Page 41 of Ties of Legacy

After what felt like an agonizing length of time, Avery stepped back from the open door and dragged the hose toward the front of the house. Elliot wanted to call a warning—the fire inside was too far gone to be put out from the outside. But Avery seemed to realize the limitations of what they could do.

She circled the house, drenching the outside, especially the roof and the ground around the walls. Every time he saw her arms tremble and the hose lower, he saw her grit her teeth and haul it up to her shoulder again. She was clearly determined to contain the flames.

“That’s a smart girl you’ve got there,” the old man grunted. “Keep a hold of her.”

Elliot remained silent. He was torn between admiration and frustration with the merchant girl, and the clarification that Avery wasn’t his tasted like ash on his tongue.

Finally, when his arms were burning even worse than they had been after carrying Avery from the market, the old man called a halt to their efforts.

“It’ll smolder a while yet,” he said, “but it’s contained.”

Avery dropped the hose and ran back to them, her face strained, but her eyes bright.

Elliot took one look at her and whirled on the old man. “What were you thinking going back in there! Better the whole house burned than you lost your life—or someone else’s!”

The man sank slowly down on the bank, clearly exhausted, while the older girl helped the woman bring the younger children out of the water.

“Do you think I cared about the house? I was doing it for my family.” He gestured at the woman and children. “If the fire had gotten loose…” He shook his head. “A forest fire can spread terrifyingly quickly—especially in Oakden. We have our system well organized. My daughter’s job is to get the children into the lake, and mine is to get the pump and douse the workshop. But I injured my leg a few months ago, and it’s still weak. It kept buckling when I tried to lift down the pump. I should have made a new plan when I was first injured, but I got complacent. I’m an old fool.”

“You’re too hard on yourself,” Avery said softly. “We succeeded. Everyone is safe.”

The man ran a hand down his beard. “Thanks to your arrival we are.”

“I don’t understand the significance of saving your workshop,” Elliot said, the residual fear for Avery making him gruff.

“I’m a herbalist,” the man said simply. “Half the plants in there are sleeping herbs.” He gestured toward the workshop as Avery gasped.

“What happens if you burn a sleeping herb?” she asked.

“That depends on how much of the smoke you breathe,” the man said in a shaken voice. “But even one breath will make you drowsy, and it doesn’t take much to put you to sleep. Burning that many refined herbs at once could put half the region to sleep.”

“And your daughter and the children in the lake…” Avery broke off, clapping her hands to her mouth.

The old man nodded. “If the fire had taken down my workshop and spread into the trees, we couldn’t have sought shelter in the lake for fear of drowning. We would have had to stay on shore, which would have left our sleeping bodies unprotected from the flames. You saved all of us—and who knows how many others besides. The wind would have driven the smoke ahead of the flames, and anyone trying to flee the fire would have dropped asleep.”

Elliot sank slowly to the ground, putting his head in his hands. He had reluctantly followed Avery’s lead with no idea how close they’d been to disaster.

He looked up. Avery had been right to help, but she shouldn’t have charged straight in, risking her own life without thought.

“Why did you run into the fire?” he asked in a rough voice. “Do you have a death wish?”

He couldn’t hold back the words, even knowing she would likely be offended. But instead of jumping to her own defense, she winced, her face suffused with guilt.

“I’m sorry. I keep forgetting about the lamp. That was unconscionable of me. I would never have forced you to run into a fire after me if I’d remembered I had it.”

Elliot’s mouth dropped open. The lamp. Who knew what would have happened if she had been caught by the flames and the lamp had been melted a second time. It might well have killed him, too.

Avery clearly thought his tie to the lamp was the reason he had followed her into the house and tried to haul her away from the fire. And yet, the thought hadn’t even entered his mind. He had completely forgotten about the lamp until she mentioned it.

He snapped his mouth shut. He couldn’t tell her the truth. He was still sorting through the strength of his reaction to her being in danger himself.

The man looked between the two of them, his brow creased. He clearly had no idea what they were talking about. But his daughter and grandchildren swamped him before he could ask, all of them crying and exclaiming with relief at the arrival of rescuers.

Elliot stood and stepped back with Avery, giving the family some space.

“Actually,” he said more lightly than he felt, “I wasn’t thinking about the lamp. I was wondering why you didn’t just go through the workshop door and avoid the flames and smoke entirely.”

Avery winced. “Yes, that would have been better. But when I see people in trouble, I have a bad habit of jumping in without weighing the risk.”

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