Story - Her Hands Were Ablaze

The house had proven difficult to find. It shouldn’t have – she knew the address and had looked it up in advance online. It sat stuck in the middle of four houses which were all that remained of the old estate, alone in the midst of the new, modern development with its white walls and irregular lines. The other three houses in the row were boarded up, clearly abandoned. It was as though the house did not want to be found, and shrank back somehow from searching eyes, and this difficulty convinced her that she was in the right place even more than the number which hung upside down on the front door, the top nail having come loose in the time since anyone had cared enough to repair it.

The rest of the house was equally dilapidated. The windows were so filthy that they acted as dark mirrors, while the wooden frames were so rotted away with damp that she was amazed they had the strength to keep the glass in place. The paint on the front door was peeling, like dry skin. A discoloured plastic doorbell sat despondently on the door-frame, but she doubted it was worth trying it. So, instead she knocked – initially faintly, as though frightened of receiving an answer.

Pull yourself together, she told herself, and knocked again more firmly. The door gave slightly beneath her knock, and she pushed it open. She was hit by the musty smell of a house dying of cigarettes and neglect, and she felt as though she were peering into a dead lung. Sunlight entered the hallway over her shoulders and lit wallpaper that had probably seen none in years. It hung away from the walls, revealing damp patches behind. Common sense said that the house had been abandoned for some time. She knew that common sense was wrong. She stepped inside.
    
The carpet was threadbare and she stepped carefully to avoid tripping. The staircase rose on her left-hand side, the door to the kitchen was in front of her, and to the right was the entrance to the living room. She looked in both, finding no-one.
    
Each step creaked alarmingly as she made her way up the stairs. At the top was a small toilet, the smell that crept out from which left her relieved that it was too dark to see anything through the gap.
    
She stepped into the master bedroom. There was no bed in the room – just a table with an antique record player on it, a collection of records lent against its legs. Plates and cups littered the floor, abandoned once used. And there, in the middle of them, was a man. He sat on the floor, back to the wall, his details lost in the gloom. He sat silent, without even sounding as though he were breathing to the point that she wondered if he were even alive, kept upright by nothing more than rigor mortis.
    
‘Close the fucking door, will you?’
    
The voice had the texture of dried leaves, if those leaves belonged to a carnivorous Mancunian plant. Then, as though reading her mind, he added, ‘Don’t worry – I have big eyes but I won’t eat you. That only happens in Salford. Now close the door if you’re staying, fuck off if you’re not – and close the door behind you.’
   
She pushed the door closed. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness she could make out his hair – patchy, like the coat of a mangy dog. He was also right about his eyes, which seemed too big for his face, as though about to be expelled from their sockets.
   
‘I’m...’
   
‘I know who you are,’ he said, cutting her off. ‘You’re Anna.’
   
Even in the gloom, her look of surprise must have been visible.
   
‘It’s not magic,’ he continued. ‘It could hardly have been anyone else. To even find this place you’d have to have been really looking, and there’s only one other person who’s bothered to do that in the last few years. That you made it inside at all eliminated all doubt.’
    
‘I’d have thought there would be others, looking for...your help.’
    
‘Help?’ he said, a mocking laugh escaping his lips. ‘Nah. Most people’ve more sense. Cursed, that’s what they think. Anyone who comes looking for my help leaves with less than they came in with. Most folks stay away. Most folks are right to.’
    
‘I know,’ said Anna.

    
‘I suppose you do.’
    
‘You’ll know why I’m here as well, then.’
    
‘I can guess.’
    
‘And?’
    
‘And you should listen to what everyone else says and stay away. I can’t help you. No good can come of it. I’m sorry. Now, fuck off and leave me in peace.’
    
‘All this is your fault,’ Anna said angrily. ‘If you hadn’t...’
    
‘Oh, it’s all my fault is it?’ he responded sharply, rising to his feet. Despite his emaciated frame he was still tall and imposing and she took a step back instinctively.

‘Listen to me love,’ he said, ‘and listen closely. If you ask for my help you carry the responsibility for what happens when you’ve got what you want. He knew that. Now I’ve been very patient with you because I know what you’ve been through but you’re leaving now. There’s nothing for you here.’
    
Anna hesitated, trying to find the best approach. When she spoke again it was in a more conciliatory tone.
    
‘You’re right. I’m sorry. But I’m not leaving until you help me understand what happened.’
    
‘What if I throw you out?’
    
‘Then I’ll come back. And you’ll throw me out again and I’ll come back again. And we’ll keep that up until you get tired of it and give me what I want, so why don’t we just not waste time and get on with it instead?’

    
There was a moment’s pause. ‘I think you would, at that,’ he said, amused for a moment before becoming serious again. ‘You do know what you’re asking, don’t you?’
    

‘I think so.’
    

‘And if I help you get what you want, you’ll take full responsibility for what happens afterwards?’
    

‘I will.’
    

He sighed, long and deep.
    

‘Ok then, princess. Make a wish.’

*

When you grow up in a place there are things you just know about it. You can’t remember how you found out or who told you, but you know it, and everyone you know knows it as well. Which streets you only go down in daylight, which pubs don’t look at fake I.D. too closely, where you can go for some privacy with other boys and girls for first experiences and discoveries. And then there’s the people. Primarily, you learn who to avoid – the man with the funny hair who rumour says tries to invite children into his home. The couple whose many visitors leave their car engines running when they go in, and come out again quickly. And then there are the less definable ones – people you stay away from just because you do. No allegations, no concrete rumours. Houses you don’t go near, people you cross the road from if you see them coming. People like Edward Ashton.
    

Anna remembered seeing him around when she was young, and how her mother would steer her away from him if she saw him coming. He had been handsome with a roguish look about him, his long dark hair and shark smile making many a young lady ignore the misgivings of her parents about the risk he posed to their innocence – most of whom indeed were hoping that he might tarnish that very innocence. But over the course of a few short years Eddie (as he was known) changed dramatically. He lost weight, and his face became gaunt and lined like that of a much older man. The colour in his hair faded, grey streaks running down to his shoulders and swelled until there was more grey than black, before the once thick mane thinned out and receded. On the rare occasions that he was then seen to smile it was an awful thing to see – a rictus grin lacking its full compliment of teeth. He looked like he was ageing in fast-forward, dying a little more with every day that passed. And then he moved into a tiny terrace house in West Gorton and was seldom seen, occasionally appearing to buy basic groceries and frighten small children. He disappeared into his house and people contrived to forget about him.
    

Everyone, that is, except Anna’s brother, Gavin.
    

As a child Gavin had been as scared of Eddie as anyone else, back in the days when he had spent most of his free time playing crude computer games that came in chunky cartridges. But there had also been a bookish side to Gavin, and as he moved into his teens he also discovered music, mostly played by pasty-faced and deeply serious young men with big hair and a natty line in black clothing. Eventually the computer games were left behind but the reading and music became his life.
    

Certainly their parents hadn’t noticed any problems. After all, they had lived through the New Romantics and The Cure so having a gothy son who wore eyeliner didn’t bother them in the slightest. Nor were they religious or superstitious so when he expressed an interest in witchcraft and amassed a small collection of books on the subject, including volumes of spells, they laughed it off in private as a phase he was going through, while doing an excellent job of keeping straight faces when dealing with him directly – they knew that the slightest suspicion that they thought his actions were cute or amusing would push Gavin into typical teenage tantrum behaviour and spoil all the fun. Instead they decided to go along with it and wait for him to discover Joy Division, like all serious young men who wore a lot of black eventually did.
    

The problem though was not that he was young, naive and a bit dramatic – although he was all those things of course. No, the problem was that he was clever, studious and, most importantly, very unlucky. Because just as he reached the age when he stopped worrying about the risk posed by the people his mother had warned him about, he met Eddie again.
    

Eddie was, as usual of an evening, staggering around drunk. And equally as usual, he was on his own. While drunks often have drinking buddies, Eddie drank alone. And that meant that if he stumbled on his way home there was no-one to lean on or catch him. As a result, his hands and face were covered in scratches and bruises that seemed to take a long time to heal. Most people who saw him looked, and walked away immediately.
   

On this particular night, Eddie tripped on the edge of a pot-hole and fell face down before his sluggish mind could tell his hands to protect his face. Gavin was walking home from a rare evening out – a reading at a local bookshop that he’d gone to as much to buy him some time before his parents would next ask him about his social life and whether he shouldn’t be getting out the house a little more often. And so he found Eddie face-down in the road, as though waiting for a car to run him over in the dark. Gavin had tentatively taken hold of Eddie’s shoulder and shaken it, worried that maybe he was touching a dead body. After some vigorous shaking, Eddie made the noise made by all males when woken from slumber – a wordless moan of annoyance.
    

‘Wake up Eddie,’ Gavin had said. ‘You’ve got to get out of the road.’
    

‘Hmm?’ was all Eddie had been able to muster as a response.
    

‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ Then Gavin had remembered he had a half-full bottle of water in his pocket. With somewhat sadistic pleasure he poured the remaining water over Eddie’s face.
    

‘What the f-’
    

‘It was for your own good. If you don’t get up you’ll get run-over. Come on now.’ And Gavin had dragged Eddie by the arm to the pavement.
    

‘Right, you can get yourself home I’m sure,’ said Gavin. ‘You normally manage it after all.’
    

At this, Eddie was filled with the belligerence of a drunk. ‘Of course I can get myself home. I’m not a fucking child you know.’
    

‘If you say so,’ said Gavin, turning away.

    

‘Hey,’ said Eddie, grabbing Gavin’s shoulder and spinning him around with such sudden force that Gavin braced himself for the punch that was sure to follow. But Eddie didn’t hit him – not in that way. ‘You think you know all about me don’t you?’ he said. ‘I know what they all say. “Look at Eddie,” they say. “Just a worthless drunk,” they say. Well, you know nothing, none of you’s. You think I’m nothing, but I’m not. Don’t believe me? Then watch.’
    

And Eddie had raised his hand, palm-upwards, and changed Gavin’s life forever.
    

‘I still did cheap tricks in those days,’ Eddie later told Anna. ‘Showing off, mostly. I enjoyed watching the faces of people who thought they knew so much but who didn’t know a fraction of what I knew. I was drunk and annoyed that this kid had had to help me, and then dismissed me like I was...’
    

‘...a drunk, passed out in the road?’
    

‘Yeah. So, because I was drunk and a bit of a prick, I decided to show him.’
    

When Gavin had gotten home that evening his parents did not notice anything unusual in his going straight to his room, nor in the paleness of his complexion or his lack of response to his mother’s question of whether he had enjoyed the reading. After all, he was a teenager (albeit a late one) and that was par for the course. But this time his behaviour had nothing to do with hormones. What he had just seen had scared him and excited him at the same time, like the thought of a woman flirting with him. Suddenly all the books on witchcraft that he had collected seemed silly. The music he listened to was ostentatious and shallow. Everything that he had been searching for had just been shown to him by the town drunk, a man with scratches on his face and urine stains on his trousers.

*

     

It took two days for Gavin to muster the courage to knock on Eddie’s door. Astonishingly, he actually answered it. He stared at Gavin for a few seconds, trying to recall where he knew him from. Then he remembered.
    

‘Fuck off, kid,’ he said, and closed the door. Gavin reacted instinctively, doing what he’d seen people do on TV – he’d stuck his foot out to stop the door closing. After he’d finished hopping up and down and swearing, Eddie had allowed him in.
    

‘Sit there,’ he said, indicating a chair that looked like it would fall apart at any moment, ‘and take off your shoe and sock.’
    

Gavin had done so, but kept his foot raised to prevent his skin from coming into contact with the carpet.
    

Eddie left the room and came back a few minutes later, carrying a bucket. Gavin had assumed it was full of cold water to reduce the swelling in his foot, but instead it was full of dirt, which Eddie dipped his hands into.
    

‘Er...what are you doing?’
    

‘You’ll see. Now just sit quiet, and don’t tell anyone about what’s about to happen, got it?’
    

Gavin nodded.
    

‘Ok then.’ Eddie took Gavin’s injured foot in his dirty hands and Gavin slowly felt the pain fade away. ‘There, good as new. Consider that a debt paid. Now we’re even.’
    

‘Show me how you did that,’ Gavin said. ‘I want to know.’
    

‘No,’ Eddie replied, ‘you don’t.’
    

But he showed him anyway.
 

*

‘What was it you showed Gavin that night that he helped you up?’
    

Eddie grinned and held out his hand, palm upwards. For a moment nothing happened, and then like a lit match touched to the gas on a stove, a flame rose up from his palm, three or four inches upwards, but without any smoke. It didn’t seem to cause him any discomfort.
     

Anna gasped, involuntarily.
    

‘Surprised?’ Eddie asked.
     

His slightly mocking tone prompted a belligerent refusal to look out of her depth. ‘Can I touch it?’ she asked.
     

‘Try,’ he said. She reached forward but felt the heat of the flame against her skin and hesitated. Eddie snapped his hand closed and the flame disappeared. ‘Too slow,’ he said.

    

‘Why did you show him? You’re hardly the sharing type.’
    

‘I figured that anyone who wanted to make a mistake that badly would find a way to make it.’
    

‘But how could he? Without you to teach him...’
    

‘What do you think magic is?’ Eddie snapped. ‘A bunch of silly, meaningless words and a little stick? Do you think you need to be packed off to some boarding school to be taught it by a bunch of posh twats? When you do magic, you change the world. You don’t do that by mindlessly repeating some words a bloke with a big beard taught you. You do it with dirt, and blood. You do it by grabbing hold of what the world is made of, and throttling it into a new shape. The only way to do it safely is to get it so wrong that you’re basically doing nothing. Getting it right is still risky, but getting it a bit right is the most dangerous outcome of all.
    

‘If I’d sent Gavin away he’d have just kept coming back, and worse, he’d have kept on experimenting himself. Most of the cranks out there are so far off from knowing how to do magic that they couldn’t stumble across the right way even by accident. But I could tell Gavin was the kind who might just find himself on enough of the right track to get himself into trouble.’
    

‘Well, your guidance didn’t do him much good, did it?’ she snapped.
    

‘For him, no. But it’s not an exact science – it’s not a science at all.’
    

‘Surely though, there must be books about how to do it properly?’
    

‘There are some things you just can’t write down, and magic is one of them. If you can write it down, it won’t work. You have to feel it, or it’s nothing. Do you know where magic comes from?’
     

Anna was about to answer but Eddie cut her off.
    

‘No, of course you don’t. Well, let me tell you. Hundreds of years ago when people worked the land a bad crop didn’t mean a loss of profits – it meant starvation. As they worked themselves into an early grave they hoped so fervently for a good crop that, without knowing it, their wishes got into the soil that they were working, and sometimes it was enough to produce a harvest that kept themselves and their families alive. It was pure desperation, mixed with their contact with the soil. Magic has always belonged to the commoners – they had more need of it.’

*

Anna flicked through the records that were leaning against the table. They were all, as far as she could tell, bands with a Mancunian connection – obvious ones like Joy Division and New Order, The Smiths and The Stone Roses, Magazine and Oasis. And…
    

‘Take That?’ she said, astonished.
    

‘They’re one of the most successful Manchester bands of the last few decades.’
    

‘Is that your excuse for this M People record as well?’
    

‘Can you think of another reason to own it?’
    

‘That’s not a good reason.’
    

‘I don’t even like half the records I’ve got down there. I’d rather listen to Miles Davis. But magic is local, it’s grounded in where you are. Like a vampire that must rest in the soil from its own land, to do magic you’ve got cover yourself in your home. So I keep myself as grounded as possible with the culture of the place – art, books, music...’
    

‘And it’s all on vinyl,’ she noted. ‘Is that because it’s more authentic, more real than CDs and mp3s?’
    

‘Nah. It just sounds better, dunnit?’ 
    

‘If the key to magic is listening to Take That I’m not sure I want to learn after all...’
    

Eddie started a singing a painfully husky version of ‘Could It Be Magic?’ and Anna laughed for the first time in...a while. And for a moment she could see the young Eddie, before he became aged and haggard, and she could tell why women had been so drawn to him. He was like Chet Baker in that documentary she’d seen once – even when he’d lost his looks and was clearly nothing but trouble, there was something about him still, a mischievous charm that made you warm to him. A dangerous charm.

*

Eddie didn’t really want to talk about Gavin, but occasionally, as they worked over the next few weeks, things slipped out.  She would be there in the bedroom, hands covered in fresh Mancunian dirt, listening to ‘Wonderwall’ and unsuccessfully trying to find that feeling Eddie had told her about, when she’d casually slip in a question that caught him off guard, or he’d make some brief reference to how Gavin had been doing at that stage, and she’d pin him down on the subject for as long as she could before he either wriggled out of it or just told her to shut up and concentrate. She’d been noticing that since she had been visiting Eddie she’d started to feel tired and run down – like the feeling you get just before you come down with a virus. She’d also noticed that Eddie’s hair was getting clearly thinner, and that he was leaving strands of it around the house. One evening when she got home she looked in the mirror and saw her first grey hair. The next day when she arrived at Eddie’s she showed it to him.

    

‘Is this because of the magic?’ she asked.
    

‘Most likely,’ was his nonchalant reply. ‘It has that effect.’
    

‘I’d noticed.’
    

‘Charming.’
    

‘On Gavin, I meant. He’d always had really thick hair, but then when this all started it thinned out and receded within a few weeks. He thinned out in general, actually.’
    

‘The human body isn’t a strong enough vessel to carry out magic, not for long. It wears you out. Why do you think so few people do it? People have known how to do magic for hundreds of years. They chose to forget, refused to pass on the knowledge to their children. You know the best thing about magic? That the people who get addicted die young before they...’ He paused. ‘Oh...shit. Sorry.’
    

Anna didn’t show any emotion. ‘Finish what you were going to say.’
    

Eddie didn’t meet her gaze. ‘Before they can do too much damage. It’s a self-limiting power – the more you use it, the less time you have to use it for. It’s the only thing that keeps us from utter disaster.’
    

‘The way he aged...I mean, there’s cancer in our family, really aggressive cancer but...Do you think the magic made it worse, or could have triggered the potential he already had for it? He’d been doing magic for way less time than you, but he totally used himself up. He went from a young man to an old man in the space of a few months. I can’t help but think there’s a connection. It wouldn’t be so bad if he’d gotten something out of it, something worthwhile even in the short-term, but...’
    

‘But?’
    

‘After he...I went into his house to help clear it out. It was a dump. He had nothing. It was like...well...here. No offence. Just empty and dirty. If he was doing as much magic as you say, he should have had something to show for it but he had nothing.’  She looked at Eddie. ‘I suppose this is the point where you tell me that magic doesn’t make you happy and how it just leaves a trail of misery in its wake.’
    

‘Don’t talk so bloody soft. Magic is a power, like any other and there’s a price for using it. Most people who know how to use it don’t know how to use it in a way that makes the price worth paying. But that doesn’t mean no-one manages it. The fuck-ups are easier to spot, that’s all. And there are more of us. Now, if you want to join the ranks of the fuck-ups you need to concentrate. Smear some more dirt on your hands and focus.’

*

After the funeral, Anna had gone to Gavin’s flat. He hadn’t left a Will and her parents were still too choked up to deal with sorting out his belongings so she agreed to do it instead. Not that there was much to sort. It still seemed odd to her that the Gavin she had grown up with would live without books, even though he had left his entire collection at their parents’ house with the instruction to get rid of them however they saw fit. When Anna had pointed out in a mocking tone that he was leaving all his precious books on witchcraft as well, he’d simply commented that he didn’t need them anymore. At that point his parents had given up trying to understand how their quiet and sensitive teenage son had become such a skinny and sullen young adult who seemed to lack interest in anything – including interacting with his family. When their mother had been diagnosed with a particularly aggressive form of cancer it was assumed that Gavin would come back to the fold, but apart from occasional, seemingly forced visits this didn’t happen either. His appearance and demeanour led to obvious insinuations about what he was spending his time and money on, although Anna never believed it.
     

The flat was pretty much empty apart from the very basic set of furniture it came with – an uncomfortable bed, small bedside table with a lamp, wardrobe that looked like it could fall down at any moment. She laid down on the bed, as though trying to see the flat as Gavin would have done when waking, and found something solid underneath the pillow. Reaching underneath, she pulled out a book – the only book in the flat. But it wasn’t the kind she might have expected to find. It was his diary.
    

She held it, unopened, for several minutes, just looking at it. Then, she put it down on the bed and started to tidy the flat up, putting his clothes into rubbish bags ready to be taken to charity shops along with the few CDs he had littered around the place – Joy Division inevitably, and Magazine, but also a surprising amount of Manchester indie – Puressence, James. Only when she had loaded his belongings into the back of her car did she come back up for the diary. And then she sat back down on the bed and opened it.
    

She started with the most recent entries. She was horrified at what she read. Pretty much every entry was a record of attempts to cast spells. There was nothing about his thoughts or feelings, just a log of his daily activity and results in doing magic. Anna was staring at the record of her brother’s breakdown. She almost threw it away but then she suddenly saw a name mentioned in Gavin’s scrawled handwriting – Eddie. It didn’t take long to work out who that referred to, nor to remember the kind of things that were whispered about him. There was no real choice – she had to visit the man she’d always been warned about.

*

The next time Anna came to Eddie’s house, she sat down on the floor without a word and burst into tears.
    

‘Time of the month?’ Eddie asked her lightly.
    

‘Fuck you,’ she replied between sobs.
    

‘Don’t get touchy. Don’t you know that women’s magic is more powerful when they’re menstruating? That’s why the whole thing became so stigmatised, to try to rob women of their power.’
    

‘I’m not on my period, not that it’s any of your fucking business.’
    

‘Then what’s up? I don’t actually care, you understand, but this crying is doing my head in.’
    

‘It’s my Mum. She was diagnosed with cancer a couple of months ago. It was aggressive – the doctors only gave her about three months to live. Yesterday she went for a check-up. You know what they found, don’t you?’
    

Eddie said nothing.
    

‘The cancer was gone. Not a trace of it. The doctors couldn’t understand it, called it a medical miracle. They ended up keeping her at the hospital for hours. They tested her with every scanner they had because they thought the first machine must have been faulty. But they all showed the same. Everyone was delighted of course, but Mum was so upset that Gavin hadn’t been around to see her recovery. And she reminded me of the last time she saw him. No-one in the family had seen much of him for a while – I guess he was here most of the time – and then one day he just turned up at Mum’s out of the blue. He’d brought a potted plant with him that he said would look good in her garden and that he’d plant it for her. She’d been surprised because he’d never done an hour’s gardening in his life. But she liked the plant and liked the fact that he’d thought of her, so she left him get on with it. Afterwards he’d come into the house with filthy hands from the planting and Mum asked him why he’d not worn gloves. He’d just laughed and put his hand on her cheek. She’d knocked it away, telling him not to be so daft as he was getting her all dirty.’
    

There was a pause before she continued the story.
    

‘Mum said that when she knocked his hand away, Gavin’s face had dropped, like he was hurt by her reaction. But it wasn’t that, was it?’
    

Eddie continued to say nothing.
    

‘It was a reaction to what he’d just done when he touched her, wasn’t it? That was why he’d suddenly turned up with a plant – as an excuse to get dirt on his hands. And when he touched her, he did a spell didn’t he? Like you did the day you healed his foot. Except he didn’t heal a broken bone – he healed her cancer.’
    

‘Seems like it,’ Eddie said.
    

‘He took it on himself, didn’t he?’ She laughed. ‘Well, that proves it. You can do something positive with magic. It cost him his life but he achieved something. He saved her.’
    

‘He was an idiot.’ Eddie’s tone was dismissive and instantly Anna tensed up.
    

‘What did you say?’ she hissed, controlled fury seething beneath her words.
    

‘He was an idiot. How old is your mum?’
    

‘Fifty-seven, why?’
    

‘And how old was Gavin?’
    

‘Twenty-two.’
    

‘Right. So, your Mum’s more than twice Gavin’s age, she’s had two kids, experienced the oh-so-mystical experience of motherhood, and has nothing much to live for except for retirement, daytime telly and her body slowly falling apart. Gavin still had the best years of his life ahead of him, years he could have done anything with with the power he had if he’d not used it all up in one sentimental gesture.’
    

‘The way you did, you mean? Getting more and more corrupted and frightened? Rotting away in your rotting house, living a rotten life. How dare you judge him, just because he shows up the nothing you’ve done.’
    

‘Without my nothing he wouldn’t have been able to throw his abilities away because he wouldn’t have had them in the first place. You want to thank someone for your Mum getting a few more worthless years? Thank me, not your useless brother.’
    

Anna jumped across the room and grabbed Eddie by his crumpled shirt collar. ‘Don’t you ever...’   But Eddie was smiling at her, smugly.
   

‘What are you smiling at you selfish prick? Why are you…?’
    

The question remained incomplete. Anna was no longer aware of Eddie’s smile. She was looking down at where she was holding Eddie’s collar.
    

Her hands were ablaze.

Copyright (c) Philip Marsh.