I'd always loved fire, not in the habit of setting it, but being close to it, lighting bonfires in the summer and hearth fires in the winter. I'd never met wildfire, never seen it up close and the idea terrified me, the destruction. But in that there was rebirth, resurrection, and it made loving such a force of nature easy.
*
In my twenties I spent a long time watching for fire, ready to report and prevent, high in an observation tower over acres of National Forest with a radio in one hand and binoculars in the other; so alert and in tune. But not once did I have to make that call, not once did I see the telltale wisp of white smoke.
*
In my thirties when Fire came to me I let him inside, welcoming consumption.
*
That fall I came down from my perch, headed home after rain had chased him away, cool winds coming to rustle reddening leaves. It was my last season in the watchtower, I'd opted for a desk job in an office, air-conditioned and heated, a pay raise with bitter coffee and ringing phones. An hour’s drive from my cabin which sat beyond the verges of civilization but near enough I could pretend to be human if I wanted to.
Coming back to town felt strange after what had happened in the woods, like coming up for air after swimming with sharks, the swirl of water filling my ears and leaving me lonely with memory.
When spring rolled around I felt the itch to go, revel in the new season, hike the back trails and see for myself if the observation tower had survived the winter. Instead, I assigned it to a new Forestry Service hire, showed him how the radio worked, wished him luck.
I wondered if he'd discover the same things in the woods that I had.
I wondered what happened to Fire.
*
It was late summer when I met my namesake, Holly knocking on the door, carrying blueberry moonshine and still warm pizza.
"Holly?" she asked, and when I nodded she smiled and said, "I'm Holly too."
We stayed up late telling stories and she introduced me to Spring, fierce and bright, with a laugh that pulled fresh growth from the violets in my kitchen window. Spring led me to the Mississippi River and to gravely charming mountains, bubbling brooks, and fallen stars.
I made room for Summer at my small table when she came, had to because I'd promised Spring I would. Can't have one and not the other, accepting the heat as it brought longer days and clear nights filled with stars. Sometimes I wondered why they came out of the woods, wandering across my threshold, exposing rarely seen faces.
These spirits and old world gods, personifications of seasons and dreamlike figures of ancient myths. How had they found me, only human Holly?
Maybe the trees told them, in the slow language of bark and reaching limbs, roots seeking in the dark earth for something better. Maybe the robins carried it with them, barn swallows, red tail hawks, or those chatty crows who are never able to keep silent and share it all, whatever it may be, with the whole world.
Come meet the woman who can see you.
*
First a deer that was not a deer, but all at once the deer, the very first from which all came after. The buck's wide antlers seemed heavy and yet he held them gracefully, tall and regal at the edge of the clearing around the cabin. Behind him stood a white doe with two spotted fawns, unreal in the drawing dark. But they came forward when I offered a pail full of well water. They were bigger, even the babies, as big as horses, and I kept my distance, watching from the porch until they'd drunk their fill and left as quietly as they'd arrived.
A late Frost came with the spring. Not Spring, the thing that is also a person, but the green fresh start that is really the new year coming around. But Frost wasn't the spiky cold figure from stories, neither handsome nor ugly, merely a man in need of a cup of tea and a moment by the fire. I expected melt water and fading and the feeling of cold coming into my house. But he spoke of craggy peaks and vegetable beds; keeping shaggy ponies and milking cows, hoping for rain in the summer and an easy winter for his fields. He farmed, he watched the stars wheel overhead, and did his part in the changing seasons.
They of course were bigger, larger than life, some so tall I'd tilt my head back to look into strange faces. I made soups and salads and roasted chickens and built towers of whip cream and fresh berries, pouring wine or coffee. And in return, I heard the stories, the ones going all the way back, past the fragile human memory. Past history. Stories of vastness and change, stories of a world being built and formed into something that might one day become the place I lived.
And when I fell in love, head over heels and hopelessly, it was when Fire came to see me.
*
I was in my forties, not feeling it, just the ache in my back and twinges in my knees, well past the point of romance in my mind. But he'd heard of me, I'd become a story too.
The woman who lived alone in the wilderness, disconnected but connected in the right ways, the woman who saw things others could not, who remembered the forgotten things. At that point I'd had almost ten years of strange and beautiful things crossing my threshold, talked and befriended giants and tidal waves, shared dinners with Seasons and given relief to the first creatures.
Fire had kept away because he'd assumed he'd be unwelcome. Who liked to see destruction coming? Only a few I guess, not many. But I'd been expecting him, knowing he'd come out of curiosity, because of rumor.
And his first words, hoarse from a throat that rarely spoke, said, "Would you like to take a walk with me?"
"Yes."
We went into the woods, following the dirt road that would eventually take us to civilization if we let it. It was the other side of noon, bright and warm and just right, the light filtering through clouds and the swaying branches of the trees.
"They talk about you. Do you know? You have the thing they all crave."
"What is that?"
"Acceptance."
I nodded, curious but unsure how to phrase it. But he must have sensed it.
"For what they are, without expectations, without forcing change."
Another nod, wondering why it would have been otherwise. They were as everything else, just as they were and should be. Even the Storms, a collection from large to small with voracious appetites and a love for whisky and broken things. I wouldn't want them any other way.
"And you didn't believe it? What did you expect to find here?"
He glanced at me, tall enough and yet closer to my height, enough so that I didn't have to tilt my head too much. "I don't know. It seems too good to be true, a mortal woman who sees? Who accepts without comment or question?"
I laughed, "Of course I ask questions. Millions! I just don't always get answers. Or I do and I can't understand them. No one is ever willing to explain."
"Ask me anything."
*
How do you tell a love story over years? The kind that builds so slow you don't realize you're a part of it until it's already happened and somehow in the middle?
We found a routine and when we kissed, because I kissed him first, it was just right. A comfortable fit as my mom would have said, I just knew that this was it. It didn't take me long to make up my mind and make room for him in my life.
I had to smile at that, a woman building a life with Fire, doing all the mundane things while the supernatural happened out of sight. We split chores and took turns cooking, we read and made love, we gardened and split logs for the hearth.
During the day I spent my time at work, into town on the tired old tires of my truck, putting in hours at the forestry headquarters; behind a desk and computer, tip-tapping away and answering the phone. It was an hour’s drive from my front porch and back, but I wouldn't have lived any closer. And I just shrugged when people asked if I was lonely up there all by myself.
"Don't you get lonely? Isn't it cold?"
"I've got a fire to keep me warm."
*
And he'd be there, waiting in the sunshine, with my name in his mouth.
*
After a decade he became domesticated, my Fire. He would leave and come home again, bring flowers from distant places, bring maple syrup and, once, crimson silk pajamas. After dinner and time spent with books he would crawl into our bed, burrow beneath several quilts and too many pillows, and we would laugh and whisper into the night.
And when he said that he loved me, I knew that it was the truest thing.
*
It ends.
All of it.
Always.
Sometimes it is happily ever after, sometimes bitter because not everything can be easy or sweet. But mine was painless, mostly because they wished it for me, made me a place without pain, without the biting sorrow of letting go. A sudden and fierce heart attack, seized and tensed and seemingly infinite.
When I woke, because my eyes opened and what else could it be? I was not alone. He waited, waited as if the end of the world couldn't stop him, waited as if I'd only ever been the one. And I knew, somehow all those years, I'd been waiting too.
"And this is after," he said, holding out a hand for me to take, pulling me to my feet in front of a house that looked very like our own. "If you wish it, if you want me, this is what comes after."
I turned with him to look at the cabin, the wide porch filled with potted plants, moss growing on shingles, the warm yellow glow behind the windows, and the open door. Overhead a million and one stars sparkled, a moon lowering in the sky and at the edges of the world a hint of dawn.
"I would never want anything else," I said.
A truth, sharper than anything that had come before, as hard as love.
We walked toward the house, arm in arm, and I didn't have to turn, to look into the trees to know they were all there; the Seasons, spirits of rivers and stones. I could feel their joy, their acceptance of me, I could feel them as part of me, and I knew I was now a part of them.
"I made dinner," Fire said, leading me up the porch and across the threshold, "I burnt the chicken but the mashed potatoes should be okay."