The flames came under the door slowly at first, burning copper and specked with a red the color of old wine. After the door gave way it came for her mercifully swift, and she was waiting for it. Outside the house, though, and as far away as the next three blocks, her cries could be heard — whether from the pain of death or heartbreak or hotness of love no one ever knew. But all who heard her that morning felt an immense sympathy, and any who could have saved her from that fate would have done so, for it was unbearable to hear.
In the street in front of the house the neighbors all gathered, but it was impossible to enter the building. They could only hope to keep the ones around it from burning as well.
When her cries finally died away it was after twelve o’clock and all was silent in that street for a very long time, outside the sound of a dog’s barking, as the building continued to burn well into the day.
Finally they tore themselves away and returned to their lives, taking care to avoid that place as best they could in the days afterward. Those who did walk that street in the days following, and indeed far into the future, claimed to hear the sound of a woman wailing, and it did strike them cold for a moment before they could continue their journeys. The one who caused it, however, never knew any of it, or her final agony, as she lived on in his memory the way he had known her, long into the future and even till his own final days.
six
Winter in the country around Berkeley was unusually dry that year, with no sign nor hint of snow or rain for weeks on end, until everything was desiccated and brittle as ancient parchment. The woodland creatures all burrowed deeper in their earthen hollows, to search out the soil’s hidden moisture, or else moved higher up into the mountains — where the underground streams that usually fed the lakes of the valley still flowed a short distance before disappearing. There was also one summit, remote in the impenetrable wilderness, where water was always plentiful, and those migrating animals that knew of it passed the dry months. The people in their houses were careful to keep well water on hand to extinguish errant sparks from their cooking fires or tobacco pipes and so protect their farms and freeholdings, but all else it was at the mercy of Heaven.
When snow did begin to fall, the week after Christmas, all were happy for it and rejoiced, thinking it would relieve the parched valley and replenish the streams high up above. However, no one counted on what moved in with the snow clouds. Great, measureless branches of lightning cleaved the sky like a celestial Nile as the storm moved over the hill country, illuminating the entire valley each time one of them exploded — brilliant as a harvest moon or star shower. There was nothing passive, though, about its radiance, and when it finally subsided, little fires could be seen burning. Wherever it had touched the earth — either the stubbled ground itself or else massive oaks and pines high in their upper reaches — all was set ablaze.
At Stonehouses, Libbie gathered Rose and the smaller one, called Lucky, around her in the kitchen, and they watched through the small back window as the world outside was made bright by the pale blue light, moving closer and closer toward them. Libbie worried briefly for Magnus and Adelia over in the main house, but there was no way to reach them, and then it was they had all weathered out storms before.
The next time the sky lit up, though, it was not by one of the massive jolts of lightning but three prodigious balls of it, which seemed to sit directly on top of Stonehouses. The entire farm took on a spectral pink and white glow, and when it died away the hill where Stonehouses itself sat looked to be aflame — as did two of the barns on the shore between the original structure and Caleum and Libbie’s place.
Her first instinct was to go over to check on Magnus and Adelia, but she feared leaving her children alone, and it was impossible to tell in which direction the ground fire was moving. Nor did she want to chance being struck by lightning or getting otherwise caught in the path of the blaze. She sat there with her children as the crackling of the clouds continued, knowing that if anything happened while she was there with them she had at least a passing chance of keeping them from harm.
When the onslaught from the tempest died down and all seemed quiet again, she bundled the children off to bed, put her coat on, and went over to check that nothing had happened to Magnus and Adelia at the main house.
As she walked along the path hugging the lake, she could see fire burning in the distance, though from two different directions. The first was off on her left-hand side, about a hundred yards from where she stood. The wind was blowing it away from a barn that had burned down already, and the fire in grasses around it were moving out toward the barren fields, where they would wither away from lack of anything to feed upon. The other blaze came still from the direction of Stonehouses. It was not until she rounded the lake that she could see the house itself was alight with flame. She quickened her pace after that but tried not to panic as she ran on toward it.
When she arrived, she found Adelia and Magnus standing out there in the storm, looking at their home as it burned to the ground.
“Isn’t there anything more we can do to save it besides just standing here?” Libbie demanded, looking first at them then again at Stonehouses as it cackled and crumbled in the still-falling snow.
Magnus shook his head stoically. “The lightning was right on top of us, and the whole place seemed like it went up at once. It will have to burn out now or not.”
They looked ghostly and faded standing there in the snow, wrapped in blankets and watching the house burn from the inside out. Libbie felt pity when she looked at the two old people, saying only that all of them should all better get in out of the storm before they caught chill on top of everything else. Reluctantly, then, they began to follow her back to the other place, filled with sorrows for all that departed that day.
As they made their way down the path, however, Libbie could see the winds were shifting, and the fire that had been burning toward the meadow was moving instead toward her house, where her children were. All at once she started to run, trying to outrace the flames that were feasting so swiftly, and cursing herself for leaving them there alone; promising to never do so again if they were still safe.
When she arrived at the other building, fire was already licking at the back wall, and she had to rush round to the front to get in, where she ran up the stairs through a thicket of black smoke that had filled the room. Mercifully the two girls were unharmed, though both had stayed there and were deathly afraid when she reached them. Rose, the older one, knew exactly what was happening, and what fire was and the danger they were in, but Lucky had hidden under the bed, and Rose had been unable to coax her out. Nor could she leave without her sister.
“Mother, the house is burning,” she said, pleading.
“Come with me,” Libbie told her sharply, bundling them up and hurrying outside.
Behind the house, Magnus and Adelia were carrying buckets of water from the well, which they struggled to throw onto the flames. Libbie joined in, running back and forth with water buckets, as Magnus battled against the fire with all the strength in his old body, knowing that, if they failed, all was lost, and what had taken so long to make would be snatched away in a single day.