After a while, I lay down, hugging myself and pretending my arms were someone else’s. “It’s okay, Frenchie,” I whispered into my pillow. “It’s okay. You’ll be okay.”

✦✦✦ ✦✦✦ ✦✦✦

There was a fire, the kind of fire that we never would have made—high and hot. We built Dakota-style fires in holes with tunnels underneath so the smoke was pushed away from the camp and no bark on the wood so it burned cleaner. I watched the flames jump and fume. The abandon was beautiful. I walked toward it, waiting for the waves of heat against my skin, but there were none.

Stepping over the ground, my feet made no noise. Noting its absence, I listened for the cracks and hum of the fire eating wood. Again, there was nothing. I tried my voice. “Hello?” It echoed around the clearing.

“Hello.” This time I was louder, almost yelling in the comparative silence of everything else.

I was at the edge of the fire, bright orange and burning tall. Still, no heat. I tipped forward, pushing my face closer. Nothing. I reached out, tentative and ready to pull back as soon as the heat jumped against my skin. Eventually, my fingers were directly in the flames. It was as if it wasn’t there, like the whole thing was a projection. I put my other hand in, then sank them up to my elbows. Finally, I pushed my head in.

Not a sound or a change in temperature. What kind of fire was this? I looked up; miles away, the sky blazed blue. I looked down. Beyond the top flames in shades of yellow and orange, the bottom burned blue, as if reflecting the sky itself. And below the blue was the fuel—wood chewed to solid grey ash, and there, in between the branches and burn, was something else. What was it?

I crouched down, getting on my hands and knees, still submerged in the pit from the shoulders up, nothing but my own breath in my ears even though the flames were jumping and the wood was breaking apart. What was it?

Something round and charred black, almost carved with dark filigree. I grabbed it—it was light—and turned it around in my hands. On one side it was like an egg where the fire had eaten it smooth. Then it got bumpy, and then there were odd formations. It was a skull, a human skull, the teeth and orbital holes intact. In my shaking hands—I couldn’t drop it—the clotted mess stuck on the front started to grow back and reshape: a nose, then a chin, then lips to form a smile around the edges of the teeth.

“No.” It was becoming familiar. “No, please, no.”

Eyes molded themselves back into the holes like blown glass, so dark they shone maroon.

“No!” I stood, the skull fused into my palms.

The ears spiraled out like seashells. Hair—loose dark curls—pooled out of the restretched scalp like vines.

“Please stop!”

Finally, I was left with the head of Rose, my beautiful Rose, staring up at me. Her eyes found mine, focused in and glinting with life, and for a second, I was happy. And then her eyes changed, her brow pulled up, her mouth opened wide, and she began screaming. And that’s when the heat returned to the fire, and I was consumed.