“Don’t. You have to wake up.” Mom’s eyes were still on her work, the wooden needles slipping up and down, in and out, knotting the strands of orange yarn into a glowing pattern against the gray and black swirls.
Keelie coughed and opened her eyes, the dream fading although the misty swirls remained, whooshing overhead in choking billows.
Fire.
All sleep gone, Keelie sprang to her feet. “Dad! Dad!”
Her father’s cough came from across the room, where his bedroom area faced the front windows. Then his groggy response vanished. “Get out, Keelie! Take nothing, just go!”
Take nothing? Keelie put her feet into her shoes and grabbed her roomy purse, which hung from her bedpost. The floorboards were hot, and she could see the orange glow of flame between the cracks. Her heart pounded. The shop was on fire, too. She felt her way toward the door. The smoke was impossible now, like a thick, gagging blanket.
She dropped to her knees and crawled, coughing. She couldn’t breathe. She pulled her T-shirt up and held the hem over her nose as she felt her way, on her knees and one hand, toward the wall. The wall would take her to the front door.
Her shoulder banged into something hard and objects rattled above her. One struck her head, then rolled to the floor. The pain stopped her, robbing her of what little air she had, and her hand closed on the object. It was a wooden frame (yellow pine, from Alabama). Keelie couldn’t see the picture, but she knew it was one of the photos of herself that Dad kept on a little chest by the front door.
“Keelie, why did you stop? Are you near the door?”
Glass exploded behind her and a wave of fire rolled over her. If she’d been standing, she would have been scorched. But the light of the fire showed Dad scuttling toward her, a towel over his face. Knot was riding his shoulders, claws dug in, his eyes wide with fear and his orange fur puffed out so that it looked like he was on fire, too.
“Keep moving,” Dad commanded, and she turned and hurried toward the door. The floor was blistering hot now, and Keelie got up and walked in a crouch. The fire sounded like ten trains and a tornado were beneath and all around them.
She reached the door and touched the knob, but it wasn’t hot. In her school’s fire safety training, she’d learned that a hot knob meant fire was on the other side. If the stairs were on fire, there would be no way out of their apartment.
She turned the knob and pulled the door open, gulping in a great breath of fresh air. Behind her, that same air fed the flames. Suddenly, she was on her face with a big weight on top of her. Heat roared overhead.
“Are you okay?” Dad said in her ear. “I tried to warn you, but you opened the door too fast.”
“Yeah.” Her voice came out as a dried-out whisper. Hands reached out through the smoke that now blanketed the stairs outside, and she found herself in Tarl the mud man’s gigantic grasp.
“Hold still, little girl. I’ll get you out of here.” He picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder. “Zeke, you behind me?”
“I am. Knot, run ahead.” Her father’s voice was reassuringly strong.
Keelie watched the cat dash down the stairs as she left Heartwood for the last time-upside down, over Tarl’s shoulder, bobbing in time to his rushed stride down the stairs. She saw Knot pause to look up at Heartwood, then run into the woods.
“I’ve got to reassure the trees,” Dad said. Immediately, his soothing tree speak calmed the trees around them and Keelie realized that their panic had fueled hers. She tried to add her calm to his, but found only fear within.
Tarl set her down, coughing, by the trees at the other edge of the clearing, then ran back to Heartwood. A crowd had gathered and she was surrounded by concerned voices, but she brushed away their hands and turned to watch the fire.
Hob was at the edge of the crowd, looking up in wonder, the flames dancing in his shiny eyes.
Something about his expression reminded Keelie of someone else, but she couldn’t think of who, because she suddenly remembered the Compendium. The one and only, the record of all elven magic, entrusted to her so that she could learn from it. It was under her bed.
She ran back toward the steps, her lungs hurting from the smoke and the effort. Hands grabbed at her, but she twisted away and ran up the stairs. She only got halfway up before her father’s arms grasped her and pulled her away.
“The Compendium,” she cried. “Dad, I have to save it.”
“It’s too late, Keelie. It’s not worth your life.” His voice was rough, as though he’d smoked his way through a million packs of cigarettes.
She kicked free and turned to head back up the stairs, but the greedy fire was now leaping from tread to tread and wrapping around the handrail like a flaming garland. If she’d gotten to the top, she would not have been able to leave again. She backed away, her heart squeezed tight in her chest.
Heartwood, her father’s beautiful shop, seemed like it was being eaten by a flaming monster. The fire licked up to the trees, and their cries of fear echoed once more in her head. The whole forest was roaring in alarm. Above her, the branches were trembling with the weight of the bhata who’d come to watch.
Water poured onto the fire from the other side of the building and, through the crowd, Keelie saw that Sean and his jousters had dragged up a portable water tank and compressor. But the water wasn’t on Heartwood. They were wetting down the trees and the roofs of the other shops to protect them.
For a second she was angry; then she realized that they were right. It was too late for Heartwood.
The crowd gasped as the front of their apartment fell into itself, folding like a cardboard toy. The roof caved down so that it looked like a floppy hat resting on the ground. Keelie’s knees seemed to dissolve and she found herself sitting on the ground. Legs and long skirts swayed around her, and the trees shrieked in her mind.
As if it was a nightmare revealing itself in flashes of memory, Keelie saw the fire brigade abandon its quest. The wooden roof shingles glowed like rows of coals before tongues of flames licked up around them.
Janice appeared in front of her, face made rosy by the reflected firelight. “Honey, let me tend that cut.” She gestured toward Keelie’s head. Something tickled Keelie’s forehead and she rubbed a hand over her face, wincing as she touched a sticky, sore spot. Her hand came away wet with blood. It seemed as black as the soot that coated her skin.
Janice started to dab at her forehead with a wet washcloth. It stung, but not too badly. She felt something in her other hand-a heart-shaped wooden frame that held her second-grade school picture. She was missing her two front teeth, but her grin was still broad. She looked at it for a moment before she remembered grabbing it off the floor.
The Compendium was gone, but she had saved this. All of Dad’s beautiful furniture was destroyed, including the beautiful counter carved from a single great trunk, but she had her second-grade school picture. Tears began to flow down her cheeks, dripping from her face.
“Oh honey, I’m sorry,” Janice said. “I promise I’ll be done soon, and then I’ll put a nice salve on it to take the pain away.”
Keelie wanted to tell her that nothing could take the pain away, but she was beyond words.
six
An hour later, Keelie was wrapped in a quilt, freshly showered, in the apartment above Janice’s shop.
“This tea will soothe your throat.” Janice placed the steaming mug of tea next to her on a little table (mahogany, from Belize).
“Thank you,” Keelie croaked, her throat raw, as she sipped from the mug in between her hands. The scent of smoke still lingered in her hair despite having shampooed it several times in Janice’s shower. She wished Sean were here to hold her and tell her it would be okay. He was still with the jousters, making sure the fire at Heartwood was out.