Free At the End of the Road by Grant Jerkins Page A

turned and saw three places where the weeds had caught fire. The fallow field was more or less bare dirt in the little spot they had tramped down and used for playing, but farther out it was clotted with husky stalks, unruly weeds, and assorted undergrowth—most of it dry as bone.
    The three little fires didn’t worry him too much, but they clearly needed to be dealt with before they grew unmanageable. He went to the farthest one and stamped it out with his bare foot. The next one was too hot for that, so Kyle found a flat rock and stamped it out that way. He went to the third little fire and threw the rock on top of it.
    “Kyle, look.”
    The second fire was still out, but three more fires had sprung up in circumference around it. These were in the denser undergrowth, and the dead dry vegetation caught like it was drenched in kerosene. Kyle smashed the flat rock down on one fire and extinguished it with two good blows, but then he saw what the problem was: The force of the tamping motion and the feathery dryness of the weeds and brambles sent tiny sparks and embers into the air, little emissaries of fire that touched down and repopulated their kind.
    “Help me, dammit!” Kyle yelled at Grace. And he thought it must have been the edge of fear in his voice that broke her from her blank staring fascination, and prodded her into action. He was the Fire Master, and if the Fire Master sounded scared, the time for action was at hand.
    Grace dropped Wonder Woman and sprang into wild movement, stamping out the little fires. But she didn’t understand the nature of the problem like Kyle did. Later, when Kyle learned the story of the Hydra at school, it would have special relevance for him. For every fire that Grace stamped out with her little sandled foot, three more took its place. There was no way to keep ahead of it.
    After a few minutes they both just stopped and watched. The field was afire. And it amazed them. They were adrift in a sea of flame, little sorcerers whose magic had gotten away from them. They’d never seen anything like it. And a sense of the deepness of the trouble and level of punishment that Kyle had just created for himself began to dawn. But that sense was soon dwarfed when the strong breeze pushed the fire forward and it jumped the field and took hold in the woods. The towering pine trees caught in no time, their sticky, inflammable sap hissing and screaming in protest. It was a hundred-foot wall of flame, growing by the second. All told, by the end of this day, despite the best efforts of the Douglas County Fire Department, the fire would take out seventy-five acres of trees. Banked by Sweetwater Creek on one side, and Eden Road on the other, the wind pushed it straight to the reservoir.
    Even today, when Kyle Edwards says his prayers at night, he thanks God for letting the wind blow northeasterly that day, into the woods, and away from his house and the other houses on Eden Road.
    Kyle came to realize that in truth, this was the day that everything changed. That the black path to damnation was paved with ash. It wasn’t because of the woman on the road; it was because of the fire. God might have been looking the other way on the day Kyle caused the woman to wreck her car. But not on this day. On this day God was watching. He saw. On this day, He took notice.
    On this day, the Fire Master became Servant of the Ash.

HE WAS NOT ABLE TO BRING HIMSELF TO
    comprehend any sense of punishment, of right and wrong. He knew only that this thing they had done must be hidden. That they must disassociate themselves from it. Deny everything. Kyle scattered the ring of stones he’d built up and used a stick to stir up the ground. He took Grace’s hand and ran toward the house, their bodies silhouetted against the conflagration.
    They slipped in through the seldom-used front door (he had to use the key under the mat because that door always stayed locked). Mama was still in the kitchen, canning. Kyle could hear the