Best Australian Yarn: The Pyrocene by Rebecca Higgie

“Keep one foot in the black, my king.” It flashed up on the preview screen, a final message from down the hill. He gave it one glance, smiled, and then returned to the scene ahead of him. A black smoke column boiled on the horizon, meeting the sky in flashes and thunder. Red lights pulsed on the asphalt as their sirens blared through road closures. He wanted to tell her, “always, yene nigist.” He wanted to tell her, “don’t worry, I’m coming home.” But the sky blackened; the night came to him at midday. He was out of the truck. * He was always the first one there. Even if she came before first light touched the cool concrete steps, there he was, at the base of Jacob’s Ladder. He was impossibly big, at least a foot taller than her, and vaulted two to three steps at a time as he sprinted up and down the 242-step stairway. When he passed her, he slowed down. “G’day.” His accent was broad, like a boy from the bush. Four rounds on the stairs. Four times he angled his eyes down to meet hers. Four times the corners of his mouth turned up in the most self-assured smile. Then he gave her a nod, made one final dash to the top, and ran off towards Kings Park. It was three days of this before he changed direction as she passed him. He fell in step with her, jogging down the stairs by her side. “Your name, yene konjo?” “What’s that mean?” she asked. “‘My beauty’,” he said, smiling. She chuckled. “Bit forward.” “What else can a man call you when he doesn’t have your name?” “What do I call you?” “Negus.” “Does that have a meaning too?” He skipped down ahead of her, then stopped, blocking the path. “It means King.” “Ah, a king,” she teased. He put his arms out and bowed, playing it up. “A King of Kings,” he said. Then he took a few steps back up, coming eye to eye with her. “I’ve given you three words from my language. I’ve given you my name. Give me yours, yene konjo.” She ducked under his arm. “Catch me before I reach the bottom and you can have it.” He turned but didn’t pursue. “I’m a gentleman. I’ll give you ten seconds.” 10, 9, 8… She skipped steps as she rushed down. …3, 2, 1! Behind her, the heavy smack of his shoes sounded on the concrete. When she was just two steps from the bottom, he caught her. The lightest touch on her arm. It surprised her. “Your name.” “Elizabeth.” “Ah, a queen!” he said. He bowed again, this time deeper, in a more exaggerated display of play reverence. Then his watch buzzed. He glanced at it. His grin faltered. “Tomorrow, Elizabeth. Yene nigist.” He was up the stairs and gone before she could say goodbye. * The fire was too big to fight; the goal was saving life and property. Negus was focused, targeting the hose methodically at the base of spot fires that lit up porches, roofs and gazebos made of varnished timber. Explosions rocked around him, booms as gas canisters ignited in backyards. One house stood to the side, seemingly unaffected, with only its gutters and roof teeming with red embers. Dave, the rookie, missed the cues. He flung open the front door. The fire in the roof cavity sucked the oxygen in. The air sparkled; the windows crackled. Then the house burst like a firework, rainbow light igniting. The windows blew out. Negus sprinted over. Dave lay on the ground, eyes wide at the sky. “You right, mate?” Negus asked. Dave nodded. “Flashover.” “Yep. Won’t tell Tommy you did that.” The house was fully ablaze. There was no saving it now. Negus pulled Dave to his feet and then glanced out at the view beyond the house. He would never know if what he saw was real or a mirage made of radio warnings and delirium. The landscape warped. All the spot fires dipped east. The black smoke in the valley below shifted, its column churning as it changed direction. The dwindling back of the fire became the front. It was coming straight for them. * “Where are you from?” That was her question the next day when she caught him stretching his hamstrings at the top of the stairs. He knew what she was really asking, but he grinned and answered, “Naarm. Melbourne. Where are you from?” “Here. Perth.” “No, but where are you really from?” “Okay,” she conceded, laughing. “Dad’s family is from London. Mum’s side from Dublin.” “Dad’s family’s from Gondar. Mum from Dessie,” he responded in turn. “Ethiopia.” He stretched his arms and then shifted his head side to side, cracking his neck. Then, he was off down the stairs. She jogged after him. He glanced back as he whirled round the corners of the ladder’s zig-zag descent. He reached the bottom quickly, and waited there. As her foot hit the last step, he introduced the next game. “If I catch you before you reach the top, you owe me a coffee.” She crossed her arms. “I’ve got no chance – look at you.” “I’ll give you a head start,” he said. “I’m a gentleman after all.” “Twenty seconds.” “Twenty?” “You’re a gentleman after all.” He considered it. “Okay,” he said. “You can start a few steps up too. Proper head start.” She took five steps up. “You really think that’s a head start?” She moved an extra five steps up and turned, looking down on him. He stood tall, hands on hips. “Add another five, yene nigist.” “Come on, you’re not that fast.” “I really am that fast.” She took another five steps up. “Go on then, start counting.” “I’m going to catch you, Queen Elizabeth,” he teased. “20, 19, 18…” She sprinted up those stairs so fast she thought she might fall. He counted loud, letting his voice fill the morning. 3, 2, 1 – he was off! His feet struck the stairs. His laugh chased her. “Better move, Lizzy!” She got close to the top, to the place where the ladder branched out into two separate exits, when he caught her. Again, she felt it, that tender grasp on her arm. “‘Not that fast’,” he said. “It’s a long mac, double shot.” * Running. To the truck. Sirens on to make themselves visible in the heavy smoke. They couldn’t see more than a foot in front of them, even with fog lights on. Trees loomed out at them in sudden flashes. The wind surged. The truck shook. Behind the wheel, Tanesha muttered expletives under her breath. Tommy, beside her, calmly spoke into the radio. Vague clipped words came to Negus in the backseat. Padbury Road. Front approaching. Risk of being overrun. He stared out at the trees that kept coming in and out of view. Leaves consumed. Branches ablaze. Trunks black with seams of red. * Day 3. He was bold. “If I catch you, it’s a kiss.” He second-guessed himself as he said it, suddenly adding a playful but probing, “Bit forward?” “Twenty seconds,” she answered, and set off. He counted. On 1, his feet came down. She listened carefully, trying to gauge how close he was. Then she stopped, so sudden he almost ran into her. One step up, she reached down, grabbing his shirt and pulling him close. The kiss was salty, laced with sweat. Day 4. She was bolder. “Catch me and you can take me home,” she said. He gave her the twenty second countdown. She didn’t move from her step. He gently reached out and touched her arm. His fingertips lingered. “Caught you.” Weeks went by. Then months. When she first asked him what he did, he said his profession was fire but his hobby was language. Up in the park, she watched him swivel around to lost tourists, offering directions in Mandarin or French. He pointed to landmarks in the distance, giving everything its Noongar name. It was him who said it first, a quiet “ewodishalehu” at the top of the stairs between stolen kisses. She knew from the accent that he was speaking Amharic, his family’s language. She knew from the tone what it meant. She said it back him in English, “I love you too.” Every day. Catch me. I love you. Up the Ladder, into the park. Sprinting passed the café, by the first hiss of the coffee machine. Him being cocky, jogging backwards through the botanic gardens. They shared their laughter with cone-shaped flowers of deep red tinged with buds of yellow. It was the emblem of the park, a native bloom of many names. Firewood, named by settlers. Banksia menziesii, named by naturalists. Mangatj, named by the owners of the land. “Use that one,” Negus told her. “It’s their first and truest name.” She called him my king. He called her yene nigist. “Language,” he said to her once, “is everything.” * A terrible clearing. The smoke gone. The time on the dash read 16:04 but the sky was blacker than midnight. Everything was in flames. To his right, the front surged towards them. Trees bent and snapped. Embers showered the truck, the pinging hard like hail. A tree fell, smashing down on them. The bonnet crumbled, sudden metal crunching. The windshield cracked. Tanesha put her foot down. The truck wouldn’t move. The paint on the caved-in bonnet blistered. The front. Pure fire. Flames with limitless depth. He had never seen it this close. He had never seen its heart. “Negus, mate, the shades.” Tommy. Always calm. Negus reacted quickly, pulling down the aluminised shades by his window. Dave did the one on his side, as Tommy pulled down the one over the windshield, covering that ominous crack. Tanesha activated the external deluge system. Sprayers doused the outside windows. “Burnover! Burnover!” Tommy shouted into the radio, his calm gone. If the windshield broke, the fire would take the oxygen from their lungs. * For months, no games. No more “if I catch you”. Fires broke out in the south-west during winter, months before the official start of the fire season. Every night, he sat in front of the news. “We’ve missed the window to finish the prescribed burns,” he muttered. “We’re screwed.” He came home smelling of smoke. She sat him in the bath, a new tradition, and washed the scent from his hair with the strongest smelling shampoo she owned. One night, he let go. Terrible, guttural cries filled the bathroom, bouncing off the tiles. Birak, First Summer, hadn’t even began, but two mates had already been killed when a tree smashed through their truck’s windshield. Three others were lost after the winds from a pyroconvective storm picked up an entire tanker and dumped it on its side. The Pyrocene, one journalist labelled it. The age of fire. With him, she felt the depths of language. Tears were a language, the tone of his cry telling her the details of his grief. The body had a language, conversations shared through the soft meeting of fingertips and the confident leaps up concrete steps. The land had a language, a grammar built on soothing whispers through delicate gum leaves and lightning rebukes against tinder dry bark. And fire. Fire had a language, its intention clear in wind changes and the colours of smoke. Black smoke was never good; it meant an intense blaze, flames eating through the oil in the eucalypts. It was the colour of his nightmares as the fire season progressed. She tried to remind him that in the language of fire, black also meant safety. When he jolted awake at midnight, not knowing where he was, she held him in the dark and told him, “You’re with me in the black. Nothing can burn us here.” He rasped in Amharic, desperate snatches of words she couldn’t decipher. She said it again and again – we’re here in the black – until his breath that flared against her shoulder slowed. His language shifted. “We’re here,” he whispered. “We’re right here,” she said, grasping him tight. “And later we’ll go for a run. You can catch me on the stairs.” He nodded. But he was gone in the morning, long before first light. * The front roared over them. The windshield shattered. The glass was blocked by the shades, but the fire pushed in. Go to the black. That’s what they say. When in danger, run to the spot already blackened and burnt. A fire can’t burn without fuel. It can’t burn what it’s already rendered to ash. He felt himself slipping into the black, to the depths of unconsciousness where fire couldn’t reach him. There, he found her. Elizabeth. Yene Nigist. He sat on a charred tree stump, naked, at the top of Jacob’s Ladder. Mangatj cones, red like burning coals, dotted the blackened stairs. Using a small bucket, she washed his hair. Her nails ran across his scalp, working in the soap. “Language is everything,” he muttered. She said it back to him in Amharic, in words she shouldn’t know. * At the top of Jacob’s Ladder, she stared out at the smoke columns that rose from the hills. Keep one foot in the black, my king. She had sent it 19 hours ago. Joggers on the stairs pointed to the smoke, commenting that they hoped the firies were alright. There was little said beyond this. The country as a whole had stopped labelling terrible fire seasons. Black Saturday. Black Summer. There was no point when every year brought more scorched earth and destruction. But she had come to learn the power of naming. Her name. Elizabeth. Traditional. Given to her by a grandmother, who shared it with another grandmother, who took it from a queen. His name. Negus. Unusual. Mesfin – Prince – was more common in Ethiopia. But his mother had wanted him to have a special name, something that told the world he was big. Elizabeth gave his name at the inquest. She dumped a handful of ash outside Parliament House and cried his name into a microphone. The flames burned across the nation for a catastrophic ten months and took more life, land and property than the previous five summers combined. At protests, she labelled the season The Year of Fire. The papers ran with it; the name she gave was translated into countless languages across the globe. In her dreams, she sat on the steps with him. “If you catch me, I’ll come to you.” He smiled sadly. “Oh, yene nigist.” “Yene negus,” she uttered, her tone broken with the language of pleading. “Catch me.” It didn’t matter what language she used. He never moved his hand.