A Mother of Flames

The perfectly round moon hung high in the inky black sky once more. Its halo cast a velveteen effect on the tree-topped horizon and sugared the nearby grasses, dimpling in the gently trickling river. In another world, another time, the view would have been magnificent. 

But Juniper sighed as she gazed up at it, her fawn colored hair grazing the top of her tattered linen pants. The moonlight even shimmered against her nose tip and cheek bones, reflecting in her irises as a pinpoint of white light. But to Juniper, the angelic full moon hanging heavily above did not exhibit extraterrestrial beauty; it meant the start of another Walk. 

Another dreaded Walk. 

For seventeen years now, Juniper and her Community have been Walking every time the round moon made a trip through the night sky. It was the only way to stay out of the Fire’s path. She wasn’t sure how many generations had passed since the fires began, but she was certain it had been many. 

There was another woman standing a little way down the river, also gazing silently up at the moon. She looked older, and Juniper knew she recognized her from the Community. Until then, though, Juniper thought she was the only one who liked to escape outside of camp. 

Pulling her thick scarf tighter around her shoulders, Juniper turned her back to the moon and the other woman and walked silently back to camp, following the muffled voices of the Community as they prepared for their upcoming departure.

As Juniper neared the gathering of tents and tarps, a creased face came into view behind a flickering orange light. It was one of the Elders, Elma, tightly tying a twine around a Walking bag. 

“Ah, Juniper,” Elma said pleasantly as Juniper’s face was revealed from the shadows. “I hardly knew it was you, coming in from the darkness.”

“Hello, Elder Elma,” Juniper replied, almost inherently. 

“Are you packed for the Walk?” 

“No, I came back to do it just now.”

“Well you’d better get started. We’re leaving at dawn.”

“Yes, as usual,” Juniper said. Elma smiled a maternal smile and returned her attention to packing. Juniper walked slowly to her tent. 

She didn’t have much to pack, but she did so under the white brightness of the moon that cast through a torn slit on the tent’s ceiling flap. Other than the clothes she was wearing, she had only one more pair of old pants, one pair of shorts that didn’t button, and two shirts, both of which were nearing the end of their useful life. She sighed and glanced down at her dusty toes. Her aged sandals creaked and groaned under the weight of every step; she wasn’t sure if they would make it through this month’s Walk. 

As a young girl, when Juniper must have only been five or six, she recalled an Elder called Wilsen telling her that before the Fires started, which was a long, long time ago, children actually knew who their parents were. She wondered now, as she was carefully folding her nearly disintegrating clothes into a patchwork bag, if her mother would be helping her pack. She wondered if her mother would mend her clothes, or even Walk beside her. 

Logically, Juniper knew that her mother lived in the Community; they were the only survivors left on the planet. She just wished, from the deepest depth of her stomach, that her mother would make herself known. 

The same Elder, just weeks before he died, also told Juniper that families who lived together stayed in one spot for their entire lives. In something called homes. On a Walk nearly three years ago, Juniper was sure she saw what must have been a home at one point in history. It was then fragmented into begrimed piles of cracked cement and sharp pieces of black metal, but she had never seen anything like the pile before. She remembered thinking as she stepped carefully through the waste that she would live in that very pile of debris if it meant she could be with her family, forever. 

With frustrated thoughts and unwelcomed memories dangling in her mind, Juniper lay her scarf on the grassy, dusty ground, and curled up on it, pulling one half of it tightly around her midsection, a thin line of moonbeam cutting across her lidded pupil. 

At dawn, Juniper awoke to the rustling of tents being folded up and the sizzling of steam rising from dampened coals. Without bothering to change, knowing her clothes would soil during the Walk, she quickly combed through her waist-length hair with her fingers and threw her Walking bag out of her tent flap, following after it. 

The sky above was a complete contrast to the clarity of the night prior. What resembled glass just ten hours earlier was now equivalent to a murky mud puddle, only the mud swirling through the water was thick smoke clouding the sky. 

“Juniper! Get yourself ready quickly!” Elder Elma called from several yards away, urgency in her tone. 

Juniper squinted at the sky, and her gaze followed the most prominent smoke trail down to the horizon. Her eyes widened with horror. 

There, visible, was a raging Fire. Even from the distance, Juniper could see streaks of red, yellow, and white deviously licking the air, engulfing dry pine trees and releasing them as grey cloud and ash.  

“Elder Elma! What is happening? We’ve never been so close to the Fires!” Juniper yelled back, panic rising in her throat.

But Elma did not hear her. As more Community members poked their heads out from behind their tarps and tents, the sense of alarm climbed throughout the camp. 

A man with a peppered beard was gathering utensils and supplies as quickly as his shaking hands would allow. 

A woman, who must have been almost at Elder age, wrapped a shawl tightly around her broad shoulders as she followed some of the other Community members North, away from the flames.

A child, no more than four, was standing alone, crying, behind a large rock. 

The Elders stood farther away, conversing urgently and tightly to one another. 

Juniper knew something was wrong; they had not expected to be so close to the ever-nearing Fires. 

With increasing haste, Juniper folded her tent, latched it to her bag, and tightened them around her shoulders. Instinctively, she ran to the crying child. 

“What’s your name?” She said as she crouched to her knees to look the child in the eyes. But her only answer was more sobs and more salted tears falling across her cheeks.  

“What’s your name?” Juniper pressed, grabbing the young girl by the shoulder. 

“Wr- Wren,” the girl gulped between sobs. 

“Okay, Wren. We’re going to be okay, okay?” Juniper tried to nod in encouragement. “I’m going to Walk with you, okay?” 

The little girl nodded, her finger in her mouth. She reached her tiny yet pudgy hand out to Juniper, who took it in her own. 

In that moment, Juniper decided the most important thing she could do was protect this motherless girl, if only for today. 

With Wren bobbing beside her, tears still falling, Juniper started North. It may have only been in her head, but she was almost certain she felt heat on her back. 

The first two days of the Walk were exhausting, but uneventful. The flames continued approaching from the South, but they seemed to be moving slowly enough. There was even time to rest on the second afternoon, just on the far side of a tall hill. 

Wren had been very good throughout the walk, not once complaining. Juniper thought her silence could be a result of shock, or terror, but she could not deny the young girl was resilient. 

With the sun gloomily shining from behind a swirling curtain of smoke, Juniper lay out her scarf for her and Wren to lie on. A familiar woman, along with two women that Juniper did not recognize, were handing out cups of pine bark broth. Gratefully, Juniper took one from the familiar woman, and gave Wren the first sip. 

Wren fell asleep within mere moments, and Juniper was not long after. 

            She had a restless sleep. She dreamed that she was underwater, and someone was pushing her deeper. They were not very strong. She was sure she could fight back. She tried to push towards the surface. She tried to gasp for air. The hands pressed her down harder. She gasped deeper. 

            Juniper’s eyes stung as they opened in fear. She realized her dream was not wrong- she was choking. On smoke. Wren’s baby blue eyes were wide with fear, and her little hands were pressing on Juniper’s shoulder in an attempt to wake her. 

            Sitting up, Juniper looked back over the hill that was supposed to offer them some protection. The flames were a mere fifty yards away, just over the hill. 

            Forgetting her scarf and her bag, Juniper scooped up Wren in her arms and began to run. The other Community members had run ahead, and Juniper felt a rush of primal anger rise in her chest at the realization that they would have left her and the child to die in the flames. 

            But then, a small voice from beside them made Juniper glance briefly over her shoulder. It was the familiar woman who had the pine bark broth. 

            “I wasn’t going to leave you!” The woman called. The fire was approaching so rapidly now that the crackling and snapping of its tree victims and the roar of the heat was loud. 

            “Why didn’t you wake me up?” Juniper yelled back, the anger and sprinting flushing her face. 

            “They tell us not to treat you any differently than any other child! Everyone else was running! I could have been exiled from the Community if I acted differently from them!” 

            “What do you mean?”

            “And I knew she would wake you up soon enough!” The woman said, motioning to Wren between running steps. 

            “What do you mean, you can’t treat me differently than other children?” Juniper called, but the smoke was filling her lungs and running, carrying Wren’s weight, and yelling was nearing impossible. 

            The woman started coughing then, too. She started coughing so harshly that she slowed to a walk, then to a complete halt, bent over and coughing. 

            Juniper stopped too. 

            “Come on! We have to keep moving!” She called back to the woman.

            The woman looked up at Juniper, her deep brown eyes exhausted and crinkled around the edges, however they were not filled with fear, they were filled with love. And in a startling moment of recognition she realized whose eyes she was looking into.

            Her mother.

            This was the woman who was standing on the river the night of the round moon. This was the woman who had given her broth when she needed it. This was the woman she longed to have in her life for seventeen years, when without realizing it she had been there all along. 

            “Mother?” Juniper breathed in disbelief. 

            “I wouldn’t have left you on the hill, Juniper,” her mother said, gasping for air.

            The heat from the flames was now almost unbearable, and Juniper could barely see mere feet in front of her through the smoke. Her mother was becoming a vague shadow.

            “Mother! I won’t leave you either!” Juniper called back. Wren coughed desperately into Juniper’s shoulder.

            “Go, Juniper! Save that little girl! Save her, and be there for her, like I wasn’t for you!” 

            Juniper could not make out the body that her mother’s voice had come from, and without thinking, Juniper knew she would have to run if it meant saving herself and Wren.

            With tears in her eyes, both from the sting of the smoke and a wave of emotions, Juniper began to run as quickly as she could, her waist-long hair trailing behind her. She cradled Wren’s head against her chest and did not look back until she could breathe clearly again. 

The view of the oceanic horizon was the most wonderful view Juniper had ever seen. In the distance, just off the coast a swimmable distance, was a small island with people standing upon it and others wading through the water towards it. It was her Community; or the survivors of her Community. Juniper did not want to think about all those who were lost to the flames that day. She especially did not want to think about her mother. 

So, she hugged Wren tightly and then looked deeply into her baby blue eyes. 

“I will be your mother,” she said, knowing Wren would not grasp the value of those words, but hoping in time she could. 

“Mother,” Wren repeated, placing a chubby hand on Juniper’s cheek, swiping away a lone tear that had fallen over the crest of her eyelashes.