Steed and Molly projected themselves forward in near time.  They saw the small boy they had saved.  He was sleeping in a lower bunk bed and his older sister slept in an upper bunk bed above him. 

Molly whispered, “What is that awful smell.”

Steed said, “Maybe one of them farted.”

“Farted?  What does that mean?”

Steed smiled.  “Sometimes stinky gases are produced in the colon and they are expelled at times with amusing sounds.  I heard some of the boys joking about it around the birthing ponds.”

Molly shook her head.  “What a strange world Lucifer has trapped us on.”

Suddenly the woman they had seen at the pool appeared.  She screamed, “That is the smell of fire.  The house is on fire.  We’ve got to get them to wake up. I can’t project thoughts like you two children can.  Please.  Please wake them up.”

Steed said, “I thought you wanted the boy to die.”

“I don’t want him to die.  Not really, but there are those who do and they will cause you problems. Regardless, it is not him that I want you to save.  I want you to save my niece and grand niece.”

Molly smiled for she now felt the woman had compassion.  She thought perhaps the woman was someone who might become a friend, and perhaps be helpful. Still though, the strangeness of the woman bothered her.  Trying to stop thinking about the woman so she might better focus, Molly projected, “Wake up.  Smell the fire.”

The boy opened his eyes and smiled at Molly.  Then he rolled over and went back to sleep.

“He saw me.  The boy saw me.  But he didn’t understand. Why did he see me?  He shouldn’t have been able to see me.”

Steed projected, “Wake the hell up.  The damned house is on fire.”

The mother began screaming.  “Harley, the house is on fire.  Let’s get the kids and get out of here.”

The girl sleeping above Luke heard her mother and quickly jumped out of the bed.  She tried to pick her brother up out of the bed, but couldn’t lift him up into her arms.  “Come on Luke.”

Luke woke back up.  He stared at his sister and then looked at Steed, Molly, and his Aunt Ellen. 

Steed told him.  “The house is on fire.  You need to get out of here.”

Three-year-old Luke asked his sister, “What is fire?”

“It is what is going to burn us alive if we don’t get out of here.”

“Yeah, out of here, that is what the man said.”

“What?”

“Nothing.  Where are mommy and daddy?”

“There.  I can see them through the smoke walking toward us.”

Harley, Byrdy, and their two children Luke and Mary, stepped out the front door of their house.  As they walked out on to the walkway, they looked back at the flames shooting out of the roof. The smell, the smoke, the flames, was something they would never forget.

Byrdy screamed in tears.  “That was my house.  Mine.”

Harley comforted his wife.  “I know.”

Byrdy said, “It was our house.  We had two homes and now we have no home.  What the hell is going to happen to us next?”

Harley said, “We will be okay.  We will get back on our feet.”

“I don’t want you doing anything illegal.”

“I won’t.  We’ve agreed that money isn’t that important. I’ll work at the Mill.”

Luke looked at his mother and remembered their other home with horses and a pond. He remembered two men coming into the home and forcing his mother off the phone. They talked so angry toward her.  Just thinking about the two men, made Luke angry.  He didn’t want to think about them.  He looked up at the fire.  He didn’t want to see the fire.  He buried his head in his sister’s arms and then looked up into her brown eyes and saw her silently crying.

Byrdy stopped crying and began to calm down.  She said, “Remember earlier, I started telling told you what I saw at the bank today but you were already running late for work and so I didn’t finish.”

“Yeah. What was that about?”

“I saw those two awful men who work for the state.  They were talking with that Puerto Rican man who bought our home in the country.  I saw Tatt Hartley walk up to them and give the state investigators an envelope.”

“Tatt Hartley, the son of the man from whom we bought the country home.”

 “Yes. They very quickly broke up their chat when they saw me.  As the state men were walking away, one of them called back to them to thank them for the directions. I doubt it was directions in the envelope that Tatt Hartley gave to the two men.  It was weird.  Now this.”

Harley looked at his wife. “I just rewired the house. I must have somehow messed up.  It is probably my fault. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to burn our house down.  It doesn’t make sense that what you saw at the bank has anything to do with this fire.”

“I know it doesn’t make sense that what I saw at the bank has anything to do with...” Byrdy again began to choke up as she looked at the flames. “It was just so odd.  And those two state investigators are such mean, nasty bastards.”

“There is no doubt that those two state officers did their best to take jurisdiction of the case against me for running shine.  If the Feds hadn’t taken control of the case, I would have been up the creek.”

A red fire truck pulled up with its eerie light twirling and its siren blaring. As firemen started setting up their hoses, the shooting flames and collapsing roof made it apparent there would be little of the house to save.  The house had burned quickly. Still, the brave men of the volunteer fire department did their job to stop the fire from spreading and save what they could.

An old green Plymouth pulled up.  Harley’s parents stood with Harley and Byrdy.  Byrdy noticed Luke shivering.  She opened the door to the car’s backseat and told Mary to sit with Luke in the car.  After Mary crawled into the car behind her brother, her grandmother reached down and picked something up off the ground.  Thinking Mary had dropped it, she handed it to her granddaughter.  Mary took it without much considering what it might be.

Thinking members of her family safe, Ellen thanked Molly and Steed for helping to save her loved ones.  Ellen looked at little Steed and Molly with great love.  She told them, “I am so grateful you took an interest in Byrdy. On the one hand I wish you would continue to watch over my niece and her family.  On the other hand, to do right by you I should tell you that it is doubtful Byrdy will have any more children after Jane.” Then as Ellen vanished, Molly and Steed recognized her.

 Molly whispered, “You know who she is, don’t you?  I don’t know why we didn’t recognize her soul right off.”

Steed nodded.  “That is Fitzgerald’s beloved.  I wonder why he isn’t with her.”

Molly added, “And she doesn’t seem to know us.  She has forgotten.”

“Maybe we look as different to her as she looks to us.  But I’m sure we are right.  I am certain that is Ellen.”

Molly said, “Yes, that is the Ellen that we know. It is strange that she has changed so much, and yet her parents on earth would give her the same name as she came to earth with.   Do you think we should heed her advice? We have become involved with a family we probably can never be born into.”

Molly and Steed first considered looking for another family to focus on, but then they decided to go backwards in near time to when Harley and Byrdy were children.  Besides wanting to know what Harley and Byrdy were like as children, they thought it would be interesting if they could find Ellen’s parents.  Since they gave her the correct name, they thought then perhaps they might remember more than Ellen and would remember them.  They also halfway thought and hoped they might find perspective parents who were part of that family during that time period.

When they attempted to go back in time, their attempt failed. Instead their projection had carried them farther into the future.  They saw Luke with a woman of color who was taking care of them.