Fire in the Kingdom
Fire in the Kingdom
By Josie Mitchell
Lucy had nothing to do with the fire. It was not her fault.
Heat, finally. Dust, to soak up the damp that had covered her feet through the cold drudgery of covering nearly frosted ground and crossing frigid rivers; she took off her shoes. Blood, for the first time in a hazy number of days, could be felt pounding through her veins. Her lungs finally sucked down air without choking on particles of water. Too much of this world was far too wet. Too cold.
Ahead of her, ashen hills were basking in the bright glare of the sun. A road, flattened but hardly discernible from the expanse of desert, snaked up and through a gap in the ranges and disappeared. Lucy stared at the sun. The chance of people, of washing the encrusted muck away with well water, was enough to force her feet to step along the path.
The compressed dirt of the road was rigid and dry under her feet, steady. There was, thank goodness, something solid beneath her. A fixed burning shot through her long legs as the way turned steep. She pressed harder into the ground with each step, reveling in the solidity and in the stretch of her worn muscles.
Lucy still wasn’t alone once the sun slipped behind the hills, and she settled into the freshly roasted dust off the road, lying back, letting the earth support her full weight. A little shrub stood beside her, each of its muted green branches reaching proudly towards the night sky. She rolled to her side to face it, and the smell of the aromatic herbage wafted into her nose.
“Careful,” she whispered to it, “he might think you’re getting too high and mighty.” The shrub only trembled when a light, warm breeze swept through the pass.
Lucy opened her eyes the next morning to a bright, pink sky. She said her goodbyes to the shrub and continued down the path. Through the small pass, the gorgeously beige and greenish landscape stretched until it faded into the horizon.
Relief, in the form of small clusters of structures scattered sparsely throughout the expanse. Lucy stepped away from the path to move towards the nearest village. The suns seeped into her skin as she walked. Bits of the thick mud from the damp land, splotched over her legs and the hem of her dress, continued to crack, falling away in dry flakes.
Up close, the buildings were greyish, made from splintering, sun-bleached wood that looked out of place, Lucy thought, in the treeless environment. Outside one of the small, weathered houses, a woman was dripping a pitcher of water onto a patch of wilting sprouts. The woman, like Lucy, was covered in smudged layers of dust. Her clothes hung loosely off of her. The plant’s tiny leaves were burnt with spots of brown, yet she gave each only a few drops. “They’ll need more than that to survive all this sun,” Lucy said.
The pitcher nearly dropped from the woman’s hand, slipping as she startled. She looked up at Lucy.
“I know,” the woman responded, still staring. She didn’t give them more water. Lucy opened her palms wide, shading as many of the sprouts as she could with her arms and hands. Small speckles of sunlight seeped between her fingers. When she adjusted her position a bit to cover a different spot, the shadows of her hands’ previous locations remained, blocking the sprouts from the worst of the glare as if something was still between them and the sun. Lucy passed her hands above each of the plants until the whole patch was bathed in dappled shade. The woman, wide-eyed and still clutching the small water pitcher, was backing towards the doorway of her home.
“Before you go in,” Lucy said quickly, “might you point me to the nearest well?”
“You won’t be able to take water today,” the woman replied, motioning deeper into the village.
“Why not?”
The woman had already slammed the door shut. One of the dry planks cracked. “You’re welcome,” Lucy murmured to the sprouts. “Good luck.”
The few people working outside, sweat leaving muddy tracks down their foreheads, tracked Lucy as she strode past them. The well was large, made of stone, looking sturdier than it had any right to amongst the flimsy, fading buildings. Across the opening of the well sat a thick wooden cover, perhaps to keep the children from climbing in, perhaps not. The covering was chained in place; the chains were locked. A wooden sign, firmly attached to one of the posts, read:
1 Bucket Per Household Daily
Distribution by Royal Guards
7 AM
Unauthorized Withdrawal Punishable
Heat. By the time Lucy left the village, her legs and dress were washed clean, though the hem was still rotted. A malformed clump of melted metal chains lay in the dirt beside the well. The sign, smoldering slightly, now read:
1 Bucket Per Household Daily
Distribution by Royal Guards
7 AM Lucy
Unauthorized Withdrawal Punishable
Lucy gazed into the looming sun as she walked and walked, letting her eyes sweat. “I’m sorry I’m so far away now,” she whispered. That blazing star, in all its infinite glory, had never been given a way to respond.
Colorful dots of light amidst Lucy’s blackened vision — the perfect travel entertainment. Perfect until something slammed into her knees, and she found herself, against her own intentions, face to face with the ground, dirt worming its way into her mouth. A child began to cry.
Blinking the gloom from her vision and wiping away the salty grime, Lucy took in the toddler’s sobbing face. They were on the edge of another weathered village. “Cry all you need, sweet thing, but you’re alright. I’m so sorry I didn’t see you,” she said, dusting the child off gently.
Holding her hand out, she squeezed her eyes shut again until the colors returned. When she opened them, the child was gaping, silent, at the orb of pink light sitting on Lucy’s palm. They giggled as Lucy gave the orb a little push, and it started to spin, lazily, around the child’s fluffy head.
They put their tiny palms out, flat like hers had been. “Food?” they whispered. Lucy shook her head, taking the child’s hand and leading them into the village. The pink light followed. “Where do you live? Can’t your parents feed you?”
The child stomped along to one of the nearest houses. So dilapidated, sunrays illuminated the dust blowing through one side and right out the other.
A man standing in the empty doorway kneeled to catch the child as they ran at him, squealing.
“I wasn’t watching where I was going when I came into town, and I must have tripped over them. They’re okay now. Just hungry,” Lucy explained.
“Briar, we’ve told you to only play next to the house,” the man whispered to his child. Then, to Lucy, “Where are you traveling from?”
“Far away,” Lucy replied. A different world, a different purpose, a different name. She dug her toes into the dust; there was solid ground under her feet. “But I just came through somewhere very muddy.”
“The River Republic,” the man whispered wistfully. “You don’t have any extra food, do you? Only, I’ve heard the forests have been especially full this year.”
Lucy turned out the pockets of her dress, showing how very empty they were. “Don’t you have enough?”
“Haven’t you heard? Everything we have here goes to the palace.”
Everything. “What for?” Lucy asked.
“Who knows. The king can take what he wants, can’t he?” The man replied. A king, not again. He’d been a king — her former employer, from her last life. Quite far away but not far enough. Close enough for the past to come seeping into her present. Briar’s weak grip was pulling on Lucy’s scrubbed hem. “Food,” they insisted, “food.” “Where is the palace?” Lucy asked.
She walked, following where the man had pointed with a bony finger, just her and the speechless sun. The Earth supported her steps, thickening the calluses she’d never had before — yet another new thing in her life. Through numerous grey villages, more melted locks, more decorative lights, and more shaded crops. Showcasing the rage of fire, the delight of light, and
the safety of shadows. She always flitted through, never stayed, and continued on with assurances that she was going the right direction.
Word of Lucy, a stranger in communities small enough to have no strangers, evidently preceded her arrivals. A wrinkled old woman noticed Lucy the moment she wandered into the next cluster of homes. Then, grinning a toothless grin, the old woman hobbled over to her with fantastic speed.
“Lucy?” she asked, “the Light Witch?”
Lucy matched the old woman’s smile. Another addition to her name, an improvement. Three syllables, then two, now five. All hers.
“Yes, can I help you?”
The old woman led Lucy to her home, babbling in a never-ending stream. Mostly, words about light.
“Those guards stole all our candles, our oil! Said the palace needs them for the prince’s celebration. Who cares? I’ve got fourteen great-grandchildren! Do you think I have time to darn all those socks during the day? No, I don’t. I need my lights.”
Lucy assessed the old woman’s small home. Shafts of light squeezed through the chinks in the boards, but it was mostly dim, shadowed, even as the sun burned in the sky. A small oil lamp was teetering on a dried tree stump-turned side table. Lucy stared at the lamp, imagined the burning of the sunshine in her eyes, and passed it along. Warm, flickering light as a flame appeared in the glass.
“You should be able to relight it now whenever you need to do your mending. Or if you'd just like a bit of brightness.”
“Thank you!” The old woman called after her as Lucy ducked quickly out of the house. “Goodbye!”
“I hope not,” Lucy replied.
Later, finally, reluctantly, a change in landscape. A city, sprawling shacks, dusty streets, and meager market stalls, took form before Lucy’s eyes amidst the desert. Looming above the rest: the palace. Massive, domineering the view, soaking the warmth of the sun into its expanse of deep-brown. Wooden. Wooden, except for the high stone walls outlining the palace and, given the wafting smell of flowers and non-human manure, its gardens.
“Is this not excessive pride? you should be punishing this.” Lucy muttered bitterly. Her prayer, as always, went unanswered.
The city was crowded, people swarming everywhere, but Lucy zigzagged through them, ignoring every stare. For now, she had a higher purpose. The crowd thickened like congealing blood the closer she slipped towards the mansion. Gates in the sky-high walls were open, yet cordoned off, and the space in front of them was flooded with bodies pushing to get a closer look. With the advantage of height, Lucy could see right into the gardens.
Amidst an array of plump, lushly blooming flowers and surrounded by servants and guards with gleaming gilded spears, two people stood, backs stick-straight. Deep purple fabric, heavy with embellishments, cascaded over both of them, leaving only their heads and hands visible. Atop those heads: bulky, bejeweled crowns, gold and glittering like stars. The king, in his purple-clad arms, stiffly held a wriggling, crying one-year-old. The baby, covered in an equally suffocating amount of intricately decorated cloth, was red-faced in his exertions of simultaneously screaming at the top of his lungs and trying to escape the clearly uncomfortable hold his father had on him. The king and queen smiled and waved at the crowds as if nothing were amiss. In the background, nurses stood, twitchy and ready to snatch back the child whenever he became too inconvenient for his royal parents. The baby’s wails buried into Lucy’s ears despite the noise of everything else — loud, wild. Alive with a dazzling spark of life.
She had certainty that this spark would be snuffed out. Too powerful, too disobedient, it would have to be crushed. The baby’s future was stiff and soulless; he would spend his life being taught what not to do. This child needed saving; this kingdom needed salvation.
The group inside the walls stopped waving. The baby was handed off to a nurse immediately. The crowds cheered as the monarchs scampered into the gaping, wooden palace doors — cheered as those who had taken their water, their food, their candles returned to their gluttonous celebration. The celebration of a miserable baby prince whom the king could not stand holding for more than twenty minutes. Heat. Burning rage.
Lucy had nothing to do with the fire.
In the shadowy comfort of night, spontaneous flames erupted over the wooden walls of the palace. Hungry and devouring, they spread fast, leaving nothing of the walls but ash in their wake. Fresh ruin. The people of the city shrieked as the smoke billowed into the sky; the center of their kingdom was ablaze. The stone wall encircling the palace was all that stopped the fire from creeping into the rest of the city.
Miraculously, none of the palace staff were inside when the fire broke out. They have all reported hazy memories of being tempted away into the city streets by a strong, overwhelming need to stay alive. Alone, lulled deeper into sleep by clouds of thick, choking smoke, the monarchs melted.
Lucy, leaning against the open, warped gates in the stone wall, watched as the last visible flame died out. The expansive piles of debris where the palace had once been were now dark and still under the starlit sky. Bits of ash fluttered in the dry breeze; she breathed them in. She picked her way through the debris, soot hiding the rotten stains on her dress. Warmth from the still-hot embers soaked through her calloused soles. Heat.
Standing alone, untouched by fallen debris or soot, was an intricately carved cradle. From within, the gentle whimpers of a baby.
“You’ll be okay now,” Lucy murmured as she approached, staring down at the sweet face of the child. She gently lifted him from his unburnt cradle and carefully brushed the ash away as it began to settle on his clean face.
No, the fire had not been Lucy’s fault at all. That credit, that glory, belonged to someone else. The fire had been an act of god.
