Hold the Light (3 page)

"Dear God, oh God, how did the fire spread so quickly? How are we going to get out? Dear God, help ... I have to think of something."

She pounced up to the window with a last desperate idea. Looking out at the tops of the green trees, she saw the redcoats moving off into the distance and looked back at the children coughing. Turning to her knitting chair, she grabbed it by the legs and heaved it through the other window, spitting the glass shards all about and down to the long green grass two stories below. She peered out and saw no flames blocking the way. She prayed her idea would work. Darting to the bed, she ripped the mattress off the bed frame, hobbling under its awkward weight, and placed it on the windowsill. A few fires sprouted along the path down the roof but she pushed the mattress down the burning tiles anyway. It softly bounced and nestled up next to her chair on the grass. She ran back to her children.

This was the only way. She looked at the huddled ball of siblings and yearned for some assurance that this would work. God, any sign would do. The idea of tossing her children out a window was heart wrenching, but they had a better chance of survival that way. Pulling and yanking on any arm she could get a grip on, she still couldn't pry them apart. With a frantic look about the room, she gave up and instead pushed the huddle of her children across the floor to the window. She tried to pry them apart again as they cried and bellowed, but they held onto each other even tighter.

"Just please do this for mommy! I'll give you treats!"

A hideous screech blew fire underneath the door and into the room, consuming the dresser barricade, spreading flames out like fingers. A rush of heat singed her face. The thought of her children being taken by this death garnered her strength. A rage burned within her, stronger than the blaze growing in the room. She ripped at their limbs, prying, poking yet managed to get a hold of two arms in both her hands and yanked as hard as she could. A pop came from both of the little arms that was louder than the pops of the burning bedroom. Nathaniel screamed and Mural winced.

She heaved Mural up from underneath his armpits and looked down to the mattress. With little hesitation, she hurled him to the padding. Relieved with the success, she reached for Nathaniel and did the same. Finally, she stretched for the last little one when a hot blast of death blew the door open, destroyed the barricade, and sprung at her with blinding speed and colors. It blasted her backwards against the windowsill squarely with her backside. Her hands gripped tightly onto the shattered glass of the broken window.

Her youngest screamed and cried. Shedding off disorientation, their mother leaped up for her daughter when the fire came with open hands.

Wide and hungry it charged for them both. She pushed her hands out for Becca through the thick heat. Her skin bubbled and melted the closer she came to her child. Tears filled her blinded eyes, momentarily cooling them as she stumbled into the smoke.

She called and called, "Becca! Beccaaaaa!" But she only heard her own coughs in response. Her fingers shook with the thought of her daughter burned alive and she responded with a more fevered push forward. Out of a puff of black smoke, Becca's white lace glove meekly emerged. Her little fingers wiggled for open air, barely piercing into sight through the black, reaching for mother. They were so close, mere inches from connecting, though neither could see the other. Fumbling through the smog, in an amazing moment of luck, their fingers grazed each other. Mother held her daughter's soft clothed hand and snatched at it. Relief surged through her body.

She had her daughter with a firm grip around the wrist. With a gulp of ashen saliva, she summoned all her strength and turned for the window.

Then, as if sent from the depths of hell, a second blast of fire shook the room and surged bright orange flames across the entire room. The fire enveloped Becca's pallid glove in the mostunnatural orange and red living flames and set her mother's once beautiful and pristine dress on fire. She stumbled backwards, desperate to extinguish herself and fell out the window.

Chapter 4

Nathaniel woke hours later and shrieked from the pain pulsating in his dislocated shoulder. Mural woke to his screams. Sitting in the twilight, Nathaniel sobbed and held his left arm as Mural strolled up to him.

"Oh God, Mural. It's broken - it hurts!"

"Come here, its not broken. Stand up," he ordered as he nursed his own shoulder. "Father taught me this."

Mural held the pendant limb at the shoulder as Nathaniel winced and walked him a few feet towards a tree. Mural had him subdued and calm until he pushed his brother with both hands into the tree. Nathaniel bellowed.

The dislocated shoulder hit the bark straight on and popped it back into place. He shook his arm and rubbed it without showing any signs of pain and hugged his brother with both quickly regretting it as they recoiled in pain.

"Take it easy on the arm."

"Thank you. How did Father know that?"

"Because he usually dislocated other peoples' shoulders in fights and always ended up putting them back into socket for them. Then they'd buy him rounds," Mural said, strolling up to the same tree. Unblinking, he rammed his shoulder into the bark and grunted. He stepped back and shook his arm, satisfied.

A few moments later, the boys turned and walked to the house. They stared at a charred skeleton of wood and brick. Fires meekly dotted the foundation of their ravaged home, greedily nibbling on the last of the food, leaving behind nothing but ash. The brick fireplace and the stove were the only recognizable objects still standing. Broken timbers that looked like ribs from picked over carrion jutted out from everywhere.

"What about Mother?" Nathaniel asked, "We have to find her!"

Both boys split up and called out for her. Their voices sounded through out the woods returning only as echoes with the cool breeze of the coming night. They searched until darkness set in, weaving past trees and coves, finding nothing but nature. Canon fire from the distance boomed as the sun headed for its resting place. Mural set up a fire with what was left of the house, scattering in some broken branches which, only hours ago, were used for playful fencing, not for survival. The brothers sat for most of the night, staring at the fire dancing about the dark and fighting tears. Neither boy could utter a word for hours. Nathaniel, worn by the day's fatigue, nestled against a log to sleep. Mural, forced into first watch, shook off his emotions and weariness, and vowed to stay awake. But as time passed and his listlessness got the better of him, he rose and strolled down the road.

"What do we do now?" He thought and walked, "Mother and Becca are missing and Father is off at war. I'm the man now so I've got to come up with something."

Nathaniel, barely twelve and Mural just two years older, came together with a meager amount of combined experience and even less experience authority.

"We can take care of ourselves and hunt for food and shelter," Mural pondered in a whisper,

"we won't be able manage it for long. Nathaniel isn't that strong. We have to find shelter and food before any more damned redcoats come back. And they will come back. But we can't leave. Not until mother comes back home with Becca in her arms looking for us."

Anger welled up in his head and smothered his rationality. He did not want the responsibility of having to decide. "So I have to choose between our immediate survival and seeing if my mother and sister are alive..."

Disgusted with his options, Mural kicked at the path, hoping for an idea to strike him. One hit his toe. He leaned down, crouching before a long, cylindrical, ornamented piece of metal and ran his fingers over the raised markings. Brushing away black soot, he found the sword he had knocked off the imposter officer. Mural lifted it and bounced its weight off his palms.

"This is a start," he thought, then paused under the weight of realization. "No, it's a sign. We are going to need protection along the road. What better protection than this? After everything had been taken from us, this is the way to take it back." Power sat heavily in his hands and fueled his anger.

The night was calm and the air was sweet but it burned his lungs as he breathed it in. It would have been a beautiful night if not for the circumstances.

Fury churned in Mural's stomach and rippled through his veins.

Goosebumps raised on his skin and anger balled in his throat. His left hand tightly gripped his forehead and tried to rub away the pain, then slid down to his eyes and wiped away his tears.

A rustling from the charred grass and timber spun him completely around. He quickly and loudly unsheathed the sword in response and gazed around the wreckage for movement. Slowly shifting his feet forward through the broken vestiges of his home an eternity passed until something poked itself free just ahead of him. Even in the dark, with the shadow cast from the fires, Mural could see something red. His arms were taut with fear; his muscles yearned to strike at that evil color. The color of the men that burned his house. The color the man he shot bled.

Without a thought of caution or an inkling of mercy, Mural flipped the sword and stabbed the blade into the debris with all his force. The sword sunk down and stuck into the ground. A flash of the memory of the soldier's malevolent faces made him twist the sword back and forth. Mural had to protect what was left of his family and the redcoats had already tried to take their lives once, it wouldn't happen again. A muffled sound Mural wanted to believe was a cry of pain came from the wreckage beneath his sword, and then died quickly, sounding more like an animal than a person to him. But he wouldn't know.

"The redcoats are more animal than man," Mural muttered.

A small fire still flickered nearby. Mural walked to it and lifted a burning board from the fire and tossed it directly atop where he had stabbed with the sword. He kicked boards on top of the flame, hoping it would burn away the vermin. He watched the flames eat the rubble and, without him knowing it, gazed angrily at the last vestiges of his childhood burn away. Content with his decisions and his makeshift revenge, Mural ran back to the bonfire.

"Listen, Nathaniel," Mural announced, lost in a plan formulating as he spoke, "We can go round up a chicken at Old Man Henry's coop and then bring it back here to roast. Then at daybreak we head to Boston. To join the Continentals and kill all those lying bastard redcoats."

Caught up in his excitement, Mural forgot that Nathaniel was already curled up asleep by the fire mumbling, "Mother...come back..."

Mural patted his brother's head, "Dream they return, Nathaniel. Dream and hope."

Mural calmed down yet didn't want to sheath the sword; he enjoyed seeing the red stained blade. Such an evil color yet so persuasive. He would have to coax to be on this side from now on.

Chapter 5

Mural rose with the dawn. He stretched out with the first rays of sunlight and walked to the dead house again. Kicking around the grass and ashen boundary of their scorched house, trying to make sense of what he knew was goodbye, his foot discovered yet another metal object. It was smaller than the sword he found and clutched and he didn't recognize it at first. He pushed around and pried it from the dirt and saw it was their mother's wedding band. It gleamed between his ashen fingertips. Mural stared at it and gently rubbed it clean.

"This is for Nathaniel," he said and walked back to wake him.

Nathaniel cried most of the morning after he received the ring. He stared at its shimmer and didn't, couldn't, break eye contact for everything in the world. It was the horrible evidence of their mother's fate and he couldn't accept it. Mural let him cry until the sun had gone beyond the horizon, but had to get them moving. He didn't have much trouble getting Nathaniel to his feet and making him travel away from their home of old, their home of childhood. Nathaniel was lost in a mournful trance. They walked in silence until Nathaniel, still gazing at the ring, complained of ill health halfway to the family printing press in Boston.

"What is the matter with you?"

"I don't feel well, Mural. I hurt."

"Was it the chicken? Did I not cook it right?" Mural asked.

"I had a dream. It was my dream Mural. Mother came to me in a dream last night. I didn't know who she was at first. I couldn't see her, but it felt just like her. She was bright, brighter than fire, and she gave me something. It was round like this ring but different. I could feel her smiling at me as she handed it over. A loving feeling came from it. It was like when she tucks us into bed. She placed it on my palm. It sat still for only a second before it began to spin on its own. It spun so fast that it turned into a little ball. Then the ball soaked into my skin and it was cold inside of me. I looked at my hand and it was almost invisible, then I looked over myself and all of me was almost invisible. Mother then whispered something into my ear and I didn't understand it. That's when I woke in a cold sweat. I was so cold I had to get within a foot of the fire to keep warm. That's when I knew she was dead and then you gave me the ring and ...but I already knew ...then ...it was strange but ...I saw Father."

"Father came back?" Mural interrupted as his heart jumped.

"He tried to," Nathaniel continued. "He and his friends ambushed the people who burned down our house. I swear I saw all this in the woods just beyond the fire last night. It was like the branches and trees spread apart like curtains and the firelight shone enough for me to see everything. Everyone was battling and, during the fight, a man sneaked up behind Father. The man reached down to his side for his sword, but it wasn't there."

Mural looked down at the sword in his hands. He knew the sword he held was the one his brother was talking about. If it had been at that man's side, he would have killed their father.

"It was supposed to be there - you changed that - but it didn't make any difference," Nathaniel continued, "Father thought someone was behind him and turned around and swung his sword, but the man ducked and father only knocked his cap off. He had blond hair and a big pointy nose like the man who burned down our house. It was the man who held the older man you shot Mural. The blond man came up with a knife after father missed and stabbed him in the chest. Their eyes met and father knew him. Father called him Ben before he fell to the ground. The fighting moved away from Father and I came up to him as his breathing stopped. I touched him and he was cold and then I was cold. I looked up and saw the blonde man looking right at me. He smiled and waved. Mural, I don't know what I was doing or what happened, but after all the fighting was done, the blonde man was the only one to survive. I think Father's dead, Mural, and the man is coming back for us."