Sarah Laker

16 - The Fire

Sarah slept fitfully. Tossing and writhing about in sheets of cotton so damp that they squeaked with her erratic movement.

Her auburn hair caught in clumps of matted knots, twisted in the torment of her lucid dreams.

How could she be so real, so lifelike? Sarah could touch her, hear her, smell her.

Her mother, Maria.

It had been so long since her mother's name was mentioned by her father. Her memory had almost faded away. Now, however, the name had conjured up images held far in the recesses of Sarah's mind. They jostled for priority within her dream.

It was autumn, her father lit the fire in the living room. Little Sarah solemnly passed him sticks of kindling. A gentle hand brushed the top of her head. A wave of lavender draped over her as her mother came in the room.

Sweeping past Sarah in a long, flowered dress made of thick cotton, with warm dark green tights, Maria flopped down onto the sofa.

Her mother hugged her knees to herself, stretching the dress's material to form a tent with only her stockinged toes peeking out. Her hair in its custom plait lay along her crossed arms. She smiled and her eyes twinkled while she observed her small family on the hazy, chilly afternoon.

Sarah felt herself changing. Now, she was no longer the little girl of the memory but the adult version of herself - taking her own place.

Her father asked her to lean into the fireplace and blow air onto the kindling.

"It's the only way to get the fire going sweetheart."

He grinned back at his wife.

Had she been an adult, Sarah would have guessed the hidden meaning of the words between her parents, yet trapped in her waking dream of innocent childhood memories, it was lost on her. She bent closer to the sparks and breathed heavily.

The blaze escaped the confines of the fireplace and softly spread like a red winged angel around Sarah and her father, reaching out to encompass the whole scene, her mother included. Wrapped in this surreal coating of flame, with no heat and no sensation of danger, Maria began to sing.

"O filli et filiae
Rex caelastis, Rex gloriae
Morte surrexit hodie...."

The gentle rise and fall of the tune left Sarah calm and serene, swaying along with the musical lilt of her mother's voice. When she reached the chorus, it seemed as if other female singers were accompanying Maria, one almost soprano, one lower. They were harmonising.

"... Hallelujah, hallelujah..."

The beautiful serenade continued while Sarah remained caught in this tableaux, her father beside her. As the voices completed the chant in a crescendo, she was aware of Neil's change of emotions.

Looking up in slow motion at his face, she could see bubbles of tears collecting in the rims of his eyes, reflecting the brazen glow of the surrounding fire. His countenance transformed beneath her gaze; from a happy, rosy cheeked grin, to a much graver expression. The corner of his lips inched their way downwards as his cheek and jaw muscles clenched tighter into a set form. Lines furrowed his brow, creating a fierce frown of anger, turning all too quickly into a face possessed with rage.

She watched spellbound as he turned to face Maria, his arms stretching out towards her in a lazy freeze frame action.

The moment his fingers were inches away from his wife's face, the voices ceased as did Maria, the silence snapping the scene back into lifelike time.