The door they had entered through was burning.
Its blue paint blistered. Elena could hear the lake beneath it, rushing into the wall, but the flames did not go out. They moved along a curtain rail that became a bookshelf halfway across the room. Books curled, blackened and fell through the water gathering on the floor.
Miles pulled her toward a gap beside the suitcase. Through it lay the hall of their first flat, its narrow stair leading somewhere she could not see. She did not want to go that way. It was farther from the real house's landing. But smoke was filling the bedroom behind them, and there was no clear air beside the blue door.
They went through the gap.
In the flat's hall she could hear a radio playing. Fire raced along the wallpaper above it. Elena tried to remember who had chosen the tune and found a blank that made her slow down. Miles kept moving. She caught up and put an arm around him because his knee had begun to buckle.
“Your hand,” she said.
“Leave it.”
The bandage was a towel, not a bandage. She knew she had given it to him. She could see herself opening a cupboard, but when she tried to find what happened before that, the cupboard stood in no room she remembered.
“Miles?”
He turned. “Here.”
She gripped his T-shirt beneath the sweatshirt. His body was warm. The floor under them shifted, becoming the studio's pale wood. Mirrors burned along one wall, showing flames where their reflections ought to have been. Elena saw herself without a partner and knew she could keep her balance on this floor. That knowledge remained, firm and useful. She led Miles around the broken edge of a mirror and found the stair beyond it.
It was the house stair. The railing had a chipped newel post she recognized from arriving that afternoon. She reached for it and could not remember arriving. A car, flowers, somebody at a door. She had those as facts, or perhaps only as things she had thought. The scene would not come.
Smoke thickened behind them. Miles caught her wrist and pulled her down. Elena wrenched against him.
He let go at once. She stayed crouched, her hand drawn against her chest. His fingers had been warm. She knew his name, knew they were getting out together. But the man reaching for her had no place beside a kitchen table, no voice she had learned to wait for. She could not find why she had let him take hold of her.
“The stair,” he said. “There. We need to get below this.”
She followed his pointing hand. The landing ran past the guest room to the stair. Through the smoke she could still see the chipped post.
“You go,” she said.
He moved toward it, keeping low. The towel slipped from his injured hand. He caught it against his ribs, stopped and bent his head. His breath came through his teeth.
Elena reached for his left arm. This time she put it over her shoulders herself.
“Lean on me.”
He looked at her. She waited until he let some of his weight come down, then took the next step with him. The wall was clear on that side. They kept close to it, bent below the smoke. Water covered the runner. It carried ash, a cherry stem, the corner of a photograph, a receipt with coffee on it.
At the guest room door Miles stopped.
Inside, the white bed was sinking. The café counter tipped above it, still bright with cups. A woman with a pencil through her hair turned toward him. Her mouth opened, but the sound that came from it was the house's low breath.
Elena pulled his arm. He would not move for a second. She saw that he was looking at something he wanted to keep.
“Come on,” she said.
He looked at her. Whatever he saw in her face made him flinch. He came away from the door.
At the top of the stair a man stood in a brown shirt. Elena recognized Daniel. Her husband. She knew that name and the relationship as she knew her own name. There should have been years gathered beneath them. She reached for one and found only the man she was seeing now, his hand extended.
“El,” he said.
His voice caught something still alive in her. For a moment she remembered a rainy walk, his cold fingers beneath her sleeve. Then fire passed across the wall beside him, and the walk was gone.
She made a sound. Miles tightened his good hand on her arm.
“Don't stop.”
Daniel's face changed. He seemed to be trying to find the expression that would hold her. Smile, grief, anger. Each lasted too briefly. Behind him the hall stretched into a bedroom, then a kitchen, then a street. Elena could see a woman turning in a green dress and knew, without feeling it, that she had once been that woman.
The stair gave a sharp crack.
She went down first. Miles followed, holding the rail with his left hand. Halfway down he slipped. She turned and caught his upper arm, bracing one foot against the stair above hers. His weight pulled at her shoulder. She bent her knees and kept him against the wall until he could find his footing.
“I've got you,” she said.
He looked at her. “Keep going.”
There was pain in his voice that she did not understand. They descended together. At the bottom the water reached Elena's thighs. It was bitterly cold. She could feel the small wooden stairs beneath it and remember, physically, how far the next step lay. She could not remember who had first come down them beside her.
The sitting room was full of fire. A sofa burned under the window. The man in the brown shirt stood behind it, growing indistinct. Elena looked once, then turned toward the kitchen because that was where the outer door stood. Miles tried to go through the hall to the porch, but a beam fell across it. He stepped back, swearing, and she pulled him after her.
The kitchen ceiling was smoking. The table had been pushed against the lake door by the rising water. Elena went beneath the edge of it, lifting with both hands. It moved slowly, scraping across the submerged floor. Miles shoved with his shoulder. His face twisted, but he did not stop until there was space beside it.
She reached the bolt. It was the ordinary kitchen bolt, cold and wet. Her fingers closed around it. She drew it back and pushed the door.
It opened only a few inches. Outside the lake stood against it, black water pressing toward the kitchen. Elena put her shoulder to the wood. Miles joined her. For a moment they could not move it. Behind them, through the sitting-room opening, the burning floor sagged. Water dropped through it with a deep rushing sound. It pulled at Elena's calves, back toward the fire. The pressure against the outer door eased, and the door swung open.
They went through with it.
Elena fell onto the steps, hitting her shin. Miles landed beside her and screamed as his injured hand struck wood. She caught his left wrist before he slid farther. For a few seconds they stayed there, gasping in air that smelled of smoke and cold leaves.
Outside. She knew they were outside.
Above them the bedroom windows shone orange. Fire moved through shapes that did not belong to the house, rooms rising where the roof ought to have been. A long pane of glass broke, showering the path with sparks. Elena stood and pulled Miles up.
They could not go through the trees. The porch end of the house was burning, and the track beyond it glimmered with the same false rooms they had left. The dock lay below them, dark and solid against the lake. She could see the overturned boat beside it. A rope ran from its bow to a ring near the first post.
Elena led him down the path. The water was retreating around their feet, rushing back toward the house, but it dragged at Miles's legs. He stumbled once, and she put his good arm over her shoulders. They reached the first post.
“The shore,” he said. “Not the boat.”
She looked along the bank. A narrow strip of stones led around the bay toward the trees. It had been underwater a few minutes earlier. Now she could see enough of it to place her feet. She took him along it, using the dock rail until it ended, then bending under his arm to keep his weight over her hips.
Behind them the house made a terrible sound.
It was not a voice. Elena turned and saw the roof sag. For a moment all the windows went black together. Then fire broke through the center, and something beneath it pulled the burning rooms downward as if the lake had opened inside the building.
Miles stopped walking. Elena held him upright. The last of the burning rooms collapsed into the lake. Beyond them the sky was still black, without even a pale line behind the hill.
Heat moved over the bay. Elena closed her eyes against it. When she opened them there were only broken beams, fire on dark water, and a part of the porch standing alone. The pressure in the air had gone. She could hear a bird in the trees, an ordinary sharp call.
Miles sagged against her. She lowered him onto the stones as gently as she could. He was still breathing. His good hand caught her sleeve and held it.
“Don't leave,” he said.
She crouched beside him. “I'm here.”
The first pale line appeared behind the hill. In its growing light she could see his face: a man in his late thirties, wet and hurt, gripping her as if he knew her. She remembered helping him down the steps and along this shore. Before the open kitchen door there was nothing she could enter.
“Tell me your name again,” she said.
He looked at her for a long time. His fingers loosened on her sleeve.
“Miles.”
She repeated it, keeping it carefully this time.