both women turn. A man steps out from behind the tree. He smiles and lifts his hand in a half wave.
“Oh, it’s okay.” Scarlet exhales. “It’s not—he’s Walt, my . . . electrician.”
Her mother stares at him. “No. He’s not, he’s—”
Walt’s nod cuts her off. “A soldier. That’s right, my dear. Your soldier. Though, I’m afraid, not in the chivalrous sense.”
Scarlet stares, speechless.
“You thought I spent so long on that dishwasher because I fancied you?” His features seem suddenly sharper, no longer soft and indistinct. The spluttering flame has flared into an inferno. “I will say, though, it was delightful getting to know you—as pleasurable as preparing a meal before you taste it. You must agree?”
Scarlet opens her mouth. Before she can answer, Walt is behind her, his hands at her throat. She gasps for breath, for words, for sense. But he is too fast, too strong, and she can do nothing to stop him.
Ruby screams. “Scarlet! Scarlet, kill him!”
Where is her fire? Why are her hands so cold?
“I’m afraid she’s not got the strength to toast a marshmallow right now.” Walt smirks. “Let alone me.”
For one eternal second Ruby is rooted to the spot, watching her daughter’s eyes wide with fear as she twists and thrashes and kicks. Then she lunges for Scarlet. But Walt steps back, gliding away as if the ground were ice instead of moss and stone, and Ruby falls at his feet, cracking her wrist against a rock. Pain tears up Ruby’s arm as she looks up to see her daughter’s face begin to pale.
“This’ll teach you”—Walt presses his mouth to Scarlet’s ear—“That angels can be demons in disguise.”
And vice versa, Scarlet thinks as she starts to fade. Her mother, Ezekiel, neither as she’d imagined them to be. She fights him, flailing in his grip. But Walt holds tight.
Then Scarlet is still.
Slowly, Walt slides her to the ground. Her limp hands flop out, arms spread wide, as Walt sets her head down gently, a pool of red curls on a patch of white moss. He gazes at her, stroking a thumb along her cheek.
“Death is such a beautiful moment; I don’t know why you all fight it so hard.” He looks at Ruby. “You celebrate birth and mourn death. It’s all backwards. One of the many reasons your world is so—”
In response, Ruby screams. A scream of helpless agony and frantic longing, of fury and despair, of blood and ice. Walt smiles, as if the sound is sweet to him. For Ruby, it knits the air, stitching every space between mother and daughter, connecting them by invisible threads, so all at once she’s at Scarlet’s side.
But Scarlet is still, silent, stone.
Walt looks on as Ruby brings her hands together. Warmth becomes heat as she lays them on her daughter’s chest. To bring comfort on a cold day, to heal a graze, to cure a cancer that’s crept in. With everything she has, Ruby wills life into Scarlet. But her daughter doesn’t move. Not a millimetre, not a molecule.
“Whatever you’re trying to do,” Walt says. “I don’t think it’s working.”
She looks at him. “Will you take me instead?”
Walt laughs. “And what use would you be to me? I can live for half a year on her light—yours will give me no more than a month.” He shrugs. “But I’ll take you both, why not?”
“Fine,” Ruby says, since she no longer wants to live.
In a split second, Walt has shifted to her side, hands at her throat. As the breath starts to leave her body, Ruby surrenders. It is a relief not to fight for life anymore, not to run, not to—and then Ruby sees it, or thinks she does: the slightest twitch of Scarlet’s finger, a spark flickering and spluttering, trying to ignite. Her mother focuses, summoning all the breath, all the life she has left, into her daughter.
Scarlet is still.
Ruby closes her eyes.
Walt grins.
Then, all at once, a sudden spike of lightning flares from Scarlet’s immobile hand, arcing into the air, curving back to Walt: a flash of fire straight into the centre of his chest.
And he’s gone. Incinerated, as if she’d detonated a bomb in his heart.
Leaving only a pile of ashes on the white moss and a vivid scar on Scarlet’s hand, snaking from the tip of her little finger to her thumb.
Ruby sinks to her knees, fresh breath flooding her lungs, her body curling like a comma over her prone daughter. Ruby puts her palm to Scarlet’s cheek, the heat from her