Smoke and Fire

Chapter 1

Every Thursday evening after a modest dinner of turnip soup, Asha would shimmy down the trellis outside her window at His House of Perpetual Peace, the church she called home, and spend her night strolling through the lower-middle-class portion of Ester.

Beneath the lambent moon, it was easier to imagine in which house her real parents lived. The one with the ceramic gargoyle in the garden? Next door, with the enclosed sunroom? Or how about the one with the beat-up cart chained up out front and the sad, skinny horse standing listlessly in its lean-to on the small strip of land in the back?

She suspected Father Brant knew exactly which house she'd been ejected from at the ripe age of two, but his memory was going, his thoughts dissolving like too much sugar in tea. Granules would be left behind, a few memories for him to reflect on, but they could be found in the dregs, what most people would cast aside.

She told herself not to get too frustrated on the days when he'd forget her face and she felt truly unwanted. He never would have told her his secrets anyway; his priest's robes kept him choked.

Her favourite house to fantasize about was a tired white brick monster, its gabled roof like sagging shoulders, its windows heavy-lidded eyes.

One of the houses across the street had a rain barrel kept near the edge of the property, out from beneath the stretch of a massive oak tree. Asha leaned against it to watch the people in what she'd come to think of as her house.

They moved behind blue lace curtains, a woman standing at what Asha imagined was a sink (she couldn't see past the windowsill) and a man that came and went behind her, taking plates off a table or baby toys for her to wash. He put a kiss on her cheek the final time he appeared and Asha's heart panged with longing.

If one of the Gods came down and gave you that very life, would you be satisfied?

She feared the truth, she didn't belong to a scene like that, she belonged to the dusty attic of the church on the edge of the slums, to the dark alleys of Wallace Avenue, and the shadows of Rose Boulevard, where she could spy poor but happy people with their poor but happy family. She belonged with Father Brant, who had done the best he could by her for as many years as he'd been able. She belonged with Bjorn, another orphan, who was almost like an older brother, though only nice to her when the lights got dim and he got to drinking.

Next door, a window shattered and voices bled into the night, screams, a man and a woman and someone caught between adolescence and adulthood. They were the raw kind of mad that only families could be. The kind of mad that cut deep to the bone. Bar fights and jealous lovers' squabbles had nothing on this fury.

The front door burst open and a gangly boy stumbled out. One side of his face was swollen and his shirt clung to him, wet with spilled beer; Asha could smell it on the air.

A tall man chased after him with a butcher's knife raised. They were almost spitting images of each other, thin cheeks and noses, low brows, high foreheads. Their hair was different, though. The man's was a dark brown, the boy had dyed his the green of the forest, probably with fabric dye or something else equally toxic to get that dark, rich colour.

The father screamed, spittle flying from his mouth, eyes two narrow slits. His voice was pitched in such a way that Asha couldn't even understand what he was saying, beyond money. That was easy, though, everyone always fought about that.

The boy ran faster than his father and after a few hundred metres, the older man gave up. He huffed and swivelled back around on his heel, returning to his house. He caught sight of Asha staring and sneered. "What are you looking at, gutter rat?"