The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

Black fire orchid

Meaning: Desire to possess

Pyrorchis nigricans | Western Australia

Needs fire to flower. Sprouts from bulbs that may have lain dormant. Deep crimson streaks on pale flesh. Turns black after flowering, as if charred.

In the weatherboard house at the end of the lane, nine-year-old Alice Hart sat at her desk by the window and dreamed of ways to set her father on fire.

In front of her, on the eucalyptus desk her father built, a library book lay open. It was filled with stories collected from around the world about the myths of fire. Although a northeasterly blew in from the Pacific, full of brine, Alice could smell smoke, earth and burning feathers. She read, whispering aloud:

The phoenix bird is immersed into fire, to be consumed by the flames, to burn to ashes and rise renewed, remade, reformed – the same, but altogether different.

Alice hovered a fingertip over an illustration of the phoenix rising: its silver-white feathers glowing, its wings outstretched, and its head thrown back to crow. She snatched her hand away, as though the licks of golden, red-orange flames might singe her skin. The smell of seaweed came through her window in a fresh gust; the chimes in her mother’s garden warned of the strengthening wind.

Leaning over her desk, Alice closed the window to just a crack. She pushed the book aside, eyeing the illustration as she reached for the plate of toast she’d made hours ago. Biting into a buttered triangle, she chewed the cold toast slowly. What might it be like, if her father was consumed by fire? All his monsters burned to ash, leaving the best of him to rise, renewed by flames, remade into the man he sometimes was: the man who made her a desk so she could write stories.

Alice shut her eyes, imagining for a moment that the nearby sea she could hear crashing through her window was an ocean of roaring fire. Could she push her father into it, so he was consumed like the phoenix in her book? What if he emerged, shaking his head as if woken from a bad dream, and opened his arms to her? G’day Bunny, he might say. Or maybe he would just whistle, hands in his pockets and a smile in his eyes. Maybe Alice would never again see his blue eyes turn black with rage, or watch the colour drain from his face, spittle gathering in the corners of his mouth, a foam as white as his pallor. She could focus solely on reading what direction the wind was blowing, or choosing her library books, or writing at her desk. Remade by fire, Alice’s father’s touch on her mother’s pregnant body would always be soft; his hands on Alice always gentle and nurturing. Most of all, he would cradle the baby when it came, and Alice wouldn’t lie awake wondering how to protect her family.

She shut the book. Its heavy thud reverberated through the wooden desk, which ran the length of her bedroom wall. Her desk faced two large windows that swung open over the garden of maidenhair ferns, staghorns and butterfly-leaf plants her mother tended until nausea got the better of her. Just that morning she had been in the process of potting kangaroo paw seedlings when she doubled over, hacking into the ferns. Alice was at her desk, reading; at the sound of her mother’s retching, she scrambled through the window, landing on the fern beds. Unsure of what else to do, she held her mother’s hand tightly.

‘I’m all right,’ her mother coughed, squeezing Alice’s hand before letting go. ‘It’s just morning sickness, Bun, don’t worry.’ As she leant her head back to get some air, her pale hair fell away from her face and revealed a new bruise, purple like the sea at dawn, surrounding a split in the tender skin behind her ear. Alice couldn’t look away quickly enough.

‘Oh, Bun,’ her mother fretted as she hauled herself to her feet. ‘I wasn’t watching what I was doing in the kitchen and took a tumble. The baby makes me so dizzy.’ She placed one hand on her stomach and picked crumbs of dirt off her dress with the other. Alice stared at the young ferns that had been crushed under her mother’s weight.

Her parents left soon afterwards. Alice stood at the front door until the plume of dust behind her father’s truck vanished into the blue morning. They were making the trip to the city for another baby check-up; the truck only had two seats. Be good, darling, her mother implored as she brushed Alice’s cheek with her lips. She smelled like jasmine, and fear.

Alice picked up another triangle of cold toast and held it between her teeth as she reached into her library bag. She’d promised her mother she would study for her Grade Four exam, but so far the dummy test the correspondence school had sent in the post sat unopened on her desk. As she pulled a book out of her library bag and read its title, her jaw slackened. Her exam was completely forgotten.

In the low light of the approaching storm the embossed cover of A Beginner’s Guide to Fire was an illuminated, almost-living thing. Wildfire shimmered in metallic flames. Something dangerous and thrilling rippled through Alice’s belly. The palms of her hands were clammy. She had just touched her fingers to the corner of the cover when, as if conjured by her jittery nerves, the tags of Toby’s collar tinkled behind her. He nudged her leg, leaving a wet smudge on her skin. Relieved by the interruption, Alice smiled as Toby sat politely. She held her toast out to him and he gingerly took it between his teeth before stepping back to wolf it down. Dog drool dripped on her feet.

‘Yuck, Tobes,’ Alice said, ruffling his ears. She held up her thumb and wagged it from side to side. Toby’s tail swept back and forth across the floor in response. He lifted a paw and rested it on her leg. Toby had been a gift from her father, and was her closest companion. When he was small he had nipped her father’s feet under the table one too many times, and been thrown against side of the washing machine. Alice’s father forbade a trip to the vet and Toby had been deaf ever since. When she realised he couldn’t hear, Alice took it upon herself to create a secret language that she and Toby could share, using hand signals. She wagged her thumb at him again to tell him he was good. Toby slurped the side of Alice’s face and she laughed in disgust, wiping her cheek. He circled a few times and settled at her feet with a thud. No longer small, he looked more like a grey-eyed wolf than a sheep-dog. Alice curled her bare toes into his long fluffy coat. Emboldened by his company, she opened A Beginner’s Guide to Fire and was quickly absorbed by the first story inside.

In faraway places, like Germany and Denmark, people used fire to burn away the old and invite the new, to welcome the beginning of the next cycle: a season, a death, a life, or a love. Some people even built huge figures out of wicker and bramble, setting them alight to draw an end and mark a beginning: to tempt miracles.

Alice sat back in her chair. Her eyes were hot and gummy. She pressed her hands on the pages, over the photo of a burning man made of wicker. What miracle would her fire welcome? For a start, never again would there be the sound of things breaking in their house. The sour stench of fear would no longer fill the air. Alice would plant a veggie garden without being punished for accidentally using the wrong trowel. She might learn to ride a bike without feeling the roots of her hair tear from her scalp in her father’s enraged grip because she couldn’t balance. The only signs she would need to read would be in the sky, rather than the shadows and clouds that passed over her father’s face, alerting her to whether he was the monster, or the man who turned a gum tree into a writing desk.

That happened after the day he shoved her into the sea and left her to swim to shore on her own. He’d vanished into his wooden shed that night and not emerged for two days. When he did, he laboured under the weight of a rectangular desk, longer lengthways than he was tall. It was made from the creamy planks of spotted gum he’d been saving to build Alice’s mother a new fernery. Alice hovered in the corner of her room while her father bolted the desk to the wall under the windowsill. It filled her bedroom with the heady fragrances of fresh timber, oil and varnish. He showed Alice how the lid opened on brass hinges, revealing a shallow underbelly ready to be filled with paper, pencils and books. He’d even planed a eucalyptus branch into an arm to hold the lid up, so Alice could use both hands to fossick inside.

‘I’ll get you all the pencils and crayons you need next time I go to town, Bunny.’

Alice threw her arms around his neck. He smelled of Cussons soap, sweat and turpentine.

‘My baby bunting.’ His stubble grazed her cheek. A lacquer of words coated Alice’s tongue: I knew you were still in there. Stay. Please don’t let the wind change. But all she could say was, ‘Thank you.’

Alice’s eyes drifted back to her open book.

Fire is an element that requires friction, fuel and oxygen to combust and burn. An optimum fire needs these optimum conditions.

She looked up, out into the garden. The invisible force of the wind pushed and pulled the pots of maidenhair ferns on their hooks. It howled under the slim crack of the open window. She took deep breaths, filling her lungs and emptying them slowly. Fire is an element that requires friction, fuel and oxygen to combust and burn. Staring into the green heart of her mother’s garden, Alice knew what she must do.

As the windstorm came in from the east and drew across the sky in dark curtains, Alice put her windcheater on at the back door. Toby paced by her side and she entwined her fingers in his woolly coat. He whimpered and nuzzled her belly. His ears lay flat. Outside, the wind tore the petals off her mother’s white roses and scattered them across the yard like fallen stars. In the distance, at the bottom of their property, sat the shadowy hulk of her father’s locked shed. Alice patted the pockets of her jacket, feeling the key inside. After taking a moment, willing herself to be brave, she opened the back door and ran out of the house, into the wind with Toby.

Although she was forbidden to enter it, nothing had stopped Alice from imagining what might be in her father’s wooden shed. Most of the time he spent inside followed the awful things he did. But when he came out, he was always better. Alice had decided his shed held a transformational kind of magic, as if within its walls was an enchanted mirror, or a spinning wheel. Once, when she was younger, she was brave enough to ask him what was inside. He didn’t answer her but after he made her desk, Alice understood. She’d read about alchemy in her library books; she knew the tale of Rumpelstiltskin. Her father’s shed was where he spun straw into gold.

Her legs and lungs burned as she ran. Toby barked at the sky until a spear of dry lightning overhead sent his tail between his legs. At the shed door, Alice took the key out of her pocket and slid it into the padlock. It wouldn’t give. The wind stung her face and threatened her balance; only Toby’s warmth pressed against her kept her steady. She tried again. The key hurt her palm as she pushed against it, willing it to turn. It would not budge. Panic blurred her vision. She let go, wiped her eyes, and brushed her hair out of her face. Then tried again. This time the key turned so easily the lock could have been oiled. Alice wrenched the padlock off the door, twisted the handle, and stumbled inside with Toby at her heels. The wind sucked the door shut behind them with a loud slam.

The windowless interior of the shed was pitch black. Toby growled. Alice reached through the darkness to comfort him. She was deafened by the rush of blood beating in her ears and the howling ferocity of the windstorm. Seedpods from the poinciana tree beside the shed rained down in sharp succession, like a clatter of tin slippers dancing across the roof.

The air was pungent with kerosene. Alice groped around until her fingers touched a lamp on the workbench. She knew the shape of it; her mother kept a similar one inside the house. Next to it was a box of matches. An angry voice bellowed through her mind. You shouldn’t be in here. You shouldn’t be in here. Alice cringed, yet still slid the matchbox open. She felt for the tip, struck it against the rough flint and smelled sulphur as a quick glow of fire filled the air. She held the match to the wick of the kerosene lamp and screwed the glass top back onto the base. Light spilled across her father’s workbench. In front of her, a small drawer was ajar. With a shaking finger, Alice slid it open. Inside was a photograph and something else Alice couldn’t see properly. She took out the photo. Its edges were cracked and yellow but the image was clear: a rambling, resplendent old house covered in vines. Alice reached into the drawer again for the second object. Her fingertips brushed against something soft. She drew it out, into the light: a lock of black hair tied in faded ribbon.

An almighty gust rattled the shed door. Alice dropped the hair and photo as she swung around. There was no one there. It was just the wind. Her heart had just begun to slow when Toby lowered on his haunches and growled again. Shaking, Alice lifted the lamp to illuminate the rest of her father’s shed. Her jaw went slack; there was a strange jellying in her knees.

Surrounding her were dozens of wooden sculptures, ranging from miniatures to life size, all of the same two figures. One was an older woman, caught in various poses: sniffing a gum leaf, inspecting pot plants, lying on her back with one arm bent over her eyes and the other pointing upwards; another held the bowl of her skirt, filled with flowers Alice didn’t know. The other sculptures were of a girl: reading a book, writing at a desk, blowing the seeds off a dandelion. Seeing herself in her father’s carvings made Alice’s head ache.

Version after version of this woman and girl filled the shed, closing in around the bench. Alice took slow and deep breaths, listening to her heartbeat. I’m–here, it said. I’m–here. If fire could be a spell that turned one thing into another, so too could words. Alice had read enough to understand the charms that words could possess, especially when repeated. Say something enough times and it would be so. She focused on the spell beating in her heart.

I’m–here.

I’m–here.

I’m–here.

Alice turned in slow circles, taking in the wooden figures. She remembered reading once about an evil king who made so many enemies in his kingdom he created an army of clay and stone warriors to surround him – except clay is not flesh and stone is neither heart nor blood. In the end, the villagers the king was trying to protect himself from used the very army he created to crush him while he was sleeping. Prickles ran up and down Alice’s back as she recalled the words she’d read earlier. Fire requires friction, fuel and oxygen to combust and burn.

‘Come on, Tobes,’ she said hurriedly, reaching for one wooden figure, then another. Mimicking one of the statues, she used her T-shirt as a bowl to carry the smallest figurines she could find. Toby fretted at Alice’s side. Her heart beat powerfully against her ribs. With so many statues in the shed, her father surely wouldn’t notice some of the smallest missing. They would be perfect fuel to practise making fire.

Alice would always remember this day as the one that changed her life irrevocably, even though it would take her the next twenty years to understand: life is lived forward but only understood backward. You can’t see the landscape you’re in while you’re in it.

Pulling into the driveway, Alice’s father gripped the steering wheel in silence. Welts had risen on his wife’s face, which she nursed with one hand. She used the other to hold her stomach as she pressed herself against the passenger door. He’d seen with his own eyes the way she’d touched the doctor’s arm. He’d seen the look on the doctor’s face. He’d seen it. A tic twitched under Alice’s father’s right eye. His wife had been dizzy when she sat up after the scan; he hadn’t wanted to stop for breakfast and risk missing the appointment. She’d tried to steady herself. The doctor had helped her.

Alice’s father flexed his hand. His knuckles were still aching. He glanced over at his wife, curled into herself, creating a canyon between them. He wanted to reach out to her, to explain she just needed to be more mindful of her behaviour so he wouldn’t be provoked. If he spoke to her in flowers, maybe then she would understand. Forked sundew, I die if neglected. Harlequin fuchsia, cure and relief. Wedding bush, constancy. But he’d avoided giving her flowers for years, ever since they left Thornfield.

She hadn’t helped him today. She should have made time to pack breakfast before they left, then she wouldn’t have been dizzy and he wouldn’t have witnessed her pawing the doctor. She knew how he struggled with their town visits, and the medical staff having their hands all over and inside his wife. They’d never been to a scan or check-up during this pregnancy, or with Alice, that was without incident. Was it really his fault that she failed to support him, every single time?

‘We’re home,’ he said, pulling the handbrake and turning the engine off. His wife took her hand away from her face and reached for the door handle. She tugged on it once and waited. His temper flared. Would she say nothing? He unlocked the central locking, expecting her to turn and smile at him gratefully, or maybe even apologetically. But she flew out of the door like a chicken escaping its coop. He tore out of the truck yelling her name, abruptly silenced by the windstorm. Wincing in the stinging gale, he stalked after his wife, determined to make his point. As he approached the house, something caught his eye.

The shed door was open. The lock was undone, hanging from the latch. A flash of his daughter’s red windcheater in the doorway filled his vision.

When her T-shirt couldn’t hold any more carvings, Alice rushed out of the shed into the murky half-light. A clap of thunder shattered the sky. It was so loud that Alice dropped the carvings and hunched against the shed door. Toby cowered, the fur along the ridge of his spine raised. She reached to comfort him and got to her feet, only to be slammed by a gust of wind, making her stagger backwards. Forgetting the carvings, she signalled to Toby and made a run for the house. They’d almost reached the back door when a shard of lightning broke the dark clouds into silver pieces, a downwards arrow. Alice froze. In that white flash, she saw him. Her father stood in the doorway, his arms braced by his sides, hands clenched in fists. She didn’t need better light or closer distance to know the darkness of his eyes.

Alice changed direction and sprinted down the side of the house. She wasn’t sure if her father had seen her. As she ran through the green fronds of her mother’s fern garden, a terrible thought hit her: the kerosene lamp in her father’s shed. His timber shed. She’d forgotten to blow it out.

Alice flung herself through the window, onto her desk, hauling Toby up beside her. They perched together, panting to catch their breaths. Toby licked her face and Alice patted him distractedly. Could she smell smoke? Dread sluiced through her body. She jumped off the desk and gathered her library books, stuffing them into her bag, deep within her cupboard. She shrugged off her windcheater and threw it in too, then pulled her window closed. Someone must have broken into your shed, Dad. I was inside waiting for you to come home.

She didn’t hear her father come into her bedroom. She wasn’t quick enough to dodge him. The last thing Alice saw was Toby baring his teeth, his eyes wild with fear. There was the smell of smoke, earth, and burning feathers. A stinging heat spread down the side of her face, drawing Alice into darkness.