Originalfic: DecoVerse - "Six White Horses", the DecoFiremen
Another brief segment of 14-year-old Davey and his adjustment to life at Wynantskill.
At Wynantskill, Davey sleeps with the cadets in the dormitory. The first night, and many days after, he cries in the night. He dreams of walking the moon-licked curve of a lake, broad and still with midnight, where the grass is damp between his bare toes. No matter how long he walks the moon stays high and he never rounds the bending of the water, and he wakes crying in fear and frustration.
The cadets are old enough to be as men in his eyes, and young enough to still be boys by the reckoning of the instructors and officers. Davey doesn't quite know where he stands, but the first night, and many after, when he wakes crying, someone will come to his bed, their kind hands tousling his hair, touching his shoulder. Voices in the smoke and fog, they are, and he grasps for them. They are young enough to be as brothers, to tumble with in the yard, to sneak him into the kitchens for a snack when he can't fall back asleep.
Davey is not to take part in their drills, but the lads give him a helmet and long coat and he watches at the edge of the proving grounds as they work, their hunkered shapes like bull terriers on the hose-line, and their daring leaps from ladder to tower, flapping black and graceful as ravens. Davey crouches on the courtyard and pulls grass from between the cobbles and his mind, loping agile from his reach, reads the memory of each footstep etched in the cold granite.
Sometimes he follows the footsteps.
There is a narrow, rutted road lined with cracked slate that leads north into the woods, east of the creek. Set a ways from the living buildings, a cottage sinks into the loamy earth and rests in slender vines beneath the trees. When Davey sees it he sweats, and when the footsteps lead him to the door he gasps, and when the rotted thing swings wide on rusted hinges he begins to cry.
The room was tiled once in white, and now is sleek with moss so dark and fine it's almost black, like the high windows are crying. The windows are so high. There is a bank of cabinets on one wall, each one a square, three high and three wide. In the cabinets are drawers like in the kitchen but not like in the kitchen. On the other side of the wall are risers bent under the weight of history. Soft ferns grow from cracks in the floor, and a table, steel as a gull's eye, sits smack in the middle.
do you see, do you see. The footsteps click and whisper over stone. do you hear, do you hear. The muttering of men. The shivering circle of golden lamplight. do you know, do you know.
Hello there son, someone says. Come to see the surgeons work?
Davey drags himself from offending and ephemeral hands, and runs deep into the woods.
Josiah finds him when the sun is long.
"My god, lad, are you alright? Boyo, talk to me, you runnin' fine?"
Davey sits by the little stream that flows down the craggy rocks and will, in its meandering way, eventually find the creek, which will find the river, which will find the city. He has been crying. The voice of the doctor will not go away. The eyes and the mouth bound tightly shut plead with him. He opens his eyes and sees Captain Josiah and sobs out high and hard and begins to cry all over again and Josiah limps, cantilevers with his crutch to him across the leaves and rocks and pulls him tight to his broad chest, to his smell of canvas and lamb's oil and smoke.
"Yes," Captain Josiah says after a moment. "This place was an asylum, sometime ago. We had a proving ground in the Bronx, but it got too crowded for us to have our peace of learning. Wynantskill came free from the state, and here we are."
Davey struggles, mind and body and voice, to articulate the scene he came upon. Where the footsteps led him, into the woods and the wilds.
"History, son," Captain Josiah says. "All history. We all come from it, some worse-scarred than others, but we all come from a history. Every day, my boy, is history when the sun goes down. We make it our own. I oughta told you. I'm sorry. Never had a lad come through already got his Sear. Never so young."
"The stones told me to go," Davey says. "I didn' mean to run, sir."
"I'da run too, openin' that door."
"What happens?" Davey asks, brushing leaves off his knees. Josiah follows close to him. Davey leans on his great friend, leans on his spirit and his body. "To firemen."
"When the night falls, d'you forget the warmth of the sun?"
"Nossir."
"And when the dawn comes up, d'you forget the smile on the moon?"
"Nossir."
"Some of us says, when a firemen dies, his Sear lights on some other mind, new born. Some of us says we turn into those footsteps you follow. Some of us says, as long as we remember, our brothers don't never die really."
"Could you tell me about the Sear, Captain Josiah? Tell me, please. The story like Lieutentant Edison told."
"Eddy tells it better."
"It needs your voice," Davey says. It makes sense on his tongue. It seems to make sense to Josiah.
They're at the gentle rise above the courtyard now, behind the tower. A group of cadets is playing baseball. Some are scrubbing grime from their necks and hands at the trough. The administration building is to the right, and the kitchen and dining hall to the left, with the dormitories furthest. The sun is strident through the trees, and a cardinal is singing somewhere. The whole of the world laid out before them is calm and strong, like the froth on a swift river winding its way from some ancient source.
"...most men breaks bread with each other, to kindle a sharing." Josiah is saying, "When the first fireman was struck by the teeth of that first fire, he came to be the first of all of us, on 'counts of how he shared his blood and flesh with the flames. It burned him, to his bones, but he looked that beast in the face and saw its secrets, and what it was hiding behind those mean red claws was that some men are born in this world with the cunning to fight it, but 'course, fire not being a man, it couldn't chase them out one by one, it had to burn the whole of the world. But 'cause the first of us was a man of flesh and bone and blood, he could see us all, the ones already born and the ones yet to be."
"It made him ... see like the fire?"
"Like Eddy said. To fight the fire, we had to be as strong as it - we had to be together, not just single little sparks and embers spit across the world, but one fierce heart together. We wears the horse, you see - " Josiah taps the patch on Davey's oversized coat - " -we wears the spirit of him on our chest, to remember all the things we got to be."
"Eddy said ... the water and the fire, the first floor and the higher, the - the - "
"Hooves and bells and hoses, the hearts as strong as horses. What else?"
"Iron and brass and grinding wheel, backs as strong as tempered steel. And - "
"And flesh and blood and bone and brothers, as one goes always, so do the others."
Always, so do the others. Davey likes that part. He savors that part, in Josiah's voice, in the trueness of his mind. One night he woke, just before dawn, to the hazy dregs of a dream in which Josiah was younger, his eyes not so hard, and his leg straight and strong. He was laughing with another fireman, clapping him on the back, and only his smile was crooked. It was a dream of someplace warmhearted and glad. Davey had shivered beneath his covers. It is Josiah's loyalty, and love, fierce like the striking of a hawk. Sure as the crack of the bat, the pop of leather into callused palms, down below in the courtyard.
"Whaddya say we go have some supper, lad. You got to be starving now. Growin' lad like you."
"Yessir."
"You'll be a tall one, I reckon."
"And strong?" Davey follows Josiah's limping gait down the grass.
"Already are, lad. Already are."
At Wynantskill, Davey sleeps with the cadets in the dormitory. The first night, and many days after, he cries in the night. He dreams of walking the moon-licked curve of a lake, broad and still with midnight, where the grass is damp between his bare toes. No matter how long he walks the moon stays high and he never rounds the bending of the water, and he wakes crying in fear and frustration.
The cadets are old enough to be as men in his eyes, and young enough to still be boys by the reckoning of the instructors and officers. Davey doesn't quite know where he stands, but the first night, and many after, when he wakes crying, someone will come to his bed, their kind hands tousling his hair, touching his shoulder. Voices in the smoke and fog, they are, and he grasps for them. They are young enough to be as brothers, to tumble with in the yard, to sneak him into the kitchens for a snack when he can't fall back asleep.
Davey is not to take part in their drills, but the lads give him a helmet and long coat and he watches at the edge of the proving grounds as they work, their hunkered shapes like bull terriers on the hose-line, and their daring leaps from ladder to tower, flapping black and graceful as ravens. Davey crouches on the courtyard and pulls grass from between the cobbles and his mind, loping agile from his reach, reads the memory of each footstep etched in the cold granite.
Sometimes he follows the footsteps.
There is a narrow, rutted road lined with cracked slate that leads north into the woods, east of the creek. Set a ways from the living buildings, a cottage sinks into the loamy earth and rests in slender vines beneath the trees. When Davey sees it he sweats, and when the footsteps lead him to the door he gasps, and when the rotted thing swings wide on rusted hinges he begins to cry.
The room was tiled once in white, and now is sleek with moss so dark and fine it's almost black, like the high windows are crying. The windows are so high. There is a bank of cabinets on one wall, each one a square, three high and three wide. In the cabinets are drawers like in the kitchen but not like in the kitchen. On the other side of the wall are risers bent under the weight of history. Soft ferns grow from cracks in the floor, and a table, steel as a gull's eye, sits smack in the middle.
do you see, do you see. The footsteps click and whisper over stone. do you hear, do you hear. The muttering of men. The shivering circle of golden lamplight. do you know, do you know.
Hello there son, someone says. Come to see the surgeons work?
Davey drags himself from offending and ephemeral hands, and runs deep into the woods.
Josiah finds him when the sun is long.
"My god, lad, are you alright? Boyo, talk to me, you runnin' fine?"
Davey sits by the little stream that flows down the craggy rocks and will, in its meandering way, eventually find the creek, which will find the river, which will find the city. He has been crying. The voice of the doctor will not go away. The eyes and the mouth bound tightly shut plead with him. He opens his eyes and sees Captain Josiah and sobs out high and hard and begins to cry all over again and Josiah limps, cantilevers with his crutch to him across the leaves and rocks and pulls him tight to his broad chest, to his smell of canvas and lamb's oil and smoke.
"Yes," Captain Josiah says after a moment. "This place was an asylum, sometime ago. We had a proving ground in the Bronx, but it got too crowded for us to have our peace of learning. Wynantskill came free from the state, and here we are."
Davey struggles, mind and body and voice, to articulate the scene he came upon. Where the footsteps led him, into the woods and the wilds.
"History, son," Captain Josiah says. "All history. We all come from it, some worse-scarred than others, but we all come from a history. Every day, my boy, is history when the sun goes down. We make it our own. I oughta told you. I'm sorry. Never had a lad come through already got his Sear. Never so young."
"The stones told me to go," Davey says. "I didn' mean to run, sir."
"I'da run too, openin' that door."
"What happens?" Davey asks, brushing leaves off his knees. Josiah follows close to him. Davey leans on his great friend, leans on his spirit and his body. "To firemen."
"When the night falls, d'you forget the warmth of the sun?"
"Nossir."
"And when the dawn comes up, d'you forget the smile on the moon?"
"Nossir."
"Some of us says, when a firemen dies, his Sear lights on some other mind, new born. Some of us says we turn into those footsteps you follow. Some of us says, as long as we remember, our brothers don't never die really."
"Could you tell me about the Sear, Captain Josiah? Tell me, please. The story like Lieutentant Edison told."
"Eddy tells it better."
"It needs your voice," Davey says. It makes sense on his tongue. It seems to make sense to Josiah.
They're at the gentle rise above the courtyard now, behind the tower. A group of cadets is playing baseball. Some are scrubbing grime from their necks and hands at the trough. The administration building is to the right, and the kitchen and dining hall to the left, with the dormitories furthest. The sun is strident through the trees, and a cardinal is singing somewhere. The whole of the world laid out before them is calm and strong, like the froth on a swift river winding its way from some ancient source.
"...most men breaks bread with each other, to kindle a sharing." Josiah is saying, "When the first fireman was struck by the teeth of that first fire, he came to be the first of all of us, on 'counts of how he shared his blood and flesh with the flames. It burned him, to his bones, but he looked that beast in the face and saw its secrets, and what it was hiding behind those mean red claws was that some men are born in this world with the cunning to fight it, but 'course, fire not being a man, it couldn't chase them out one by one, it had to burn the whole of the world. But 'cause the first of us was a man of flesh and bone and blood, he could see us all, the ones already born and the ones yet to be."
"It made him ... see like the fire?"
"Like Eddy said. To fight the fire, we had to be as strong as it - we had to be together, not just single little sparks and embers spit across the world, but one fierce heart together. We wears the horse, you see - " Josiah taps the patch on Davey's oversized coat - " -we wears the spirit of him on our chest, to remember all the things we got to be."
"Eddy said ... the water and the fire, the first floor and the higher, the - the - "
"Hooves and bells and hoses, the hearts as strong as horses. What else?"
"Iron and brass and grinding wheel, backs as strong as tempered steel. And - "
"And flesh and blood and bone and brothers, as one goes always, so do the others."
Always, so do the others. Davey likes that part. He savors that part, in Josiah's voice, in the trueness of his mind. One night he woke, just before dawn, to the hazy dregs of a dream in which Josiah was younger, his eyes not so hard, and his leg straight and strong. He was laughing with another fireman, clapping him on the back, and only his smile was crooked. It was a dream of someplace warmhearted and glad. Davey had shivered beneath his covers. It is Josiah's loyalty, and love, fierce like the striking of a hawk. Sure as the crack of the bat, the pop of leather into callused palms, down below in the courtyard.
"Whaddya say we go have some supper, lad. You got to be starving now. Growin' lad like you."
"Yessir."
"You'll be a tall one, I reckon."
"And strong?" Davey follows Josiah's limping gait down the grass.
"Already are, lad. Already are."