The Fall And The Fire

The lawn was buried with orange and brown oak leaves. More leaves clung to the branches above. It was mid-Fall. The breeze was cool, chilling Jordan’s bare legs as she stretched in the backyard. The leotard was thin against the Autumn cold, but practice would soon warm her limbs with the heat of her balance beam performance. And she lived for the performance on the balance beam.
Jordan kept her blonde hair shortly cropped, just like her Olympic hero, Kerri Strug, and just like Kerri Strug, Jordan was short. Also much like her heroine, Jordan was compact, stout, and compressed from years of gymnastic tumbling. She wanted to compete in the Olympics within three years, and she knew her strength lie on the balance beam. Her father had built this balance beam two years ago, for her thirteenth birthday, after much pleading and begging. He feared that she would harm herself in the yard. She said she needed more practice at home. Jordan’s father conceded, buying mats and setting them around the beam. These mats were now buried in leaves, much like the rest of the tree-columned yard. The yard itself was a mess. Her father had not raked it in a month. He had been too busy working overtime at the factory. And, with the exception of an acorn here and there, Jordan liked having the Autumnal detritus arrayed around her as she practiced. The leaves were jubilant in their colors and abundance, like tasteful confetti from a crowd that had recently passed through in celebration of her Olympic medal.
On the other hand, the thought of a loud crowd gave her conniptions. She did not like distraction. Cheers—real cheers from a live audience—did not energize her. She was not comfortable with her performance yet to perform for an audience and to feed off its energy. The good thing about living out in the woods—and not in the suburbs—was the silence. It allowed her to concentrate without distraction. That was not to say there was no ambience. The squirrels squabbled sometimes, and the birds chirped, but these sounds were negligible when she was focused.

Jordan stretched, warmed up, and mentally prepared herself. In time she felt ready to face the balance beam. She did not hesitate. Scattering the leaves with her bare feet, the young gymnast ran, vaulted, and wheeled gracefully onto the beam. She began her routine. It was an unbroken series of motions: tumbling, rolling, dipping, and rising into a handstand that halted near the end of the balance beam. Slowly wheeling over to grip the very edge with her toes, she then did a little hop to about-face, steadied and readied herself, then launched into a cartwheel, a back hand-spring, and concluded with a back-flip that triumphed with a peacock flaunt of the arms. It was all muscle-memory. She performed the series again, and then again. She felt like a squirrel as she went foot to hand to foot, vaulting and spinning and leaping and soaring. She felt like a bird, springing and kicking her legs out like the wings of a bird flapping toward the heights. Her soul was chimeric when she was performing gymnastics. The balance beam was a totem along which she traversed spirit animals with grand exultation. She focused her mind on breathing properly and concentrated her eyes on one spot while her body rotated about, so as to not make herself sick. Yet, the motion of the world still blurred and shifted in her vision, and she felt herself totter and sway with dizziness.
And so when she glimpsed the little man sitting on the bough above her, she nearly fell, halting and swinging her arms wildly like a cartoon character trying to fly after coming to the edge of a cliff. Regaining her balance, Jordan took a deep breath and exhaled, hands on her knees and her head feeling dizzy with the blurring motion. She was too heady. Blood beat in her ears like woodpeckers seeking worms. She was seeing things.
Or so she thought.
“What a lovely lass ye be,” a voice said.
Jordan looked up at the bough of the old oak tree. Head steadied now, she still saw the little man. He was real, to her surprise, and not just an image conjured by whirling motion and swirling vision.
“A lovely lass indeed! As an oak and a willow tree made as one! A dryad in the making!”
He was short and had orange hair—bright orange hair, like fire atop his head—and the freckles on his pale body flared like fire, too. A crown of antlers rose crookedly from his head. He wore a skirt of leaves, but, at such a high angle, the skirt did not conceal his furry deer legs, nor the genitals beneath the skirt. His priapism was comically large, and, as such, frightening to Jordan.
“What are you?” she demanded. It never occurred to her that the little man was a human being. Seeing him was like seeing a Unicorn or a Leprechaun: merely seeing them, though absurd, seemed to force the rational mind to surrender to the otherworldliness of it.
“What am I?” he says with a goat’s grin. “Why, ye say it as if I be what is unnatural, but, my lass, I am as natural as ye. And just as unique as ye.”
Jordan stood on the balance beam with her eyes averted from the little man. She could not look at him without looking at the obscene appendage beneath his skirt, and so she looked to the side, and only occasionally looked at him, just to verify that he was still sitting there; that he was still watching her with his lecher’s leer.
“What…do you want?” she whispered. She did not need to ask. She could see what he wanted. It was obvious.
“To ask ye what ye want,” he said.
“I want you to leave…” she whispered.
He stood up on the bough now, hooves apart, hands on his hips, arms akimbo, and the obscenity between his legs straight out at attention. He looked like an absurd Jolly Green Giant, only orange and pale and diminutive and lewd. He scratched his ear thoughtfully. It was the ear of a stag, not a man.
“I will leave,” he said, “if ye wish it. But in the depths of ye heart ye do not wish it so, my sweet dryad.”
Jordan looked at her house. Her father was still at work, and the windows were dark. Her mother lived with a boyfriend miles away from here. The nearest neighbor was a mile down the road. Jordan herself was no pushover, though. She had broad shoulders and arms stronger than most boys her age. She was an athlete, and though she was short, the orange-haired man was shorter. If she wanted to, she could kick hard as a horse.
Yet, his short stature made his obscenity seem all the larger by comparison. And there was a certainty in his grin, a self-assurance, and she did not feel the same confidence that he obviously felt. He seemed to have an invisible audience cheering him on, whereas the applause were silent for her.
Jordan’s indecision prompted the little man to speak.
“Ye seek the Flame, do ye not?” he said. “The old Greek Flame? The Flame of glory? The Flame of Olympus?”
“Flame?” she said, her mind awhirl with the iconic Olympic torch.
“Yes,” the little man said. “The Flame of olden days, and of days to come. It does not belong to the Greeks, nor to any one people. It is the Flame of Prometheus and Agni and Kagu-tsuchi and Loki and Gibil. It is the Flame of glory and celebration and…sacrifice.”
The last word he whispered. Jordan could barely discern it from the rustling of a squirrel amongst the distant leaves.
“Sacrifice?” she said. She fidgeted on the balance beam and, though she was merely standing still, she almost lost her balance. “What sacrifice?”
The little man’s grin spread wider. “Ye know of what it is I speak.” His orange eyes surveyed her, up and down, and he licked his lips. “Ye innocence.”
Jordan was wordless, oscillating on the beam. Unconsciously her hand adjusted her leotard, and the little man’s eyes grew wide with delight.
“Do ye wish to stand for years, my dryad,” he prodded her, “or do ye wish to fall from greatness? There is always a price. There is a price if ye do not feed the Flame. A bonfire is kindled for the village, and the world is nothing but giant villages now, my little leaflet. The bigger the villages, the bigger the bonfires, the bigger the Flame. From Marathon to Munich. Between the seasons of Beltane and Onsen and Burning Man and Thimithi, the Flame must be fed. The Feat must be done and the Flame must be fed. The season’s burning always returns.”
A chill in her bones made Jordan tremble. It was not the wind.
“Will ye bend or will ye break?” the little man wondered aloud, scratching the hairs on his chin. “And for what? Ye innocence slips away even now, so why not surrender it for a greater gain?”
“I will earn my place on my own,” she said. Her voice seemed tenuous in that Autumnal silence, as if it had been drowned beneath the cheer of an audience to which she was somehow deaf and blind.
“Pride precedes the Fall,” the little man said, his grin disappearing. “Just as Summer precedes the Fall. How confident humans are in the splendor of warm days and ample food!” He grinned again, maliciously now. “How bitter they feel when the cold winds rake at their starving ribs. Wouldn’t ye rather be a dryad than a mere human being? Wouldn’t ye rather be eternal than brief as a leaf? Dryads grow on Mt. Olympus, my lass, but no mere woman may go there unless she offers a god something of value.” Again he eyed her thighs, and the place between them where the leotard pinched. “The summit of Olympus is good soil, my lass.”
“No!” she gasped, finding her throat choked with fear…and sadness.
He shrugged, then turned as if to leave. Much to her own horror, Jordan called out to him.
“Wait!”
He grinned at her over his pale, freckled shoulder. Seeing his grin, she felt her resolve grow stronger. Her momentary weakness gave way to anger.
“I will succeed on my own,” she said. “I don’t need you. I have talent. I have skills and heart and passion!”
“So do thousands of other lasses,” he says. “But they grow no more than as saplings before wilting away into obscurity. Some are no more than acorns, stagnant and squandered in unfertile soil.”
The little man laughed, then stepped off the branch. He did not fall, nor did he fly away. He simply disappeared into the orange leaves like he never was.
As soon as the little man vanished Jordan forgot about him. She wondered how she had gotten off the balance beam and came to be standing in the leaves. Something else bothered her, too, but she did not know what it was. She could not remember.
Taking a deep breath, Jordan hopped back up onto the balance beam and walked to and fro, trying to shake the strange chills she felt in her limbs. The fire seemed to have gone out of her. She did some warm-up exercises, trying to rekindle it. All around her the trees were orange and fluttered as if aflame, yet the chill breeze stiffened her limbs. The cold stiffness clamped at her neck and shoulders and hips and knees. The icy claws dug in and clutched at her sinews and her tendons, tightening around her muscles and her bones.
Still, she persisted. She shook out her joints, warmed her limbs, and steadied her breath. She walked across the balance beam as if in a firewalking ritual. A matchstick struck against her heart and flared to life. The warmth spread and she felt her skin grow hot against the cool winds. Energized with heat, she renewed her practice, channeling her whole soul into her routine. She exulted in her speed and technique. She triumphed in her passion aglow with her own inner fire.
The stiffness was sudden and excruciating, seizing the arch of her foot with a paroxysm of pain. She felt her foot spasm with an arthritic grip, felt her body flail wildly as she lost her balance and, with her accrued momentum, tumbled off the beam. She then felt the impact of her head on the leaf-strewn lawn, felt the snapping of her neck, and then, at last, felt nothing at all. She was a broken sapling crumpled upon the ground. Somewhere in the flaming leaves overhead she heard a little man’s laughter. It was the last sound she heard as her hopes and dreams extinguished on the summit of Mt. Olympus.

Put Out To Pasture

The two ranchers looked down from their horses at the body, its rotund girth expanding laboriously at the ribs.

“That old-timer’s not gonna’ make it,” one rancher said, spitting his chewing tobacco out. He tilted his cowboy hat back. It was star-spangled blue. “Oughtta’ we get him help, ya’ reckon?”

“Naw,” said the other rancher. His hat was red-and-white striped. “Wouldn’t help the other old-timers none neither. Wouldn’t help him none.”

“It might help,” the star-spangled rancher said. “If we invested in that there vaccine, maybe.”

“Maybe,” the red-and-white rancher said. “Maybe not.” He squinted at the sun as it lowered upon the pasture. “Not cost-effective, really. What we need is that there herd immunity. Let the old, sick ones croak and that there virus can’t do nothin’ but die out, too.”

The blue-spangled one scratched his chin. “Ain’t that like what ‘em Nazis did? I mean, we ain’t Nazis. But it just seems a little heartless, is all.”

“It’s all natural,” said the red-and-white striped rancher. “We’re just lettin’ it happen. Passive like. We can’t afford it in this business to think with the heart. He would of died anyhow. He ain’t profitable, neither. He ain’t producin’ like he used to, bein’ past his prime. And each old one’s a huge investment sink for the ranch. Bet he wouldn’t even make good dogfood no more, bein’ what he is.”

The star-spangled rancher nodded. “Yer right, I suppose. Nobody else seems to be carin’ none about it. Except that ol’ Jap farmer down the road. And he ain’t had nearly so many dead as we have. He said we oughtta’ try ‘em at least. Couldn’t hurt none.”

The red-and-white striped rancher scowled in some aimless direction, thinking. Or resenting. “I’m tellin’ you it ain’t cost-effective, neither, to put it on ‘em.” He snorted angrily; more loudly than his horse. “That Jap just lyin’ ‘bout it workin’, is all. Don’t be naive. How can they eat and grow big with ‘em things coverin’ their snouts? You tell me that!”

The star-spangled rancher furrowed his brow, and scratched his chin. “We could have ‘em graze at a distance from each other. And keep ‘em in different stables. Half and half, maybe, and all apart from one another. Less likely to spread.”

The body laying on the pasture trembled and wheezed.

The red-and-white rancher shook his head ruefully. “Just let it ‘appen. Herd immunity, I’m tellin’ ya. It’s the way to go!”

The old man wheezed and coughed upon the ground, gasping for air in the hot American evening. The two ranchers pulled their bandanas up over their mouths.

“Let’s just go round up the others,” the red-and-white rancher said, sneering. He rode off at once.

Glancing over his shoulder as he turned his mount, the star-spangled rancher paused a moment, considering the old man dying at his feet.

“Will make good fertilizer for the pasture, I suppose.”

He then bid his horse to a gallop, helping his partner round up the rest of the citizenry into the barn, lest the like-minded wolves get them in the coming night.

“Y’all better be more productive come tomorrow,” the ranchers said, “or y’all will all be put out to pasture!”

The citizenry went in together as one, whether they wanted to or not.

Consequences

“Consequences follow, my dear,” Lady Thatcher said. “They are the most faithful of hounds.”
“If only men were so faithful,” Lady Fairsdale said, fanning herself with her little oriental fan. “Then I would not fret so much over Henry’s time abroad.”
The two ladies exchanged mischievous, knowing smiles.
“The stray cannot remain away for long,” her elder friend returned. “Perhaps you should seek consequences of your own in the meantime.”
“I have enough dogs in the kettle,” Lady Fairsdale said, tucking a stray tress of russet hair behind her dainty pale ear. Her ear was tinged a faint cherry at the topmost curve, as were her cheeks and the flat of her chest above her bodice-bound bosom. “And of dogs and men and consequences I have tolerated enough. They all make such a terrible ruckus.”
Lady Thatcher sipped at her tea, a glint of mischief enlivening her otherwise dull brown eyes. “In my day the ruckus was what made dogs and men and consequences, my dear. A good ruckus makes the world go round.”
The pool of shade plunged from their broad parasol and soaked the two Ladies in its cool depths while the lustrous sun rose to peep over the treetops, burning the cool mists into fairy-fire that disappeared in the crisp dazzle of the dawn. The two Ladies chatted away, and gazed upon a young man and his happy father by the hedgerow. Lively petal lips found compensatory fare in conversation, though younger petals longed to quiver in other diversions.
“A man’s task is to prove himself worthy of a Lady’s affections,” Lady Thatcher said. “A Lady’s task is to prove him wrong. If she fails, then he has met his match. If he succeeds, she has failed herself.”
“You speak as if no man is worthy of a woman.”
“A wealthy geriatric may be,” she said. “Provided he has the decency of an imminent grave.”
Lady Thatcher was herself mottled with age, and yet like a well-kept antique she yet clung to a certain luster and fine figure which had possessed the hearts of many susceptible men when in her youthful bloom. And she still spoke as if fresh from the bud, in full array of her colors and her fragrance.
“That said,” she added, “a poor servant may be worthy, too, for a while. At least insomuch as he proves adept at the task given by his Mistress.”
The faint cherry of her young companion’s cheeks bloomed into a scarlet blush that no high breeding could conceal. She fanned herself fervently, and gazed out upon the lawn. The gardener and his son trimmed at the hedgerow. The old man stood with a bent back and a sweaty forehead, pointing and directing his son. The latter—in his prime years—worked the sheers assiduously, scissoring away the offensive leaves from the otherwise squarish greenery. Distantly, the dogs in the kettle barked with incessant insistence.
“When is Lord Fairsdale to return?” Lady Thatcher asked absently.
“However long he requires in Venice,” Lady Fairsdale said, disinterested. “Two months? Three? He has been gone already for two months.”
“So you have time, at the least, for more consequences,” Lady Thatcher remarked meaningfully. “A Lady in her youth, such as yourself, should always seek the fulfillment of such idle time in whatever means are natural to you.”
The young man glanced at the young lady from the distance, smiling to himself. His father took no note, but the young Lady did. Lady Fairsdale noted the young man’s large, strong hands, watching them flex and relax, her green eyes traveling up his thick forearms to the folded sleeves and up his broad shoulders to the slight slit of his white shirt, the cleft of his chest, the straight neck and square chin, dark eyes and dark hair. He was a strong buck, she knew, and yet the doe led him on like a dutiful fawn. Lady Thatcher watched Lady Fairsdale watch the young man, and smiled with vicarious pleasure. Lady Fairsdale’s bosom heaved, crowded with frustrated breath and its own largess within her bodice.
The dogs continued to bark, but both Ladies ignored them.
“It is needful work,” Lady Thatcher said.
“What is?” Fairsdale said, entirely dazzled and distracted by sunlight on a labour’s dew.
“Caring for gardens,” she said. “There are consequences in failing to attend them. They can grow positively riotous if unchecked.” She smiled. “And there is so little ruckus heard when one’s husband is away. The dogs can yap all they please, but none will mind them.”
“I should mind them,” a voice said near at hand, startling the two Ladies. “The temper of a dog is only equaled by faith to his Master, and he will bite those whom his Master mislikes.”
The gentleman loomed, a shadow with the sun at his back. Cradled in his arm, like a newborn babe, was a rifle that gleamed blackly in the forenoon sun.
“Henry!” Lady Fairsdale gasped. “I thought you were yet in Venice!” She cleared her throat, and calmed her heaving chest with the flat of her hand. “Has the venture been a failure?”
“To the contrary,” Mr. Fairsdale said, his tone casual between grinning yellow teeth. “The venture went rather well. So well, in fact, that I sent Howard to manage its conclusion while I returned home to see to…other affairs.”
He abruptly stepped around the table and headed toward the gardener and his son.
“Henry!” Lady Fairsdale exclaimed, close to fainting.
Lord Fairsdale halted and turned about, still grinning. He looked cheery and cheeky, ear to ear, though the thin wisps of gray hair at his temples— in their disheveled state—lent an air of uncouthness to his overall visage; as though frayed by some wayward tempest. An unhealthy sweat bedewed his reddish forehead, trickling over wrinkle and pox scar alike. Yet, his features otherwise were cast in a mold of hard-chiseled amicability.
“What is the matter, my dear wife?”
Before she could speak, a group of men— likewise cradling rifles—stepped forth together. Mrs. Fairsdale, attempted to contain her heaving breast and the hammering heart within. These men were her husband’s friends. Lords, one and all.
“Hunting today?” she said, glancing to Lady Thatcher.
“Of course,” her husband said, still grinning. “It is a lovely day for it.”
“Must you?” she asked, feeling frantic and febrile. “It does not seem a good day for it. Looks like rain.”
There were dark clouds converging on the horizon.
“A quick hunt will not take long,” he countered, still grinning. “It is my land, my wife. I will do as I please. The rain will not keep me off from it, however sadly it falls.”
The dogs in the kettle barked in a great clamour as the group of men converged on the gardener and his son. Lady Fairsdale watched them unblinkingly, feeling powerless and faint. Her hand instinctively sought the hand of her elder companion, tremulous at the clutch.
“Do not fret, Ellen,” Lady Thatcher said. “He suspects nothing.”
“He never smiles so dreadfully much,” Lady Fairsdale said, breathing labouriously. “Not ever on our wedding day, or the next morning.”
“You fear overmuch,” Lady Thatcher said. “Your husband is like most English husbands. Thinks himself lord of his lands, but is ever asleep on the throne. All is quite safe. No need to faint at phantoms, my dear.”
“But the hounds…” Lady Fairsdale said, trembling. “What a terrible noise!”
“Oh, they are beasts without reason,” the older woman said. “As are most cuckolded men.” She giggled softly. “You did well by marrying a man twice married before and twice your age. He is likely, thus, twice certain to be abloom within a meetly season. And then, my dear, your true life will begin.”
“I will not marry again,” Lady Fairsdale vowed. “I wish only to serve myself.”
“And so you should,” Lady Thatcher said. “Just keep plenty of comely youths in service. It has done wonders for my woeful years of widowhood.”
Lady Thatcher’s sly smile encouraged Lady Fairsdale’s to debut. It was a most winsome smile, charming both man and lad and lord and pauper, and had won her many an invitation to London’s most prestigiously exclusive soirees. Her smile suddenly vanished, for she could hear, at a distance, the conversation between her husband and the gardener’s son.
“I have never hunted before,” the young man said. “Perhaps you would rather I serve as a beater?”
“Nonsense,” said Lord Fairsdale blithely. “You are a hunter after my own heart. This I know to be entirely true.”
The young man’s father admonished his son to acquiesce to the Lord’s proposal. The dogs barked ever more loudly.
“It will be my first time using a rifle, sir,” the young man said.
“I think you will have much luck in it,” Lord Fairsale remarked. “The Devil’s Luck, I dare say, and a happy disposition toward it. All young men do. Just aim to the heart.”
The young man looked to his father and, sheepishly— almost shamefully— glanced to Lady Fairsdale. She shook her head only slightly, her eyes wide.
“I insist,” said Lord Fairsdale.
The young man was handed a rifle and shuffled away with the hunting party. Lady Fairsdale watched as the group of men walked down the sun-gilded field, toward the dark arbor of the forest; divided as day from night. Lady Fairsdale sighed. All cherry tinge had drained from her cheeks and ears, her face a pallid mask of bloodless fear as the men vanished within the woods.
“My dear,” Lady Thatcher said, “you mustn’t fret over such things. There is a proper order in society, and the English are known for following decorum among their peers. No harm will come of it to anyone of importance. Least of all to you.”
A shot rang out vengefully, like the crackling thunder of an old, angry god. Lady Fairsdale’s heart leapt as if to burst. The dogs’ clamour died at once to a deathly silence. The rain began to weep along the horizon.