Eight Days of Luke by Diana Wynne Jones Page B

pouring out, far more frantic and many more of them, treading on one another, pushing, spilling out on to the road, shouting, waving their arms and getting in the way of cars. One man’s coat was smouldering and two people were beating it out for him. A lady stumbled and sat down in the gutter. In a matter of minutes, the road was in chaos, with people running all over it, cars stopped in zigzags, a crowd gathering, and a policeman and two traffic wardens trying to move everyone off and not succeeding.
    David looked at Luke. He was smiling, smiling, watching the building as if he were entranced. “Luke,” David said.
    Luke did not answer. Long flames were beating out of all the open windows. Where the windows were shut, David could see fire behind the glass, orange and whirling, like a sunset reflected back to front.
    â€œLuke,” said David, “I didn’t mean—”
    â€œBeautiful, isn’t it?” Luke said raptly.
    With a merry double blaring, a fire engine swept down the street and stopped outside the building. Then another came roaring and blaring from the opposite direction. While the firemen jumped down and unreeled hoses, police cars arrived, blaring too, with blue lights flashing on top.
    By this time, everyone else in the shop had realized there was a fire. Assistants and ladies shopping came crowding round David and Luke in great excitement.
    â€œJust look at those flames! The size of them!”
    â€œThere’s another fire engine on its way. Look.”
    â€œWe were in that very building only half an hour ago!” Astrid told people inaccurately.
    â€œJust think of the cost of all that damage!” someone said.
    â€œOh,” said someone else. “This has made my day!”
    It certainly was exciting. David admitted that. But he was struggling with that sick, uncertain, itchy feeling you have when you know you have done something wrong. Flames were lashing from all but the top windows now, and those were smoking. Three hoses were going, in solid arches of water, but they only made the windows steam and splutter and had no effect on the flames. Luke was laughing gently, living in those flames, basking in their heat, and, David was sure, somehow whipping them up to greater power in spite of all the firemen could do. David had no doubt at all that Luke was a very strange person indeed and that Luke had made the fire to please him. That was why he felt so itchy and guilty.
    The trouble was that David, particularly in the holidays, was so used to feeling guilty that he had come to ignore it whenever he could. He found himself pretending that the fire was nothing to do with him; that it was probably nothing to do with Luke either; and that, anyway, he had no influence over Luke. He had almost stopped at least the sick part of the feeling, when he looked up, because flames burst out of one of the top windows and across the roof, and flared into the sky against rolls of thick smoke. And he saw two office girls on the roof, scrambling toward a chimney and looking quite terrified. He caught one in the act of throwing away her silly, Astrid-type shoes in order to climb better, and he knew he must do something.
    â€œLuke,” he said, “I think those girls are stuck.”
    â€œStuck?” Luke said vaguely. “Yes, I expect so. The stairs and the lift have gone. The roof’s going in a minute.”
    The women round David saw the girls too, and began asking one another why somebody didn’t do something. David took hold of Luke’s elbow and shook him.
    â€œLuke, could you stop this fire if you wanted?”
    â€œOf course,” said Luke, but his eyes were fixed on the heart of the building and he was not really attending.
    â€œThen could you stop it now?” David said. “Those girls are going to be burned.”
    Luke smiled absentmindedly. “Little twits,” he said. “They went to comb their hair first, then they