Prairie Fire (19 page)

This voice was different. He was practical, or he wouldn't be here, but there was movement in his tone that I hadn't encountered in anyone except Nick since I'd enlisted. Nick was controlled, his violin classically trained, like you'd expect from a dragon slayer. This was something else. This was five finger picks and the ability to play all the notes together, rapidly, one right after the other.

“Just one,” the banjo repeated. I looked for him through the crowd, but I still couldn't see him. “Can you tell us about the time you burned down Manitoulin Island?”

THE BANJO

If I had a party trick, telling the Manitoulin story would be it. Whether I set it to music or chanted it like the Viking bards of old, it came out of me as easily as water flowing downhill. Even before I had registered surprise at the request, I could feel my diaphragm getting ready for it; I heard the music in my head. The request was repeated from around the room, and I decided that if this was to be my way in, I would take it. Maybe, as Annie had said, they were just bored. Maybe they didn't respect me or the Oil Watch, but they just wanted a show. I could do that. I was a bard, and the Oil Watch was supposed to be flexible when it came to civilian relations. I wouldn't always concede, I decided, but if they opened the door first, I was sure as hell going to let them hold it for me while I went through.

“Could I get a glass of water?” I asked, every inch the small town country girl. I didn't have to worry about rank in this room. I had to worry about experience. “I walked here kind of quickly, and I don't think you want to hear me sing like that.”

There was some laughter, and an older woman passed me a cup. I still couldn't see the banjo, and I stopped scanning the crowd for him so I could focus on the song. I drained the cup and tried to think of fire. As usual, it wasn't very far away. The smells, the way they clung to my hair even after I'd gotten out of the hospital. I hadn't been able put that in the music, how it felt to burn, but I'd never forgotten it anyway.

Like always, they were leaning in before I was through the first few bars, and by the time I got to the part where the dragons flew over the car, they were mine entirely. They all joined in on the last chorus, the one about waking up in the hospital to find out that the skies were safe again. That was new. I'd written this song as a solo, like I did with anything that wasn't orchestral. Yet here were harmonies and counter-melodies I hadn't written, merely laid the path for. I thought about the cold October sun on Kaori's newly shorn head. Maybe this was what being part of the story was all about.

They applauded when we finished, and I clapped too. I wondered if they knew that this was the first time I'd actually sung this song with other people. When the clapping faded, they asked me questions for a while, mostly directions and who to talk to about certain requirements, and I promised them better maps than the ones they'd been given so they'd be able to find their way around. I moved from table to table, both professional and approachable, and trying desperately to remember everyone's names. Even with most of them gone for the day, I knew it was a lost cause. But it was a start. At last, I made it to the back of the room and looked around again for the banjo.

“Man,” he said, sliding down the bench to sit directly across from me as the two men I'd been speaking with got up to leave. “That song is really not the same without you to sing it.”

“You sing it without me?” I asked. I knew we had a pretty decent number of YouTube subscribers, and Emily had told me that there were a few video replies of people singing their versions of my songs, but I never imagined it on a larger scale.

“Do you mind?” he asked, elbows on the table.

“Of course not,” I said. “I'm just a bit surprised.”

“That a bunch of farmers sing a song about a dragon slayer who went over and above the call of duty to defend another bunch of farmers?” he said. “Yeah, I can't imagine why that song would speak to us.”

“I'm used to writing for a very small audience,” I told him.

“What, like the busts of Beethoven and Bach that sit on top of your piano?” he said.

“How do you know about that?” I said, shocked.

“Because it's a piano,” he said. “What the hell else do you put on a piano?”

“Fair point,” I said. It was a little bit unnerving how quickly we fell into rhythm. Maybe I was getting predictable. “Though you could make a strong argument for Liszt and Mozart.”

“I'm Peter, by the way,” he said, extending a hand across the table. I shook it, and he didn't even look down to see my scars. “And I think it was kind of adorable how you introduced yourself to a room full of people who already knew who you were.”

“It's the training,” I said, putting my hand back in my lap. “It encourages redundancies.”

“Don't I know it,” he said. He was, I decided, much more gregarious than Owen, even more so than Nick. Maybe that's what was throwing me off. I added it to my ever-increasing list of questions to put to Sadie at the next opportunity. “Do you have any idea how many forms I've had to fill out since I got here?”

“Yeah,” I said. “What do you think I spent last week reading?”

“My condolences,” he said, but he didn't look sorry at all. Then he leaned forward with an overly eager expression on his face. I braced myself. Emily looked like this sometimes. It could be exhausting. “So,” he said. “Thorskard and Porter banished for the whole winter. That's gotta suck for you.”

“We go where we're sent,” I said. It was the unofficial motto of the Oil Watch. Well, the unofficial motto of the Oil Watch that was fit for print.

“That's all you got?” he said. “I thought you'd be writing angry emo music about it by now.”

“Excuse me?” I said.

“You know.” He gestured vaguely, like he was playing a piano. “Like you do.”

“I record what Owen's done,” I told him. “And he hasn't done much lately, because he's been busy training.”

“Right,” Peter said. “Training.”

“Besides,” I went on, “I can't play my own stuff anymore, and this place doesn't exactly have a recording studio.”

“Yeah,” he drawled, “it's too bad that a few dozen farmers with nothing better to do in their spare time than learn to play the fiddle couldn't just wash up at your door.”

“You play the fiddle?” I asked. He really didn't look like the type.

“Well, no,” he said. “But I know at least three guys who do.”

I considered this. I'd tried to tell myself otherwise, but I missed music so profoundly that it hurt sometimes, almost as much as it hurt to try playing something only to be reminded that I couldn't.

“I can't write it like I used to, either,” I told him. “Do you have a friend who can take musical dictation?”

“No,” he said. “I'm not even sure I have a friend who can read music. Not that that stops us from playing it.”

“Somehow I don't think this is what General Speed meant when he told me to liaise with you people,” I said.

“What do you think he meant?” Peter asked. He had that look in his eyes. That Emily look.

“I gave up trying to figure that man out almost immediately,” I told him. “It's too depressing if I look at him too long.”

“Well that's uplifting,” Peter said. “I'll tell you this for free: wintering here isn't exactly a great option for us, but it's the only one we've got right now, and when we thought Lieutenant Porter was going to be here, it was a lot more appealing.”

“Why?” I asked, even though I had a feeling I already knew the answer.

“Did you know that in the entire history of dragon attacks in Western Canada, there have been thousands of dead people and only one dead Chinook?” he asked rhetorically. Of course I knew that. “And the Chinook wasn't even slayed in Canada.”

“But it was slayed by Declan Porter,” I finished his thought.

“Exactly,” he said. “We felt safe here. Like someone cared about more than oil and wheat for a change.”

“Owen cares about more than oil and wheat,” I said, without even thinking about it.

“We know that too,” Peter said. “And look where that got him.”

I shifted uncomfortably. I had grown up admiring the Oil Watch for what it did around the world. Meeting Lottie and Hannah, and even Aodhan, hadn't damaged my perceptions of it either, but ever since I'd joined, it was like I was overturning stone after stone and nothing good was ever beneath them. I wanted to love the Oil Watch. I wanted to be proud to put on my beret. And usually I was. But here was yet another sign that something, either in the Watch itself or in the government, was working against Lottie's plan. Against Owen. And it didn't seem to care who got in the way. The notes tugged at me, stronger than they had in months.

“It's just for the winter,” I said, even though I knew as I said it that I sounded hopelessly naive. I needed time to think, time alone with a lot of staff paper to sketch out all the notes that pulled at me. It was time to sort them into the tunes they went with. It was time to write music again, even though I had thought until I walked into this room that there was nothing more to write music about.

“Of course it is,” Peter said, but not unkindly. Maybe he could tell I was thinking. Maybe he just thought I was stupid. He smiled. “You know,” he said. “I play the mandolin, and you sing. You know what this means.”

“I already have a YouTube channel, Peter,” I told him. But I could feel the music pulling at me, and I couldn't help but smile. I hadn't felt like this in months, not since I'd arrived at Gagetown. It was nice to have a musician around me again.

“Yeah, but you haven't posted anything in months,” he said.

“I've been a little busy,” I reminded him. “Serving my country and all that.”

“Uh-huh,” he said. “And how's that working out for you?”

“All right,” I said, holding his gaze. “We'll give it a try.”

“Excellent,” Peter said, and I held up one curled hand.

“Don't tell too many people,” I cautioned him. “This is an experiment and possibly outside my orders, and I really don't want it getting out of control before I know what it is.”

“All right,” he said.

“I have time for music between two and four o'clock, unless there is a dragon attack,” I continued. “I'll get you directions to the room that are easier to follow than the map they probably gave you.”

“I look forward to it,” he said. “And I'll get you that list, so you'll know what else you've got to work with.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I have to go now. I've got a duty shift.”

“It was lovely to meet you,” Peter said as I stood up.

“Likewise,” I told him. “See you tomorrow.”

He nodded and I headed for the door. I was more than halfway to the comm office before I realized that I had just agreed to write music with a veritable stranger. For me, that was practically second base. It was entirely possible that Sadie was never, ever going to stop laughing at me.

THE FAMILIAR CEILING

There's not really a lot you can say about winter in Alberta. It snowed right after Hallowe'en—but not as much as I had expected—and then it got really, really cold. It was a different kind of cold than I was used to. The sky stayed mostly blue, and the sun on what snow we had was blinding. If you sat next to a window, you'd boil with the heat. And if you opened that window, not that many windows in Fort Calgary could be opened, you would freeze to death in fairly short order. At least it was dry, and the snow stayed light and fluffy instead of getting weighted down with slush. Peter and Laura tried to explain what the difference between thirty below and forty below was to the rest of us.

“If it's thirty below,” Laura said, “and you leave the milk in the car, you can just run out and get it.”