TWENTY-EIGHT

THE CARRIAGE SHED WAS EVEN DARKER THAN THE STREETS. And so silent I thought the Girl must have kicked through the wooden bar and galloped off by herself. But as shapes congealed into various shades of black, I saw her outline. She was standing stone still now, her dark eyes burning. Only her nostrils flared slightly with each breath. We looked at each other, appraising one another. Did she deign to let me climb onto her back? Did I dare to do so? Leading her was one thing, but galloping a horse as powerful as she was with no saddle and only a halter for guidance was nothing short of lunacy.

But there was no other way to get to the livery in a hurry. With my heart crowding my throat, I pulled the halter from its hook. I buckled it on her head, looped the rope around her neck for makeshift reins, and knotted the end under her halter. She began prancing in place, her big hooves thudding the straw and her shoulder jostling against me. “Whoa!” I ordered. Keeping one eye on her, I carefully lowered the bar. She lunged through before it hit the ground, yanking me off my feet. “Whoa!” I cried again. It was no use. In her fervor she went caroming off one wall and into another. A bucket upended, a rake clattered to the floor. Her shrill whinny split my ears. Aware that I could be crushed in her frenzy, I nonetheless rushed toward her and grabbed hold of the rope again. I yanked as hard as I could and she came to a tense halt, eyeing me with momentary surrender. Forcing her head toward her stall and away from escape, I managed to push open the sagging carriage shed door. The rush of night air spun her round and she charged the opening. With all my strength, I pulled her back. In one smooth motion I kicked a crate into place, then lightly stepped onto it and onto her broad back. There was no mane to grasp. We were already moving, and I remembered to duck my head a split second before she shot through the doorway.

In all my life I’d never felt such raw power. I was terrified and thrilled at once. The Girl’s huge shoulders lifted and sank, building speed, eating up the ground in great, rolling strides. She headed out to the street and instinctively veered toward the fire station—which was the wrong way. Desperately trying to maintain my balance, I pulled on the rope and kicked her in the opposite direction. In a couple of thundering heartbeats we were turned around and galloping toward the Common. When the street opened up in front of her, the Girl lengthened her stride. I looked straight through her ears, concentrating. The sharp clang of her iron shoes hitting the cobblestones told me any fall would be fatal.

Up and down the street, people began calling out to their neighbors and pounding on doors. Some stared at the fierce orange skyline in mute stupidity, while others began sprinting toward it. Like a runaway locomotive, we galloped past them all.

The commotion at the south end of the Common slowed our careening enough to let me catch my breath. To my astonishment, the green expanse was already jumbled with furniture and merchandise of every description. Trunks and cabinets and crates teetered in massive piles; animals were leashed to trees; people ran hysterically toward the flames and back, filling their arms and carts with salvaged goods, filling the night with their panicked cries. Like a fine gray snow, ash coated the battleground.

The Girl shook her head and reared, sliding me backward. She was impatient to be moving and I pulled her in circles, trying to remember which street Mr. Stead and I had turned down to get to McLaughlin’s Livery.

A pathetic clanging sounded above the tumult. The tinny ring moved closer and closer until, prodded by shouts, the crowd parted. Here came a lone steam engine, dragged by half a dozen weary firemen whom I didn’t recognize. They paused just long enough to push their helmets off their sweat-glazed foreheads and gaze at the hellish scene. Joined by a few bystanders, they leaned into their work and struggled on, like so many Davids coming to fight an awesome Goliath.

The Girl kicked out at someone who’d come too near. She pinned her ears at another and began pushing through the crowd on her own, ignoring the otherworldly screeching that ripped the night’s fabric. All faces, including mine, lifted to watch a huge granite building crumble in slow motion. Blocks fell through the sky like playthings; splintered molding stitched orange threads that frayed before our eyes. The final, violent explosion shot red sparks high into the air.

In the brief silence that followed, I heard horses screaming. The Girl pricked her ears. Eyeing a likely-looking street leading off the Common, I nudged her in that direction. I half expected her to resist charging toward another fire, but she bravely broke into a canter, scattering people right and left as we proceeded.

There was the corner florist’s shop that I’d remembered, and we raced down that street and then onto Washington. We were making progress until we found ourselves behind another throng. Like a tenuous dam, a line of policemen held back a flood of frantic, crying onlookers. Over their heads I saw a desolate street heavily shrouded in a haze of smoke. Snapping flames licked windowpanes like fiery serpents, and right before my eyes I saw them dart out and entwine themselves around the next building, devouring its contents at will. A huge glass pane plummeted to the street with a nerve-shattering crash.

“Please!” a man shouted at an official, “just let me get my tools. They’re my livelihood.”

“No!” came the adamant reply. “It’s not safe.”

Somewhere in the night another horse screamed, and the Girl whinnied an answer. She bucked once and spun to the left, and I barely held on. Another official came running up to the barricade, waving his arms and shouting, “Get these people away from here. The fire’s spreading by the second.” Joining arms, the police began pushing us backward. At first the mare was a solid white rock in the stream, but then the crush of people began forcing her to move, little by little, along with them. Bumping her with my legs and tugging on the rope, I managed to edge her out of the retreating mass and into a store’s recessed entry. She tossed her head impatiently, flicking foam onto my face.

To my surprise, the lady journalist who’d worked at the Argus was hunched next to the store’s window, madly scribbling away in her notebook. She kept glancing out at the disaster, then back at her page, not even noticing the restive horse and rider almost climbing on top of her. “Pardon me.” She couldn’t hear me over the din. “Pardon me!” I yelled.

“What?” She looked up with that same wild-eyed expression she’d worn outside our house.

“I have to get to McLaughlin’s Livery on Kingston Street. Is there another way around?”

“Are you mad?” she exclaimed. “The entire business district is on fire.”

“I have to get there.”

She squinted, considering. “I know you,” she said. She gripped my knee to study my face. “We’ve met. When?”

“I’m Rachel Selby,” I replied loudly, feeling my cheeks flush with guilt. “My father was your—”

“Matchstick!” she shouted in a voice so shrill that I wondered if she was the one who was slightly mad. “Now I remember.”

“Matchstick?”

She tossed aside the question. “Some other time. What are you doing here?” And then, as if it had suddenly struck her, “Do you know where your father is?”

It gave me a start that she sounded as if she already knew where he was. And that I ought to know as well. I shook my head. At the moment I had other worries. “Please,” I begged, “can you tell me if there’s another way to get to Kingston?”

“Why?”

“I told you: I have to get to McLaughlin’s Livery. The fire started near there and the horses might be trapped. I don’t know the city well. Is there another way around?”

“Not tonight,” she shouted. “Take a look for yourself.” She nodded toward the chaos of smoke and flames, of people screaming and whistles shrieking. “It’s Dante’s Inferno come to life. Why … granite buildings are crumbling like … like sandcastles … like sandcastles beneath the tide of a fiery ocean. Wait a minute!” She flipped open her notebook to scribble the words. “That’s good.”

“But I have to get there. Some of the horses are sick. One of them belongs to a veterinary friend of mine.”

“Really?” Her pencil paused, then waggled furiously. “‘Veterinary’s Own Horse Burned in Livery Fire.’ That might be another interesting story. Is it one of the sick horses?”

A scare gripped me. “I hope not. But I know there are a lot of sick ones there. Please, just tell me which street to take.”

She peeked out toward the policemen and back at me— sizing me up, it seemed—then motioned me to follow her into the crowd. We obediently retreated with the others a ways until, without warning, she darted down a narrow alley. I reined the Girl after her.

The passage was barely wide enough for a person, let alone a big horse with a rider, and the rough-edged bricks clawed at my skirt. The outline of the woman hurrying ahead of me quickly melted into the inky blackness, and I wondered if I should be following her with such trust. Before we’d gone twenty steps, another ominous rumble vibrated the air. It ratcheted louder and louder until it exploded in a nearby boom! that rocked the very walls pressing on us. The Girl flinched. A hot wind blasted my face, lifted my hair, and vanished. In its wake, luminous specks of orange spiraled downward like dying fireflies. I brushed them from my sleeve with a growing panic that we were walking into the fire rather than around it. And what would we do when it descended on us? There was no easy escape from this suffocating chasm. Sweat began prickling my neck, my underarms, the backs of my legs. Oddly enough, the Girl waded forward with renewed spirit.

An orange light beckoned us; whether it was heaven or hell, I wasn’t sure, but by then I was ready to welcome either. When we stepped out onto the desolate street I saw cobblestones glowing red beneath swirling embers. A sucking heat snaked down my throat and parched it raw. It burned my eyeballs in their sockets. Deafened by the fire’s howling, I recalled the words of Ezekiel, one of Grandmother’s recent favorites: An end is come, the end is come. It watcheth for thee. Behold, it is come. Choking and blinded, I let the Girl carry me on.

The suffocating confines of the next alley seemed a haven after the firestorm. Again we were moving through a narrow black chasm with no end in sight, but this time I didn’t care. As my eyes adjusted to the sooty walls and the scattered debris, I noticed shadows flickering across the cobblestones. I thought they must be rivulets of water and wondered if a pipe had broken somewhere, although I didn’t hear hooves splashing. As my eyes cleared even more, I saw that the shadows were rats, legions of them, swarming in the opposite direction, desperate to reach safety. They came poking through vents and squeezing out of cracks and pouring down rainspouts. One leaped onto my shoulder, trailing its naked tail along my neck and then my arm before clawing its way down my skirt. My throat was too dry to scream.

When we came into the open again, smoke churned all around us. I heard more glass shattering. The journalist turned to say something, but the fire’s roar ate up her words. Chunks of ash and cinders pelted our shoulders with increasing fury. A live ember burned right through my sleeve, and the flashing memory of flames consuming my arms nearly knocked me off the Girl. My heart banged against my tightening chest.

I knew we were on Summer Street because I could make out C.F. Hovey’s store through the smoke. We weren’t alone this time. Men and women and even a few children ran the length of the street, many pushing wheelbarrows loaded with papers and books and files, and anything else that could be grabbed from the jaws of the flames. Others smashed through windows and emerged with bulging sacks. Some had only their arms to measure what they could carry. A desperate-looking man, blackened with soot, came running toward us, kicking a rat out of his way. He hugged a wrapped bundle close to his stomach.

Another explosion shook the ground. The journalist pointed, and I followed her down a winding, smoke-filled street. She was running now, and the Girl picked up a trot. We rounded a corner, kept going as fast as we could through the haze, and rounded another corner.

There was the metal horse head, shimmering an eerie orange. We’d arrived at the livery from the opposite direction!

“Here you are,” she said while gasping for breath. “Now give me a story worth writing about.” She ducked beneath an overhang and opened her notebook.