Memories

It is not the first time she has woken up to a room in flames. Still, the fire does not burn anything; it doesn't burn her either, it is just there, encircling everything, even her bed. It is near her, around her, and yet it does not touch her.

The first time this had happened, she had screamed, and her mother had come into her room with a pale face.
"What is it?"
"The fire, the fire, don't you see it?"
"No, there is no fire."
"Mother, it is all around everything, around my bed!"
"You just had a nightmare. There is no fire. I´ll stay with you for a while so you can get back to sleep."

She had despaired that her mother was unable to understand. There had been flames, and they had been all around everything, and also around her. Not burning just there.
So her mother had stayed with her, and she had gone back to sleep.
From then on, she kept the presence of the fire to herself. Once she had found out it didn't burn anything, she had stopped being afraid.
She only wondered why she was to see it when others couldn't. It only made her curious. Was she the only person able to see it? And if so, why?

This morning is no different. The fire is all around the room; it looks too vivid, too real to disregard it as a mere dream. She wonders if she's not losing her mind.

The pyre is immense. They descend the mountain, they know what is waiting in the valley, and yet, they march singing. The women go first, the men follow them. They don´t show fear; perhaps they feel it, maybe they have somehow transcended their physical bodies, and they march to their last baptism on Earth, the one of fire.
She walks with them; she can't do otherwise, she's part of their community. They have been offered life if they renounced their faith, they have not accepted. She wishes she had, even if the life offered by the Inquisitors probably meant being tied to a stonewall in a dungeon for the rest of her days. She walks with the other women, she sings the hymns. She can't do otherwise.
They arrive at the valley, the stake is waiting. There is no way out, she doesn't want to die, but she doesn't want to live in the world created by these murderers either.
Before climbing the pyre, her last thought is that she doesn't want the world to forget what happened to them; at least one person in another time, someone has to learn about them, someone has to know.
" Would they libel that person as mad, would they accuse her of heresy?" She doesn't know; she's climbing to her death, bracing herself for the pain that awaits her, that awaits all of them.
Her mind focuses on another time, perhaps someone living in another time will understand, she hopes so. She prays to God that it will be so. She has no more time to think; the fire grows furiously now, the pain doesn't take her by surprise, she knew it would come. She prays that she goes quickly.

"We are going to see Dr White today, her mother had sounded adamant.
"Why, are you unwell?"
"Not me, you are the one who is not well. These ideas of fire in your room, this fire that doesn't burn anything but still goes around, this is something he has to know."
"Mom, I'm fine."
"No, you are not fine, I'm only too sorry to tell you."

So they go to see Dr White, he listens to her mother and then to her. He smiles and asks if she has been watching movies about this topic lately.
"No"
"It seems you have been dreaming of the burning times."
"In the Middle Ages?"
"Yes, you are imagining you were there."
" I am not imagining anything, I see the fire."
"Yes, but only you see it,"

She nods. She doesn´t want to tell Dr White this morning that she has seen something else; she has seen people surrounded by flames, they were burning; they were the only ones burning, not her, not her room. And she had seen a girl, a girl with hazelnut eyes who looked straight at her before the fire engulfed her. Better not tell him, not in front of her mother at least.

"Write everything you see and come back to see me."
"Alone?" her mother asks anxiously.
"Well, you can come with her," the doctor says.

He will manage to keep the mother in the waiting room. He has to listen to the girl on her own; he has to read her writings.
Many years before, he had dreamed of a huge fire devouring heretics. He had paid no heed to the dream, and eventually it had disappeared. He had not fueled it with his own mind, and it had gone away. Perhaps he can teach this girl to do the same.
Still, he has doubts, maybe she had listened to the plea of one heretic, he remembered that heretic, a girl with brown eyes and beautiful hair, the one who had looked at him straight in the eye before climbing the pyre.
In the dream he had rejected she had asked him why he had chosen to be an Inquisitor, why he was so bent on killing her, on killing her people. He wonders what if Mrs. Andrews´daughter has seen this girl.
If she has, maybe she is linked to her somehow.

She has just finished writing their story; she knows it now. She has written it with the flame surrounding her, and she has seen the girl. She knows now that she has seen herself standing with a smile and her mouth saying thank you before she disappears amid the flames.
She is not surprised to find a bay leaf on her dresser; she knows now where she comes from.

During breakfast, she tells her mother the flames have disappeared. She slept peacefully that night.
She never sees Dr White again. Her mother tells him she has no more nightmares, she sleeps well, and seems fine. He is relieved in a way, in more than one way, after all, he doesn't want one of his patients to know he has been there, watching the flames with an impassive face.

Her manuscript turns into a book. He sees it by chance in a bookshop. He buys it against his best judgment.

No one knows about Dr White after that. He's gone on a trip to the south of France and has never been seen since.

He has climbed the pog. He had never done so, but he manages; he's in good shape. He sees the castle, the reconstructed ruins of it.
So this is where she had lived, a girl who had dreams, probably a lover, parents, all had died in the fire. It hadn't been his hands the ones who had lit the fire; it had been his orders. He had given them death, a horrible one, without pity, believing he was doing the right thing.
Today, he knows it had never been the right thing, and he wonders if there's any forgiveness for him for the likes of him. He finds comfort in the knowledge that the girl is free from her visions, she has written their story, and the memories have cleansed her.
And so he stays in the mountain, thinking of times gone by. He has lived many lives and none too remarkable for their kindness. The pog grows dark; it is too late to go down, and he could slip to his death easily.
So he stays there quietly, sitting in an awkward position. He's unable to tear himself out of that pog and of the memory of the heretics going down the slope to their deaths.
He feels he has become one with a mountain, a rock among rocks.

Elizabeth Aldam 30/12/25