Wendigo Island (ONC2024)

[M5]: Entry 14: Fire

Marie/Entry 14: Dancing with Fire

It's been some time now. Three months since the boar tail.

We went back to the lovebirds nest, but all we found was an empty cave, bones from a giant bug, and an endless slide into nothing.

Blain is fishing in a small pool of water, but it seems empty. Ron is slumped against the cave entrance, clutching his briefcase as tight as his thin arms can and shaking from the effort. His suit covers most of his gaunt features. The rest of us look exactly as emaciated as we are, though.

Karla was acting strange this morning. She said she was stepping away to get a breath, but when I found her sometime later, she was crying down by the beach.

Her eyes and lips were swollen and fit to burst. It was a devastating contrast to the skin pulled tight over her bones. She still had more muscle than any of us, but it broke my heart to see such a powerful and charismatic woman brought so low.

"This is it for me Marie, this is as far as I go. Figures this is how I go out."

"You're the strongest of us-"

"I can't power through an alergic reaction, Marie."

"Allergic... to what? Why didn't you tell us?"

"So you could magic up some Benadryl?"

There was silence for a long time. Neither of us had the energy for winded conversation, even if there was no dark cloud hanging overhead.

"It used to happen once or twice a year. Doctors say I'm allergic to every flower and weed there is. Living on the open sea these past years felt like I was revived. The salt air and the wind kissed me better than any man ever could."

"Who needs men when you have the ocean?"

I could see a smile under her bent features.

"My throat will close soon, but I'm glad I could die here. On the beach with someone who gets it."

She was too weak to sit up, so she lay her head in my lap.

"I was a fire dancer, you know? I performed on cruise ships. It was so much fun. So much better than bagging groceries. I regret nothing, even if it landed me here."

"That sounds amazing. I would have loved to see it."

"I have a bottle left. Can you help me to my feet?"

A part of me didn't want to. I wanted her to rest, but I knew it didn't matter. I couldn't refuse her in that moment anyway.

Once she was on her feet, she picked up a handful of small strait sticks and a staff wrapped in leaves and cloth at the ends. It was all leaning against the cliff, ready to go. She had accepted her fate a long time ago and was ready for her last dance. The weight of that realization froze my heart.

She put one of the small sticks in her mouth and threw the others into the sand at random. I'm not sure when she lit the ends of her staff or how she even lit them. It was on fire with a single twirl out.

The staff twirled behind her back and then back in front. As it spun, she spun the opposite way. Even at the end of her rope, her hands moved faster than anyone I have ever seen.

She was a whirlwind of fire leaping around like a woman possessed by passion. I couldn't see her guant features when she moved like that. I saw her as she was. Healthy, alive with laughter, dressed in her tribal armbands and skirt, made her every spin even more dramatic. Her hair was tied up expertly, but only as much as it needed to be to keep it away from the flames as she was flying around the deck of a cruise ship.

Then she jammed her staff into the sand underneath one of the sticks and shot me a wink as it caught fire. She flipped it into the air to balance it on the end of her staff and picked another up with the other end. She made the sticks hop in place and shook her staff, just for laughs, just to test her balance, just to play with fire. Then she juggled them.

She tossed one into the air and slid one down the end of her staff. Then she flicked that one up and lit the one in her mouth with it! I almost missed it. The fire passed by her face, and suddenly, she was glowing with the flame hanging from her teeth.

She juggled all three with her staff alone, not bothering to use her hands, until...

CRACK!

WOOSH!

CRACK!

WOOSH!

CRACK!

WOOSH!

She struck the sticks out of the air one by one. As her staff met them, they transformed into fireballs streaking into the woods, into the air, and out over the ocean.

She did this until all of the sticks were gone. She wasn't performing a dance. She was performing magic, and the night sky has never been more alive with magic.

She finally ran out of ammunition, and she stood under the wanning moon until her staff had returned to nothing but a stick. She broke the staff over her knee with strength a starving person shouldn't have and took a swig from her bottle of alcohol.

When she spit on the two charred halves, they came back to life and released a waterfall of flame into the sand around her. She moved her whole body the way that the dragon moved its neck. Swaying to change directions and bathing the world in a ten foot stream of red. The fire blotted out the rest of the world, and I could only see the flame shooting into the sky.

She dropped the sticks, but the flame persisted with nothing but her own breath. It fell like a fountain around her as it receded. Soon, the flame was only a dagger pointing to the sky, hanging onto life just between her lips.

Karla inhaled the dagger and crumpled to the sand with fire in her lungs, but with a smile on her burnt lips.