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She ran back into the house, straight for the kitchen, riffling through the cupboards till she found the salt. Then she raced back to the porch. Elijah had cleared the corn and was in the yard by the swing. Quickly, Theta began pouring the salt along the edge of the porch to keep him out.
“No,” she pleaded as the salt ran out. “No, no.” She bent down and scooped up what she could, tossing it in front of the door. Theta burst into desperate tears; there simply wasn’t enough to protect her. Elijah kept coming. The heat that could be a weapon hid like a frightened child. She needed to stop him somehow.
“Where is Miss Addie?” Theta said. “What have you done with her?”
Elijah stopped. “He has Adelaide. Her heart is weak. He may take her at any time. She’ll become part of our world. A many-eyed tree that watches all but cannot speak. A lowly toad covered in sores. A crow who can travel between worlds but never rest. Or he will let her rot, but her mind will be awake. Voiceless for eternity.”
“Why can’t you let her alone—or better yet, fight for her?” Theta said, horrified. “You loved her once. You loved her.”
“She is owed to me.”
“Nobody’s owed to anybody,” Theta said.
“She brought me back.”
“She made a mistake! She tried to fix it.”
“She and I are bound together for all time. And now you have bound yourself to me as well. We are coming for you. For all of you. You cannot win against us.”
Elijah, coming for her, like she was his to claim. Just like Roy.
The anger that had been timid a moment ago slithered inside her now, a dragon begging to be let out. Theta had started this life in a fire, and the fire had become a part of her. The fire was awake, and she was ready to let it roar.
“Leave now,” she commanded.
Elijah stepped forward. The flames overtook Theta. “I’m going to light you up like a goddamned Christmas tree, you backwoods son-of-a-bitch.”
Theta would not remember how it started. Rage has a way of blotting out reason and memory. It was as if she were transported to another fire, the one that swept through her village when she was only a baby. She was vaguely aware that she had run screeching toward Elijah and grabbed him by the throat. The fire caught on the dried kindling of his Confederate shroud. Somewhere in the part of the brain where memories are stored, she noted that when he screamed, it sounded for all the world like a murder of crows shrieking into the night. Theta was there, setting Elijah alight, but she was also standing on the edge of her village in the snow, watching the cabins burn orange, watching her people running out only to be shot by wicked men with secrets to cover up, watching the snow bloom red with blood. She was there as her frightened mother gathered Theta into a blanket and into her arms and tried to make a doomed run for it. Even after the men had shot her down, she’d crawled to a tree to spirit Theta inside. There was so much fire within Theta, she felt as if she could burn for the rest of her life and it wouldn’t be enough.
“Theta! Theta!” Evie’s voice brought Theta back into her body, which hurt as if she, herself, had been burned. Sweat ran down her back. She blinked. Elijah was gone, a pile of ash at her feet. All around her, the dried corn was on fire. The fire was spreading fast. And she was stuck in the middle of it. Through the burning corn going black, through the smoke, she saw Evie racing for the pump and bucket. Mr. Olson stumbled down the steps. Mrs. Olson came out just behind him and put a hand to her mouth.
Sam and Jericho and Bill had joined Evie at the pump. They raced toward the blazing corn, tossing bucket after bucket of water on the flames. She’d done this. She and her fire. She was out of control. Just like at the asylum. Just like at Sarah Snow’s memorial. She couldn’t be trusted. She couldn’t trust herself.
Memphis was running toward her.
“No,” Theta screamed. “Stay back!”
“Theta, hold on!” Memphis yelled. He tossed another bucket of water on the corn, putting out enough of the fire for her to make a run for it. “Come toward me, okay? Just don’t look back!”
Theta cried out as her bare feet touched the smoldering corn silk. Smoke filled her lungs, making her cough, but at last she was through. Jericho worked the pump furiously, filling the buckets and handing them off, everyone working together to contain the blaze. Theta saw Bill Johnson step to the edge of the corn and put his hand on the ground while the others were running around. She saw him draw the oxygen from that fire to put it out. She knew it cost him to do that, and as she watched gray pebble his dark hair, she felt responsible for this, too.
“Thank you,” she said.
“It’ll be all right,” he said and patted her back. “It’s out,” Bill announced to the exhausted, filthy crew.
“Once I let it go, I couldn’t control it, Evil,” Theta said quietly a few minutes later as Evie escorted her back to her room. “It was everything I was afraid of.”
Evie sat on the edge of Theta’s bed. “Well, maybe we need to lose control sometimes.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“All right, then. What if you thought of your fire less like this thing that has power over you and more like an object you can read?”
“Whaddaya mean?”
“What is it saying to you? What does it want you to know? At least, that’s what I think about.” Evie shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t understand any of this, but maybe if you let it know you’re in charge, you will be.”
“I thought I was, until I wasn’t.”
