6

For a moment, the crowd of city leaders stood transfixed by the blaze. Flames in the attic poked out of crevices in the white-wood shingles of the roof and were beat back by the rain when it tried to escape. Billows of smoke rose in pillars, blending into the dark cloud cover above. In the flickering second-floor windows, Mallory could see glowing soldiers of flame marching down the hallways of the civil servants’ offices. Some of the fiery soldiers caught hold of the red curtains, and they burned quickly, leaving a lace of ashes before falling away in orange floating embers. The red brick of the interior and the white-columned porch seemed relatively unscathed, but the fire was spreading fast, and it would not be long before the entire interior of the building would be in flames, and then the fire would consume what it could outside the building. Suddenly a window burst from the intense heat, and the pop was louder than the deafening noise of the rain and thunder. The crowd winced in unison, and the spell the fire had them under was broken. The Governor turned to the City Services Manager and shouted, “Jake, without the Dikaió and with the generators offline, the fire department may not have received the emergency signal. Go, and make sure they’re coming!”

“Yeah, but without the Dikaió, who knows if they can help?”

“We need to try! Go, quickly!”

The large man, looking more comfortable in his usual state, overalls caked in mud and grime from the storm, ran off swiftly toward the north side, giving the burning building a large berth.

The Governor yelled at the other city leaders: “If the fire department’s sprites cannot be roused to put this fire out, we’re going to have to do it ourselves. We need barrels, buckets, bowls, urns, anything that will hold water, and we need it now!” The rest of the crowd exploded into action, zig-zagging this way and that as they weaved around each other in different directions: everyone heading home to see what they could find to help. The Governor grabbed Caleb’s and Mallory’s arms before they could run away with the rest and shouted, “You two, wait! We need that book if we’re going to have a chance of getting the Dikaió back. Go, find Alex!”

Caleb shouted back, “I can help with the fire, Dad! I want to help!”

“The Dikaió is more important than a silly building. Find that book!”

Caleb nodded and turned toward Mallory and yelled, “Where do you think she would go?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she went home?”

“Her father probably went there to look for her, but let’s start there anyway. It couldn’t hurt.” Caleb took off at a sprint, which Mallory would normally have had a hard time keeping up with, except that the storm had turned City Hall’s lawn into a mud pit, and Caleb’s heavier frame caused his feet to sink further into the muck than hers. While the mud evened out their race with one another, it also held them both back considerably in their race against time.

The Governor needed the Dikaió to rekindle the light. The viciousness of the storm without the light to mitigate its effects was just one potential hazard the city faced without the light’s protection. Since the passing of the last Chorus, no one in the city really knew what lay beyond the light, but parents told their children fantasies of beasts that hunted with claws and teeth, and a dangerous breed of humanity that had chosen to live in darkness rather than embrace life—all of whom would happily drag any stray child off into the darkness with them if not for the protection of the light. Thinking about childhood horror stories told round a Dikaió torch in the dark made Mallory’s hair stand up on the back of her neck.

Maybe it was the terrors the memories carried, but she felt as if someone was watching them while they ran. She desperately wanted to call out to Caleb to stop, but her breathing was so heavy from their run that she could not catch hold of the air to speak. Her eyes darted left and right, looking for the invisible watcher when she saw movement in one of the tall townhomes on the street they were crossing. Mallory focused through the rain, and she could see vague shapes of people in the dark windows of the houses. The citizens of the city were looking out of their windows, wide-eyed with terror; every house they passed was the same. At this hour, it was mostly adults, but in some houses, there were children clinging to their parents’ clothes for comfort. They knew the light had gone dark, they had likely figured out that the Dikaió was gone, and they were most likely remembering all the same wild stories Mallory was thinking about as she ran.

But then Mallory saw the citizens’ terror transformed as they recognized the runners: When they saw that the Matriarch’s daughter and the Governor’s son were going somewhere, doing something about the light, their fear became hope. Mallory wondered how misplaced that hope was. She knew the city leaders and the limits of their ability to fix problems. City Hall might be burning to the ground even as they ran. The light might never come back. The Dikaió might never come back. Their old life might never come back. As if bidden by the city’s crisis, her childhood memories, and the citizens’ faith, her grandmother’s voice spoke to her through the storm: “You will be the Matriarch who is a Dikaió Chorus, and you will save the city.”

Mallory had little time to process that thought as they rounded the corner to the Administrator’s house, but she felt herself brimming with confidence: This was the moment for which she had been born. Caleb slowed down and ran up to the back door of the big house, but somehow Mallory knew that Alex would not have gone back to the place that started it all, so she ducked down the path that led to the Chief Magistrate’s home in the back, just beyond the muddied gardens. Normally, the gardens were quite beautiful this time of the year, full of every color of flower one could imagine, but in the dark and the rain, they looked like a forbidding bog; all the color drowned in the downpour into mud and darkness. Lightning flashed through the shadows of broken plant stems waving wildly in the wind like beasts chained to the Earth, trying desperately to escape. Mallory ran gingerly along the path as the bare, wet plants lashed at her legs. Finally, she reached the door.

Alex had instructed the door to know Mallory and open to her when she knocked, but for some reason, tonight the door ignored her percussive presence. She rapped louder, but still the door did not budge. She moved to the small window and found herself looking into a pale, ghostly reflection that was not her own. Mallory shrieked and stumbled backward in terror. The apparition knocked on the window and seemed to be yelling something. It was hard to make out, but it sounded like, “Go to the back!”

Mallory took a second look at the face and realized it was Alex’s mother looking out at her. “Go to the back! The door is open,” Alex’s mother yelled.

The backdoor was open, and both of Alex’s parents were standing in the doorway when Mallory got around the house. Chief Magistrate Daniel Nelson was in partial undress. He clearly had been changing out of his casual dining attire into his Magistrate’s uniform, as he was wearing a white undershirt and his uniform slacks. His wife was already wearing a nightgown as if she had given up on the excitement of the night.

“Mallory, what is happening—Why are the lights out? Has the Council come to a decision so soon?” Alex’s parents peppered her with questions, one after another not allowing Mallory to answer. They had left in search of Alex at the Governor’s direction, so there was no way they could know what was happening, and they were understandably frightened. Then the question came that hit at the heart of their fear: “Where is Alex?”

“I had hoped she would be here.” Mallory’s shoulders sagged.

The Chief Magistrate shook his head. “No, we searched the house from top to bottom. The Administrator’s house, too. I was just getting dressed to call the magistrates to help with the search.”

“Oh, Daniel! Is she okay?” Mrs. Nelson asked, concern rising in her voice.

“I don’t know.” He hugged his wife tenderly. “If she comes home, tell her to meet us at the Matriarch’s.”

Mallory interrupted: “No, everyone is at City Hall. The Governor sent us to get the book from Alex.”

“What book?” Mr. Nelson demanded. “What is going on, Mallory?”

Mallory shook her head. “It might be able to fix the Dikaió and the light, but I don’t have time to explain. You should call the magistrates out for another reason than finding Alex though. City Hall is on fire. They’re asking people to bring containers of water.”

Mr. Nelson’s eyes widened, but as he turned to his wife, he seemed to stifle any worry or emotion that he was feeling and steeled himself for the work ahead of them. “Okay. Ellie, you stay here and wait for Alex. I’ll get dressed and load water to help with the fire. Mallory, you might check my father’s house. You children have spent a lot of time there. Maybe there’s a place we haven’t checked?”

Mallory looked blank, and then realized he was talking about the Administrator, Alex’s grandfather. It always seemed strange to think of parents having parents. She nodded an affirmation. “Caleb was checking the big house while I ran down here.”

Alex’s father nodded and said, “Okay, when you find her, let us know that she’s safe, please.”

“Of course, Mr. Nelson.”

The Chief Magistrate turned and dashed back into the house to finish dressing. Eyes brimming with worry, Mrs. Nelson touched Mallory’s arm and held her other hand to her mouth to stifle whatever tearful words were fighting to escape. Mallory could see that she desperately wanted to steel herself like her husband, but the emotions were too strong. Tears traced down her cheeks. She nodded, touched Mallory’s arm again, and then also turned back into the house.

Mallory stood still for a moment, wanting to go and comfort Alex’s mother. The thought of leaving her in this state was more than she could bear, but then her grandmother’s words sounded in her mind again: “Save the city.” The best thing she could do to help Mrs. Nelson would be to find Alex and get things back to normal. Mallory turned around and ran back through the dark garden. She found Caleb waiting on the Administrator’s back porch. The door was standing wide open just like the Chief Magistrate’s house. “She’s not home,” Mallory called.

“She’s not here either.”

“You checked the Book Club?”

“Yes, the door’s still locked, and we can’t lock it from the inside.”

Mallory tried to think of where Alex might have gone to hide. She did not have any other friends that Mallory knew. Most buildings were locked for the night, and in this rain, Alex would have to find shelter of some sort. Then it hit her, and she shuddered: the secret room beneath City Hall. The only other people that knew it could be accessed through the hole in the back and crawling under the building were Alex and the Dikaió Piper. No one would ever think to look for her there. And right now, the building was on fire.

“I know where she is,” Mallory began running back along the route they had just taken with Caleb following behind her. They passed the menagerie of silent onlookers behind their windows, cheering them on with their hopeful eyes, and then they ran slowly back uphill through the muck of City Hall’s lawn, which seemed to be more of a shallow lake at this point.

The fire at City Hall showed no signs of dissipating. The City Services Manager was there with several of the Firefighting guild, and they had formed a human chain with the City Council members and several citizens that had been roused to help. They were passing small containers of water up and down the chain, then up a couple of rickety ladders, and were, rather ineffectively, dumping the water through the shattered windows of the second story of the building. The Firefighting guild must have been able to activate their hydrant sprites somehow because they were lined up with their large tanks full of water, but their hoses were spraying water haphazardly at the roof of the building. One of the firefighters was yelling desperately at them to aim at this or that point, but without the Dikaió, it seemed like the sprites were performing their basic duties without a mind to guide them. None of the efforts seemed to be doing anything to stop the fire, which was quite a bit larger than when Mallory had last seen it. Not even the rain seemed to be doing much to tamp it back.

 

Mallory ran past the commotion to the back of the building. She was about to do something incredibly dangerous, but she knew that Alex was in the secret room. She was absolutely convinced of it, and she was going in to get her out. She had read enough about fires to know that the smoke was the most dangerous part of a fire, so she tore a wet sleeve off her shirt and wrapped it around her face to protect her lungs. The hole that had been excavated under City Hall was full of mud and water, so she took a deep breath through her wet shirt sleeve and jumped into the puddle. She tried to squeeze under the building, but rain had washed too much of the excavated dirt back into the hole, and she could not get further than her waist under the building; the water was rising too quickly. She flipped over and tried to pull herself up but found that there was nothing stable to grab onto to leverage herself against the water and the mud. Water was pouring into the hole, and it splashed into the cloth covering her face, flooding her nose and mouth. She choked on the sudden inhalation of muddy water. Her hands slipped, and she found herself underwater again. Then a vice gripped her wrist, and she was yanked up above the water’s surface. Caleb struggled and pulled until they were both laying in the puddle-strewn lawn of City Hall breathing hard.

Mallory could not allow herself to rest or to take time to thank Caleb, though she badly wanted both. She pulled herself quickly to her feet. There was no longer any way to get into the secret room from this point, which meant there was only one way to get there. Mallory jogged, coughing and wiping her face, to the front side of City Hall with Caleb following.

The adults were so preoccupied with the fire that they did not see her dash up the front steps. She checked her makeshift mask and then pushed on the double French doors. They were locked for the night. Yellow smoke puffed through the cracks of the doors, and the handles were hot. Peering through the smokey glass, Mallory could see only small pockets of fire in the hallway past the doors. It looked relatively safe, but she wondered how she would get in.

Without warning, Caleb’s shoulder pushed past her, and the bulk of his frame smashed into the doors, shattering glass and buckling the locks. He barely had time to step back because the instant the fire inside the building was introduced to the oxygen outside, a gigantic ball of smoke coalesced in the hallways and raced toward the open air. The doors catapulted outwards, flinging the two teenagers off the steps before they had a chance to move. They hit the ground with a thud.

Mallory’s vision swayed, but Caleb barely seemed phased as he rolled over in the grass toward her and threw his heavy frame over her body to protect her from the flames, now hovering over them like the fingers of a hideous, burning monster. He put his hands over her head and although her arm bent the wrong way beneath his weight, she barely noticed. She was hidden there below her protector, watching the cannon of flame chase the smoke just above their prone forms. Caleb’s bright blue eyes hovered over her own, his head haloed by flames as City Hall spewed deadly fire: a dragon woken from slumber. He looked surprised, but it was hard to tell since his eyebrows were almost completely singed off. Then his face faded into shadow almost as suddenly as it had started, the dragon calmed down, and the propulsion of fire receded quickly back into the building.  The backdraft had balanced the oxygen levels in the building, but the flames were now raging along the walls and columns inside, heading back towards the open front door.

Caleb rolled off her and sat up, looking toward the open doorway. With Caleb off her, Mallory did a quick mental check of her body. She registered some abrasions from being hit by the door and hitting the ground, there was some burning pain on the exposed skin of her uncovered arm, but for the most part her water-logged clothes absorbed the brunt of the heat. She sat up and looked toward Caleb. He started coughing violently because his taller frame put his face directly in the path of the smoke escaping the building. Mallory crawled over to him and tore off his sleeve, which was warm but still wet. She pointed to the sleeved mask she was wearing, and he covered his face. He was still coughing from the smoke that had already been inhaled, but he gave her a thumbs up.

Mallory looked toward the adults, who had noticed them now after the violent explosion, and were moving toward them rapidly with pale, fatigued faces. There was not much time, and she pushed herself to her feet. Her clothes were still wet, and she did not know how long that protection would last inside. The stairs to the basement were only a few feet to the left of the front entrance, and it looked like the fire had left a small opening there if she hurried. Mallory heard her name being called, but there was no time to stop and explain as she dashed into the building to find Alex.

The heat inside felt like an oven just after opening the door. It roiled around her in waves. She could feel the water in her clothing begin to heat up, but not as quickly as the skin on her forehead and exposed arm. She ignored the pain and dashed down the stairs. The fire had not reached the basement, and the farther down the staircase she went, the cooler it got, but it was darker as well: There were no windows in the basement, and the only light was the fire at the top of the staircase. Mallory stepped off the final stair, and her foot landed in water. The water from the storm, flowing to the lowest point, had found the basement and was about six inches deep. She swished through the pools heading in the general direction of the record shelves. She felt blindly along the dark wall searching for the second stack with the secret lever.  

Mallory felt along the shelf trying to make out where the lever was. It was very difficult to find anything in the dark, and she still felt somewhat disoriented from the explosion and heat. Then she saw a dim light in the dark space, and she could make out a small indentation where the lever was. She glanced behind her to find the source of the light and inhaled sharply. Small pockets of flame had clawed their way through the floor and were licking at the rafters in the basement overhead. Mallory reached down and pressed the lever. It was harder to push than she remembered but with some effort she heard the click of the secret mechanism. The shelf swung open of its own accord, and for the second time in so many minutes, Mallory found herself being knocked off her feet: This time it was a rush of water rather than a fireball.

She sputtered and spat as she tried to stand back up. The current was too strong, and she fell over and over again. Finally, she managed to get hold of one of the shelves and steady herself against the water. The secret door had been holding back enough water and mud that the basement was now flooded almost to Mallory’s waist. She waded back to the door and found Alex clinging desperately to a post by the secret door, dripping wet and breathing hard.

“Oh, Mallory! Thank goodness! I thought I was going to drown in there.”

“No time, Alex!” Mallory’s throat burned when she shouted, and her shout came out as little more than a forceful rasp. Apparently, the smoke had gotten through her mask, and she hadn’t noticed. She pointed at the burning rafters as the building creaked and groaned above them.

Alex’s eyes grew wide with fear, and she made to bolt up the stairs, but Mallory grabbed her arm.

“Smoke,” Mallory rasped indicating her masked face. 

Alex signaled understanding and opened her jacket. Despite all the circumstances of the night, Mallory was relieved to see she still had the book tucked away under her jacket. It was wet, but if they could make it out of this building, there was hope.

Alex tore a strip of fabric from her wet shirt and then zipped her jacket back up, positioning the book safely near her arm. She tucked the torn fabric quickly behind her ears, stretching it over her nose and mouth. When it was tied securely, the two girls started to climb out of the flood toward the fire.

Mallory was dismayed to see the hallway entrance she had used to access the basement staircase was already engulfed in flames above them. With the back door caved in with mud, there was no option but to go into the fire and try to get through it.

Mallory took off at a run up the last few stairs and leaped through the flames. She was thankful for the floodwater below giving her clothing a fresh soak to protect her from the fire, but the heat was still nearly unbearable. Her shoes began to melt on the floor, making it difficult to run, but she kept pressing forward, heading toward the doorway, out of the inferno. Then there was a crash and a scream behind her.

Mallory turned to see the frame of the doorway to the basement had collapsed, and Alex was on the floor, her arm trapped under burning rubble. Mallory turned back, forgetting the heat and the pain and rushing back toward her terrified friend. Alex was screaming and trying desperately to get away from the flames. Her arm was caught beneath a heavy wooden beam and would not budge, and her jacket and her hair were both on fire.

Mallory unzipped Alex’s jacket, burning her fingers on the zipper pull. Alex managed to wiggle out of it, except for Alex’s arm, which was still caught under the rubble and while Mallory pulled hard at her panicked friend, she was not strong enough to free her. The fire was spreading over Alex as the water dried out of her clothing, and for a moment all Mallory could think of was the story of the old Governor and the fire sprite. Her grandmother was so sure she was going to watch him get burned to death, but he had triumphantly rescued the city instead. Now, she was supposed to be rescuing the city but was instead about to watch her friend burn to death, and she may even burn to death beside her with no Dikaió to save them. If her tears were not instantly vaporized in the heat, she would have cried; she lowered her head in defeat.

She winced then as strong hands took hold of her and dragged her away from Alex. She screamed and tried to pull back to her friend, but she had no strength left to fight. Two men brushed past her toward Alex. She thought one of them was the City Services Manager and he was carrying a metal pole. He used the pole as a lever to pry the rubble off Alex’s arm, and the other man scooped her up tenderly. Alex was going to be okay. They were both going to be okay.

Suddenly, Mallory was in the open air and out of the fire. She registered that she was being carried, cradled in someone’s arms, though how she had transitioned from vertical to horizontal seemed to escape her. She looked around and saw the aghast faces of her parents and the City Council members as she floated toward them. Then she was falling and hit the ground with a thump—whoever was carrying her had dropped her and began to slap her.

She tried to fight back, but again found herself too weak to move. The slapping continued starting on her head, and then around her body. She looked down to see the hands slapping her and understood what was happening. She was on fire—or at least bits of her clothing were—and someone was trying to put it out. She looked up into her rescuer’s face and saw Caleb’s eyes just above a cloth mask: strong, blue, determined; but the longer she looked, the more she realized that these eyes were different than Caleb’s somehow—older, wiser, indomitable in their determination.

It was Caleb’s father, the Governor. Even without the Dikaió, the Governor had rescued her from the fire.