Flames: Snow Summary & Analysis

Nicola recalls a vivid memory of Nicola’s father coming home after a day of fishing and beaming when he sees her face. No feeling compares to that, except touching Charlotte for the first time. In the middle of the burning field, she grabbed her without thinking. She felt the burning warmth within Charlotte dying, and it was clear that her touch put the flames out. Later, when Charlotte suggested they run away from the airport police office, Nicola surprised herself by going with her. They collected Nicola’s car from the long-term carpark and began driving north. Now, Nicola drives as Charlotte sleeps. Nicola’s thoughts are a blur of images: her father’s smile, the dead wombats, and her fingers on Charlotte’s skin. These thoughts circle until she decides on a destination.

Nicola remembers Allen bringing Charlotte up from the dock at Melaleuca. Though at first Charlotte hardly looked at her, Nicola the prospect of having a friend in such a lonely place thrilled Nicola. Eventually, as Allen’s behavior began to worry Nicola and Charlotte, they started to go everywhere together and find comfort in each other’s company.  

After a few more hours driving north, Nicola pulls the car into a supermarket parking lot. She knows she should sleep, but instead she heads into the store and buys food to last them both a month. She drives on into the forest. Charlotte finally wakes up and asks where they are. Nicola says they’re almost at their destination, which is “somewhere safe.” As she drives, the landscape changes from ferny lushness to a flat plain dotted with ponds and boulders. Nicola follows the signage to Cradle Mountain. Charlotte is skeptical—it’s a tourist destination—but Nicola continues on along a narrowing road before coming to a stop in a small parking lot.

Nicola and Charlotte put on hats and gloves in the cold air. They take the bags of clothes and groceries from the trunk. Nicola tells Charlotte it’s a 15-minute walk to where they’re going, and they set off into the forest and up a winding mountain path. Soon, they arrive at a stone hut on the edge of a lake. The hut belongs to Oshikawa, a friend of Nicola’s father, who invited her family to visit a few years earlier. It’s the most fireproof destination Nicola could think of—a place for Charlotte to control her flames without causing too much damage, thanks to the stone walls, the lake, and the wet vegetation. Nicola is used to making plans that prioritize other people’s comfort and needs, but right now she feels driven by something deeper than a simple desire to help. 

It’s as cold inside the hut as it is outside. Charlotte builds a fire in the wood heater and looks for matches to light it before realizing she can simply shake sparks from her hand. Nicola collapses onto the couch and falls asleep without even taking off her boots. She wakes up in the middle of the night to the smell of smoke. The fire in the wood heater has gone out; she realizes the smoke is coming from a cushion beside Charlotte. There’s a stream of blue fire leaking from Charlotte’s ear. Nicola smacks the fire out of the cushion and puts a hand on Charlotte’s cheek. She feels the flame within Charlotte flicker out. Charlotte wakes up and apologizes. She tells Nicola to go back to sleep and gets up to tend the fire in the wood heater.

Nicola wakes up again hours later. Charlotte is unpacking the groceries in the kitchen. She brings Nicola a slice of toast. They find thermal hiking gear in the closets and, having nothing else to do, they head outdoors and walk without saying much to each other. After climbing to the edge of a crater, they can see Cradle Mountain in front of them: two peaks with a sagging sling that joins them. It’s getting late, so they start heading back to the hut.

Charlotte asks Nicola what her plan is. Nicola says they’re going to wait until Charlotte can control her “episodes,” and then they’ll sort things out with the police and the ranger. Charlotte asks what will happen if she can’t control the flames. Nicola doesn’t know how to reply. She worries that Charlotte thinks the plan is stupid, but when they get back to the hut, Charlotte makes a fire and prepares dinner, showing no signs of doubt. After Charlotte eats and showers, Nicola does the same.

Nicola wakes up later that night to the smell of smoke again. Blue flames are leaping out of Charlotte’s feet and burning the sheet on her bed. Nicola grabs Charlotte’s ankles, and the fire inside Charlotte dies, but the flames keep burning the sheet and Nicola’s wrists, too. Charlotte wakes up, swears, and smacks out the flames. Though Nicola says she’s fine, Charlotte swears again when she sees the burns on her skin. Nicola offers to stay in Charlotte’s room with her—the flames stop when she touches her. Charlotte refuses at first because of Nicola’s burns, but she eventually pulls the covers back on the bed for Nicola to get in beside her.

There are no more accidental fires for three nights in a row. Charlotte and Nicola sleep in the same bed, trying not to touch each other. In the mornings they go walking, and in the afternoons, Charlotte sits by the wood heater or beside the lake trying to control her flames—which sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t—while Nicola reads on the couch. When they talk about their families, Nicola mentions how Nicola’s father was “wrecked and hollow” after his seal died and Charlotte describes Levi and Charlotte’s mother’s death, Levi’s difficult nature and Levi and Charlotte’s father’s absence in general terms. At night, they change clothes in separate rooms before climbing into bed together, with Charlotte always falling asleep first.

A week after their arrival at the hut, there’s another fire. Nicola wakes up to see flames leaking out of Charlotte’s mouth. She touches Charlotte’s chin, but the flames don’t stop, so she runs her hand up and down Charlotte’s neck. Charlotte wakes up and sucks the flames back into her mouth. She tells Nicola to keep touching her. The next morning, after sleeping in, they hold each other again before getting up. They go for their usual morning walk without discussing what happened in the night, but they do share a kiss as they go out the door.

At the end of their walk, Charlotte and Nicola sit at the lake’s edge holding hands. Nicola gets up to go inside, but Charlotte points at a white car parked next to theirs in a lot. They see a stranger (the detective) trudging up the path toward them. Nicola says, unconvincingly, that it’s probably just a tourist. She doesn’t want anyone to threaten the life she’s living in this moment with Charlotte. Ten minutes later, the stranger emerges from the trees. She’s short-haired and dressed poorly for the weather. When she sees Nicola and Charlotte, she looks relieved, stops walking, and asks if they have any gin.