I understand it now. The sorrow in the vision is not the grief of a Black Wing. This sorrow is all mine. It strikes me with such force it feels like someone has struck me in the chest with a baseball bat. My eyes flood with hot, bitter tears.
Tucker’s going to die.
And this is my test.
I jerk back to Lazy Dog, sobbing. I look up into the sky, where storm clouds are gathering in the east, a bit of hell spilling over onto Earth.
You are not a normal girl, Clara.
“This isn’t fair,” I whisper furiously. “You’re supposed to love me.”
“What did the fish say when it hit the concrete wall?”
“What?”
“Dam!”
I love him. He’s mine and I am his. He saved me today. Loving him saved me. I can’t leave him to die.
I won’t.
“Damn it, Tuck.” I throw myself into the air and streak toward Idaho. My instincts tell me that he’ll be at Palisades, at his land. It’s a starting point, anyway.
I fly straight to Palisades, and that’s when I see the other fire.
It’s huge. It has burned right up to the lake line and now it’s eating its way up the mountainside, not moving along the forest floor but higher, in the trees. The flames shoot up at least a hundred feet into the sky, curling and crackling and tearing at the sky. It’s a literal inferno.
I don’t think. I fly right at it. Tucker’s land is hidden somewhere back in those trees. The fire is making its own wind, somehow, a strong steady stream of wind that I have to fight against to go in the right direction. There’s so much smoke that it’s hard to keep my bearings. I fly lower, trying to get below the smoke to see the road. I can’t see squat. I just fly, and hope that my angel sense will somehow guide me.
“Tucker!” I call.
My wing catches a stray branch and I lose my balance and spin toward the ground. I right myself in the nick of time, jolting down hard on the forest floor but managing to stay on my feet. I’m close, I think. I’ve been to Tucker’s land maybe five times this summer, and I recognize the shape of the mountain. Then the smoke drifts for a moment and I can clearly see the road snaking its way up. It’s too hard to try to fly, too many obstacles, so I sprint onto the road and hurry up it.
“Tucker!”
Maybe he’s not here, I think. My lungs fill with smoke and I start coughing. My eyes water. Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe you’ve done all this and he’s over at Bubba’s getting an early dinner.
It’s my first moment of real doubt, but I quickly squash it. He’s close, he just can’t hear me. I don’t know how, but I know this is where I’ll find him, and when the road turns and I come up to the clearing at the edge of his land, I’m not surprised to see his truck parked there with the trailer attached.
“Tucker!” I call again hoarsely. “Tucker, where are you?”
No answer. I glance around wildly, looking for some clue to where he’s gone. At the edge of the clearing is a trail, very faint, but definitely a trail. I can make out hoofprints stamped in the dust.
I look down the road. The fire has already swallowed up the road at the bottom of the ridge. I can hear it coming, branches crackling as they burn, this loud popping and snapping. Animals flee before it, rabbits and squirrels and snakes, even, all running away. Smoke moves toward me along the ground like an unrolling carpet.
I have to find him. Now.
I can see much better now that I’m ahead of the fire, but still not great. There’s so much smoke. I glide above the trail yelling his name and peering ahead through the trees.
“Tuck!” I call again and again.
“Clara!”
Finally I see him, coming toward me on Midas as fast as the horse can go on such steep terrain. I drop down onto the trail at the same time that he slides off the horse’s back. We run toward each other through the smoke. He stumbles but keeps running. Then we’re in each other’s arms. Tucker crushes me to him, wings and all, his mouth close to my ear.
“I love you,” he says breathlessly. “I thought I wasn’t going to get to tell you.” He turns away and coughs hard.
“We have to go,” I say, pulling away.
“I know. The fire’s blocking the way out. I tried to find a way over the top but Midas couldn’t do it.”
“We’ll have to fly.”
He stares at me, his blue eyes uncomprehending.
“Wait,” he says. “But Midas.”
“Tuck, we have to leave him.”
“No, I can’t.”
“We have to. We have to go. Now.”
“I can’t leave my horse.” I know how this must be for him. His most prized possession in this world. All the rodeos, the rides, the times when this animal felt like his best friend in the whole world. But there’s no choice.
“We will all die here,” I say, looking into his eyes. “I can’t carry him. But I can carry you.”
Tucker suddenly turns away from me and runs to Midas. For a minute I think he’s going to run away and try to make it out with the horse. Then he unfastens the horse’s bridle and throws it onto the side of the trail.
The wind shifts, like the mountain is taking a breath. The fire is moving quickly from branch to branch, and any minute the trees around us will catch.
“Tuck, come on!” I yell.
“Go!” he shouts at Midas. “Get out of here!”
He hits the horse on the rump and it makes a noise like a scream and darts away back up the mountain. I run to Tucker and grab him tight around the middle, under the arms.
Please, I pray even though I know I have no right to ask. Give me strength.
For a moment I strain with all the muscle in my body, arms, legs, wings, you name it. I reach toward the sky with everything I have. We push off in a burst of sheer will, rising up through the trees, through the smoke, the ground dropping away beneath us. He holds me tight and presses his face into my neck. My heart swells with love for him. My body tingles with a new kind of energy. I lift Tucker effortlessly, with more grace than I’ve ever had in the air before. It’s easy. It’s like being carried on the wind.
Tucker gasps. For a few seconds we see Midas running along the side of the mountain, and I feel Tucker’s sorrow over losing his beautiful horse. When we get higher we can see the flames pushing steadily up. There’s no way to tell if Midas will make it. It doesn’t look good. Below us Tucker’s land, the little clearing where I first showed him my wings, has already been engulfed. Bluebell is burning, sending out thick, black plumes of smoke.