The Truth about Hearthflies

I can save this city. I can correct my mistakes. I have the plan set out, and all of the pieces in place. Once the drilling is complete in the undercity, the plan can start. Preparations are almost done.
And from my knowledge, I shouldn’t have to wait too much longer.
Lamp light is the key.

“Wait. What?” He blinked, confused. He shifted about in his seat. The hearthflies, or spiritflies, or whatever, are actually the souls of the Cursed?” Faulkner said, for about the fourth time.

“Yes,” Elenor repeated with a tone that suggested annoyance.

Faulkner looked past the girl, staring blankly into the distance.

“But…how?”

“What happens is that once the Blesssing mutates—even I don’t know for certain why that happens, but I wouldn’t take Castoro’s explanation for absolute truth—their heart leaves their body. They fall asleep, and when they wake up, there’s a hearthfly sitting on their chest. Generally, the first thing that happens is they shoo it away. It hangs around, but over a time, they begin to reject it. Have you never wondered what the pulsing was from the ‘flies when they hang around?”

“I’ve always assumed it was their wings beating.”

She shook her head. “No. It’s the cauldron. Within that is a human heart, still beating so long as a person lives. The fire is the soul, attached to the heart. It’s why it’s so warm. It’s the reason it cannot be extinguished by the rains or water.
“And eventually a person will fully reject the hearthfly. That day, it flies away, and they become a fiend. Never again will they be human.”

Faulkner mused in the silence for a time. “So that’s why the fiends are so afraid of their fire…or any fire for that matter?”

Elenor nodded. “To feel love, to be human is to have a soul, and by no fault of their own they’ve rejected it. It’s the Curse, and has something to do with the Blessings going wrong. Nearly every person on this side of the wall is Blessed—or rather, nearly all those in the upper echelons of society—and none of them have become monstrous. Something has happened on your side of the wall, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it had something to do with Castoro.”

It was quiet for a time in the room. Faulkner spent it mulling his thoughts over, while Elenor seemed on the verge of asking him something. She rocked back and forth in her chair, fists clenched.

“You said something about a boy named Nataniel,” Elenor said, biting her lip.

“Yes? Why?”

“He’s got the Blessing markings on him, hasn’t he?”

“I believe so.”

She paused, and then blurted, “I know him!”

“What?” he said incredulously, for the second time in a matter of minutes.

She explained her dreams, in which they both danced together, and how she had not seen him in a number of days.

“I’ve been worried,” she replied quietly. “Do you know if anything has happened to him?”

His face darkened. “No, I don’t,” he replied. “After we left the Tower, I went straight to Ophelia’s. I don’t know what happened to him after we left him at the foot of the tower. For all I know, he might be safe at home.” He added quietly so as not to be heard, “He’s probably better off than I am at the moment.”

Elenor’s mother walked, hands wrapped around a bottle of medicine.

“Ah, good. You kept him company. You can go now, Elenor. You have to be ready for the ball tonight.”

“Okay,” she replied, turning back to Faulkner to give him one last hopeful look. He undertstood instantly what it meant. She then got up from the chair and left the room, leaving Faulkner alone with her mother.

“She can be so very talkative,” she said. “I hope she didn’t bore you too much.”
“Not at all,” he replied, smiling thankfully as she unscrewed the top on the medicine bottle.

*

Nataniel dreamt again of Elenor, surprised given that it was his first night in captivity. He had expected a fitful night, filled with tossing and turning and sleeplessness.

But instead, he dreamed.

The ballroom was completely new to him. There were ball gowns and suits everywhere; hundreds of them, for the room was massive, domed and ornate. Filigrees of gold outlined frescos of cherubs and angels and fire and towers. There were forests and darkened mountains, and sky-scapes stuffed with clouds and sunlight—something he had seen very little of. Drapes of blood red hung from the tall ceiling, strung from the centre of the room where they were attached to the massive chandelier, dispersing and softening the golden light so that the room was ignited by a warm, moody glow.

And then there was Elenor, dressed in pink, her light hair allowed to flow in waves about her shoulders, a bow around her waist tied at the back. She didn’t look entirely comfortable in a dress that was so massively, exaggeratedly decorated, but she still looked beautiful. Every other faerie in the room, no matter how much they shone, no matter how luminescent their eyes were, paled in comparison to this young lady before him.

She was not dancing at present, though. She was standing at the side of the dance floor, just ahead and to the left of Nataniel, glancing over the dancefloor as if she was searching for someone.

“It’s me,” he said quietly to himself, as he began his way over.

Her face brightened as he approached, and she rushed up to him, her dres flapping about as she held it up from the ground, lest she trip over on the long fabric. Thankfully she was wearing flat shoes, so running was not too much trouble.

The pair hugged each other, and Nataniel blushed as she kissed him on the cheek. He could feel the hearthfly, even in his dreams, though it was currently invisible.

Strange that it should make its way into my dreams.


“It’s been too long,” she said, her excitement quite apparent in her voice.

“It has,” he replied. “I’m sorry I haven’t been here, but I can’t control my dreams.”

She paused, as if confused by the statement, but brushed it aside like a person who had realised what another had said a moment after they had asked them to repeat it. “I have met Faulkner,” she said. “He’s at my house, asleep.”

“What? How?” He said it more excitedly than he had expected to.

“He came to our side of the city,” she said.

He raised an eyebrow at this, confused. “Your side of the city? What do you mean?” He stopped, looking behind himself at the tower through the window. “This is the world of the faeries, isn’t it?” Within seconds he felt foolish. It sounded so stupid saying it out loud just now.

“No, silly,” she said. She quickly explained everything in the simplest manner she could, and by the end of it, Nataniel looked just as confused as he had been to begin with. “It doesn’t matter, though. He’s here, he’s relatively well, and this means that you can come to my side of the city! We can meet in person!”

His expression showed confusion, but he felt elated. She looked worried for a moment, as if she had mistaken his expression for sadness, but the smile that quickly broke his face destroyed any of those fears. He hugged her once more, so tightly he thought his arms were about to pass through her, not that she was really there anyway.

“But I can’t,” he said slowly, sadly. “I’m imprisoned in the Architect’s tower. It’s a weird place, where they keep the people that know too much about what really happened to the city. I’m here, though, because of these.”

He pulled his collar down slightly, revealing the markings of his curse. They were bruise-like, as always, but darker than they normally were. Perhaps it was simply because he was in a dream, though, for they had never been this dark before. Or maybe it was the lighting? Nevertheless, he expected people to stop their graceful dance to stare at him and at his markings. He waited for a hundred pairs of eyes to suddenly snap to him, but they never did. The people kept dancing, almost unaware of the pair’s existence.

“They’re worried that if my Blessing mutates I’ll be a danger to society,” he explained.

At that moment, the hearthfly shimmered into existence, its pulse smooth, slow. One could almost call it mellow. The flame burned brightly in the cauldron it carried, the fire rich with sparks and light.

“What’s that?” Elenor asked, her gaze quickly snapping to the small, dragonfly-like creature as if it were a fiend lurking in the shadows.

“A hearthfly.”

“No, I mean what’s it doing here?”

“I don’t know to be honest. It’s with me in the prison at the moment. I just woke up and there it was! Strange, eh? I’m actually a little surprised to see it here in my dreams.”

“You say you just woke up and it was there?”

“Yes, why?” He paused, recognising her fearful expression. “Is that bad?”

“Of course it’s bad!” she yelled, though none of the ball guests seem to notice. It was almost as if they didn’t really exist in the room. “Nataniel, that spiritfly is your—”

She was cut off, as she disappeared from the dream. She puffed from existence like smoke, and then the dancers followed, and then the ballroom, leaving Nataniel alone.

“Does this mean she woke up?” he thought aloud, her voice echoing in the darkness.

And then he shot up in bed, drenched in sweat, head booming with an angry, animal pain.

The hearthfly floated nearby. What had she called it…A spiritfly?

He looked to it. It clearly felt some kind of a connection to him, and he to it, but she had said it was bad. She had been terrified of it, unlike he, who saw hearthflies as a sign of goodluck. Anything in Castore that displayed even the slightest bit of bio-luminescence was practically sacred. To kill a firefly was sin; to consume glowing mushroom was to see as God sees. How could a hearthfly, or spiritfly, which burned most brightly be bad.

But he trusted Elenor. He loved her.

“Go on,” he said, rising up suddenly from his bed, flinging his back hand at the small, insect-like creature. “Shoo!”

And it did, without a moment’s hesitation. It flew itself through the bars of his cell, and down the hallway, shimmering back into invisibility as it went.

*

Elenor woke, sweat-drenched and puffing, as if she had run a marathon. She threw the blankets off her, sighing with relief at the feeling of air running over her skin, her body suddenly crawling with goosebumps. It was a nice feeling, though, for it cooled her down quickly. Far more quickly than she had anticipated. It was only moments later she pulled the covers back over herself.

“Nataniel,” she whispered, hoping that the dream had indeed been a dream. But how could it? The boy existed. He lived just over the wall, but he was imprisoned. He exists though, she thought. He was as real as she or her mother or…

“Faulkner!” she gasped, rising up suddenly from her bed. A little too quickly, though, for she had a headspin. She tried to ignore it, though, and dizzily made her way down the dark hall into the room where Faulkner was sleeping. She threw open the door, dashing quickly to Faulkner’s bedside, and shook him awake.

“Faulkner! Wake up! Faulkner!”

He groaned as he stirred.

“Faulkner, we have to hurry. We have to get Nataniel. He’s in a prison in Castoro’s tower, and his spiritfly has revealed itself.”

This seemed to shake Faulkner from his sleep. “What!”

“We have to get to him and break him out. If we can tell him not to shun the fly, then he might be able to stay human. And if all else fails, I want to meet him, so I can say goodbye in person at least.”

“But he’s on the other side of the wall,” Faulkner said. “The current flows east. That means if we wanted to get back, we would have to swim against the tide. Not only that, we only have one hearthfly…spiritfly, sorry.” He pointed to the cauldron-burdened insect in the corner of the room.

“And we can’t enter the city like tourists,” she said. “That will take too long.” Faulkner could remember many long, quiet days spent at the checkpoint gate—the only gate into Castore. “But we have to get there. I have to see him.” She paused, as if her train of thought had been interrupted. But it wasn’t that. She had begun to cry. “I’ve only ever seen him in dreams,” she sobbed. “But…I—I—I think I love him.”

*

It was like, for a moment, it was not Elenor and Faulkner, but Harriet and Faulkner. There was passion in her voice, and caring, and love. True love, for the young boy imprisoned from her. And just as Faulkner had had to comfort Harriet, he now had to comfort Elenor. He put on hand on her shoulder and patted softly.

“We have to save him,” she said, “even if only for a day. I have to meet him before he becomes a monster.”

Faulkner nodded, thankful for the darkness. As she looked away quickly, glancing at the time, he wiped away the tear that had appeared in his eye.

“Then we have to go,” he said, throwing off his blankets. “Go and get dressed. I’ll meet you back in here in a minute and we’ll decide how to go about this from there.”

“Thank you,” she said, shooting up. She rushed to the door way, but stopped herself before she was fully gone.

“Faulkner…what do you think we’ll have to do if it’s too late.”

His heart sank for her, as he realised what the worst-case scenario could be. This was true love. It was nascent, but true nevertheless. He prayed quietly for her sake to an unknown God.

“We’ll worry about that if we come to it. For now, we’re going to rescue Nataniel and warn him.”

She nodded and closed the door, allowing him to dress.

“Any suggestions?” he asked to the hearthfly fluttering in the corner of the room.

As if it understood, it flew smoothly to the door, indicating to it.

I hope it can guide us, he thought, as he pulled on his shirt and coat.

He glanced momentarily to the table nearby, on which sat his rifle. I won’t need it, he mused, thinking of Ophelia. If I do, I’ll send Elenor back.