The Lizard's Bite

THE FLAMES IN THE FURNACE LOOKED WRONG. SO DID the smoke, a sooty black swirl escaping from the kiln’s mouth, then spiralling upwards towards the shaking roof. Uriel knew how the furnace was supposed to look. He could judge the state of the fire just from the intensity of its heat on the cracked veins in his cheeks.

There was something foreign now in the maw of the beehive structure, behind the crock of forming glass, something burning with a bright, smoky fury. He racked his half-drunk head, searching for an explanation, wondering what to do. Uriel Arcangelo had worked in here since he was twelve. The process was so familiar he scarcely thought about it anymore. Around five on a working afternoon he would load wood and raise the gas burner to 1250 degrees centigrade before placing the first crude load in position. Throughout the early evening, he or Bella would return from time to time to see the furnace rise steadily to 1400 degrees, adding wood according to his father’s specifications, until the furnace was hot enough to allow any bubbles to escape from the glass. Then around three, Uriel, and he alone, as omo de note, would make his final visit and begin to lower the temperature gradually. By seven in the morning the glass he’d created would be sufficiently malleable for Gabriele to begin making the expensive and individual goblets and vases that bore the foundry’s trademark, the mark of a skeletal angel.

Nothing, in all his decades of attentive nighttime activity, fitted with the sight that lay before Uriel now: a furnace racing inexplicably out of control.

“Bella?” he called out, over the roar of the kiln, half hoping.

No one answered. There was only the call of the fire.

Uriel Arcangelo took a deep breath, knowing the decision that faced him. To close down the furnace would mean an entire day of lost production. The family was broke already. They couldn’t afford the blow.

Except . . .

There was always a lone, bitter voice at the back of his head when he’d been drinking. Except they’d scarcely sold anything at all of late. All they’d be losing was another set of unwanted items to store in the warehouse, alongside boxes and boxes of identical glass pieces of expensive, beautiful—they were beautiful, he still believed that—works of art.

Uriel looked at his watch and wondered whether to call his brother. It was now approaching three. The loss of a run was bad, but not so terrible that it was worth risking Michele’s wrath. Besides, Uriel was the omo de note. He was employed to make these decisions. It was his role, his responsibility.

He walked over to the tangle of old methane pipes and the single giant stopcock that controlled the gas supply to the burners. It was possible he could adjust the temperature manually. He ought to be doing this by now in any case.

Then he remembered what he seemed to see when he stared inside the furnace’s belly, and turned to look at the spiral of smoke still working its way to the stained moon visible through the roof. Something was out of place here. And without understanding what it was, he found it impossible to assess the full degree of the danger. He couldn’t take risks with the furnace. If something damaged the beast itself, it would mean more than a lost day’s production. An extended closure could spell the end of the business entirely.

He gripped the wheel with both hands, fingers tight around the familiar marks, and began to turn, looking for ninety degrees to shut off the supply completely. Michele could complain all he liked in the morning. This was a decision that couldn’t wait.

Uriel Arcangelo heaved at the metal with increasing pressure for a minute or more. It was so hot it burned his desperate hands. It didn’t move, not the slightest amount.

He coughed. The smoke was getting heavier, becoming so thick it was starting to drift back down from the ceiling. His head felt heavy, stupid. He tried to run through the options in his mind. The only working phone in the foundry was by the door. The Arcangeli didn’t believe in cell phones. If matters took a turn for the worse—and he had to consider this now—he would have no choice but to call Michele and the fire station, get out of the building and wait.

Becoming desperate, he lunged at the wheel one more time. It was immovable. Something—the heat itself perhaps, or year after year of poor maintenance—had locked it into position.

He swore under his breath and with one last, somewhat fearful look at the furnace, started to walk to the door.

He was halfway there when he felt something move on his apron, an odd, hot finger tickling at his chest. Uriel Arcangelo looked down and refused to believe his eyes. A fire was sprouting out of the fabric over his midriff. A healthy, palpable tongue of flame, like that of an oversize candle, was emerging from beneath the vest as if his own body possessed some kind of internal burner beneath the skin. And it was growing.

The flame flickered upwards, outwards. He stamped at it with his sleeve, only to see the fire catch the fabric there, dance along his arm, mocking him, like the furnace itself, which was now wheezing at his back, louder and louder . . . .

Uriel. Uriel.

The air shook. Instinctively, he knew what had happened. One of the burners had crumbled into dust. The searing heat had worked its way back through the pipe, towards the dead stopcock, feeding on the flammable carbon gas, devouring it every inch of the way.

The explosion hit him full in the back, so hard he fell screeching to the timber floor. He felt his teeth bite on the fossilised wood, felt something shatter in his mouth, sending a pain running into his head where it met so many other messages: of fear and agony and a dimming determination that he could survive all this, if only he could reach the door and the key, the magic key he’d had the foresight to leave there only a few long minutes before.