Prairie Fire (21 page)

NARY A BUTTON

My parents woke me up after two hours of sleeping so that we could have dinner, but there were no bells or calls. No one yelled at the Thorskards for arriving late. When Mum finally finished putting all the food—all my favourites, I noticed—on the table, there was no rush to eat. And the conversation wasn't exactly regulation either.

“I can't believe Speed thinks that putting Owen and Porter together is solving a problem,” Lottie said. Hannah rolled her eyes. I could imagine that they had already had this conversation ten times. Still, Lottie had a point. If Speed had wanted to crush Owen, he would have assigned us to Amery and let the American lieutenant's disdain do his work for him. Instead, we got Porter, who didn't precisely encourage us to colour outside the lines, but who didn't complain when we did.

“The refugees were upset that Lieutenant Porter was gone,” I said. “It was their first official complaint. The general just told them it was military deployment and none of their business.”

“Which is true,” Aodhan put in.

“Could you pass the broccoli?” Hannah asked. Mum handed it over. “And Siobhan, it sounds rude when you call them refugees.”

“I know,” I said. “But it sounds extra dumb when I call them farmers or oil workers, so I just stick with the word they gave me.”

“I'm sure that's very comforting,” Hannah said. Lottie snorted.

“But aside from the political shenanigans, everything is all right?” Dad asked.

My e-mails home had been pretty brief and possibly not private. Mostly they were a general summary of events. I had yet to really tell them about Peter and the fact that I was writing music on a regular basis again.

“Everything is fine,” I said. “We're literally burrowed in for the winter. I don't have to go outside unless I want to, and from what Owen tells me, he's got more field practice in since moving to Hinton than he did the whole time we were in Fort Calgary.”

“That's good news,” Catalina said. She had already booked her ticket when Owen found out that he wouldn't be coming home, but hadn't canceled because Lottie had talked her into visiting anyway. She saw Aodhan infrequently enough as it was, Lottie reasoned, and just because Owen wasn't there was no reason to forget she was family. “Now, tell us about the Singe'n'burn.”

I did, thanking my lucky stars she hadn't asked about the Chinook. I was still sorting out how the story came together. It resisted my efforts to put it to music. Peter had tried to help, because he'd lived through the attack too, but his lack of technical proficiency made it difficult.

By the time I was done telling the story, Mum was serving dessert and I was nearly asleep in my chair. The Thorskards didn't stick around for long, and while my parents were doing dishes in the kitchen, I went and sat on the piano bench. The lid was closed, and there was a layer of dust on it. My sheet music was gone, some packed away in the bench with the overflow in the small filing cabinet that sat beside the piano. Back in its place was my grandmother's hymnal, opened to a random page as it had been before I'd learned what music was.

“Siobhan?” I turned around and saw my Dad standing in the doorway to the kitchen with a tea towel thrown over his shoulder.

“I'm fine.” I was surprised to find out that I was telling the truth. “I'm going to bed.”

“Sleep well, darling!” Mum called from the kitchen. Dad came over and ruffled my very short hair.

“See you in the morning,” he said. “If Emily gets here before you're awake, we'll hold the food until you're ready.”

“Thanks,” I said. “But if I sleep past six, I am going to be really surprised.”

“You know,” he said, “now that you're not on duty, you could always just roll over and go back to sleep.”

I felt a bit silly. That thought had never even occurred to me.

I got out of bed at eight o'clock, unable to stand being still for any longer. While I waited for Emily, I started sorting through the few things I had brought with me from Fort Calgary.

I didn't really have presents for anyone except Sadie, who was getting a bundle of handwritten notes from Owen. I hoped no one would mind too much. I had an abundance of papers packed in my kit, though. About half of them were the files on which I'd spent my train ride working. I should be receiving another bundle by courier before I left, for the ride back. The rest were all my attempts at music, and they were a mess.

I'd given up trying to teach Peter proper notation almost immediately. Instead, I told him the letters to write down. This meant that I had sheets of what looked like code, and none of the music it produced had any shape at all. Fortunately, I had the shape—the rhythm and the dynamics, how the notes were to be played—in my head. When Emily got here, she could help me make all the conversions, and then we'd have actual playable music. I sorted the sheets into piles on my bed in the order of how important or complicated I thought they were, and stopped to add to them where I noticed gaps.

“Siobhan!” Mum called from downstairs. I looked at the clock and sighed. Off duty for fewer than twenty-four hours, and I was already lacking discipline. And I was still in my pajamas.

“Be right down!” I said. I could hear Emily chatting to them as I dressed. It was a relief to wear these clothes. Nary a button in sight.

“Hi, Emily!” I said as I pounded down the stairs. I gave her a quick hug. “How are you doing?”

“I'm good,” she said. “Dad's Christmas presents came in the mail this morning, and he got to them before I did. But I managed to snag the DVDs I ordered for him, so at least that will be a surprise.”

“We all know how much your father likes surprises,” Dad said. “Now sit down, the bacon's ready.”

“Well,” Emily said, taking in the mess of papers on my bed and floor. “You've been busy.”

“I'm playing to my strengths,” I said, and winced. “No pun intended.”

Emily laughed, and we started to work. She dug the staff paper out from the drawer in my desk and started writing everything down. It was so much easier this way. Peter was fun to work with, but he got distracted very easily, asked a lot of questions, and didn't know how to draw a quarter note. Emily could get distracted and ask questions, to be sure, but that didn't stop her from writing things down. Gradually, she filled the staff paper with recognizable music, and I filled her in on everything I had been up to in Fort Calgary.

“General Speed has quite the reputation online,” she said.

“I'm not surprised,” I told her. “Do they talk about his daughters at all?”

“They know he has some, but not much else besides,” Emily said. “I haven't brought them up.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I really like Courtney, and I'd hate for the Internet to get a hold of her before I've warned her about it.”

“Seems fair,” Emily said. “Anyway, Speed is as old-guard as they come. He doesn't like the idea of support squads at all. He claims it leads to fraternization.”

“He's … not wrong,” I said, thinking about how easily my own crew helped me get through meals and, of course, what the general's own daughter was up to. “But I think that would happen anyway.”

“Of course it would happen anyway,” Emily said. “But he thinks that the Oil Watch should be for dragon slayers only, and that the cleanup should be done by private contractors.”

“And I assume he doesn't mean Darktide?” I looked down at what she was writing. “The guitar rests for four bars after that, by the way.”

“Nope,” Emily said, marking off a measure of rests with a flourish. “Man, your Peter really sucks at this.”

“He's not my Peter,” I said. “And he's doing his best.”

“You should probably nix the defensiveness before you talk to Sadie about him,” Emily said, grinning like a fox. “She'll eat you alive for that.”

I rolled my eyes, but I knew that it was true.

“I like the turn to guitars and fiddles, though,” Emily said. “It's a bit more country than usual, but I think it will be easier for people to play on their own.”

“It's still really weird to think about playing with anyone else besides the TSS band,” I admitted. “The first time the refugees joined in with my Manitoulin song, I almost forgot the words.”

“I wish I'd heard it,” Emily said. “Not the part where you panicked, but the part where they all sang. It was probably wonderful.”

“It was pretty good,” I admitted. “Maybe I'll figure out a way to record it. Some of the guys have laptops with mics, but the recordings sound pretty wretched.”

“I don't suppose if you requisitioned something, Speed would get nervous,” Emily said.

“I don't think General Speed gets nervous,” I said.

“He sent Owen and Porter to the sticks,” Emily pointed out. “That sounds like nerves to me. In any case, I'm glad you have time to record while you're home. We'll dole the songs out over the next few months, and it'll be like you're here all the time.”

“I'm glad to know you miss me,” I said. “Do you think I should wear my uniform?”

“No,” Emily said. “But I think we should hang it up behind you, so that people remember what you're up to.”

“Good,” I said. “I don't mind it, but I'm really enjoying wearing my own clothes again.”

“I love the hat, though,” Emily said, plunking it down on her own head. “Do you think if I asked nicely, they'd send me one?”

“Nope,” I told her. “You're probably on too many watch lists.”

She laughed, and we turned back to the papers that were scattered all over my bed.

A PERFECTLY LEGITIMATE FORM OF CAKE

Sadie came over on the morning of the twenty-third. My parents were excruciatingly polite to her while she was standing in the kitchen taking her snow boots off. That's when I realized that there was something she hadn't told me.

“So?” I said, once we were safe upstairs in my room. “What's up?”

“It's my parents, obviously,” Sadie said, flopping gracelessly down on my bed. I still found myself sitting at attention and straightening every time someone said my name. I'm not sure I could have slumped if my life depended on it.

“They're not pleased you went to England?”

“I think they were hoping that I'd go overseas and finally get away from Lottie's influence,” Sadie said. “But then my mentor had to go and be nearly as crazy as the Thorskards. They think I can't make my own damn decisions.”

“What do they have against the Thorskards?” I asked. As far as I knew, the whole town loved them.

“Well,” Sadie said. “In theory, nothing. I mean, they're thrilled to have local dragon slayers and all, but Dad's always been fairly active in local politics.”

She meant Conservative politics. We'd had the same MP for our whole lives, but he was getting older. It was a very ill-kept secret that Sadie's dad would be our next candidate. Mum said the Health Unit had a list of extra dentists on standby, just in case they had to replace him.