Fire as Fine as Wine

"Close the door," moaned Charles. "Close the door, damn you!"

In a defiant glare she kicked the door shut it banged like a gunshot. She spat on the hardwood floor, letting it drip and touch the red carpet.

"That enough, you old crook?" she said. She unhitched the wine flask from her waist, popped the cap and down the last bit of wine. It burned her throat, giving fire to her lungs.

"You would've let the wolves in," he said warily. "Who knows what's out there?"

He bent over the planks, and inspected them with eyes as clear as prime. He looked like a broken twig, twisted and gnarled and old with hunger and thirst.

Behind him she snickered. "The only wolf here is me," she said.

Foolish girl, he was muttering, but she already left him for the counter top, and behind the bar she brushed the bottles with a twinkle of her eye, occasionally pulling out a bottle and turning it over.

The fire in the hearth snapped and cackled, sending off sparks. There was an empty chair there, and it was warm and inviting. She had forgotten the familiarity of such fire for so little as three days, and she had already begun to wonder how it feels to sit there to warm her fingers and her feet, making sweat take a drop from her forehead. But she knew that if the warmth of it ever reaches her she would be the young girl again, on her mother's lap, listening to bedtime stories. She stayed where she was underneath the cold comfort of the darkness and a good company of wine. A splash inside one such bottle caught her utmost attention, while Uncle Charles sat down like greatly and slowly at the chair before the hearth.

"There's my little girl. You still have life in you." Her fingers stopping at a set of letters. She said, with a squint of her eyes, "Let's see: E-S-T-D, Two-One-Two-Seven. Whatever that means. Now. Offer the direwolf your blood, little one."

She popped it open with a corkscrew. Behind her Charles chuckled from his seat. "You're barely a pup fresh out of the wild. The real wolves are harsher."

"This pup," she said as she filled her flask. "Just traveled miles for food, escaped a brigand of poachers, and made it all the way here without as much as a scratch on her skin."

He leaned forward. "Your eyes, little girl, betrayed you. Have your tears dried enough?"

She snapped her hand to her eyes. She noticed as she looked at him that her ears must have flushed with red. "Keep your tongue close to your chest," she warned him. "Unless you want your feet to walk through sheets of glass from your wine. These are hard times, Charles, and you're giving me half the mind to do it."

A log cracked opened to the burning comfort of the fire, giving shadows the chance to dance. The old man's hollow eye sockets defined his small beads of red eyes. He spoke, as quiet as a wind's whisper, "You don't even know how much they're worth."

"A little more than water, true," she said. "But not as much as you think. At least, not if you offer it to a dying man. They'll kill for a sip. Do you want a glass of wine?" The laugh that came from her was rich and strong.

"That was your mother's wine collection, and you're sullying it."

The laughter died from there, leaving a dry smile. "We don't speak of her here," she said. "Not with you."

"Oh, do forgive me," he clasped his hands together. "I am but an old man, with senility in my footsteps. The past is the only future I have. I can still remember her. Wonderful woman. A pity she worked herself to death taking care of you. Have you once thought of that, little girl?"

Behind the cloaks of the darkness she remains unseen as a subtle blade. Her boots stomped on the floor, letting a bottle of wine slide, glass against glass.

His voice rose higher, but there was not a mock in it. "Has it ever occurred to you how much she suffered raising you? I did all I could. It wasn't enough. It wasn't enough."

A swish of a bottle in the air, it shattered at the carpet floor with a thump and a hollow crash. Charles barely spared a glance, brushing off shards of glass away from his socked feet.

"I'm leaving, Charles," she said. "I've stocked for a long journey and I'm thinking of leaving you by the fire to rot."

She uncapped the flask and downed the rest of it, but what he said brought early memories of her mother she'd rather not remember. Thinking of the wine helped, but as she wiped her mouth with her hand she found she could not remember her mother's face, and it lingered in her mind. She blinked the tears away before he could see it.

"You were born here," he said. "This is your home."

"My home died with her."

She believed it, just as she believed the apple-faced girl had died when her mother abandoned her in this dead world. In her mind's eye she saw that girl humming on the red carpet near the hearth where her mother told her of her father when she asked about him. He died before she was ever born, her mother said, and spoke of it no more. Now her memories was stained, bloodied and dirtied.

Charles turned his head to the door. "Summer," he said her name, softly.

She felt like a child again upon hearing that name. "I told you never to call me that," she spat.

He blinked. "My ears are as sharp as they used to be. So, tell me, were you followed?"

She listened and she only needed to hear it once. Outside footstomps of the horse crunched and crunched the wet soil; paired with it were hard boots shifting and creeping forward. She breathed in a lungful of cold breath, letting it still.

"All the way here?" she said. "What's one woman to them?"

She picked up her bag and slung it over her shoulder. She pressed her hand to her waist and felt the little comfort the kiss of cold steel. She looked at Charles, horrified to see him still in his seat.

"I loved your mother," he said to the hearth.

"This isn't time for old tales. Get up!"

"You should know this now," he said, gravely. "I never had a brother."

She caught her breath, finding the shadows sweeping past the moonlight, but it wasn't them that made her stop. "No, no, no."

"She loathed me," he said to her. "But she loved you more than she despised me. So we lived together. And it's everything I ever wanted," he said, and then those old eyes seemed to regard her for someone else. "I'm sorry. I can't keep this secret to my grave."

She cursed herself a hundred times before bounding the front door in weights of whatever she could find. She retreated behind the counter, her back to the wine bottles. There was a sizzle from the hearth, doused with water. She hoped he couldn't see her from the darkness; she was not the woman he was used to seeing were she in the light.

He held a stoker on his hand, glowing with fire and light.

Summer did not allow tears to be wept, whether for good or for ill. She searched for him in the darkness, seconds before the door banged, and still after all these years she saw him now differently, like fire as fine as wine.

The door burst open, and woolen boots and cloaks surrounded the house.