-human shape in the middle of the clear space; in the middle of the little cluster of tombstones. She didn’t come here often, but she was sure that no such tall thing had ever stood where this one was now.

She stopped. Flame turned around instantly and came back to her; went round behind her and leaned against the backs of her legs. I don’t want to go forward, she thought. I don’t want to go any nearer that thing—whatever it is.

And then it opened its eyes, or turned its head, or threw back its hood. All of the rest of it was still black, lightlessly black, black as if light were an unconvincing myth, but it had red eyes. Large, slanted, almond-shaped, scarlet-red eyes.