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FIRE DRILL
A fire drill begins when the
siren hidden at the top of the tall wooden tower by the river starts
to howl. Worried about surprise attacks the village council runs
drills at least twice a year and long ago installed a siren that no
one could ignore; before its sound even reaches your ears you feel a
pinch to your spine, right at the bottom, then something cold raking
through your lungs. It’s like the village trapped an ancient demon
- with who knows what black magic - chained it in the tower, and
whenever there is cause for alarm someone stabs at it with a hot iron
to make it scream. Whether you’re sweeping, talking to the butcher
or lying in bed alone in the darkest part of the night, when you hear
the siren they say it’s your civic duty to run to the river and
safety. No second thoughts.
My
first memory of the siren, or anything, is from when I was three. I
am in the village nursery stacking wooden blocks that are painted
different colours. I have them stacked in an impressively tall
eight-block tower but when the siren hits I knock them over in my
attempt to run away. Then I’m off the ground, held tightly and
struggling against adult arms, desperate to escape the swarm I feel
but can’t see around me.
Everyone runs when they hear the
siren, but a child’s uneducated response is to run away from the
noise and the river, into the fields that surround the village. I
learned quickly though and soon knew where to run, I knew that the
river and full submersion promised safety. Another memory, this time
I’m six years old, everything is harried and loud but the drill
feels less chaotic because I know what is expected of me. I hide my
fear and churning stomach, trying to match the somber faces that
surround me, as all the village children run for the water.
I’m nineteen now and still
feel a bit sick when the siren starts, but I know that when I run I
feel better. It’s gotten so I don’t even think anymore, my
muscles twitch, adrenaline hits and I’m flying. Full out running is
the best. Sometimes when I’m pushing myself hard my head and body
don’t even feel like they’re moving. It’s as if they’re
floating above the street surrounded by a churning blur of arms and
legs. I don’t look down but like to imagine my feet - invisible
because of the speed - exerting a huge force for the instant they
actually touch the ground. They tug at the earth’s surface, causing
it to bunch and wrinkle far away, at the tasseled edge of the
pan-global rug. There’s no strategy to it, or pacing, just run as
fast as you can. And if you run so fast that breathing gets ragged,
steps heavy and grey dots are swirling in your eyes by the time you
reach the river, that’s a good thing. I like that feeling, knowing
I really ran and didn’t pace myself. The oblivion of top speed is
bliss.
The first time I saw grey dots I
was eleven and with my best friend Theodore on a lumpy field outside
of the village. Rocky and full of scrubby plants, no one has tilled
it in years. I remember walking into the beige late-afternoon
landscape looking for lizards. Everything feels dead, or is just
waiting in stasis for the start of the winter rains. Behind a far-off
hill I see a flash of orange, then the siren’s call distracts me
and I run. But something else is there, chasing me; I can feel it
screaming above the siren. I’m moving very fast, winging through
the village, past my home, the temple and the market, and now dancing
dots are in my eyes. They congeal into a ring around my vision and
march inward. I can see the river but it’s grey, my world is grey,
then black. In the darkness I am somewhere else, I think. On the edge
of a great gaping maw that is slowly and secretly swallowing the
world. I want to run and yell, warn my family and friends, but slip
instead and fall into the black. In the real world I hit water and
the terrifying mouth is replaced by wet shock and cold. Teddy hadn’t
kept up but from behind saw me catch my toe on something a few meters
out from the river. He said I stumbled and lunged, he thought I would
fall for sure, but I somehow kept my feet beneath me until the water
cut into my shins. It was January and the riverhead is in the
mountains to the north so the water was very cold.
Usually when you run to the river
you’re aiming to get in at the bowl, a natural bend beside the
siren tower that’s been worked over the centuries - widened and
deepened - to provide safe haven for the whole community. There’s a
pier and a shallow area for wading, but during a drill people are
only concerned with sliding in up to their necks. I spent a lot of
time in the bowl when I was young, talking with my family, wetting my
hair, shivering and looking skyward with everyone else. When that got
boring I’d inspect my pruned hands or watch my clothes float around
my submerged body then cling tightly when I stood or lifted an arm.
If you stand out of the water before the all clear sounds you get
yelled at.
If you’re away from the bowl,
or just don’t want to be around people, there are other places to
get wet of course. I call my favourite spot the lagoon. A steep bank
and brambles hide its landward edge and a false shore with piles of
muck and sharp-edged bulrushes do the same from the river, so unless
you know where to look you won’t find it. It’s private, quiet
and, if the time ever comes, I hope deep enough.
Three years ago in August I was
near the lagoon when an alarm sounded. August is normally hot but
that year the air felt heavier, weighing on the whole village,
turning everyone and the milk sour. I left a village meeting that day
where people with the sweat for it were arguing about some new edict.
It was boring and I was hot so bought myself an icy treat from an old
man named Piotr. He makes them in his cellar using ice he harvests
from the mountains in winter then stores. When the siren sounded I
was close to the lagoon so ran there and even managed to get my
frozen snack through the mud sort of clean. No one had ever been in
the lagoon with me before and, distracted by my melting treat, I
didn’t notice Katia. She startled me when she asked for a taste,
then sat waiting quietly on a moss-covered rock near the shore while
I swam to her.
Katia was two years older than me
and as much a stranger as is possible in our village. I knew her
parents had died when she was very young, no one ever said how, and
that she was quickly becoming one of the village’s best weavers.
That afternoon we talked a long time, our conversation filled with
pauses that sat on the water until they dissolved or sank. I swam
some while Katia stayed on her rock. She didn’t like getting wet
and explained that she came into the lagoon via a bramble-arched
tunnel she’d found. Later when we heard the all-clear I squeezed
onto the rock beside her to better hear what she was asking. “Does
the siren scare you? It’s meant to mean safety but whenever it
starts I just want to cry. Lie down wherever I am, curl into a ball
and cry until I burn. Or whatever.” She laughed then, long and
gentle. The laughter
arrived slowly, floated then drowned. It sounded like crying. “Just
drills,” she laughed. “Always drills.” I nodded and told her
how the siren brought me close to puking sometimes, then explained
how running so fast my brain slowed and my vision blurred always set
me right. I suggested she try swimming.
The lagoon was still around us
and she leaned into me. I put my wet arm around her. Katia looked at
me, then out past our bulrush cordon to the distant mountains and
through them. I was going to ask her what she saw beyond the edges of
the world, but the sun moved and she kissed me while the day’s
shadows were repainted across the water and our floating clothes.
When it was dark we crawled through the bramble tunnel and went to
our homes. Katia left the village soon after, apparently - despite
rumours of banishment - with the council’s blessing, and I never
saw her again.
Last week when the siren sounded,
I turned to the river and twisted my ankle. No high-speed,
earth-tugging run for me. I didn’t feel sick as I hobbled my way to
the bowl though, safe and not aflame. Once there I spent more time
underwater than normal, enjoying a different view of the world. I
watched the sky dance and shimmer, warped by ripples, and bubbled
laughter when my four-year-old cousin appeared above me waggling his
tongue, only to be scolded by his mother for standing up. “Up to
your neck!”
That day reminded me of something
from when I was very young, from before the incident with the blocks.
Was I less than one? Is a memory even possible at that age? It’s
all a bit muddled. I am floating in the bowl then suddenly held
underwater by strong arms. I am still looking up when an enormous
green shadow darkens everything. Noise and commotion, but it is
muffled and distant. Then the shadow is gone, torn apart by a violent
slash of red-orange flame screaming across the water. It burns the
world. And that’s it, my
only experience with a dragon in real life. But like I said the
memory is hazy and, I realized recently, similar to a picture book I
read a lot when I was younger. Maybe I’ve never actually seen a
dragon.
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