Those Who Favor Fire by Lauren Wolk (easy readers .TXT) 📕

staying in the tree house for another night or two. The last night or two, at least for a good long while. And,” he said slowly, “maybe I should board up the tree house, too, just in case.”

She smiled at him, not too proud to accept these other small favors he had chosen to grant her.

“I don’t know how I’m going to live without you,” she said, leaning into him, forgetting for a moment the house at her back, the land under her feet, and everything, everything else but him.

“I don’t know how you can live otherwise,” he said, for he knew that instinct and wisdom sometimes met, sometimes made a place as unanchored as the horizon, as the junction of sea and sky, and that Rachel had found this place, as he had, one mild, invigorating season a million years ago.

Chapter 51

        As Rachel walked through her last days in Belle Haven, her hands busy, dismantling her home, it was not only her parents who occupied her mind. It was also the constant, lethal image of Mary Beth Sanderson baking underground. Like the foreign, threadlike matter that sometimes swims a lazy course across the eye, a terrible image of the dead girl crept without warning across Rachel’s vision, again and again, throughout those long, last days.

At night she dreamed about Mary Beth and Rusty sinking through the dirt. Awakened, she considered the course of events that might have been: if she, herself, had chosen to leave Belle Haven earlier; if Angela had not stayed on to try and make her leave; if Angela had taken Rusty north and Mary Beth, without him, had not stumbled onto the spot that killed her. What if, what if, what if sounded the nightly litany. Desperate for reprieve, she told herself again and again what she had once told Joe, about Holly, and what he had said to her, only days before: that she had been involved in Rusty’s life and therefore, nearly, in his death. But the notion did not soothe her, for she remembered, too, what she had told him about the importance of his motives, how they absolved him of any guilt. Remembering this, she could not escape the fact that her own motives offered no such absolution. She had stayed in Belle Haven for her own sake. To postpone the hard task of taking back her life. And in part because of this, Mary Beth had lost hers.

Rachel waited, through those last days, for some sort of peace to descend. She waited for a pardon. When she sensed the image of Mary Beth fading a little, she thought that the beginning of forgiveness had come. But while the torment that spoiled her waking hours abated, it divided and multiplied in her dreams as if it had a life of its own.

As Mary Beth let go of Rusty’s foot, the dirt parted beneath her and she slid down through it. It closed above her head as she passed. The hole was not like a tunnel, open, stable. It was simply a soft vein of earth. It was very, very hot in the hole, but Mary Beth could no longer feel the heat. There was only stale, exhausted air in her lungs. There was an impossible interval between the last beats of her stubborn heart. She was dying quickly.

Far below the surface of the earth, Mary Beth died, but her body kept moving. It slid faster and faster now, the earth slick and fire-hot. When she hit the deep bed of red coals, it consumed her. Her body moved the way a leaf turns and struggles as it burns. And then, as her body was reduced to its most resilient elements, it flared suddenly as if the fire had finally reached her volatile core and a blast of flame shot back upward. It split the dirt, erupted through the surface where Rachel stood, looking for signs of life, and caught her full in the face. It cauterized her eyes, bloodied her skin, consumed every hair on her head as if it were a fragile wick. But the fire did not knock her back. It spun her around and wrapped her up, drew her toward the hole and then down into it, down through the dirt, back down to the deep fire and the remnants of Mary Beth Sanderson. Only then did it let her go.

Rachel did not awaken herself from the dream. Her instinct for self-preservation was no longer any match for her regret. She permitted the dream to run its course. Then she crawled out of her bed and made her way from the house to the old apple tree where she had meant her parents to be interred. Finally, everything awful had come to pass. Finally, she said, “I am resigned.”

Chapter 52

        Rachel was cold. The huge willow had shed its leaves and gave her no protection. She sat in it and looked out through the thin branches that hung down all around her, nearly trailing on the ground. She felt like a bird in a cage.

Children were coming: ghosts, fairies, monsters. As they edged closer to the willow, she cackled and they jumped. “I’ll eat you up, my little pretties,” she said, showering them with licorice whips and sour balls.

She had thought this would be good for her, to sit in this tree and remember. She had hoped it would tie things off, heal her up, and send her away unencumbered. But, sitting in the tree, cold and very much alone, she realized that her departure had already begun and that she was impatient for its conclusion.

She climbed carefully out of the tree, snagging her witch’s dress, and began to walk back through town toward her hill. She walked past all the empty lots, past the boreholes, past Angela’s and Earl’s, past the place where the Schooner had gone down and Pal had died, toward the bridge where Joe was patiently waiting for her to be done.