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It was three days past Sunday, and Kasumi went down to the bog. Petticoats hitched up, she stepped into the peat and let her Mary Janes sink ankle-deep. The peat bubbled and squelched, letting off unpleasant smells, and mud crawled up her nice white skirt.
The peat fire was burning now off the side of the east riverbank, belching smoke into the crystal-blue sky. Mother said the peat didn't reach close to their house, there was no danger; what did Mother know? Kasumi stomped a foot further into the slimy peat and took a deep breath in. The smell was woody, sulfurous. It stank to high Heaven. She stepped into the shallow water. Squelch, squelch, squelch. What did Mother know? Nothing at all; she didn't know Kasumi was out here, breathing in the deadly air, guided by the column of off-white smoke oozing into the sky. The ground beneath her took a breath.
The peat fire had been burning since last summer. They didn't know how it started, maybe a cigarette from one of the boys or a simple spark. Winter had come, and the peat fire retreated, simmering and smoldering underground. Now it was back. On a bad day, the wind blew towards the village until the schoolhouse and the pub and the house Kasumi lived in with her two brothers and their mother and their dog and the ghost of their father and Jesus Christ the Lord and Saviour stank like the fires of Hell.
She imagined that the burning peat bog would be the same. She had imagined last night, chopping greens in the kitchen, that the smoke would spiral all around her, and the peat would breathe beneath her, and the smell would lull her like faraway incense, that it would be a quiet Hell wreathed with smoke and burning grass until the land opened beneath her and swallowed her whole and her dress caught fire like so much tinder and engulfed her in an inferno that turned her hair to fire and boiled her eyes until she was dead, and Hell would be a forest where the ground breathed and the air hung with white smoke. Then Mother asked her why she was just standing there staring off into nothing, and the vision was gone.
So why was she here? Because Mother told her not to.
Squelch, squelch, squelch.
“Who art thou? Whi art thou heer?”
Up, like a deer, smoke stinging wide eyes; the boy was standing on the edge of the clearing. Half-blending into the trees. Skin the colour of peat moss and leather, mottled in the sun. He wore a cloak, stained brown and stiff with mud, but clearly very fine all the same.
He took a step forward. Black hair shone red in the sun. He opened his mouth again: “Dost thou witen not, ther is a fyre?”
Kasumi’s mouth opened and closed, baffled.
His mouth twisted up into a sneer. “Art thou an idyot? Ther is a fyre. Go out of heer. Go out.” One skinny arm raised - pointed east. And the peat below him gave a great heaving exhale, and from the bottom of his cloak, from seemingly nowhere, he caught fire.
Within a moment he was consumed entirely by inferno. Flames leapt into the air, capering with the joy of finally being freed from their underground simmerings. The boy did not seem to notice, but stood there, pointing east with one flaming finger, black figure against the flame like a dead tree struck by lightning.
Kasumi shrieked in shock and fell over in the peat with a loud squelch. She did not hitch up her petticoats, this time, simply stuck both hands in the depths of the peat, scrambled upwards and stumbled, as fast as her legs could take her, westwards and home.
For muddying her dress, Kasumi was confined to the house and the yard. Hiroki and Kenji walked to the schoolhouse, Mother went to work at the big house up the road, muttering, how will we find marriage for such a wild girl? Kasumi tried in vain to wring the mud out of her underclothes. A white-grey fog settled over the village, bringing the smell of burning. Through the smog, the sun shone red as a butcher’s apron. Kasumi couldn't shake the feeling that the smoke was settling into her hair and skin until far after the wind had changed she would smell of burning peat moss.
She took a deep breath and held the smoke in her lungs. Waited.
She left her skirts to absorb smoke on the line, stripped down to her combinations in the back field. There was nobody around to see. She ran through the smoke, half-coughing, untied hair whipping behind her, with her stockings sinking in the muck. Ran to the peat bog.
She retraced yesterday’s footsteps, still stamped into the peat but now pooling with opaque water, until she recognized the treeline - turned north, and squelched her way through until she reached the spot where the boy stood.
It was empty. No dead body, not so much as a charred stalk of grass.
“By Goddes bones, gerl. Whi camest thou ageyn?”
Well, that, she understood. “You're not dead,” she said, without looking up. She didn't want to see a demon, or a burning man, or a witch, or some sort of peat bog ghost.
“Zounds! She speaketh!”
Indignant, she looked up.
The sun shone through the smog and made blistering colours. The peat ghost, wrapped in a fiery halo of smoke and sunlight, breathing like the ground, with dark eyes and leathery skin. He was, she realized with a shock, just about as old as her. Without thinking, she reached out to touch his cloak, and found it soft yet stiff and faintly damp. He had only one arm, and a dark gash on his cheek, oozing mud.
“I'm Kasumi,” she said softly, just to be polite, wishing she had brought a crucifix with her, around her neck and in her pocket, just in case this spirit was about to drag her to Hell.
“Kosumy.” Leathery lips wrapped clumsily around her name.
“Kasumi.”
“Kas…u… my.”
“Close enough.”
“Kasumy. Whi camest thou again? The fyre is stille brenninge.”
“Because my mother told me not to,” Kasumi whispered, unable to meet his eyes. “Why are you here?”
He seemed to take a second to deliberate on this, maybe to figure out what to say or maybe to puzzle out her own speech. “Ich dwel heer,” he said finally.
“You… live here? In the peat bog?”
“Peet… bogge.” He considered this. Nodded. “Eis.”
“Why do you speak that way?”
“Wy spekest thou in that wyse?”
Well, she hadn't got an answer to that. Kasumi shrugged. “It's how I learned.”
“Ich lerned to speke a ful long tyme ago. Paraventure the langage hath chaunged.” He cocked his head. “Thou shouldst depart.”
Kasumi shook her head.
“Nay? Then comme.”
Perhaps he was an orphan living off the land as an exile, she reasoned, as she followed his footsteps deeper into the flat land of the bog, towards the smoke. When he breathed, his chest heaved, uneven, like the bubbling mire below them. He limped too. Perhaps he was sick. But no, she knew better; some spirit of the land had come, and she had given him her name and was following him, foolish girl that she was, to Hell. He was leading her to an ash pit - any time now, the peat would open below her to reveal a smoldering darkness and she would fall, clawing at the edges…
The bog stretched endlessly, glassy brown water, tufts of grass, smoky sky. The sun’s light shattered across the peat fire, and the wind stagnated until all across the surface of the mud there was only silent, sticky air, rough on the throat. But the peat ghost marched on, seemingly oblivious to his bare feet sticking in the mud. Forever passed them by and was on its way back when he stopped. Oh, near here - she recognized this place. The edge of the turbary, where the men of the village used to dig peat before the fire started and chased them all away.
Here, the boy turned and looked at her very seriously. “Thou knowest ich am a prynce.”
In bare feet and a calfskin cloak, bare-headed, yes, a prince. His eyes were piercing and dark enough, and red embers seemed to glow in them. The sun crowned him in golden strands. A pattern seemed to flicker on his cloak - red, white, yellow. She did believe him.
“I'm not,” she said, somewhat self-conscious all of a sudden in nothing but her underclothes in front of a prince.
“A servaunt womman. Ich see.” He crouched down suddenly, took off his cloak and laid it down upon a tuft of grass where it wasn't too muddy. “Comme. Sit doun.”
Obediently, Kasumi sat. The prince sat beside her.
“Ich am Kokyshee,” he says.
“Kokichi.” His funny way of speaking was harder than it sounded.
He laughed quietly. “Good ynof.”
“Have you been following me?”
“Why wolde ich folwe thee? Ich awook to se who hath been reysing swich a ruc in the myre.” He sighed, and his breath bubbled. He exhaled thick clouds of smoke. “Stille, ich am glaad thou cam. It is lonesomme out heer.”
“It's not much better in the rest of the world,” Kasumi said, thinking about Mother.
He laughed again. “Amen.”
“At least you've got prospects,” she said. “You're a prince. I'm poor. I've got no dowry. Mother can't find a man for me to marry.”
“Doth that unsette thee?”
“Well, it's not like I really want to get married. But there's nothing else to do. Except wander out into the moor to die in a peat fire.”
“Is that what thou were trying to do? To dyen in a peet fyre? It is a dredful wyse.”
“Well… no. I wanted to see it, though.”
“The peet fyre.”
“Yes. I thought… I don't know. I thought it might look like Hell.”
Again, a bubbling laugh. “Thou art a straunge oon, Kasumy.”
Kasumi lay down in the grass and felt the cold peat ooze up past her hair, up the back of her neck. The prince followed suit and lay beside her, both staring at the sky. Kasumi reached out and took his hand, since it was ever so close to hers. His skin was very leathery and underneath there was an unnatural heat. She thought he might be some sort of demon, or a saint, or a pagan god.
But if God led her to the peat bog, and God set this fire, God must have introduced her to the prince as well, and as she stared up into the smoggy sky with the prince's hand in hers, she felt ever so right.
“Let's get married,” she said.
“All right,” he replied.
She saved up flour each time she baked a loaf of bread, until she had enough for two; fled the house and the laundry to pick and roast quinces, apples, redcurrants. She wanted a pie, but settled for buying cheese with her savings; she wanted a diamond, but settled on cutting apart the hem of her nice blue dress and braiding three strips of it together into a ring for her fiancé. Kenji and Hiroki teased her and Mother berated her and despaired at her daughter’s insanity - smelling like peat and burning, in and out at all hours of the day, slacking, bound to be a spinster… but Kasumi picked flowers, for she knew she was engaged to be married to a demon prince and he would take her down to where the peat fires burned all winter, a quiet Heaven.
Late August, and she brought a basket and her Sunday clothes out into the peat bog near sundown. At the edge, smoldering into the sky, crowned with fire and his hair all in ancient knots, Kokichi met her with an outstretched hand and an almost-nervous smile.
“Wel met, my love. Shal we wed?”
“Right away,” she said. “I marry you.”
“Ich wed thee.”
He swept her into his embrace and kissed her, exhaling smoke into her mouth until she breathed it out as if the peat fire burned within her as well, and his heat radiated through leathery skin and his smoldering cape, which he draped around her as if it was the finest silk train. His arm seared the skin around her waist.
“Ich shal make thee my quene,” he breathed low against her. “Comme.”
He took her to be buried with him in the soft dark earth, the smoldering around them, smoke spiraling up into the clear night - moonlight broken on the back of the peat moss, wind sweeping across their untouchable skin. His skin is leather, and scarred all over. When he touches her, his skin turns charcoal-black, his hair bleaches unnatural red, his eyes sink, but he breathes burning peat into her lungs and touches her with a burning hand, and then he fills her up and she holds him, ever so fragile and mortal, ever so unafraid. When he cries over her naked body, his tears, too, are muddy and hot.
Naked in the mud, holding hands, she fed him from her basket - roasted quince and apple, redcurrants, cheese and bread. He seemed subdued, somehow. Tamed. The way a wild animal might be.
“What are you the prince of, anyway?” Kasumi asked, staring at the stars.
Weakly: “Ich ne remembre. ‘Twas a longe tyme ago…”
“You can be the prince of me,” she said.
“Aye. The prynce of Kasumy.” He laughed. Embers flitted up into the air and were gone.
“Are you on fire?”
“Eis.”
“Have you been on fire this whole time?”
“It cometh and it goeth, aye.”
“Does it hurt to be on fire?”
“Eis, it feleth as brenning lik the fyres of Helle.”
“Are you really alive?”
“Ich thenke so - for feble, hope so.”
She reached towards the Milky Way and watched the tips of her fingers miss their mark. “Are there princes living in the stars too?”
“Nay. Ther is noonbody in the sterres.”
“Kokichi - can I call you Kokichi?”
“Aye; thou mayst thouen me as wel.”
“Okay. Do… thou… think that the fire will reach my village?”
He laughed affectionately. “Dost thou. Nay. T’will not.”
“How are… art thou so sure?”
“Ich can smelle the reyn, the comynge storm.”
“It's been raining all year. It even snowed. The fire kept burning.”
“The fyre ne may nat brenneth without ende,” he said. “The storm wole come, and washe over the lond. And it wole drown the villege in its reyn, and drenche the fyre in cold and dark agayn.”
“How long has it been burning?”
“For aeons.”
“Oh. And now it's going to die? How sad.”
“Eis. And juste as it bigan to trewely brenne.”
“I love thee, Kokichi. Thou art so beautiful.”
“And ich love thee.” He squeezed her hand. “Of al ich have knowne, thou brennest brightest in my sight. So seith my breth, my brest, my lond, my harte - for what harte ich have left.”
After the storm, the turbary was usable again. The ever-present smoke cleared from the sky, leaving it crystal-blue. September - the peat diggers struck a body, preserved in the dark soil. It had peat-dark skin and a withered face, peat-bleached red hair, only one arm, a dark mortal wound in its cheek. Along with it, a preserved calfskin cloak to keep it warm during the long centuries of burial. They carried it to the old wooden church and kept it there while the priest called people from the city to study it.
In the night, Kasumi walked barefoot down to the wooden church with a box of stolen matches. She walked into the church and searched until she found the small room with the body. She kissed his leathery ancient skin and slipped a loop of blue fabric onto his fourth finger. With a fare thee well, my love, out of the church she skipped, took every match from the box, struck them all at once and scattered them across the church porch. The building was up in flames by midnight, and Kasumi was out in the peat bog, dancing in the mud.