Fire Season

Something was very wrong with the fields in Drift City, but no one could say exactly what the problem was. What was once a fertile valley where just about every crop you could think of grew as abundantly as can be was now barren and empty. One year everything was as it always had been and the next, it was as if the fields had been heavily salted. Or as if they’d been cursed.

In fact, many of the people of Drift City were certain that’s exactly what had happened. Several months prior to planting season, a band of strange vagabonds had materialized within the city limits, wagons, and livestock in tow. No one knew from which direction they’d come, and no one asked where they were going. However, it was known that they were in need because the travelers stopped long enough to ask the citizens for food and fresh water.

You see, the mayor of Drift City wasn’t the type that took kindly to the presence of strangers, especially when they were as out of the ordinary as this particular bunch had been.

The travelers were like people from another time that might have existed hundreds of years in the past — dressed in strange, old-fashioned, weathered clothing and covered in thick layers of dust as if they’d come a very long way. Except their appearance wasn’t the strangest thing about them. When you attempted to really look at them to size them up and see exactly who it was you were dealing with, it was hard to do for reasons you couldn’t completely put your finger on.

Their edges seemed fuzzy, almost as if they weren’t fully occupying the space around them. In fact, the very realness of them appeared faded, almost as if they were copies of copies of copies produced by a printer that had begun to run out of ink. Or at least that’s what the townspeople thought before they came to their senses and realized that was impossible. Surely it was just a trick of the light — some anomaly for which there was a perfectly rational explanation.

To be near the travelers was to feel uneasy. Some of Drift City’s citizens reported a strange pressure on their eardrums as if a storm were on its way. Others said they felt mildly dizzy as if they’d forgotten to eat that morning, even though they’d all had perfectly ample breakfasts. However, he’d best describe that feeling, the mayor didn’t like anything about it, so he ordered the vagabonds to move along until they were outside the official limits of Drift City. He did so without even considering their request for food and water, of which the town had plenty.

It was a decision he’d soon come to regret. Nothing had been quite right in Drift City since that fateful day, and the citizens were certain it was because of the group of vagabonds. Some thought they were time travelers from another era. Others thought they were a group of angels sent by God to test the charitable nature of the townspeople. Still more thought they might be aliens, ghosts, or witches.

However, everyone could agree that Drift City apparently hadn’t passed whatever test it had been put to. The complete absence of any crops this year had merely confirmed the nagging feeling everyone had already had. Not a single crop sprout or shoot had appeared after the fields were sown, fertilized, and watered for the season.

All that had sprung up in any of the fields were masses of weeds, but even those shriveled and died shortly after coming into existence. The dried husks that remained were a constant reminder of how incapable the fields had become of sustaining even unwanted life. The citizens prayed for a miracle — a way to undo whatever great wrong had been done to bring them to where they were now. Otherwise, they’d soon be in the same position as the mysterious wandering travelers — hungry, destitute, and barely there anymore.

........

Perhaps in answer to Drift City’s prayers and perhaps not, the townspeople awoke in the middle of the night to a sky thick with smoke and tinted the most lurid shade of red. The dead husks of the weeds that filled the fields were burning, although the cause of the fire was anyone’s guess.

There was always the chance someone who’d been out there had been smoking and had tossed a spent match away a little too casually. However, the previous day had been unbearably hot, so spontaneous combustion was also a distinct possibility. But then, before the townspeople had too much of a chance to wonder which scenario was more likely, a figure appeared and began to emerge from the depths of one of the blazes.

It was a man, tall and thin, dressed entirely in black from head to toe. Even his face was covered almost completely by a black woolen scarf, leaving only his eyes visible. They were terrible eyes, black and shiny like the guilty eyes of a rat, but they twinkled ominously in the glow from the fires that surrounded him.

The man strolled casually through the flames, seemingly without a care in the world. He could easily have been taking a turn in the park after dinner or enjoying a walk on the beach as the waves lapped at his toes. His boots stirred up small swirls of dust, ash, burnt vegetation, and glowing orange sparks as he made his way through the flaming brush.

He was, of course, headed straight for the group of townspeople. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that not only had he expected them to be there but that he could tell them everything they wanted to know about the origins of the fire, not to mention the terrible blight on the crops that had thrown the town into turmoil and scarcity. The question was, would he?

After what seemed like ages, the man finished his walk to where the citizens of Drift City were standing and stopped short in front of the mayor. He took his black cowboy hat off with a flourish, revealing a full head of long black hair that shone like crows’ feathers, and bent into a deep bow.

“Jakob Ash, at your service,” he said. “We’ve much to talk about, you and I. Shall we begin?”

“But… the fires,” stammered the mayor. “The town will burn to the ground if something isn’t done.”

“Oh, yes,” said Ash, cool as a cucumber. “That.”

He put his hat back on, gracefully raised his left hand, and brought it down again in a fluid but casual motion. He could have been shooing a fly away, but instead, the raging flames in the burning fields grew lower and lower until they were no more. A few tendrils of grey smoke were all that was left to prove they’d been there at all.

........

Ash and the mayor stood locked in conversation in the middle of one of the smoking fields for what seemed like an eternity while the people of Drift City looked on at a short distance. Finally, they walked forward together and rejoined the waiting crowd.

The mayor looked spent and exhausted on every level. Ash looked fresh as a daisy, his coal-black eyes twinkling and sparkling over the top of the black scarf that still hid the lower half of his face. He gave the crowd a brief, barely interested once-over, and then began to speak.

Ash never had told the mayor his origins, nor had he admitted any connection to the mysterious travelers that had made their way through the town so many months ago. He did assure the people of Drift City that he could restore the fertility of the fields. However, the return to the fruitful life they used to know would not come without a price for the townspeople.

In addition to the endless, rolling hills of artichokes, and greens, and potatoes, and beets, the fields of Drift City would become home to a new type of crop. Ash held out his gloved hand to reveal a small pile of shiny, silver pellets — mysterious seeds unlike anything the townspeople had ever seen, more akin to buckshot than anything else.

“These are god seeds,” explained Ash. “Their yield will be what your hearts and homes are lacking — what this dying world most needs. The righting of the wrong that you’ve been praying for.”

“And how must they be tended?” asked one of the townspeople. “Under what conditions do they grow?”

Ash responded by removing one of the shining god seeds from his palm, approaching the man who’d spoken, and instructing him to open his mouth. When the man reluctantly did so, Ash placed the seed on his tongue. The result of this action was instant.

The recipient of the seed opened his mouth a second time — to ask for an explanation, no doubt. However, where one expected a question to emerge, instead an explosion of vines and greenery burst forth. More shoots, tendrils, and leaves exploded from his eye sockets, his chest, and from underneath his fingernails. Roots emerged from underneath the cuffs of his pant legs and drove themselves into the ground beneath his feet.

Soon, there was no trace whatsoever of what had once been the man who spoke. There was only a tall, climbing plant resembling a beanstalk. Heavy pods hung from some of the stalk’s vines, swaying gently in the night breeze. They glowed luminously in the darkness, home to some mysterious fruit one could only wonder about.

“And now, six more of you must make the same sacrifice,” said Ash casually, as if a man had not just become a plant in a matter of seconds before his very eyes. “Once this is done, your town will be restored.”

........

Decades later, no one remembered how the people of Drift City chose the six. However, the crops were indeed restored and the city became an agricultural epicenter once again. And in the middle of one field, high on the hill, swayed seven beanstalks, vinelike branches heavy with luminescent pods, each full to bursting with secrets.