Brandon watched Uncle Barra juggle balls of fire. Barra glanced at Brandon and nodded to him. Brandon stepped out of the crowd and Barra flung one of the fiery balls at him. The crowd gasped, then applauded when Brandon caught it easily, then tossed it back. Barra tossed two more in succession, and Brandon tossed them from hand to hand. He couldn’t juggle like his uncle, but Barra was the centerpiece here and Brandon was the sidekick.
The piece of cloth with a jar on it testified to his uniqueness. Before coming forward, there were a couple of dollars and some change. After, there was a bit more.
Brandon flicked his wrist and poured out the boric acid that came from a small container under his shirt. The flames slowly changed color, from red to green. The crowd applauded again.
This was the final part of the act, which was just as well, since three bobbies were heading their way. Barra said, “Okay,” and held out a piece of fabric. Brandon tossed the balls to him one at a time, and he caught them in the fabric, snuffing them out. More change fell on the bit of cloth at their feet before the crowd dispersed as the bobbies arrived.
“Hey, Barra,” said one, an older man who stood relaxed and easy with his uncle. “Who’s the new lad?”
“My nephew, Brandon,” said Barra, as Brandon bent to gather the fabric. The bobbies didn’t stop him, as it was kind of/sort of/not really enforced illegal to busk on the street at night. They were early, and they could go down the street to the other pubs and try and get more from the other tourists of the night.
“Toirse?” said one of the other bobbies. Torch? Brandon translated from the Gaelic.
“A wee bit,” said Barra. “Canna light the fire, but the flame don’t hurt him.” Barra doused the remnants of the baseballs with water, just to be sure they were out. “We’ll be moving along.”
“That you will,” said the older man. “Though that boy isn’t registered?”
“Left his ID back in the States.”
“Right,” he said, laughing. “Go on. Try near Sully’s. I hear a whole trainload o’ Japanese pulled into that bar tonight.”
“Thanks, Mil. Got it all, lad? C’mon then.”
They started walking south along the town’s Pub Alley. “Sully’s?” asked Brandon.
“We ain’ goin’ there.” Barra sighed, wiped his brow. “It’ll be a hot one tonight. Gonna be a lotta buskers, and I don’ want us to be one of many.”
He was right, as they passed assorted musicians and other street performers. Barra would stop to watch their technique, throw a few coins from his takings, and move on to the next. Barra didn’t need to perform on the street – he had a day job as a developer for a large pharmaceutical company. He just liked to. As he liked to say to Brandon, “Can’t let loose in a room fulla computers an’ wires.”
Brandon looked at the clock and thought another day gone. Another day closer to going home. Home to St. Martins, Missouri, with his overbearing mother and artistic father. To think, that the tall, thin, confidence man named Barra was his father’s brother.
Brandon was allowed to go to visit Barra for the summer. They had been writing back and forth for two years, since Barra came to the States to visit them. Barra had a magic trick to show the kids. He could generate fire in his hand. He could set fire to almost anything that was combustible. Brandon wrote to him and divulged his own secret – he could be set on fire and not be burned – not even the hair on his arms. He found out that when one Fourth of July, he went to set off a rocket with a long flame from a lighter, and the flame caught his coat, then his arm. The coat burned, but he did not.
His mother told him to not tell anyone. “They’ll take you away and use you for government experiments,” she said. His father, for once, agreed. His sister Anna thought it was cool and made him do it when their parents weren’t around to see.
From the moment Barra picked him up at the airport, they started working together. Barra was the one who figured out that Brandon himself was not combustible, but his sweat, blood, and tears were. (Other bodily fluids, they didn’t even want to try.) His sweat and tears were the most flammable, though the tears did not last long. His blood burned like oil, slow and steady, with not much heat.
For their “shows”, Brandon would get the balls wet with his sweat – which wasn’t difficult on these hot summer nights – and Barra would catch them, setting them on fire in his hand. Using Brandon’s ability, Barra could set rocks on fire. Barra told Brandon that he was “part of Brigid’s forge” just like he was. Brandon shrugged, not knowing where he got his ability from, but careful when he used it.
Although he could put unflammable items on fire, the fire was not his to control. Barra’s workshop showed the scorch marks of too many fires that raged out of control. As it was, Barra was working on a harness for Brandon, to generate fire that he could physically throw. Brandon’s fire could stick to things if thrown right from the palm of his hand, but burned out quickly.
Barra had a friend who has built a Dune-like “stillsuit” that used Brandon’s bodily fluids and kept them in assorted pouches and reservoirs along his arms. It hadn’t been perfected enough to pee in it yet, and the idea of using his urine as an accelerant blew his mind. A chemist friend of Barra’s suggested the boric acid trick, so Barra built a couple of small pouches with snaps that he could flick open and pour the acid in the palm of his hand. When the fire ignited, it was a beautiful green.
Thbey got to the end of Pub Alley. Barra turned back and shook his head. “Too busy for tonight, lad. Best go home.”
They started to walk back to the car, taking the road parallel to Pub Alley. The hackles of Brandon’s neck stood up suddenly, and he stopped. Barra stopped and turned around – there was a gunshot. Barra went down. Brandon ran to him and Barra yanked him down. “Stay down, lad, play dead.” Brandon buried his head in Barra’s chest.
“Well, well, well,” said a voice. “Pervert.”
Brandon turned his head to see a pair of pointed boots, skulls with metal spikes on the end. Brandon hugged Barra, but two men pulled him off. Brandon lashed out and kicked at the man in the boots. He had a mohawk dyed red as blood, and was built like a weightlifter. He wore only a vest with assorted pins and ribbons on them. Brandon saw what a few of them meant: the lightning bolt in a black triangle, the Celtic round cross.
“Feisty, ain’t he,” said the man. “You the bottom or the top?”
Brandon struggled against the two men holding him. The man then turned to Barra, who had gotten to a sitting position and was holding his shoulder. “He’s my nephew, f’r God’s sake,” said Barra.
Mohawk grinned. “Keepin’ it in the family this time around?”
“Let him go,” said Barra. “Whatever you do, just let him go.”
“We might, but then, we might not.” Mohawk kicked Barra right in the teeth.
Brandon cried out, “No!” and yanked harder. Set them on fire, do something, I’ll spit at them, don’t just lay there…
But Barra did lay there. He let the Mohawk kick him into unconsciousness. He was bleeding, mostly from the head, after those spike-toed boots had cracked into his skull. Brandon was crying by the time he was done, hanging limply from the men holding him.
They let him go, and he fell forward into the dirt. Mohawk grabbed Brandon by the hair and lifted his head. “Gonna fuck him now? Gonna suck his dick? How about sucking mine?” He thrust Brandon’s face into his own groin, and there was laughter behind him. “I can fuck him up the ass,” said somebody else, laughing.
“You fuck him and I’ll call you faggot,” said Mohawk darkly, throwing Brandon’s head to the side. His body toppled over, landing on Barra’s legs. “You wanna? Want me to call you faggot?”
“No, Rage,” said the man, sounding sheepish.
“Let’s go. Let the faggots bleed.”
Brandon cradled his uncle’s head, and that was how the whore and her john found them.