Soul of the Fire

Silence throbbed in her ears. There were no bugs making noise. No crickets. No frogs. No birds. It was just plain dead quiet, like the ground in the lamp's little glow around her was all there was to the world and beyond that there was nothing, like if she left the lamp and stepped out there into the darkness she might fall through that black beyond till she was an old lady and then still fall some more. She knew that was foolish, but right then the idea seemed very real and scared her something fierce.

The privy door squeaked when she pulled it open. She hadn't even been hoping, as she done it, because she knew Julian wasn't in there. Before she got out of the bed, she knew he wasn't in the privy house. She didn't know how she knew, but she did.

And she was right.

She was sometimes right about such feelings. Julian said she was daft to think she had some mind power to know things, like the old woman what lived back in the hills and came down when she knew something and thought she ought to tell folks of it.

But sometimes, Nora did know things. She'd known Julian wasn't in the privy.

Worse, she knew where he was.

She didn't know how she knew, no more than she knew how she knew he wasn't in the privy. But she knew, and the knowing had her shaking something fierce. She only looked in the privy because she hoped she was wrong, and because she didn't want to look where she knew he was.

But now she had to go look.

Nora held the lamp out, trying to see down the path. She couldn't see far. She turned as she tramped along, looking back at the house. She could make out the window, because the fire was going good. The birch logs had caught, and the fire was throwing off good light.

The feeling of terrible wickedness felt like it was grinning at her from the black night between her and the house. Clutching her shawl tight, Nora held the lamp out to the path again. She didn't like leaving the children. Not when she had her feelings.

Something, though, was pulling her onward, down the path.

"Please, dear spirits, let me be a foolish woman, with foolish woman ways. Please, dear spirits, let Julian be safe. We all needs him. Dear spirits, we needs him."

She was sobbing as she made her way down the hill, sobbing because she feared so much to find out. Her hand holding the lamp shook, making the flame jitter.

At last, she heard the sound of the creek, and was glad for it because then the night wasn't so dead quiet and frightfully empty. With the sound of the water, she felt better, because there was something out there, something familiar. She began to feel foolish for thinking there was no world beyond the lamplight, like she was on the brink of the underworld. She was just as likely wrong about the rest of it, too. Julian would roll his eyes, in that way of his, when she told him she was afraid because she thought the world was empty beyond the light.

She tried to whistle, like her Julian whistled, so as to make herself feel better, but her lips were as dry as stale toast. She wished she could whistle, so Julian could hear her, but no good whistling sound would come out. She could just call out to him, but she feared to do it. Feared to get no answer. She'd rather just come on him and find him there, and then get cursed for her foolish crying over nothing.

A gentle breeze lapped the water against the edge of the lake, so she could hear it before she could see it. She hoped to see Julian sitting there on his stump, tending a line, waiting to catch them a carp. She hoped to see him look up and curse her for scaring his fish.

The stump was empty. The line was slack.

Nora, her whole arm trembling, held up the lamp, to see what she came to see. Tears stung at her eyes so she had to blink to see better. She had to sniffle to get her breath.

She held the lamp higher as she walked out into the water till it poured over the tops of her boots. She took another step, till the water soaked the bottom of her nightdress and shift and dragged the dead weight back and forth with the movement of her steps and the waves.

When the water was up to her knees, she saw him.

He was floating there, facedown in the water, his arms limp out to his sides, his legs parted slightly. The little breeze-borne waves slopped over the back of his head, making his hair move as if it were some of the lake weed. He bobbed gently there in the water, like a dead fish floating on the surface.

Nora had feared to "find him there, like that. It was just what she feared, and because she feared it so, she wasn't even shocked when she saw it. She stood there, water to her knees, Julian floating like a dead bloated carp twenty feet out hi the lake. The water was too deep to wade out to get him. Out where he was it would be over her head.

She didn't know what to do. Julian always did the stuff she couldn't do. How was she going to get her husband in to shore?