An Acceptable Burning

flash fire fiction

All was in readiness for the burning. Uriel the preacher, the barber-surgeon, and all the town elders, had places reserved for them on a pew dragged out of the church and set down to face the pyre. They filed out and took their places alongside the parents, seating themselves with decorum and a seemly modesty. A light drizzle of rain was beginning to clear up. Nothing that would cause a problem with the fire.

Behind them the townsfolk had been gathering for some time. The atmosphere in the square was strangely casual for such a solemn occasion. Perhaps a fiddler playing some mournful music would have helped to instill the correct mood. The men and women, along with a few scuffed wide-eyed children, stood around chewing sesame seeds and spitting out the tiny husks, gnawing on those wizened apples that grew here, scratching under their homespun garb, squeezing lice between chipped and cruddy fingernails, and chatting amiably with neighbors. The children tried to play chase and catch with each other but lacked the energy and soon gave up.

Here at last she came, led out by Markus and Peter the two deputies cradling shotguns in the crooks of their elbows as they edged the manacled girl forward, not roughly but with some solicitude for her wellbeing. These men were the most uncomfortable of any in the square at this moment, the least at ease with their place in the proceedings. And no wonder.

They walked patiently enough as the girl shuffled forward. She looked terrified and seemed to want to stop walking, but each slight nudge from the deputies would set her forward again. She was compelled not by brute force but by some obligation these men had over her, the shotgun or the ragged bits of uniform, or some intangible remnant of authority.

These men looped the chain around the stake and stepped back. At this point everything could be annulled, the whole thing could be called off, they could say there was a new foretelling, a different and better prophecy. The girl snuffled just a little and looked at her parents, sat a mere ten paces from her. They could hear her ragged breath, perhaps even smell her fear.

Uriel the preacher stood, turned and bowed to the congregation. This was unusual. He never usually bowed. At least the correct spirit had come upon the townsfolk and they gazed at the girl who was to burn with some awe and even a little pity. The children stopped their weary play and snuggled into their mothers’ skirts, sucking thumbs and picking noses. They seemed curious, tired, defeated.

“The parents of this young person have deemed her both worthy of the prophecy and unworthy of our concern,” spoke Uriel in his strong voice. He of course was solemn but there was the wisp of a smile about his thin moustache, his fleshy lips, as if there was some undeniable pleasure also to be had in his sad duty.

“This is a paradox, worthy and unworthy, which speaks to us of the deep mystery of the Maker’s will. If it were easy to know this will we would all be gods. But there is only one Maker, and we have need of one special one who can hear his voice and know that oblique wishing.” Again he bowed, as if in modest acknowledgement of his special gift and its vast responsibilities.

“The parents have specified that the child will receive no bludgeoning, no draught of easement, no swift garotte, as we sometimes administer in such cases.” Uriel pulled himself up to his full height and spoke more clearly than ever, stroking the pendant at his chest. “This is a tribute to her purity, her readiness, her worthiness”

The girl seemed lost now and simply looked down at the wooden scraps piled at her feet, old planks sharp with rough splinters and the dry cracked logs taken from abandoned old woodsheds. There was nothing further from her. Her parents similarly looked to the drying dust at their feet, as did the town elders. The men and women of the town and their dull children gazed at the girl with indifference as she drooped.

Then it was done, without words, without ceremony. Markus and Peter appeared bearing flaming brands and chucked the torches into the woodpile at the girl’s feet. Then it was done.

The girl whimpered softly as flames bloomed like flowers from her feet. Had Uriel lied, had she been eased by some drugged draught, or stunned by a blow from a cudgel before being led out? No: the burning caught hold of her and the shriek came. This sound, this screaming called forth from her inner self, this mechanical sound of life being forced out of a narrow space, this was the offering. Nothing else could make that sound, nothing else could assuage the Maker. It was his music.

Compared with which the crisping of the flesh in brittle strips that cast off into the funneling updraft and became like mothwings in flight was nothing. The swift mechanical jerkings of that body which were quickly stilled to inert stillness, nothing. The smell, so familiar, so secretly delicious, so sought-for in dreams of smoke and sizzle, nothing at all. The only acceptable sacrifice was the long and constant shrieking.

Now the townsfolk were absorbed, no longer distracted by snacks and gossip. Now the exhausted children goggled and filled their mind with sensations that would live in their hearts forever. Even the dulled town elders sat up and paid an absorbed attention. Only the parents still gazed at the ground and would not look. But they would hear; they could not help but hear.

When it was done, when this acceptable sacrifice had become an uplifting shriek ascending into the high air and a stump of dark scorched matter emitting that singular incense of familiarity, Uriel turned again to his congregation. This time there was no ambivalence about his demeanor: he was well pleased. The barber-surgeon led the parents away to where they would receive a tranquilizing posset and a quart of peach brandy.

Uriel spoke up: “Well my children, I’m certain that this most fitting sacrifice will be pleasing to the Maker, that our troubles are at an end and that the ground will again yield unto us its bounty. I’m sure that-”

But he stopped abruptly. He looked out beyond the town square, over the low squalid cabins that clustered around them. The townsfolk turned, following his gaze.

Smoke. Climbing up over the hillside. He looked to his right, to the east where the silvered sun gleamed pale behind overcast. Another column of smoke, beyond the fields. And north: smoke rising from the other side of the dry creekbed. And the sound of a wailing, a shrieking, like the ghost of the shriek they had all raised together to the sky of the Maker.

A burning was approaching.

The burning which would make of them all — all, man and woman, young and old — an acceptable sacrifice.

All was now in readiness.