Atlas and Alice, Issue 16
Rebecca Harrison
Chimney-side We lived where the fires were. The chimneys tall as skies, broader than river mouths. Our homes clung to the chimney sides. Our streets were stairways that never reached to the ground. Our homes were filled with the fire sounds. The crackle and hiss rumbled through the bricks. Genna sat on the edge of the greatest chimney, the one her home coiled around, and she dangled her feet in the smoke and let it settle in her hair. “We all smell of smoke,” she said, “but I smell of it the most.” She told me her great grandparents helped drive the fires into the chimneys and seal them inside. We looked into the far and far, smoke wrapping us, and we saw the lands grown green. Once they were red and orange and yellow and always bright. In those days, the fires roamed, and the lands were theirs. Genna said she would let the fires out. She said the smoke was filled with messages. We watched our mothers tending the chimneys. We helped them lower the nets. We saw them catch soot and haul it up and shake it over the sides. And as hard as we listened, we never heard it hit the ground. When I was in my bed, and the only sound was my mother and grandmother scraping the net clean and the only smell was the soot dusting the floor, I thought of Genna—her words and the smoke twirling into her hair, and I pictured her unbolting the doors and letting the fires out and going with them—a dark shape in the brightening lands. In the morning, Genna was gone. They said the fires had coaxed her down into the chimneys. Far down where they burn. I helped my mother shake the nets over the side and I watched the soot floating and I remembered the smoke curling in Genna’s hair. The fires all died long ago. The chimneys crumble by inches but still stand into the clouds. And sometimes, when the sun is low, the clouds coil around the chimneys and I think I can hear the fires coaxing Genna down. 45
