When he woke, he was stiff and on edge. He heard crackling and pushed himself up from the floor. His arms, legs and neck were aching, but he limped towards the window, where he confirmed that it really was night time.
As he crossed the landing, a loud crack came from the street. When laughter followed, he realised that boys were setting off fireworks and his heart began to slow its pace.
He found Sarah downstairs with Clare, in her new room, discussing books that they had uncovered.
“Hi,” the women said and they smiled at him. He almost stopped on the threshold, because he didn't want to ruin the moment. Already, the house had started to feel like a home.
“Sleep well?” asked Sarah.
“A firework woke me. Must have been a big one.”
“Me too,” Sarah said. “I got up, because I wanted to see. Something normal. The world goes on.”
“And so do we,” said Clare.
Simon looked in the direction of the kitchen door. “Shall we go?” he said.
“Yeah,” said Sarah. “I'd like that.”
*
Local school children had made an effigy of Guy Fawkes using sacks stuffed with what appeared to be hollow fibre and straw. It stood at about six feet tall and had marker pen 'X's for eyes. Its nose was a backwards 'L' and whoever had drawn the mouth had diplomatically opted for a straight line.
Over two hundred people had gathered to watch him burn. An ice cream van was parked off to one side, a shiny fire engine sat to another.
The bonfire was tall enough so that everyone would have a decent view of the burning.
“Actually, it's sort of sickening,” Sarah said.
“Sort of?” said Clare.
A government official made an announcement, but his loudspeaker wasn't working, so they could barely hear him. A ripple of clapping and cheering worked its way from the front of the crowd. They joined in half-heartedly.
At last, Clare was feeling in control again. She wouldn't have said that she was back in her element, but here she was, walking among people as though she hadn't seen the things she had seen or done the things that she had done. She continued to clap, empowered by her secrets.
She had never felt like she belonged in society, even before the Third. She didn't want to belong. Except now she'd met Simon and that was different.
When a little boy smiled up at her, she smiled back and felt a momentary schizophrenia. Her smile had been automatic, but did that make it real or something well-practised? Was anything about her real?
The boy took a swig from his can of fizzy drink and was then weaving between the bodies to get nearer to the front.
“Look,” Sarah said.
A local teen, supervised by a fireman, used a flaming torch to set light to the bonfire. Once done, the crowd gave him a cheer and then cheered again as two men used torches to get the blaze really going.
As Clare had, Sarah found herself watching the crowd more than the fire itself. The children shrieked with pleasure as flames stretched up and up and up and leapt and cracked and barked and grabbed the Guy by the ankles, twisting and roaring and pulling sticks apart to lick at his hollow fibre body. All the while, his grim mouth was set with determination.
“It's going to be okay,” Sarah thought bitterly and laughed. Clare put an arm around her then.
Sarah found that she didn't mind it.
“It is going to be okay,” she thought. “This time, it really is.”
The crowd rippled and rolled like an animal, retreating from the growing flames, until the three of them were no longer lost in the middle, but standing very near to the front. Sarah was glad of the warmth on her face. Despite a hot shower, this was the first time she had felt warmed since the intense cold of the Third. She reached out for Simon's hand and when he took it her warmth was complete.
Three firemen were now standing in front of their vehicle with their arms folded. Like Simon, they were unsmiling. The fire had taken on its own life now and would burn unassisted for a good time to come. It created and recreated itself, finding new sources of fuel and using them up, throwing smoke into the air and ash to the embers. The belly of the fire roared, orange and blue and red, white and green.
The Guy's head was a flame, his fiery crown spiralling up and up and exploding above him. Amber sparks leapt like grasshoppers, turning the grass black.
Unlike the firemen, Simon saw things in the flames that he reasoned could not possibly be there. He watched Firdy's arm reach up out of the embers, the gloved hand melting, ringed with fire, seeking a grip on the world. He saw the Third, a tidal wave of fury, crashing over her son, then drawing back, like fingernails digging great grooves into the world. He saw Naomi and Ian Moody and Jonathan, rolling in the ash among jaws and teeth and claws, turning over among smacking lips, tongues ...
A hand seized his arm.
Not Firdy this time.
One of the firemen.
Hauling him back.
Sarah holding him too.
Tugging at his sleeve.
Nine years old again. She'd always be nine years old to him.
“What were you doing?” she asked. “What were you looking at?”
Clare was also watching him intently.
He thought for a moment what to tell them and decided to tell them the truth, that he had imagined terrible things in the fire and that he had been afraid, but in the middle of it, as furious as the flames themselves, he had seen himself with the two of them, carving paths through the future, leaving the past behind.
## End ##
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