February Thaw (3 page)

"And I have caused another seven to grow in its stead. One for each of the seeds you ate so that you can see how much my love has multiplied."

"I ate?" Persephone repeated, her voice rising dramatically. "You fed them to me."

"I only offered them to you," Hades protested. "You ate them."

Her chin rose. "I didn't know what it meant."

"And now you do." He opened the hand that held the rose and, like drops of blood against his pale skin, were seven pomegranate seeds.

Persephone gave a little cry Demeter wasn't quite able to interpret, but her eyes were dewy and that seemed a good sign.

"Please come back to me, Sephie. The Underworld is empty without you. All my wealth is meaningless. I'll stop spending so much time with the guys. I'll cut out saturated fats. I..." The horses jerked forward. Muscles straining, Hades brought them back under control. "I love... Damn it, you four, stop it or I'll feed you to the dog! I love you, Persephone."

Could have been a more polished declaration, Demeter acknowledged but not more sincere. "Well?" she said again, this time with a little more emphasis.

"But spring...?"

The goddess smiled, trying not to let the relief show. "Spring can wait two months."

With a glad cry, Persephone ran forward and leapt into both the chariot and Hades' arms. Finding no hand on the reins, both of the god's hands being otherwise occupied, the team did what horses always do under similar, if less mythic, circumstances. Hoofs striking sparks against the air, they bolted down toward their stable carrying their two oblivious passengers back to the Underworld with them.

The last Demeter saw of her daughter and her son-in-law, they were feeding each other the pomegranate seeds and murmuring things she was just as glad she couldn't hear.

"Happy endings all around," she muttered, and added as she went to work tucking the spring growth back into bed, "I have no idea how Aphrodite puts up with this kind of nonsense day in and day out."

With Persephone back in the loving arms of her husband, it didn't take long for Demeter to return the season to normal, although she felt a little bad about the radishes.

When Dusk approached, the goddess wandered down to the rec room, opened a new bottle, and poured herself a glass of wine. The house was blessedly quiet. Even the cat had returned from wherever he'd hidden himself.

Slippered feet up on a hassock, she picked up the remote. Maybe she'd heat up a frozen pizza for dinner.

The lawn was a disaster. In the spring, the actual spring, it would have to be rolled.

It seemed a small price to pay.

Outside the cottage, it began to snow.

As I recall – and my recall isn't the best, but, all things considered, this seems like a no brainer – stories written for the anthology,
Earth, Air, Fire, Water
, were to be about one of the four elements in the title. Edited by Margaret Weiss and Janet Pack, it was the second in the
Tales from the Eternal Archive
series. I'm not sure there was a third.

I wanted to use Fire because I'd recently bought a book called
Fire: Technology, Symbolism, Ecology, Science, and Hazard
by Hazel Rossotti who is a Fellow and Tutor in chemistry at St. Anne's College in Oxford. I suspect it may be her thesis. I love this book. It pretty much proves to me that, if you look hard enough, you can find a book about anything.

As for the story, well, this is another one that started about three thousand words before it was supposed to and had to be ruthlessly edited until the actual beginning appeared. Now, I have no problem setting my urban fantasy in a distinct time – the tech is going to out you anyway – and two lines set this story firmly in the time it was written, back before DVDs of television shows were quite so omnipresent and before George Lucas proved he should've quit while he was ahead.

"Mom?"

Beth Aswith opened her eyes and stared up at the young woman bending over her. "Good, you made it. Did you come alone?"

"No, Alynne gave me a lift."

"Alynne?" Beth glanced suspiciously around the small room as if she expected to see her daughter's oldest friend hiding behind the curtains or under one of the ugly, orange plastic chairs. "Where is she?"

"She's waiting for me down in her car. She wouldn't come in."

"Why not?"

"I think it has something to do with a guy she was dating."

Silver brows dipped down. "She put a date in the hospital?"

Beginning to feel like part of a Three Stooges routine, Carlene dragged a chair over to the bed. "I think he works here, Mom."

"Well, I wouldn't be surprised if she
had
put a date in the hospital." Thin fingers clutched at the blanket. "She's an eccentric little person."

Circumstances helped Carlene resist the urge to announce
it takes one to know one
. As a child, her mother's eccentricities had been fun, as a teenager they'd been embarrassing, and as an adult, well, they put Alynne's in perspective. "I don't want to argue with you, Mom. Not here, not now." She caught up her mother's hands in both of hers. "Tell me what’s happening?"

"Didn't they tell you? I'm dying."

"Mom, you're
not
dying." Elbows braced on the mattress, Carlene leaned forward until she could capture her mother's pale gaze with her own. She knew it was a mistake the moment she did it – no argument could stand against that pale stare. When shaking her head failed to dislodge the unwelcome truth, she leaned back. "Oh my god. You really are."

"I really am. We all have our allotted time and mine has run out. I meant to end this properly, but I thought I had another year. Such a pity because I was so looking forward to seeing how the experiment came out. Let this be a lesson to you." Her fingers returned the pressure of Carlene's grip. "Always check your math."

"Mom, what are you
talking
about?"

"What do you think?"

"Mother!"

"Sorry, force of habit. That whole answering a question with a question thing; we're all trained to do it." Beth frowned slightly. "It's supposed to make us seem mysterious. Can't see how."

Silently vowing not to lose her temper at her mother's deathbed no matter how surreal things got, Carlene fought to keep from grinding her teeth. "Mysterious, no. Annoying, yes."

"Thought so." Beth snorted. "Make them work it out for themselves, they told us. Once you
start
solving their problems, they'll expect you to solve all their problems."

"Mom."

"But enough about me, I'm dying..."

"Stop saying that!"

"...we need to talk about you."

"I'll be fine."

"No, you won't."

Releasing her mother's hand, Carlene pushed back the chair, walked over to the window, counted to ten, and returned. Only her mother could turn what should be a touching moment of resolution into a petty argument. "Yes, I will. I'll miss you very much, but, after a while, I'm sure I'll be fine."

"Fine is a relative term."

"Mother..."

"I’ve enjoyed being your mother." Sagging back against the pillow, Beth seemed faintly surprised by the revelation. "Watching you grow and learn was the most fun I ever had."

"Even when I got suspended for pounding Terry McDonnell's head against the playground?"

"The little snitch deserved what he got."

Carlene returned the smile. "Thank you. I’ve enjoyed being your daughter."

"You're not human, you know."

"What?"

Her free hand raised to forestall further protest, Beth suddenly struggled to draw a breath. "What time is it?" she gasped as she released it.

"Ten thirty."

"Oh, bloody hell." The eyes that locked on Carlene's might have been the eyes of a dying woman, but they were also the eyes of a woman who expected to be obeyed. "Stay away from the oxygen tanks."

Carlene waited for the next breath.

There was no next breath.

Barely breathing herself, Carlene slowly stood and backed away from the bed. The too conditioned hospital air had picked up a shimmer and she could hear nothing through the sudden roaring in her ears.

Her mother was dead.

Beth Aswith was dead.

Bindings began to unwind.

Carlene remembered.

"Oh crap..."

She barely had time to move away from the curtains before she returned to her true form.

The flesh she'd worn for twenty-four years turned to ash so quickly there wasn't smoke enough to register on the alarm over the door. The flooring got a little scorched and the ambient temperature of the room went up about fifteen degrees, but she managed to regain control before she set the whole hospital on fire.

It wasn't easy and had there been an oxygen tank handy she wouldn't have been able to resist, but there wasn't and she did and, eventually, she calmed down.

Burning only enough oxygen to maintain a brilliant white flame barely an inch high, she danced over to the bed and, leaving a scorched line along the blanket, settled in the air above the dead wizard's nose. "See," she said, unable to stop herself from flickering, "I told you I'd be fine."

They’d been together for over a hundred years before the final experiment. Even measured in combustion rates, that amount of time, that kind of companionship, couldn't be burned away as quickly as flesh. Her flame dimmed and she dipped down close enough to temporarily warm cold lips.

"And I miss you very much."

A change in air currents warned her that the door was opening.

"Ms. Aswith?"

She sped past the nurse and out into the hospital corridor. Staying close to the ceiling where the glare of the fluorescent lights rendered her virtually invisible, she followed the blue line to the elevator, took the elevator to the ground floor with a pair of grumbling orderlies, and finally flew out the front doors.

The sense of freedom was intoxicating. She ignited a dead leaf just because she could then sped off to rediscover the joys of a world with no boundaries.

A nickel smelter in Sudbury.

Fifteen hundred acres of spruce forest in Siberia.

The marshmallow on the end of a boy scout’s stick.

A lava flow on Maui.

She was everywhere fire burned and everything burned if the fire was hot enough.

There was only one, small problem. She couldn’t burn away Carlene.

She’d gotten into the habit of being human and burning bored her.

*

"Tell me again; you're a what?"

"A fire elemental."

"Cool." Feet up on the trunk that served her for a coffee table, Alynne took another swallow of beer. "And Beth wasn't really your mother, she was a wizard who gave you a body so you could see what it was like to be human?"

Resting on the wick of a meditation candle, Carlene flared. "That's right."

"And you liked being human and now you want my help to get you another body."

"Yes."

"I don't know." Alynne's eyes narrowed as she studied the flame. "You needed my help yesterday afternoon and then you ditched me in a hospital parking lot."

"I
said
I was sorry!"

"Easy to say." Setting the empty bottle carefully on the frayed arm of the couch, Alynne stood and shrugged a Toronto Maple Leafs hockey jacket on over a faded Grateful Dead t-shirt. "Well, let's go."

"That's it?"

"That’s what?"

"You're going to do it?"

"You thought I wouldn't?" One hand beat dramatically at her chest. "You cut to the quick."

"Sorry." Carlene carefully disengaged herself from the wick and followed her friend out into the hall. "I have to say, you're taking this whole thing a lot better than I expected."

"How long have we been best friends?"

"Ever since you bit me in second grade."

"And I should throw all that away?" There were five locks on Alynne's door but only one of them worked. "What kind of best friend would that make me? Besides, that whole voice out of a burning bush thing is historically kind of hard to argue with, not that a pot of winter savoury counts as much of a bush." She lifted the gate on the freight elevator just high enough to duck under. "Although the next time you show up to tell me you've turned into something weird, you could wait until I'm not holding something breakable." Using the hammer left in the elevator for just such an occasion, she whacked the button for the first floor. "You owe me a Princess Leia Star Wars glass."

"Sorry."

"Actually, you're a lot more interesting now than you used to be."

"Thanks a lot," Carlene muttered, lightly charring the two-by-six bracing the back wall.

*

Given the gasoline fumes leaking out of Alynne's car, Carlene thought it might be safest if she made her own way home.

To the wizard's house.

It looked different, dark and empty. She'd lived there as human for twenty-four years and for almost fifty years in her true form before that – had, in fact, helped the wizard decide to buy it – but she felt no more connection to the house now than she did to any other building on the street. Burning a little copper out of the air pollution, the brief blue flare the elemental equivalent of a human sigh, she wondered if everyone who discovered they were adopted felt as disconnected to their past.

The distinctive sound of Alynne parking by Braille pulled her out of her funk and she swooped down to windshield level.

"Swamp gas ahoy." Alynne stepped out onto the sidewalk and hip-checked the driver's side door closed. "You look like one of those will o' the wisp things."

"Sometimes I was."

"Yeah? You ever lure men into swamps to drown them?"

"Once or twice in the old days to protect the wizard." Carlene lead the way up the path. "It's not something I could do now."

"Not even to a really bad man?"

"Well, I guess..."

"Not even to some guy who like broke your best friend's heart and ripped off her favourite pair of motorcycle boots when he left?"

"I'm
not
luring Richard into a swamp to drown him."

"Bummer."

"Now be quiet until we get inside. Ever since he retired, Mr. Chou has taken it on himself to be a one man neighbourhood watch."

"Was he the guy who found your mom passed out in the garden?"

"Beth
wasn’t
my mother." It was more of a sizzle than a snarl.

"Oh yeah. Sorry."

The spare key to the side door was inside the hollow body of the hedgehog boot scraper. Alynne fished it out, unlocked the door, and the two of them slipped into the house.

"Don’t turn on the lights," Carlene cautioned.

Moving carefully down the basement stairs in the dim glow from her friend, Alynne snorted. "This is your house now. There's no law against breaking into your own house."

"If I don't have a body, I can't have a house."

"But we're here to get you another body."

"And until we do, we shouldn't be here."

Alynne paused and shook her head hard. "Whoa. Paradox. I hate it when this happens."

Carlene decided it might be safest not to ask how often Alynne had found herself in similar situations, although she was beginning to realize how much of their friendship seemed to be built on a willing suspension of disbelief.

The workshop door was locked as well, but there was no spare key.

"It's a wooden door, can't you burn through it?"

"I can burn one molecule of oxygen at a time and slip through the key hole, but I need
you
in the room with me."

"So burn the whole door down."

"The heat would ignite the rest of the house."

"Not good." Alynne boosted herself up onto the washing machine and sat swinging her legs. "Well, you've always been the smart one."

Carlene settled into the recycling box and absently started burning old newspapers one sheet at a time. She'd always done her best thinking on organics.

"I thought you quit smoking?"

"Ha. Ha." Extending herself a little, she burned the smoke as well.

"So how come you're not igniting the rest of the house now?" Alynne wondered unwrapping a stick of gum.

"Paper burns so quickly it's easy to control."

"You think your mom's cable is still hooked up? 'Cause if we're not accomplishing anything down here, I'd like to go upstairs and watch bull-riding."

"Beth wasn't my mother." Rising off the paper, Carlene moved toward the door. "There
has
to be a way in."

"Fire's not out."

"What?" Adjusting her point of view back the way she'd come, Carlene flared briefly orange. "Crap. Could you throw some water on that..."

"What’s the magic word?"