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  Title Page

  Copyright

  Hearth Fires

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  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Hearth Fires

  Zoe Cannon

  © 2021 Zoe Cannon

  http://www.zoecannon.com

  All rights reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and events are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Hearth Fires

  “You’re walking along a dirt path. The grass is green, the sun is shining. You turn a corner and see a house you recognize. You’ve been on a long journey, but now you’re finally home.”

  Heather rounds the corner, past the oak tree where Charlie used to climb, and sees a skeleton of blackened wood. The roof is half caved in, exposing the house’s vulnerable insides to the oppressive openness of Earth’s sky. She can still see the outline of the cozy Cape it used to be, can still pick out traces of the robin’s-egg blue siding she and Matt picked out together. But now there are two gaping eyes where the upstairs windows used to be, and the downstairs windows are a snarling mouth of shattered-glass teeth.

  “You open the door and step inside. Someone is standing on the other side of the door to greet you.”

  For a moment, Heather holds her breath and hopes. But she opens the door onto a dark abyss. Claws skitter on linoleum as something runs from the light. The smell of smoke and rot clogs her nose. If she squints, she can see the indistinct silhouettes of the furniture that survived the fire. But even in the dark, she can see clearly enough to know none of those shapes belong to a person.

  “You’re disappointed at first, but realize they must be in another room, waiting for you. You go to them.”

  She can’t disobey the voice. She has a vague memory of trying, once, but just as she’s powerless to resist the imagery it shapes around her, she also can’t stop herself from doing as it says. She walks mechanically up the stairs, clutching the banister to keep herself from falling through the fire-weakened steps. Bits of charred wood break off under her feet. The final step creaks, and she pulls her foot up just in time, before her leg goes through.

  She pushes open the bedroom door, even though she already knows what she’ll find. This is where the roof caved in. After five years in the Martian domes, the yawning void above her feels like death. When she looks up, she can see bodies hanging in the emptiness, drifting. She forces her eyes down. The bed is wet with rain, sprinkled with bits of broken shingles and splintered wood. It’s a single. Even here in her mind, she can’t forget that this is Matt’s home now, and not theirs.

  She tries Charlie’s room next, because the voice told her she was searching for someone, and now she can’t stop until the search is done. The fire didn’t do much damage here. His dinosaur bedspread is still intact, and the dinosaur posters on the walls, and the dinosaur figures making a minefield out of the floor. In real life, Charlie must have outgrown dinosaurs a long time ago, moving on to interests she never got to hear about. Somewhere there’s a room identical to this one, with walls papered in football posters, or lovingly-sketched spaceships, or something else she doesn’t even know enough to imagine.

  “You hear your son’s voice. He’s looking for you.”

  His voice drifts in from the hallway, as high and light as if he’s still seven years old. Mom? Is that you? But it’s only the wind, blowing through the hole in the bedroom roof.

  “Any idea what to do about this? Every time, it’s the same song and dance. I upped her dosage this time, hoping it would help, but no dice. What am I supposed to do with this wreck?”

  “Don’t fight it. We get the strongest results when we follow the patient’s lead. She’s showing you her inner reality, the core of her very being. And that place is where you will reach her.”

  “If you say so. Heather? You still with me? Suddenly, you remember the safe you kept hidden under the bed, to protect the things most important to you against just this kind of disaster. You walk back to the bedroom, and pull out a heavy black box.”

  She kneels on the rotting floor, and closes her arms around the safe, and drags it to her. Her stomach drops at the sight of it hanging open. She must not have latched it properly the last time she opened it. It survived the fire, but not the damp. All the papers within are covered in sticky black mold. Mice have built a nest inside, the tiny squirming bodies of their babies curled snugly in the remains of her life.

  “Oh, for—”

  “Control yourself. Everything you say shapes her reality. A single harsh word could manifest as a physical attack.”

  “You’re not the one who’s spent weeks with this waste of oxygen.”

  “Mind your words. That is not how we speak about our patients. Think of her mind as a garden, filled with delicate flowers. It is essential that we walk with soft steps, lest we crush them under our feet.”

  “Are you even looking at the screen? A delicate flower, she is not. Rot and vermin, that’s what she’s made of.”

  “Do I need to assign this patient to someone else?”

  “No, no, I’ve got it. Heather, you can ignore all that. You put the safe back and start walking down the stairs. On the wall beside the stairs, you see a row of frames. Each contains a portrait of someone important to you.”

  She remembers hanging that photo of Matt, even though she isn’t sure the photo existed before the voice told her about it. She remembers him complaining that he looked like a dweeb, dressed in a suit and tie for the professional portraits she had insisted they take together, back when she was still trying to overcompensate for her inner restlessness by throwing herself into the role of perfect mother. Yearly professional portraits were part of that, in her mind—it was what her own mother had done, after all. The same went for the elaborate Halloween costumes, hand-sewn, like the stegosaurus costume Charlie is wearing in the next picture. The picture doesn’t show the smear of blood on the hem from when she stabbed her finger with a pin.

  The man in the next picture is all frown and bad combover, because that was all she ever saw when she looked at him. As she meets his glossy eyes, a yawning pit of panic opens within her. She’s not—she’s not supposed to—

  She tears her eyes away. When she looks again, the photograph is burned, unrecognizable.

  “You take another look, and see that the picture isn’t badly damaged after all. The glass is covered in a layer of ash, but it wipes clean easily when you rub it with your sleeve.”

  One swipe of her sleeve across the glass, and she sees that the voice is right. The ash created the illusion of ruin. The picture is fine. Her heartbeat drums in her ears. He’s not supposed to be here in this house. Matt wouldn’t want his picture hanging here, wouldn’t want to walk past the reminder of what she did every time he went downstairs. Maybe that’s why she can’t shake the feeling that she’s made a terrible mistake.

  It says here you have a seven-year-old son. You do understand that an off-planet tour of duty will take you away from Earth for three years minimum. Have you thought this decision through?

  She didn’t want to leave Charlie, didn’t want to leave either of them. It was just that in the first heady flush of love, when turning her attention from the international stage to the domestic had seemed like a wide new frontier, she hadn’t understood what her life would actually look like almost ten years later. How could she have imagined the hollowness inside her that grew a little more every time she tried to replace the old adrenaline with a frantic search for the previous night’s homework? Or the restlessness that built with every attempt to satisfy her former sen
se of duty and purpose with a bovine satisfaction at getting dinner on the table and yet another school craft project completed? You’re shaping the future, she had told herself after every homework session successfully enforced, and every time-out that ended in a contrite apology. For a while, she could convince herself that was enough.

  She didn’t want to leave. That was what she told them. It was what she told herself. But the truth was… the truth was, she wanted exactly that. It would hurt—it already hurt, even when all she had done was show up for that first meeting and sit in that uncomfortable chair and try not to stare at that inept combover. But that was a hurt she could handle. Not like the screaming ache of her current life, like a swarm of angry bees flying in circles inside her.

  Maybe that memory, and that guilt, is the source of the sudden heaviness in her gut, like she’s swallowed a bag of stones. Maybe that’s why, as she tries to look at the photograph and tries just as hard to wrench her gaze away, a small voice inside her is screaming that she’s done something horribly wrong.

  I’ve looked into you, you know. It wasn’t easy, but I was finally able to gain access to your files. I know your previous employer no longer has a place for you—as a rule, they don’t look kindly on people who choose to walk away from that life. But that doesn’t mean your skills have to go to waste. To be perfectly honest, we can’t do much with most of the people who walk through this door besides jam them into a uniform, stick a weapon in their hand, and throw them into a ship bound for the Martian front. But you… you could be very useful.

  She would have been satisfied with that uniform and that weapon and that ship, just to feel like she was part of something bigger than her tidy domestic bubble, just to feel the adrenaline singing in her blood again. But at his words, something sang louder. She could have her life back. She could have her self back.

  She didn’t know how frantic the bees had become until, at his words, they went still.

  They didn’t start up again for years. Not until the last time they spoke, when he ordered her to—to—

  No. She can’t—

  The picture in front of her is destroyed, nothing but a few curls of ash.

  The picture is intact behind glass.

  She can’t let them—

  “Heather? Heather, it’s all right. This isn’t one of their interrogations. You’re back on Earth, in the inpatient clinic—do you remember?”

  “I thought we weren’t supposed to say anything that might break the illusion.”

  “The drugs will keep her down where she needs to be. The metaphor of the inner landscape is usually enough to help us reach someone, but sometimes they need more than their own mind is capable of giving them. Heather, you came here because you needed a way to safely explore what happened in Theta Dome. I’m going to help you calm down, all right? You’re standing on the stairs. You hear them creaking under your feet, but you know they won’t break. You take a deep breath, and know that this is a safe place, where no one can hurt you. You continue down the stairs, looking at each picture as you go.”

  The rest of the pictures are ruined. The heat of the flames must have broken the glass. Mold has taken care of the few photos the fire left intact.

  “That’s all right. We can come back to that later. As you walk back into the living room, you survey the damage. At first, it looks as though nothing can be salvaged. But the closer you look, the more you can see all the small things that survived. A single book on the bookshelf. A scrap of paper, unburned, peeking out from underneath the couch.”

  Her wedding ring, sitting on the mantel, where she left it the day she walked out.

  “You feel a spark of hope building in your chest. It’s past time for you to clean this place out, see what survived, and begin again.”

  “Very poetic. But what do you think you’re going to find in there? That’s who she is inside. Barren and dead.”

  “It appears that way now, I know. Her inner self is terribly wounded. Due to the trauma, no doubt.”

  “Oh, of course, her trauma. Let’s all drop everything and soothe the hurt feelings of Heather fucking Grant.”

  “Yes. Her trauma. That is what concerns us right now. If her inner landscape looks like this, it’s because her psyche has sustained severe damage. If we are to make any meaningful progress, we must begin by undoing that damage.”

  “I still say there is no damage. All she’s doing is showing us her true self.”

  “Are you ready to resume the session, or shall I take over for you?”

  “Fine, we’ll try it. But it’s not going to get us anywhere. All right, Heather, you decide to start with… oh, I don’t know. This is ridiculous. There’s practically nothing left of the place, and she’s supposed to, what, start mopping the kitchen floor? And then what, we sit around watching while she does her chores?”

  “Let me handle this, since you are clearly incapable at the moment. Many apologies, Heather. We can begin with the garden. You walk out the back door.”

  The door falls off its hinges at her touch.

  “A gentle breeze meets you, and you smell fresh air, untainted by smoke. Ahead of you, you see a patch of green grass, and at the center of that patch, a single flower. You smile at the sight, remembering after far too long that beauty still exists in the world—and in your heart.”

  “Beauty in her heart? That’s the best joke I’ve heard all year. The woman is a fucking war criminal, and I’m supposed to see her mind as a flower garden?”

  “Since you have obviously lost your objectivity, I’m taking over this session, as of now. Either be silent, or leave.”

  “You can’t do that. She’s my patient.”

  “Not anymore. If you are unable to control yourself, I will have you removed. Otherwise, sit quietly and observe, and I will show you how to do this delicate work properly. The voices you hear, Heather, are nothing more than a passing storm on the air. A light drizzle of rain falls, sinking deep into the soil to nourish your garden.”

  Garden. That’s a joke. Even when she lived here with Matt, she couldn’t make anything grow from this dead soil. Every spring, she dug in the dirt until her fingernails were torn and bleeding, buried her seeds as deep as bodies and as thoroughly as secrets, and assaulted the leaf-eating pests with the best weapons the garden store had to offer. But every summer, she ended up with withered and yellow plants, flowers with half their petals chewed into Swiss cheese, tomatoes that turned brown and shriveled instead of red and plump.

  The flower in front of her is dead. Crumpled petals on a twiglike stem.

  “This is not who you are. This is something that was done to you. Cast your mind back, Heather. Picture the moment when the fire began.”

  She’s not outside anymore. She’s standing in the living room, sun streaming through the windows, one of Charlie’s cartoons playing on the TV. She faces the stairs, with a wall of portraits she won’t allow herself to look at. She blinks, and she’s facing the other way, toward the mantel, and the wall above it where the same portraits are suddenly hanging. She strikes a match and holds it aloft, then lets it drop from her fingers and flutter to the carpet.

  “You see? You are not this barren shell. This is a wound you have inflicted on yourself, but all wounds can be mended. Did your guilt drive you to destroy everything bright and good in you? Did you feel you could no longer allow yourself the safety and happiness this place represented?”

  So you’re going to abandon your family because, what, you’re bored? Because you think it’s better to contribute to the violence in the world than make it a better place by raising a happy and healthy son? At least when I lost my father to this damn war, it was because they forced him to go.

  She calls Charlie to her, salty tears running down her cheeks to wet the corners of her lips, as the car outside honks for the third time. Matt blocks Charlie’s path, face red, jaw tight.

  No. You don’t get to put that memory in his head—that last hug that will leave him craving one mor
e for the rest of his life, that tear-streaked kiss goodbye. You want out of his life? Then go.

  “You caused your family a great deal of pain. You have regrets.”

  She wishes she regretted leaving. She doesn’t. That, she thinks, is worse.

  “But is that truly the guilt that drove you to destroy yourself?”

  She’s standing in her living room, but not on Earth. This is her shoebox-sized apartment in Theta Dome, with an old picture of Matt and Charlie tacked onto the wall. She’s eating rehydrated imitation chicken—it may be true that most things taste like chicken, but this doesn’t—and trying to ignore the loneliness sharing the room with her, taking up more space than any human companion would have.

  “Theta Dome was your home for five years. You lived there, worked there, said hello to your neighbors when you passed each other in the mornings and evenings.”

  She’s standing in the nerve center of Theta Dome, where no one has bothered to decorate the walls. The stark room, crowded with terminals and twisted cords, is buried so deep that the air filters groan with the strain. But she isn’t breathing the room’s air. She has her own air supply inside her suit, which will protect her when she engages the old forgotten construction protocols and opens the dome to vacuum.

  It’s unthinkable, what she’s been asked to do. She can’t comprehend the scale of the destruction. Although to be fair, she has good reason not to try. Yes, this very possibility is why Mars has many smaller domes instead of one larger structure, although even the most pessimistic of doomsayers only imagined accident and not sabotage. That means her actions in the next few minutes will cost only tens of thousands of lives, instead of millions.

  Tens of thousands, in exchange for billions.

  The conspiracy stretches all the way through Theta Dome, the conspirators drawn here by lax security as well as possible sympathizers in the administrative council. The tendrils run deeper than Heather’s bosses can root out before the clock hits zero. By the time they so much as found the factory that manufactured the weapons that would be used to poison Earth’s sky, both the weapons and those who had created them were long gone.