The Fire Sermon. Francesca Haig

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      They were buried together the next day, though the gravestone bore only his name. Mum had burned Alice’s nightdress, along with the sheets from both fever-sweated beds. The sole tangible proof that Alice had existed was hanging on a piece of twine around my neck, under my dress: a large brass key. The night she died, when Alice had woken briefly and seen that she was alone with me, she’d taken the key from her neck and passed it to me.

      ‘Behind my cottage, buried under the lavender, there’s a chest. Things that will help you when you go there.’ She entered another coughing fit.

      I handed it back, loath to receive another uninvited gift from this woman. ‘How do you know it will be me?’

      She coughed again. ‘I don’t, Cass. I just hope it is.’

      ‘Why?’ I, more than Zach, had cared for this woman, this reeking stranger. Why would she now wish this upon me?

      She pressed the key again into my resisting hand. ‘Because your brother, he’s so full of fear – he’ll never cope if it’s him.’

      ‘He’s not afraid of things – and he’s strong.’ I wasn’t sure if I was coming to his defence, or my own. ‘He’s just angry, I suppose.’

      Alice laughed, a rasp that differed only slightly from her usual coughing. ‘Oh, he’s angry all right. But it’s all the same thing.’ She waved my hand away impatiently as I tried to pass back the key.

      In the end, I took it. I kept the key hidden, but it still felt like an admission, if only to myself. Looking at Zach’s face as we stood in the graveyard, squinting in the relentless sun, I knew it wouldn’t be long. Since Dad’s death, I’d felt something shift in Zach’s mind. The change in his thoughts felt like a rusted lock that finally gives way: the same decisiveness, the same satisfaction.

      With Dad gone, our house was filled with waiting. I began to dream about the brand. In my dream that first night, I placed my hand again on Alice’s head, and felt her scar burning into the flesh of my own palm.

      *

      Only a month after the burial, I came home to find the local Councilman there. It was late summer, the hay freshly cut and sharp underfoot as I walked across the fields. On the path up from the river I saw the blurring of the sky above our cottage, and wondered why the fire was lit on such a hot day.

      They were waiting for me inside. The moment I saw the black iron handle sticking out of the fire, I heard again the hiss of branded flesh that had sounded in my recent dreams, and I turned to run. It was my mother who grabbed me, hard, by the arm.

      ‘You know the Councilman, Cass, from downstream.’

      I didn’t struggle, but kept my eyes fixed on the brand in the fire. The shape at its end, glowing in the coals, was smaller than I’d pictured it in my dreams. It occurred to me that it was made for use on infants.

      ‘Thirteen years now, Cassandra, we’ve waited for you and your brother to be split,’ said the Councilman. He reminded me of my father; his big hands. ‘It’s too long. One of you where you shouldn’t be, and one missing out on school. We can’t have an Omega here, contaminating the village. It’s dangerous, especially for the other twin. You each need to take your proper place.’

      ‘This is our proper place: here. This is our home.’ I was shouting, but Mum interrupted me quickly.

      ‘Zach told us, Cass.’

      The Councilman took over. ‘Your twin came to see me.’

      Zach had been standing behind the Councilman, head slightly bowed. Now he looked up at me. I don’t know what I’d expected to see in his eyes: triumph, I suppose. Perhaps contrition. Instead he looked as he so often did: wary, watchful. Afraid, even, but my own fear dragged my eyes back to the brand, from its long black handle down to the shape at the end, a serpentine curve in the coals.

      ‘How do you know he’s not lying?’ I asked the Councilman.

      He laughed. ‘Why would he lie about this? Zach’s shown courage.’ He stepped up to the fireplace and lifted the brand. Methodically, he knocked it twice against the iron grill to shake loose the ash that clung to it.

      ‘Courage?’ I threw off my mother’s grasp.

      The Councilman stepped back from the fire, the brand held high. To my surprise, Mum didn’t grab me again, or make any move to stop me as I backed away. It was the Councilman who moved, quicker than I would have imagined, given his size. He grabbed Zach by the neck and pressed him against the wall beside the hearth. In the Councilman’s other hand, raised above Zach’s face, the brand was smoking slightly.

      I shook my head, as if trying to shake the world into some sort of sense. My eyes met Zach’s. Even with the brand so close to his face that its shadow fell across his eyes, I could now see the smirk of triumph. And I admired him, as I always had: my twin; my brave, clever twin. He’d managed to surprise me after all. Could I bring myself to surprise him? Call his bluff and play along, let him be branded and exiled?

      I almost could have brought myself to do it, if I hadn’t detected, beneath his triumph, that splinter of terror, insistent as the brand itself. My own face was screwed up against the sizzling heat that I could sense in front of his.

      ‘He lied. It’s me. I’m the seer.’ I forced my voice into calmness. ‘He knew I’d tell you the truth.’

      The Councilman pulled back the brand, but didn’t release Zach.

      ‘Why not tell us, if you knew it was her?’

      ‘I tried, for years. Nobody believed me,’ Zach said, his voice half-crushed by the Councilman’s hand at his throat. ‘I couldn’t prove it. I could never catch her out.’

      ‘And how do we know we can believe her now?’

      In the end it was a relief for me to tell it all: how the flashes of vision came to me at night, at first, and later even when I was awake. How the blast tore open my sleep with its roar of light. How I sometimes knew things before they happened: the falling branch, the doll, the brand itself. My mother and the Councilman listened carefully. Only Zach, knowing it already, was impatient.

      Finally the Councilman spoke. ‘You’ve given us all quite the runaround, girl. If it wasn’t for your brother, you might have kept on playing us for fools.’ He plunged the brand back into the coals with such force that it sparked against the metal grating. ‘Did you think you were different from the rest of the filthy Omegas?’ He hadn’t let go of the handle of the brand. ‘Better than them, just because you’re a seer?’ He pulled the brand again from the fire. ‘See this?’ He had me now by the throat. The brand, only inches away, singed a few strands of my hair. The smell and the heat forced my eyes shut. ‘See this?’ he said again, waving the brand before my clenched eyes. ‘This is what you are.’

      I didn’t cry out when he pressed it to my forehead, though I heard Zach give a grunt of pain. My hand was at my chest, clutching the key that hung there. I squeezed it so tightly that later, upstairs, I saw that it had left its imprint on my flesh.

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