Lady Sylva laughed when they burned down her orange grove. It was bound to happen wasn’t it. That she had expected but she was surprised that it smelled so good. The burning essence of young orange trees, citrus fused with green wood smoke, some grass, some bush, a heady cocktail of an end to an age. The age of a Lady’s own orange grove had passed in this distant land.No such luxuries now. Now, the new men, would plant wheat, and mullets and sugar cane. Those fields would burn too after the crops had been harvested. But that burning would produce dark, bellowing smoke, that would darken the sky and choke the lungs. Nothing like the burning of a young orange grove. That age of such things was past.
She was mildly sad too. The trees were so young. All they had borne yet were the first flowers for their first fruit. Yet, such is the nature of things. Some die too young and some grow older and older never once bearing fruit.
Now, it was time to go. To go, move on, with nothing left behind. An old house which would be reclaimed by nature after her. After the vagrants had their fill. Would anyone live there after she departed? Some village woman would raise her family in the stables or her animals in the barn. No. She would have everything boarded up. She would wall up all doors and windows leaving the fetid air hanging inside. She would have to find someone to do it, though, with all the villagers busy with overthrowing the system, that would be hard. The old man across the road, maybe. He had sons. No not anymore. He had grandsons. They were too little.
The house, though. What must be done with the house? She could burn it down. Starting with the bedrooms, the upholstery, the linen, the furniture, they would catch fire quickly, then spread out, down the corridors, into the hall, seeping through the cracks of the many unopened doors, burn the many unslept in beds, fire, fire, every where. The house would burn for many days. But it would remain. Charred it would be, blackened inside and filled with the ashes of all that was, but the house was too strong to fall. Too strong to fall but too empty, too cold to be a house.
She could remain. She could live on. She could keep lining for many years. Sitting at her window and watching the world outside. The world could watch her, watching. People would make stories, children would creep up the hedge lined stone walls to catch a glimpse of the ghost, their mothers would reprimand them and make silent prayers to draw off the evil of her gaze. But she would curse no one. She would bear no hate. Or malice. She would hold no grief in her heart for what once was and what was lost. She would sit at her window and watch. The world. Outside.
Or she could leave. Go. Away. Where. Some where close to the ocean. Far away from everything. The house. What is it anyway, but an empty shell of what she could not be. A house is its people. Not its ghosts. She would go away. To the ocean. Walk on the shore every morning and let the waves wash her feet. She would raise her hands above her head and let the warm winds embrace her. She would sing to the rising sun.
The odor had changed. The fires in the grove were dying down and replaced by ashes and embers and a few solitary stumps sticking out of the earth like charred infant arms reaching out for their mother. She glimpsed a few forms, then a huddle of men amidst the smoke. They held torches. They looked up. They saw her at the window. They gestured towards the house. The choice was not hers to make.
She laughed. The house was old but it would not fall, yet everything within it would burn. Fire, fire, every where.
THE FIRE SALAMANDER 