Trying my hand and more short fiction this week, as I combine traditions of autumn with a noir sensibility.
She could feel the bodies run past her in the dark wood, the flowing stream of humanity whipping and whirling around her, the stars and moon obscured by the skeletal remains of the canopy. She stepped lightly among the tree roots as the younger children screamed like banshees, called towards the light beyond the tree line. It was the same clearing every year– starting at the beach, a kilometer or so inland, down the well-worn path– where the people from town brought their twigs and branches and leaves and piled them high to wait for the spark. She shoved her fists deep into her cardigan pockets and smiled as she heard friends calling out to one another.
“Faster, faster, Sophie!” The urging, pitched voice belonged to Michael, the little boy who lived on the corner with his mother and two smaller siblings, so young they barely even spoke sentences. Twins, Sophie’s brother-in-law had winked, but the Irish kind.
Michael’s mother held a little one on each hip as the boy toddled towards the clearing and squealed. “Come back here!” She shuddered as her foot slipped on a patch of wet. “Michael, stay where I can see you!”
Michael was gone, his small head peeking and ducking behind the bodies silhoetted against the rising flame.
A storm had ducked south just in time to leave the kindling dry. Past years, the pile of brush had been far too wet, far too smoky, far too weak to perform its duty. Though she was still meters away from the clearing, she could already feel the warmth from the mass exploding with energy. It was impossible to stifle excitement when she could hear the pop of pine cones and the explosive cracks as the heat burst forth through the pile of limbs. The fire quickly grew from a whisper to a scream, Come to me, it roared. Give me what I crave. The mayor pulled a branch from a reserve pile and threw it with his whole might at the top of the pile. The crowd breathed, inhaling and exhaling into the pulse of the licking tonuges, the collective bellows that urged the swirling inferno.
The tornadoes of rising heat flirted with the skirts of the townswomen, all pulling now at their woolen stockings, too hot in the breeze of the blaze. The flushed children stayed behind the rope cordon volunteers put up at the perimeter of the fire-line. Before Sophie was born, there had been an incident. The older folks’ eyes went dark when searching for polite ways to explain what they had seen and heard. The rules were now strictly adhered to. Children behind the ropes. Unless they earned the responsibility of approaching.
The bonfire in Seabreak went farther back than anyone could say. Back to when people spoke Old English, back to when the town was called Morþorwyrhta. Sophies great-grandmother spoke of her own grandmother’s delight at the conflagration. She hummed in broken voice the melody of the songs they sang in celebration, so off-key Sophie could never hope to re-create them. The lyrics were in words Sophie could not pronounce. But the other traditions remained.
The vicar moved silently through the crowd, gathering the queue with polite intrusions into conversation. Sophie could hear him murmur his pardons. “If you don’t mind, may I grab Jeremy?” he would say, and move the beaming man to his space in the processional. Only the vicar knew the order, and he knew it by memory. The order would start over again, tomorrow.
Sophie would be near the front of the line, and she was glad of it. She shoved her fists into her cardigan pockets, deeper now, wanting to feel the breath of the fire against her skin, her stomach giddy as she made eye contact with the black-clothed man and he moved his way through the crowd to her.
“Pride is a sin as well, Sophie,” he said, his face breaking into a grin. “Go on, then, behind Mrs. Stanhope, and quickly. There are fewer this year than last.”
Sophie paused to shake the vicar’s hand. “Shame. I hope that there are enough to keep the tradition up in a few years’ time.”
Ten more people lined up behind Sophie– Michael, her tiny neighbor, swaying at the end of the line, fearfully looking back at his mother in the shadows. The light of the fire made it difficult to see the faces in the gawking crowd. She felt as though she was on stage, though the last time she had lights in her eyes as such was when she played the third cow in her elementary school Nativity. Michael was just too large to play the baby Jesus again this year. He would make an absolutely darling lamb.
The mayor and the vicar stood side-by-side at the break in the ropes.
“Thank you all for coming!” the mayor shouted. He was met with polite applause.
“The forecast is changing,” the vicar said, slipping his phone back into his pocket. “So I think I may forgo some of my usual speech and move on to the reason we are gathered here.” A splotch of rain landed right on his glasses lens, and Sophie felt a cold drop wiggle its way beneath her collar and down her back. She pulled the empty cardboard box from her pocket, and held it in her right hand.
“Now, you all know the words of the offering, may we suggest reciting them as you wait in line?” the mayor said. “Just to keep the pace up. Have you done it, Joseph?”
The man first in line beamed. “Aye.”
“Right you are, then. You emptied the chamber, correct?”
“Right into ‘im, I’d say.” Joseph held up a wooden-handled pistol to a beaming crowd. With a strong under-handed bowl, he threw the gun into the roaring fire.
“You know the rules. No bullets, incendiaries, or full boxes of poison in the fire, all!” The vicar shouted. “Sophie, the arsenic is out, right?”
Sophie beamed. “And in the old woman’s porridge, yes, sir.”
“Good. Mrs. Connell? Where’s Mrs. Connell?”
“Back here!” Michael’s mother called.
“Now, I understand his father had a bit of an accident down the stairs, correct?”
“Aye.”
“So what will he be offering to the Cleansing Flame?”
Michael yipped as he pulled two dark pieces of fabric from his pockets. “Daddy’s socks!”
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