A few minutes later Kathleen and Edward found their path blocked again. Fire burning from the direction of the river had raced through the duff of leaves and needles on the forest floor, climbed into the dry branches of the trees, and leaped across from the low to the high side of the trail. Kathleen looked down and saw a semicircle of flame coming up the mountainside toward them. A rabbit, lost and frightened, scurried past her.
“We have to go straight to the top,” Edward said, nodding to the steep slope at their right. “There’s no other way.”
“I can’t go on,” she told him.
“You must. If we stay here, we’ll suffocate in the smoke, or we’ll be burned alive. Hurry.”
Kathleen left the trail and climbed, placed her toes in footholds on the jagged rock, pulled herself upward by grasping shrubs and branches. The lantern’s metal handle cut her fingers, so she shifted it from one hand to the other and back again.
“Leave the lantern,” Edward told her. “We’ll make better time.” Gratefully she set the light on a rock. From force of habit she turned down the wick and watched the flame flutter and go out.
Kathleen moved faster now, scrambled over loose earth, breath short, a catch in her side. She paused on a ledge of rock, then clambered on higher. She felt herself slipping and clutched a branch, heard the dry wood snap, and she fell. She did not get up. I’ll lie here, she thought. Nothing matters anymore except keeping very still, resting. Edward touched her shoulder but she shook him off. He turned her over roughly and pulled her to her feet. She leaned on him for a moment, feeling a new strength flow to her.
The ascent became a nightmare. The fire flared high on both sides and behind, receded briefly only to flare stronger than before, throwing an eerie, flickering light on the rocks and trees. Smoke eddied around her. She remembered, as she had when she left the train at Gleneden, the swirling stream and writhing bodies in her father’s old book. No depiction of Hell, she knew, could be more terrifying than the scene before her.
The air became hotter. She tried to blink the perspiration from her eyes, wiped her face with a sleeve. Her hair hung damp and disheveled. The dress clinging to her legs made her envy Edward’s clothes. Women’s dresses are designed to hobble and impede, she decided. Hers had become unrecognizable—buttons lost, the cloth torn and smeared with soot.
The fire surged close. A ball of fire hurtled up the slope scattering flame behind. Kathleen’s eyes widened. Another rabbit, she realized, its coat ablaze. The animal stopped, quivered in its death agony, and she recoiled from the stench of burning flesh. She saw a flash above and in front of them, where no fire had been before, and a moment later flames shot into the crest of a tall tree, leaving it burning like a beacon against the sky.
She choked, felt the heat sear her face and hands. Wherever she turned she found no escape. A sudden gust blew her hair about her face. A shower of sparks whirled around her and, when they landed, small fires sprang to life in the leaves.
“Your dress!” Edward’s voice was edged with alarm. She looked down to find a smoldering circle of burnt cloth spreading from an ember on her skirt. She shook the glowing fragment from the dress before bending to beat out the fire with her hand.
“No, no farther,” Edward called. “We’re trapped.” She breathed warm air into her lungs, longing for coolness. Edward pulled himself up to stand beside her. He handed her the canteen. She felt the metal rim warm on her lips and, although she tipped the container high, a mere trickle ran into her mouth.
“Empty,” she said. He hooked the canteen back on his belt.
“Over here, we’ll have to dig in.” Edward led the way across a rocky clearing to a group of huge boulders rising twice as high as a man’s head and, leaving her at the base, scaled the sloping rock. He returned in a few minutes. “We have a chance. I found an overhang at the top with a crevice underneath. Not large, but large enough.”
“Help me up.” Kathleen placed her foot on the side of the rock.
“No, not yet. We’ve got to keep the fire as far away as we can. You go around to the right and clean out the debris. I’ll go the other way.”
Kathleen stooped to remove branches which had fallen on the rocks and throw them as far as she could from what was to be their sanctuary. She knelt and cleared a two-foot dirt corridor by scraping the matted leaves from the base of the rock formation. Did moss burn? She did not know and, not wanting to take the risk, she clawed at the clinging growth with her fingers. But when she found she could dislodge only small segments, she abandoned the task.
A crashing in the brush made her turn, startled, her back against the rock with both palms flat on the rough surface. A stag bounded into the clearing and stopped with his antlered head cocked. Did she glimpse the reflection of the flames in those huge eyes? The deer swung about, jumped up the slope in a series of graceful leaps before disappearing into the woods.
Kathleen dropped to her hands and knees. As she dug into the dry leaves she winced as her fingernail tore, but she did not pause. She heard a voice and glanced up. “Edward.”
“Good, the circle’s complete,” he said. She joined her firebreak to his on the far side of the boulders where, for the moment at least, they were shielded from the heat.
He looked over his head at a tall hickory and frowned. “That dead tree worries me.” One great branch, black and leafless, reached above them. “If the limb splits and falls…”
Edward climbed onto the boulder and reached down to pull her up beside him. They had walked only a few paces along the top when he stopped her. “Down there.” He pointed to a crevice no wider than her body cutting across the rock like a dark wound.
“You first,” he said, “I’ll help. Be careful, the inside’s deeper than it looks.”
Holding to his hand, Kathleen slid feet first into the cleft between the rocks. He was right, for the crevice was not only deeper but also larger than appeared from the surface. The dirt floor sloped gently down, widened and became higher until she could stand if she crouched. Kathleen inched ahead with one hand touching the wall, the other extended in front of her. As the passage narrowed abruptly her outstretched hand struck a damp slab of rock.
Probing up and down on the wall with her fingertips, she satisfied herself she had reached the end of the cave. Not really a cave, for a long, narrow opening high on one side extended its full length. Through this jagged crack she saw an orange glow spread across the sky.
Kathleen backed from the rock wall until she could turn. Edward stood where she had left him outlined in the entryway. He swung himself into the opening and dropped down beside her.
“Make sure there’s nothing that will burn,” he told her. Together they crawled on hands and knees, gathering leaves and twigs.
“The soil underneath is moist,” she said.
“Must be a spring somewhere near. We’re in luck.” Edward piled the litter together and climbed from the crevice to hurl it down the slope.
When he returned they sat together in the cave watching the fire leap toward them, race along the ground, flame into the trees. Edward covered his face with his hands, but not before she saw his mouth twitch uncontrollably. “Trapped, trapped,” he muttered.
Smoke billowed above the fire and drifted into the cave, forcing them to hold handkerchiefs over their mouths. Kathleen felt her throat contract. She bent forward with head to knees, held her breath, but could not prevent the spasm of coughing.
The heat. Was there no escape from the pulsing, searing heat? They lay flat on opposite sides of the cave with faces pressed to the walls. A roar outside told her the fire had climbed into the hickory. She looked up, felt the blast of heat, drew back and huddled closer to the rock. The cave was light as day. The walls seemed to gather and focus the heat on her body.
The splintering of wood. She tensed. A crash. The thudding impact shook the walls of the crevice, while rocks and dirt rained on her head. The branch had fallen. Flames sprang to life within the cave. She scooped dirt onto the burning pieces of bark and wood, stamped on the smoking embers. Edward had not moved from where he lay on the floor of the cave. Is he ill? she wondered.
She looked outside and saw that the limb had slammed onto the rock and rolled to rest against a tree on the ground below. The heat seemed to have lessened. “The worst is over,” she said. Edward did not reply. “The fire’s going on beyond us.”
“Thank God.” His voice shook.
Kathleen sighed and lay still, exhausted. She had feared she was going to die. Now she knew she would not. She gathered dirt in her hand, squeezed, and felt it trickle from between her fingers. The feel of the earth gave her pleasure. Everything will be different, she told herself. I’ve been selfish, unappreciative of what I have. I’ll change.
Edward, lying with his back to her, drew up his knees and clasped them to his body.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“It’s nothing.”
She touched his shoulder and found he trembled like a man with the ague. “Don’t worry about me,” he murmured as he shifted away from her hand.
I want to help him, she thought. All her life she had avoided touching others or being touched, yet now she wanted to reach to him and hold him in her arms while she assured him she would not leave, would be there when he needed her. But, afraid of being rebuffed again, she lay on her back staring through the crevice at the pale glow in the sky. She felt alone and unable to help. There was so much she did not understand about Edward.
Kathleen woke with a start. When she realized her body was curled against Edward’s she pulled back. Is he awake? Has he noticed? She could not see his eyes in the darkness.
“The wind has changed,” he said. His voice, calmer now, startled her and she jumped. He was awake. She felt herself blush. The breeze flowed cool on her face and, still only half-awake, she savored its freshness. She stretched, turning this way and that to find a comfortable position on the hard ground. Who are you, Edward Allen? she wondered. She remembered him beside the creek in the glen when she thought he would kiss her, pictured him fighting Floyd, then huddled in the cave with his back to her. Who are you?
Again she slept.
Such a pleasant noise. I’m so cool, so relaxed, she thought drowsily. What is the sound? The rustle of leaves? The brook splashing in the glen? Kathleen opened her eyes. She recognized the sound now. Rain.
A hard rain drummed on the burned leaves, quenched the last, smoldering embers, collected in black pools in hollows on the boulders, ran off in rivulets which emptied into streams rushing toward the river. Although clouds hung low over the mountain and the cave remained dim, the soft light outside told her the morning had come. She remembered waking on rainy mornings at home feeling warm and protected under the covers of her bed.
Edward stirred in his sleep. She watched his lips move, heard him groan, his face contorting as though from a frightening dream. He reached to her and his hand ran along her side in what she believed must be an almost instinctive caress. He quieted and she saw him smile.
Half-awake, he shifted his body until he lay against her. When she felt his fingers move lightly down her side to her leg she stiffened, shrank away, but he spoke her name and she relaxed, accepted him, trembling as his hands moved on her body beneath her clothing. But she accepted him. As though she had no choice. This is right, she told herself, pushing doubt from her mind.
He kissed her, gently at first, then demandingly, making her shiver with an excitement she had never known. She adjusted her body to receive the weight of him, felt him strain to her, knew fear and pain and joy. She held him, her fingers in his hair, repeating his name again and again—“Edward, Edward, Edward!”—the syllables an affirmation, an entreaty, a caress.
After a long while she quivered beneath him and he moved with her, and then was still. When he raised himself from her she opened her eyes, tried to read his expression, but in the pale light she could not.
“My darling Kathy,” he said. “My lovely, lovely Kathy.”
She felt warm and content, afraid yet happy. She pulled him closer, holding, touching, murmuring. He’s mine, she thought, mine for the rest of my life. Even if I should never see him again, he’s mine.
In the stillness she could once again hear the whisper of the rain.