Fire Along the Sky
Page 157

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?”