There are so many ways to die, to be killed. Knives to stab, ropes to pull tight, and guns to fire. And so many people to fear and fear for. Who will deliver your end to you? There are the obvious people. The strangers, and knowing their strangeness, we must shun them, lock our doors against them. But what about the others? The familiar ones. The postman, perfectly harmless. Or old man Zook. He’d always liked children. But there was talk once about a little girl… And where and when and how and why? People were so unknowable, even the people you loved. There are so many ways to die, to be killed. I’d never considered them all before. And if I did methodically consider them all, what then? Then madness. Then, my poor child, forced to trust her safety to a madwoman, one of those to be shunned, doors to be locked against. A madwoman for a mother who could no longer trust herself to recognize the enemy.
In the end, it was time that fooled me. Time passed, a month, then two, then fall turned to winter and into spring, and the spring seemed less dangerous than the winter had been, less dark, less opportunity to hide in the dark. I waited still. But now there were lapses in my waiting, an hour here or there when I let myself sleep or sit down to a meal without thinking of Seth.
And, of course, that was when he came back.
The heart of the night, it was, and sleeping the dreamless sleep of exhaustion, I awakened, disoriented, to thoughts of autumn. Someone was burning leaves in the middle of the night. Coughing, I tried to sit up. Rennie was beside me still asleep. I reached for the gun beside me. It was there ready for me but there was nothing to shoot, and the door was still bolted soundly. I could see it clearly in the flickering glow that softly lit the room. Everything was all right—must be, for the door was still locked. No one had gotten in. We were safe. I coughed again. My breath came labored. The strange light still shone through the window. Not daylight, more like gaslight, but not that either. And the roar of crackling, like a thousand candy wrappers being opened in unison. Then all at once, I knew. The inn was on fire.
Rennie would not wake. I shook her, but the sweet dreamy expression would not leave her face. Trying to get out of bed, I fell to the floor, dizzy, my vision blurring, so that where one door had stood, now there were three and all of them soundly bolted. If I could just get beyond the door to the hallway, get some air into the room. Smoke was everywhere now, thick enough to see, a misty gloaming that brought death. But my legs wouldn’t hold my weight, and I had to crawl. Even the floor was warm, and with every inch I gained, I grew weaker. Reaching the door, I touched it. Cool. The flames had not reached the second floor yet. All that lay between us and the life-giving air was the door. The bolts. Two of them. One at the bottom. Every muscle strained to pull it back. Dizziness came in waves, each deeper than the one before. “No one’ll ever break this,” the hardware clerk had said proudly. The other bolt was near the top. Using the door handle, I pulled myself up and grabbed the knob of the bolt. It would not give. Again, I strained to pull it back and again failed. And the last thing I remember was the defeated sound of my fingernails against the wood of the door as I went down.
10.
And Like Wind I Go
When I was once again aware of life, it seemed as if I’d been gone from it for a long time, suspended in some limbo that was like death, but without its finality. But I couldn’t have been gone long because the sky was still eerily lit by the burning inn. It was still in flames, its rotting timbers screaming goodbye to those who ran about, trying to bring order to its death throes. Much of the town had turned out to witness the destruction of the dwelling that had so long been the object of their contempt. I think I was the only one who knew that more than the old hotel was burning. A part of our history, my own and that of every soul who had ever wandered or blundered in, was dying too, and with it, the last holdout against ignorant conformity that Galen might ever know. Yet watching it burn, I felt as if a terrible burden had been taken from me.
Sitting up, I heard Rennie crying beside me, a good sound because it was as much the sound of life as laughter. “She’s all right,” a voice assured me. It was Dr. Lynch, the one who’d found me bleeding in the snow. A good man, that doctor, in snow or flames. “She’s just scared. But there’s no saving the inn, went up like kindling.”
“Where’s our boarder?”
“The Chinaman?” He shrugged. “Don’t know yet. You and your girl were lying out here when we arrived. We figure he must have gone back in for something and
