They say it's impossible to remember the future, but at that moment, Andrew remembered all time at once.
He remembered the bargain he was about to make with the fire queen. He remembered handing his blue flame, his heart, his song . . . the last thing he had of Lithe, to the queen. He remembered her fiery hand clutching it tightly.
"We have a deal?" she'll say.
"I will do what you ask," he'll promise. "If you bring her back."
Andrew remembered leaving the hospital, his foot bandaged and damaged. He would limp on it for the rest of his life, but he wouldn't care. He had a purpose that transcended the physical realm . . . a dark purpose.
He remembered how he will buy the old building, half crumbled, half torn down, and restore it, turning it into an apartment building on the edge of the Sound.
He remembered how he will buy the old furnace from the hospital at a salvage sale, how he'll have the ten tons of cast iron steel hauled and installed in the basement of the apartment building.
He remembered the nightmares he would someday have, of losing Lithe to the Sound, her face would ripple on the surface of the water, then disappear forever. He will wake up clutching his chest where the missing flame once lived, which would be hot with imagined heat. He will glance at the vents, almost seeing her face, then he would cry.
He would cry every night.
"What do you do with fire numbers?" he had asked Lithe months ago.
"We count the universe," she said.
"The whole universe?" he had asked.
In the future, Andrew would spend almost every evening at his desk, working on the fire numbers. Before his very eyes, over many years, the chaos numerology would unfold, the fire numbers would reveal the truth that Lithe was trying to teach him.
"The chemical reaction of elements combined with heat creates enough energy to bend time and space in a predictable, functional equation," he had tried to explain to his teacher so many months ago.
In the future, he would learn the truth about time and space, that fire once ruled the planet called Earth, billions of years ago. He would learn that over time, fire lost the world to water, the great eraser.
He would learn that the natural state of the universe was chaos and that fire worshiped chaos. He would learn that they had waged war on the great eraser, and their life spawn: the humans, creatures who had controlled fire for millions of years.
Andrew's foot burned, melted as he remembered the worst part of the future.
He remembered the tenants of the apartment building, each one poor, each one desperate. Drug-addicted mothers, abusive fathers. And their children, already haunted and broken, in and out of foster homes.
He would bring each one down to the basement to see Fornax. He would tell them it was going to be okay. He would escort into the mouth of Fornax, into the arms of the Fire Queen. As they changed from form to fire, they would no longer have to feel the pain of love gone terribly wrong. Their screams would turn to song. They would be one with the fire world.
He would do it all for Lithe.
But after she had each child, the Fire Queen would demand just one more before she would release Lithe.
There was always one more.
He knew the decades would pass, he would grow into an old man. The boxes would piled high in the basement, filled with the reminders of lives lost.
At the end, when his age had reached a downturn, he would realized the truth.
Lithe was never coming back.
She was lost forever to the sound.
The second flame, the song, had destroyed his soul.
He had to use the fire numbers to bring his soul back from chaos.
He had to become the great eraser.
ČTEŠ
The Song of Burning Souls (COMPLETE)
ParanormálníThe song haunted Andrew's dreams. Then he found the singer: Lithe-a girl made of flame who lives in the vents of his apartment building. Slowly, she shows him the fire world, a brilliant place where there are no lonely winters. But these glimpses ar...
