The truth is, we set out too late. Our head driver, Martin Swale, said as much, but my father hadn’t been inclined to listen. The esteemed Reverend Marshall could never err, an exhausting fallacy that his second wife Gertrude further fed with a convert’s ardency. Miss Gertie—I never called her “Mother”—liked to wag her lace-adorned talon at my affinity for moonlit walks and the parliamentary chatter of crows. But she was a slight, sickly thing, and little remains of her to discipline me now (medium; stringy).
Every member of our wagon train had braced themselves for hardship. Enough families had tried and failed to travel the trail to Willamette Valley for us all to understand that success would require sacrifice. But a full belly’s perspective on adversity is a book left behind or a half day’s delay to repair a split wagon wheel. Deep, aching deprivation sharpens that understanding.
The young couple with the newborn, Thomas and Prudence Boucher, reported the first snow. It had come early, like their daughter Patience (medium rare; tender), spelling our party’s doom as soon as September. For a time, the other nearly adult children and I rolled and threw packed snow with oblivious glee, but I broke apart from them when I noticed Father gazing fixedly into the growing icy dark.
Before I could tell him of our frivolous game, Reverend Marshall commanded, “Look to the horizon, child. What is it you see?”
Father would often cloak tests in questions, so I followed his line of sight and stood quiet for a time. As the unseasonable wind moaned around us, I squinted hard, willing my eyes to adjust. At first, I could make out nothing but shivering prairie grass and the sighing reds of the departing sun. Soon, however, as stars began to dot the unending sky and the moon dragged itself aloft, other sights were revealed to me. Some skittering things hid, while others emerged eager for their nocturnal delights. A creature that I hoped was a coyote howled far too close, prompting me to flick my eyes back to Father. But he still had not looked away from the horizon, and I noted then that his gaze was slowly shifting from left to right, never quite still for more than a few moments.
“I… I see the trail before us,” I stammered, so eager to prove that I was the hardy frontier daughter that I had claimed to be when our journey began. “If the oxen make good time tomorrow, perhaps we might reach the next trail marker by—”
“No,” Father interjected in a hushed whisper. It had the sharpness of a slap. “Tell me true, Emmeline. Can you not make it out?”
Even as my eyes grew acquainted with the dark, there was little I could identify beyond nameless shapes and shadows. But as it happened, Mr. Swale had just begun to gather kindling for the party’s fire, and so the illumination from the swaying gas lamp at his hip assisted me. As he bent and rose, bent and rose, his lamp cast enough light to solve certain mysteries. A towering mass that I’d feared was a bear showed itself as a patch of overgrown brush. The rattling that I’d heard as a venomous snake’s warning was in fact the rush of a small freshwater brook, a boon in this dry, uncertain land to be sure.
My heart had nearly nestled back into my chest when I saw something that I had to blink rapidly to comprehend. There, where my father had not ceased to stare since I’d joined his side, were two small, red flames with no discernable source. An abrupt gasp nearly suffocated me.
“Then you can perceive it.” Father sounded more relieved than I felt he ought, but I dared not look away to read his face. “Good. At the very least, I am not mad.”
I swallowed to prevent the salted meat I’d eaten at the noon hour from returning. “Father, I have never seen its likeness.”
“Alas, I have,” Father muttered, wiping his brow with his sleeve without breaking focus. “This sight I have seen every night since we entered the Kansas Territory. It is possible, though, that it joined us before then, when I had not yet the wits to see it.”
The two red flames continued to hover side by side in the distance, never drawing closer but never quite receding into the darkness, either. A lizard of a shiver trailed down the length of my spine. “You speak of it as if it is a being and not some trick of the moon.”
Moving slowly, Father positioned his tree branch of an arm in front of me. “The moon is honest on the prairie. Mr. Swale advised me as such, and he has made this journey for more years than you’ve yet lived.”
He then grasped my shoulder and began walking backward, all without tearing his gaze from the two red flames. I followed suit, although something lingered just on the edge of my mind, whispering that I was walking the wrong way.
It was not until we had returned to the safety of the party campfire and our circled wagons that I ventured to speak again. “Those two red lights…if not the moon, what are they?”
Something I had never seen on my father’s face before now lingered there, draining the hale color from his skin. Not even when he was reciting scripture did his lips purse so tightly as they did that night. His cheekbones jutted into his face, carved in deep by what I eventually recognized as fear.
“Eyes, Emmeline. They are eyes.”
That night, I dreamt of Mother. I had been blessed to call her mine until my sixteenth year, when a wasting sickness had consumed her in less than a fortnight. Shortly before this fatal illness, my parents had quarreled about our family making its fortune out West. In the dream of a memory, I recalled tiptoeing to the top of the staircase when their disagreement had grown loud enough to wake me.
“Please, Eleanor. Think of the opportunity we could secure in places unknown,” Father pressed from his seat at the kitchen table. “I could found a house of worship and establish the Marshalls as leaders of a new community. Then our Emmeline’s prospects would surpass the highest hopes we have ever had here.”
I heard Mother sigh as clearly as if she were standing beside me again. “You assume much, Henry. How swiftly you have forgotten the Hartfords’ tribulations on this trail.” While silence lingered between them, I peeked from my hiding place to see Father crossing himself. “May their souls rest in His care.”
Mother wrapped her arms around Father from where she stood behind his chair. They both smiled and held one another for a long while. My heart ached in the presence of something I could never reclaim. After the clock struck ten, Mother whispered, “Please hear me, love. I do not believe the rewards outweigh the perils of this journey. Let us stay.”
Before I could hear more, my dream shifted into a memory of tending to Mother during her final days. Save to retrieve fresh linens, I had never left her bedside, so I was privy to all she endured, shouldering the burden alongside her. One evening, I was wiping the sweat from her golden hair when she suddenly grasped my wrist with unexpected strength.
After a reflexive yelp, I managed, “Mother?”
She peered up at me with emerald eyes that mirrored my own. “My time is short, Emmy. You should know that your father is determined to drag you into a dangerous land, despite my protestations. One to which we are not accustomed and not invited.”
I looked down at her grip and then back up at her gaunt face. “Leave? But this is our home.”
With a soft smile, Mother closed her eyes. “Home never leaves you. Just as I shall never leave you.”
Tears slid down my cheeks as I bent to kiss Mother’s brow. Right as my lips touched her skin, her eyes flew open. To my horror, they were no longer the green of a peacock’s feather. Instead, Mother’s eyes were an unnatural milky white, and her grip grew so tight that her nails dug into my flesh.
“Be not swayed by meager promises of riches and standing,” she growled in a deep voice that was not her own. “That path is paved with corpses, much like the one you will soon travel.”
I tried to pull away, but Mother would not relent. Blood trickled from my wrist. “One has heard a mother’s last plea for her babe. The bargain is made. Loneliness will not be her companion on this bloody trail if proof of appetite is presented.”
Her strange words confused and frightened me. “Mother, I—”
Abruptly she sat up and yanked me close, her otherworldly gaze boring into me. “The bargain is made.”
Before I could ask what she meant, the world I once knew swirled around me and vanished.
Moments later, I awoke with a gasp on my bedroll. Sweat left me shivering, but I dared not stir for fear of waking Father and Miss Gertie on the other end of our covered wagon. My father’s second wife was just as light of a sleeper as she was heavy-handed with the switch, so again I closed my eyes. I tried to focus on the crickets sawing away in the distance and the rhythmic sounds of Mr. Swale tending the fire nearby. Even so, each time I began to drift back to sleep, all I could see were Mother’s milky eyes.
Premature frost crept across the prairie, matching our wagon train’s pace no matter the speed. Everyone grew more careful—with their rations, their wagon loads, their horses and oxen, and their associations. That was around the time that Father forbade me from mingling with other families. Although I did not understand why, I did not doubt his guidance, for while my cheeks remained rosy and full, the children with whom I’d played just a few weeks before started to fall like starved flies. Even Ginnie Carver, my closest confidante and a renowned lover of sweets, was not immune to the mysterious wasting sickness that spread so quickly through our party (rare; juicy).
After our hired wagon driver perished (well done; tough), it fell to me to retrieve fresh water for my kin each day. One such afternoon, Father kept me in the corner of his eye until I passed over a hill toward the bustle of moving water. Despite my polite inquiries, he had refused to speak again of the red eyes in the dark. Yet every sunset, Reverend Marshall stood fast outside of the circled wagons, watching for something until the last hues faded from the sky. Because the dark had not yet come that day, I suppose he thought me safe on my own.
Although the stream had sounded so close, my feet ached by the time I reached its shore. When I turned around to assess my journey, I saw only wind dancing through endless grassy hills. Stranger still, I heard a discordant splash that revealed I was not alone, despite wandering from the wagon train in solitude.
“Do you startle so easily, girl?” quipped the dark-haired man across the stream. As he watched me fumble with my bucket in surprise, his mouth curled up into a scoundrel’s half smile.
Something about his brazen air raised my hackles and loosened my tongue. “Begging your pardon, sir, but you know nothing of me.”
I then focused too intently on my task, which seemed to provoke the young man to antagonize me further. “I see. A snake may startle, but its venom is ever deadly.”
A curt laugh escaped my lips as the pail filled with water. “Are you in the habit of insulting strangers without so much as an introduction? I may be a snake, but you appear to have been raised among wolves.”
The other side of the man’s smile filled his cheek, at which point I noticed that he was particularly fair and lacked a coat to protect him against the impending winter. His eyes, too, were an unsettling dark burgundy that I had never before beheld.
He swiftly halted my scrutiny. “Are you so certain that this meeting is our first?” I studied him for a long moment, my brow knitting in concentration. Although I could not place his face, something about the young man with the dark curls felt known to me. Staring just as intently back at me, he took a step closer, and I wondered why I didn’t hear his boot disrupt the stream. One more stride might have brought him beside me, but water overflowing from my pail broke my focus, and good sense bade me draw back.
“Excuse me, Mr…”
“I’m known by many names, but you need not address me so formally. Aldric will do.”
“Fine. Excuse me, Aldric.” My chore done and my patience thin, I heaved the pail out of the stream and onto the shore with trail-forged ease. When I stole a glance at the broad shouldered man, I saw his eyebrows arc. It was plain that he was impressed. “Just as I’d hoped. You, Emmeline, are a survivor.”
Despite the sunshine overhead, ice filled my fingers. “Tell me how you know my Christian name, or God help me, I will scream.”
The young man stood by my side then, towering above me and so close that I could smell the amber and sea salt in his hair. “Why? Who would hear you?”
Unable to move, I could only watch as he tucked a loose strand of my golden hair behind my ear. To my surprise, the brush of his large finger along my jawline sent a surge of warmth throughout my body. As I closed my eyes, Aldric positioned his lips close to my ear. “You are exactly as promised.”
My breath caught in my throat, and I found I could not speak or move. Terror mixed with a famished ache in my chest, holding me in place.
Aldric moved closer still, and this time, his lips brushed my ear. “Believe in me, Emmy. You’ll hunger for nothing if you do what’s required. After all, the bargain was made.” Time froze as I felt Aldric’s strong arm curl around my waist, slowly closing the distance between us. I watched the movement unfold as if I was floating above our two figures, powerless and indeed unwilling to stop it. I might have disappeared into the expanse with him then and there if not for a familiar voice calling my name.
“Emmeline! Where are you?” Father shouted, his words tinged with worry. I turned to spot him at the top of the hill and regained enough control to wave in greeting. However, by the time I looked back at the young man, he was gone.
As I said, we set out too late. When the cold settled in and snow slowed our progress, we began to lose members of our wagon train every night. Those with weak constitutions were the first to fall, which included Miss Gertie (again, medium; stringy). Then the young Boucher family perished together, in love to the last (to reiterate, medium rare; tender). Even Father could not endure as I seemed to be able, wasting away due to his refusal to dine on our last provisions (raw; unsampled). Soon enough, the only souls that remained were myself and the head driver, Mr. Swale.
On the night when it became just us two, I bedded down in my father’s wagon, while Mr. Swale sat by our campfire and kept watch. In the twilight before sleep, I wondered how long Mr. Swale would be able to maintain health and vigilance. How close could we reasonably get to the Willamette Valley from wherever it was we found ourselves now? Even as the winter gusts howled outside, I somehow felt so safe and warm that dreams soon took the place of worry.
Sometime later, the absence of sound woke me. No longer did I hear Mr. Swale prodding the fire, nor was the wind lapping at the wagon’s calfskin covering. Never had I heard a world so quiet.
Fueled by the instincts of my forebears, I emerged from the wagon and drew toward the fire. It was only embers, but the full moon overhead provided more than enough light to see. Mr. Swale had fallen asleep on the cold, lifeless ground; his ragged snores clarified that his time was short. For a moment I feared I would soon be alone, but then I saw what I had been seeking since I first gazed upon them: the two red eyes swaying soundlessly in the dark.
“Emmeline,” rumbled a deep voice I had not wanted to forget.
As the eyes drew closer, the scents of smoky amber and the sea in winter surrounded me. Dark curls came into view, as did a face too pale to belong to the living. “It’s you,” I breathed. “I thought you had left me.”
The tall man from the stream slowly shook his head as a half-smile overtook his face. Aldric enveloped me in his arms and fixed his red eyes on me. “Never.”
I rested my cheek on his chest and sighed. “Why did you return so late? The things I have done…”
“I had to be certain,” he replied simply as he stroked my long hair.
“And are you?”
“That depends.” Aldric tilted my chin up to meet his gaze. “Could you walk beside one such as me?”
The dying fire and Mr. Swale began to fade from view. I no longer knew where I was nor the anguish that I had once felt about consuming the dead. All memories and sentiments from my life before evaporated as if they had never been. By Aldric’s side, all I wanted was to devour and be devoured.
“A thousand times, yes.”
No sooner did the words leave my lips than Aldric covered them in a deep, ravenous kiss that left me breathless. Once I’d tasted him, I forgot what it was to be a scrounging mortal just a few days from starvation. The eons belonged to us, and hunger fueled our every step. At long last, we became two pairs of red flames, lying together in wait for the next wagon train.
Alexandra M. Lucas (she/her) is a Game Writer II at Electronic Arts. She won the GDC Game Narrative Review Platinum Award twice and the 2022 Dark Sire Award for Psychological Realism for “In the Deep”, originally featured in HamLit‘s Spring Issue: Alter Ego. Her short stories have appeared in Coffin Bell Journal and Whatcom WRITES, and her poem, “Leftover,” won a 2020 Sue C. Boynton Poetry Merit Award. In 2023, she was named an IGDA Foundation Next Gen Leader, and her poem, “Water Like Honey,” was a 2025 Pushcart Prize nominee. In October, Alexandra spoke at the Austin Film Festival on a panel entitled, “Inside the Making of Battlefield.”
Including “In the Deep”, Alexandra’s poetry and prose has been featured in many other HamLit season and solstice issues: “Glow” in Special Issue ’24 After Dark, “Water Like Honey” in Vernal Issue: Due West, “The Other Side” in Winter Issue: No Man’s Land, “With You” in Summer Issue: Second Place, “Harmony” in Fall Issue: Golden Age, “Soldier’s Like Us” in Summer Solstice: Life Expectancy, and “Covenant” in Winter Solstice: Without Pause.