City of Ash (34 page)

She yelled over her shoulder. “Come
on
!”

I heard a terrible crack. A frame swung down from the heavens, a mass of flame, crashing upon the stage, splintering, sending fire shooting in every direction. Something exploded behind me, and I screamed and jerked around to look.

When I looked back again, Beatrice Wilkes had disappeared.

Beatrice

O
ne moment the floor was beneath me, the next it was gone and I was falling. I screamed and slammed into the ground so hard it burst the breath from my lungs. Pain shattered into my spine and my skull and one elbow, and I was pelted with broken boards. The costumes I’d been holding floated around me like spirits. The dressing gown caught fire in the air, bursting into floating, live flame, and I rolled to escape it as it spiraled down.

Above me was the hole I’d fallen through. I was below stage again, and there was flame everywhere, a wall of flame where there had once been struts. I could not see beyond it to the hallway I knew was there. Smaller flames licked along the beam above my head. What remained of the trap was shattered all around me, nothing but little torches now, the rope that ran its pulley a line of flame to where it anchored on the winch. I’d fallen through the grave trap—an irony I didn’t want to think of just then. A brand fell on the carriage just beyond me, and the papier-mâché went up before I could blink. Pieces of fire fell; it became a hellish game of tag as I rolled to escape them, and my whole body hurt so damn bad. Beside me, my satin gown suddenly exploded in a burst of flame.

I jerked up hard, scrambling back from it, screaming, “Help!” But the roar of the fire was loud, and even if she was up there, even if she were still alive, I doubted she would hear me.

I was going to die.

Then I heard, “Mrs. Wilkes!”

Her voice was a little squeak through the noise; I wouldn’t have heard her if I hadn’t looked up just at that moment. Mrs. Langley peered over the edge of the hole.

“Stay back!” I screamed up at her. “For God’s sake, don’t fall in! Can you get me out of here!”

She didn’t move. She looked as if she were in shock, and I understood that, but just now if she didn’t do something we were both going to die. “Mrs. Langley!” I shouted. “Help me!”

She seemed to jerk awake then. She stepped back from the hole, disappearing.

There was a crash; a beam to the left cracked and slammed onto the floor, boards splintered, a settee fell from the stage above, its legs shattering, its upholstery a mass of flame, barely missing me. Two counterweights smashed down, the burlap bags exploded, sand skittered out like water. I could hardly breathe through my coughing. The skirt of the calico I wore began to smoke. I was going to die here. I was going to die, and it was going to be so damned painful, and
dear God, save me, save me, save me
.…

The metal bar that crashed down missed me only by inches. I stared dumbly at it until I saw the rod coming up from it, the leather belt dangling. It was the hoe, the bar we used to ascend an actor to the heavens.

“Mrs. Wilkes! Mrs. Wilkes!”

The voice of an angel. I looked up and saw Mrs. Langley there at the edge of the hole, and I was so damned relieved and grateful that she hadn’t gone my knees went weak.

“Hurry!” she screamed. “Get on the bar! Get on the bar!”

That was when I realized the bar still had a rope attached to it. A rope that snaked up into the flies, still strong, though it was singed in places. I stepped onto it, grabbing onto the rod, and Mrs. Langley disappeared again, and in a moment the rope went taut, squeaking. I clutched that rod so hard my knuckles went white, even though it was hot as an iron. To my left, the floor went up, a sheet of flame, and I felt its heat like a burst of wind, and
thank God
the hoe began to rise. Slowly, swinging madly, and I heard myself murmuring words I hardly recognized as she turned that winch and brought me inch by inch out of
hell, and then, finally, I was suspended there above the flames already closing in over where I’d been, and she came rushing across what was left of the stage, screaming, “Jump!”

I launched myself to the edge of that hole with every bit of strength I had. I hit the floor flat, on my stomach, jerking hard away from the boards collapsing at my feet. She grabbed my wrists, hauling me from the edge, screaming into my face, “We’ve got to get out!”

I don’t remember getting to my feet. I don’t remember running. All I knew was that suddenly we were at the edge of the apron, and I saw the flames licking up from the orchestra pit and I felt the whole stage shudder and I screamed at her to jump and then we were both on the floor of the parquet, dodging down the aisles as the curtain and the boxes erupted into flame above and there was this terrible crash and scream as the stage collapsed behind us, a scream like it was dying. Flames boiled out, clouds of smoke, and the two of us raced up that aisle with the monster chasing, and it was too much to hope that the door was clear, but it was our only chance. We rushed into the tiny lobby at the bottom of the narrow stairs leading to the boxes, and then suddenly, unbelievably, there was the door. I slammed up against it and she slammed into me, and then we were outside, half falling into the street, falling from one hell into another, into terrible heat and noise: alarm bells, steamship whistles piercing the roar of the fire, great crashes of collapsing buildings, explosions
rat-a-tat-tat
like gunfire, huge blasts, men shouting as the boardwalk blew up into flame and they scattered like ants. All around us was fire and ash and smoke.

We lurched out, choking and gasping, and a man black with soot grabbed my arm and shouted, “Get out of here!” as if I wasn’t trying to do exactly that, but where the hell to go? It wasn’t just the Regal; the whole city was in flames around us. Nothing but fire wherever I looked, and I started toward the harbor, thinking
water
, but that man jerked on my arm again and pointed and shouted though I couldn’t hear him through the roar, only that his lips made the word “Run” and he was pointing east, away from the water, toward the hills, and I didn’t question, I just grabbed Mrs. Langley’s hand and ran the way he pointed.

Pyres of salvaged goods burned in the middle of the street; the sky rained flaming brands and sparks, falling signs and bricks and shattered glass. Telegraph and telephone wires snapped and melted. Clouds of smoke purpled in the sunlight. An explosion behind us made me jerk around in fear, but all I saw were flames shooting a hundred feet into the air, and the boiling smoke, and after that I didn’t look behind anymore. I pulled Mrs. Langley with me to Second Street, where the brick building of the Boston block stood steaming and two bucket brigades of filthy men with sooty faces passed water from one to the other, sloshing it over their trousered legs, shouting at us to get out of the way, to get somewhere safe. I didn’t see a single fire engine.

I kept running, my face stinging as if it had been burned. There were other people too, women and children mostly, running in the same direction. We didn’t stop until we were on Third Street, and the fire was behind us, though the smoke was heavy and stinging both my lungs and my eyes and I couldn’t stop coughing.

We stumbled into someone’s yard, which was already crowded with people staring vacant eyed, watching the fire burn below, clinging to whatever they’d managed to save. I let go of Mrs. Langley and fell onto the grass, my lungs burning, and she collapsed beside me in a flurry of charred silk and exhaustion, both of us choking with every breath.

Another explosion, a fusillade of gunfire. There was nothing left of the block the Regal had stood on but fire; we were just in time to see the theater collapse in a big ball of flame. Sparks swirled through the smoky air; flaming brands landed on rooftops, and men beat them out with wet blankets. Someone yelled, “The hotel!” and I turned to see the fire leap toward the Occidental and thought how impossible it was that the hotel should burn. It was brick, and there was an excavation just before it. The fire would stop there.

But the building across on Second went up as if the devil were feeding it, and I saw the smoke come from the fourth floor of the Occidental when everyone else did, and there was an explosion, and suddenly the roof burst into flame.

It was then I realized where the fire was heading.

“My hotel,” I gasped, lurching to my feet, but before I could run, Mrs. Langley grabbed my arm, jerking me back.

“There’s nothing you can do,” she croaked.

I knew she was right. And in any case I could not bring myself to run back into that fire. I could not make myself do it. Everything was gone. Everything I’d saved, everything I’d hoped for. All gone.

She released me as if she felt the same despair I did, and together we sank back again onto the grass, wordlessly watching the world erupt in flame.

I turned to look at her. She was unrecognizable, her hair falling and charred in places, her face so black with ash and soot she looked like she belonged in a minstrel show, and I knew I must look the same. There was a burnt hole in the shoulder of her gown; the fine lace at her throat looked half-melted and filthy. I would never have known her for Geneva Langley—even now, I didn’t quite believe she was.

A burning coal fell to the grass near her booted foot; wearily she kicked it into the street, where it smoldered and died, and I watched numbly as the fire raced up toward the County Courthouse, while down on the waterfront the wind came up and Yesler’s Mill went up like fireworks—flames shooting like geysers and terrible explosions and black clouds swirling to hide the sun. The wharves with their warehouses collapsed into the bay and burned and smoked on the mud as the tide came slowly in—too late to save us or put water in the hoses of the fire engines. Useless now. Only bucket brigades and men shouting orders and then running to catch up as the fire outran them. Then the coal bunkers caught, and those flames lit up the horizon like the biggest hearth I’d ever seen.

Hot air pummeled us so it was hard to breathe. When I rubbed my face, my eyelashes broke off in little stubs of soot. It seemed it would never end, that the fire would burn a swath clear to Tacoma, and Mrs. Langley and I would just sit there, unmoving, forever, while the sky turned this sickly purple and the smoke cloud grew bigger and bigger into twilight, while the setting sun shone bloodred through it.

As the night came on, it was eerie, a night that wasn’t night.
The fire reflected on the underside of the smoke cloud, shifting and playing like the northern lights, and those coal bunkers burned steadily.

The lawn was crowded, stony-eyed men and women holding their frightened children with heaps of their belongings beside them; firemen with scalded faces and burned hands fallen into exhausted sleep. I wondered if anyone I knew had died. I wondered where Lucius was, and Jackson and Brody and Aloysius and all the others. But mostly I wondered why Sebastian had not gone to the theater, and where he was, and it was hard to think it had only been this morning that I’d awakened beside him. It seemed so long ago it might have happened to another person.

Beside me people curled up to sleep on the grass, and I realized that was what I would do too, and I didn’t care. Where else would I go, after all? I’d lost everything. All my costumes. Everything I owned. Little as it was, it had been something.

I turned to Mrs. Langley. “Don’t you want to see if your house survived?”

She looked north. I looked with her. It was impossible to see past the nimbus of the smoke. “The fire came from the north,” she said thoughtfully. “That’s what the boy said. He said it came from the north.”

“Yes.”

“Do you think it could possibly have survived this?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe. Where is it?”

“First Hill,” she said.

Well, yes, of course it was. “Well, there’s no fire here on Third. If it didn’t cross uptown, you’d be all right.”

She nodded and drew up her knees, settling her chin into them.

I glanced south, seeing nothing but smoke. The weight of what I knew I had to say settled hard, nudging, and I cleared my throat and said, “Thank you. You know, for not leaving me in there. For saving my life.”

“You’re welcome,” she said softly. “But I think we’re even. You saved mine as well.”

“All I did was show the way.”

“I would have been hopelessly lost.” She wiped her hands on
her skirt as if it mattered that they were dirty when she was so filthy with soot and ash it would probably take three baths to get her clean again.

“I suppose your husband’s probably looking for you.”

She went quiet, too still. “Perhaps he’s dead.”

“Rich men don’t die in fires like this,” I said, meaning to reassure her. “He would have been out the moment anyone smelled smoke.”

She nodded, her expression gone thoughtful. “What if he didn’t get out?”

“Mrs. Langley—”

“Or what if I was the one who died?”

“But you didn’t. You’re right here beside me.”

“It would be so easy now to just … be lost.”