SmokeLong Quarterly

First, the knife. I pare flesh from above my left hip into the dented peppermint tin and render the fat from it. The scent rises, honey-bitter. In the corners of the room, the shadows ease back from the tin, giving room.

I dip two wicks in the warm fat and press them into the hollow chests of two wax figures at the center of the kitchen table. When the flames catch, they stir and breathe.

“Mama?” the taller says.

“Eli,” I whisper. The wick leans toward my mouth.

The younger looks up. “Mae,” I breathe. The wick gives a small, sharp twitch.

Wax feet smear the tabletop, leaving glossy marks that set. They laugh in bright voices, almost right. Wax holds a face until you look too long. The candles throw my shadow long against the wall. My hands shake. I don’t look at their faces.

“Remember the bullfrog you kept in a jar?” Eli grins, showing the chipped tooth I shaped too neat. My boy fed it every morning, careful. Mae claps, proud. My hands stop shaking. Most nights, this is enough to breathe.

They play until Eli turns and says, “At the glass lake, can I swim first?” There was no lake. Only the pond, green with algae, and the ditch that stank after rain.

“You mean the pond,” I say. He shakes his head. “The lake with the swans.”

I open my mouth to correct him. For a moment it’s real. Still water, white birds, candlelight gilding the swans, the lake, the lie. My teeth click shut. I reach for the real pond and find the lake waiting in its place, smooth and sunlit. It doesn’t ache. I keep it.

When I look back, Eli has bowed his head. He murmurs a prayer. Bedside words, twisted. Wax slips down his chin into a smile I never carved. Below the glow, their true faces. Slack. Fever-damp. Gone when the flame steadies, but I know that look.

I knew their fever by its tells: Mae’s face toward the wall, Eli’s hand clamped to mine, those last nights, my forehead against the blanket. Even the bedside was mine.

Wax rustles. Mae curtsies. “Ma’am.”

My girl spat, sulked, kicked. She would have died before she curtsied—and she did. The thought arrives flat, and I hold still until it passes.

The shadows have come closer to the table. They do not move when I move. They wait at the edge of the light, fuller each time the children answer to their names.

I dip a spoon into the tin and add another warm trickle of myself. Feed the flame and they brighten. Brighten, and they drift further from true. I dip anyway. Their voices smooth, edges blur. The tin grows cold.

“Remember the pond,” I say. “The ducks that chased you. The stone that sank so deep the water swallowed it.” They nod, polite.

Then Mae says, “Tell us about the frog. The golden one. By the river.” There. Almost her voice. I lean forward.

“The golden one,” she repeats. “By the river.”

The jar was cloudy. The walk home was two miles. The frog was brown and alive, and my daughter carried it with both hands the whole way, without being asked to be careful.

I reach for her name and find only the word. Mae gone out of it. She’s borrowed the shape the way wax keeps a thumbprint and forgets the hand.

They shine like someone else’s children.

My fingers find the raised scar edges above my hip. The tin holds a last gleam.

I bend to them. Eli reaches up, hand hot and tacky, leaving a shine on my wrist. “Please, Mama.”

Mae presses her cheek to my shoulder. She smells of clean wax, faintly sweet. My children smelled of sour sweat and camphor.

I close my eyes. I let them hold me. I want one more laugh, one more flicker, want it the way I sat at that bedside after, not leaving, not moving.

Then I lean close and snuff their flames, tasting char and tallow.

Light comes gray through the window. Two shapes slump into silence, arms melting into sides. I press them flat with my palms, slow, the warmth leaving under my hands.

I take up the knife again. There is a place along my ribs the scars have not yet reached. I pare what the wick needs and render it in the cold tin. I dip one wick and let it set.

I gather the soft wax of the two and mold it around the new wick. With my thumbnail, I scratch Eli, then Mae. The letters come uneven. I press deeper on Mae’s until the wax gives. The names are theirs. I set the candle on the sill.

In the corner, the shadows wait for the names they almost had.

I leave the wick unlit.