Prairie Fire (34 page)

THE HIGHWAY OF HEROES

It was a very small container. The smoke jumpers had taken what they could from the ruins of the ATV, but the Chinook had been all over everything. I heard Porter tell Courtney that from the photos, he was pretty sure Owen had practically been on the beast's tongue when he fired. I hoped those photos were heavily classified and kept somewhere where even Emily would never find them. I certainly never wanted to see them.

They'd cremated what they found and put it into a box for us to carry home. I had no idea how large an urn usually was, but this one seemed small. I had only just gotten used to thinking of Owen as a giant, and now I could carry him around in one hand.

We landed in Trenton, having flown back. Sadie arrived shortly after we did. The Oil Watch did not customarily allow girlfriends compassionate leave, but her mentor had supported her application and made it out to look more like she was his training partner—which happened to be true—and the leave had been granted. We sat together, just the two of us, while they arranged the motorcade, and I told her most of what had happened in my own unadorned words. We both cried, and then I hummed the main theme of the song I was composing for her so that she could hear it. It would never have words, I had already decided, but that didn't mean it would be hard to understand. Sadie had tears in her eyes again when I finished.

“It will be beautiful,” she told me. “I know it.”

It usually takes two hours to drive from Trenton to downtown Toronto, where the coroner's office is. It took us three hours that day, because we drove the whole way below the speed limit. There were two police cars in front of us, lights flashing but no sirens, and then the hearse with its tiny urn. Then there were three black limos. Sadie and I rode in the first one with Davis and Ilko, and everyone else was in the other two. Last came one more police car.

Every member of the Canadian Forces who is killed in the line of duty makes this trip. They land in Trenton and drive down the 401. The coroner's office receives and registers them, and the official death certificate is made up. Then the body is released home for the funeral. That is the official procedure. What happens on the 401, however, is entirely beyond military protocol.

It started in 2002, when four soldiers made the trip at the same time. People came out to line overpasses, to pay their respects. It expanded to involve local firefighters and police officers for crowd control, and soon they had to close the roads whenever a hearse was coming through. By the time Owen made the trip, it was an expected, but no less meaningful, ritual.

“Look,” said Sadie when we got close to the first bridge.

I craned my neck to see out the window. There they were, hundreds of them, on this overpass and all the ones I could see. They stood above us and let the flags they held hang low over the railings. I had assumed I'd run out of tears eventually, but I hadn't yet. Sadie took my hand, crushing my hat in the process, and we watched until we left the bridges behind.

“I came to do this once,” Davis said once we'd exited the highway. “To stand on the bridge, I mean. We had to walk for more than a kilometre, there were so many people. I think there were more today.”

“There's always more for a dragon slayer,” Sadie said.

“It's not really about the numbers,” I said. “It's that they come at all.”

We drove the rest of the way in silence.

The Trondheim memorial was long, and I don't remember most of it. I didn't sing or play. I sat with the support squad, though my parents sat directly behind me, and afterwards they took me home before I had a chance to speak with anyone.

I didn't really mind. I had work to do and not a lot of time to do it. I wanted to compose this song myself, or at least do most of the work before I called in Emily for help, but a couple hours after the memorial, Courtney showed up at the house. She was still in her dress uniform, though I had changed into my civilian clothes, but she didn't look uncomfortable.

“How is everyone?” I asked.

“I think they're sleeping,” she said. “We've been stressed.”

That was an understatement.

“You're not?” I asked. “Tired, I mean.”

“I'll live,” she said. “Besides, I thought you might need some help.”

“You write music?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “But there are a lot fewer letters in music than there are in the alphabet, and I can write that just fine.”

I laughed in spite of myself, and we set to work. Courtney had no idea what she was doing, and she couldn't make the same helpful suggestions that Emily often did. But she was a quick study, and since she was mostly just manipulating notes on the computer after I sang them in, she did just fine. Mum made us stop to eat at one point, but by the time it got dark, the song was more or less done. It had been in my head for so long that actually writing it down was almost the easy part.

It was longer than I had expected it to be, and it had a lot of parts. I hadn't set out to incorporate every person we'd worked with that night, but they had all crept in, one by one. Most of them were hiding in the general orchestra, but a few had features in the main part that I hadn't been expecting. I didn't fight it, though, even if it sounded odd at the start. By the time I had assigned instruments to all the parts, and multiplied the ones that needed to be duplicated, it felt like it was nearly done.

“I should go,” Courtney said. “I think you're just going to poke at it forever, and Porter will be worried if I'm not back soon.”

“You've been a huge help,” I said. “This would have taken me forever if you hadn't come over.”

“Honestly, I kind of wanted to see how you worked,” she said. “You get to watch me all the time.”

“It does seem fair,” I said.

“I can't believe you have all that noise going on in your head, all the time,” she said, putting her coat back on.

“I can't believe that other people don't,” I said.

“I guess it's kind of like blueprints,” she mused. “You just read them differently.”

“It's exactly like blueprints,” I told her, and we went down the stairs.

“You're sure you don't need a ride back to the motel?” my dad asked as I saw Courtney out.

“No, thank you, Mr. McQuaid,” Courtney replied. She'd called him ‘sir' over dinner, and he'd laughed so hard he'd almost choked. I think he was feeling a bit emotional. “I don't mind the exercise.”

“She really doesn't,” I said. “We don't have any green space in Fort Calgary, so the air's always a little weird.”

“I'll see you tomorrow, Siobhan,” she said, and then she was gone.

“Are you done for the night?” Dad asked. I must have looked as tired as I felt.

“No,” I said. “There are a couple of things I need to tweak on the song. And before that, I need to go to the Thorskards.”

Mum and Dad both froze for a moment.

“Does it have to be tonight?” Mum asked.

“Yes,” I said.

It was an easy drive to the Thorkards' house. I could probably do it in my sleep. I'd done it so many times. Hopefully, I'll be doing it many more.

When I pulled into the driveway, there was smoke coming out of the forge and the van was gone. I couldn't really judge, I supposed. I had gone straight from the funeral to recording music. We all had work.

I turned off the engine and walked towards the forge. I rang the bell—more of a gong, really, so that Hannah would hear it—and a few moments later she opened the door.

Her face was red from the heat, but her eyes were red too.

“Hi,” I said, not sure what else to say.

She pulled me into her arms, wrapping them so tightly around me that for a moment it was hard to breathe, and then she let me go.

She took me inside and made me tea, and we sat for a while without saying anything. I hadn't known exactly why I needed to come here, what I needed to say to her, or what I needed to hear. Only that something had been pulling at me, the way a song did sometimes, and I'd decided to follow it.

“It all happened really quickly,” I said, finally. “I mean, Owen and Courtney had figured it out, but I hadn't. I wasn't thinking that far ahead. I didn't even get a chance to stop him.”

“You couldn't have stopped him,” Hannah said softly.

“What will you do now?” I asked. “Will you stay in Trondheim, now that Lottie's plan is broken?”

Hannah laughed. It was a hard, ugly sound. The kind of laugh you make yourself have because the alternative is screaming and breaking through the walls.

“This
was
the plan, Siobhan,” she said, her voice harder than I'd heard before. “This was always the plan.”

My heart froze. She loved Owen. There was no way …

“I don't understand,” I said.

“It was supposed to be Lottie,” Hannah continued, in that same dark tone. “But she fell. After, when she woke up and I realized she was going to live, my first reaction was abject relief. I thought I got to keep her. I got to keep them all.”

She stirred her tea, even though there was nothing in it.

“But they don't stop,” she said. “They are out there right now, defending some helpless barn from a soot-streaker. They never stop. It couldn't be Lottie, and it couldn't be Aodhan. And Owen—he was the only one left, in the end.”

I felt my heart thaw to a quiet horror then. This had been the plan. Yes, they had probably hoped for a longer game, more years, more stories, but the outcome had always been the same. To sell a tale, you need a hero. And there are very, very few ways to sell a hero.

“Why didn't you tell me?” I asked. Why hadn't they told me that I was going to be his friend? That was I was going to go with him to his death? That was I going to survive and have to tell everyone in the world about it, over and over and over again?

“Would you have stayed?” Hannah replied. Her voice was soft again, more like her normal one. “Would you have followed him?”

I didn't know. So I told her a story instead.

“He said to tell you that he loves you,” I said. “He said to tell you that he always thought of you as his mother.”

At least that was the truth, though Owen hadn't said it.

Hannah put her face in her hands, but she didn't cry again. She just heaved, her shoulders going up and down like she was pulling on the bellows, until she recovered.

“Will you write his story?” she asked me, like Lottie had done before. “Will you sing his songs?”

I heard it then, like I always did. Lakes and islands. Old vans and red barns. Prairies and mountains. And fire. Always fire.

“Yes,” I said, and the melody soared. “I will.”

And I do.

THE STORY OF OWEN

This is the Story of Owen.

It starts out slowly, as small towns do, with small notes and small parts, split between flute and strings. It grows, like wheat in spring, through small adventures that bind the town together. When it grows too big, it leaves, but it will always remember where it came from.