A Thread of Time: Firesetter, Book 1 (7 page)

“Go, Jan!” Pellen called again, grabbing
the tiller and swinging it to and fro.  Had I not been so busy trying to set
the sail, I would have told him the rudder was not an oar and no amount of
swaying would propel us any further.

“I can’t,” I cried instead, pulling the
sail up as quickly as I could, but there was no wind to catch us, only the
river’s current to carry us out to sea. 

“Stop!” the men yelled, their guns
flashing brightly with yellow light.  Something pinged against the mast,
followed by a scream from Pellen.

“He’s hit!” Dov called.

“Uncle?”  I scrambled across the deck into
the cockpit where Pellen was clutching his arm, blood running through his
fingers like a sieve. 

“Do something,” Dov begged.

“I’m trying!”  I pulled the tiller from
Pellen’s hand, and pushed him onto the cockpit floor where he lay stunned,
watching the blood pool around him.  His face had gone deathly white and his
body began to shake. 

“Take the boys to the motherland, Jan,” he
murmured.  “No matter what happens to me.”

Pointing the boat down river, I did my
best to fill the sail, although it merely luffed and rippled, flapping like a
useless wing.  A shot pierced the sail and another hissed by my ear.  “Get
down!” I yelled to Dov and Amyr, who stood clutching the cabin door.

“Do something!” Dov demanded and for the
second time, I thought he was speaking to me.

“I am!  I am steering the boat.  Get on
the floor before you are hit, too.  Take Amyr with you,” I shouted, but neither
boy paid any attention to my voice. 

Dov was pulling Amyr forward, instead of
down into the safety of the boat. 

“What are you waiting for?  Stop this
now.”

My cousin raised a hand, his palm
outstretched as if to catch an unseen ball, and then, I saw a flash of bright
white light.

From the shoreline, I heard an explosion,
a thunderous boom followed by another, and accompanied by the rancid scent of
burning flesh.  At the same moment, my sails filled, a ferocious wind erupting
from behind my back, catching us and propelling us forward at a rapid clip. 

We raced down river as if we were flying. 
The sounds and scents from the explosion at the wharf receded into the past. 
With them, disappeared my mother and my auntie and all of my life in that tiny
village.

Instead, I was embarking upon an adventure,
a journey to a new life in the motherland across the sea with Pellen, Dov, and
my cousin, Amyr, whose eyes shone like a million stars. 

Just as we passed the mouth of the river,
bursting out to the open sea, Amyr placed a hand upon my uncle’s wound and
healed it with his touch.

Chapter 9

Ailana

When I was eighteen years old, I was
admitted to a university across the continent, surprising everyone, except for
myself.  It was in the outskirts of the Capitol City, a prestigious and well known
institution, and I was very proud to have attained the rights to study there
amongst the most learned professors and smartest students in the land.

“How will you pay?” Grandmother demanded,
barely glancing up from the needlework in her lap.  “I certainly can’t afford
it.”

“I will find a way,” I insisted.  “I know
I will.”

“Better take your needle and thimble.  You
can always sew.”

I would never sew.  I would wait tables in
a restaurant, or sweep the floors and polish the silver in the house of a great
lady, long before I would submit again to hemming, darning, and tatting. 

“Suit yourself,” Grandmother said with a
self-important sniff.  “But, take this letter with a copy of my old royal
commission.  It will admit you into the service gates of the Imperial Palace
where, at least, you’ll be paid well for your toils.  Now, thank me, you
ungrateful child and give your old grandmother a kiss goodbye.”

I did both, somewhat insolently and with
little gratitude, although in hindsight, I have realized it was Grandmother and
her insistence that I take a needle, which brought the most cherished days of
my life.  Instead, at that moment, I left with anger in my heart for not once
did she congratulate me on my acceptance.  Not once did she say, ‘Good work,
Ailana.’

Neither did Embo, who was preoccupied with
her little family and never cared much for me anyway.  The feeling was mutual,
although for Grandmother, we faked affection.  Since the arrival of Embo’s
husband and baby, Taul, our precious space seemed overly cramped, as well as
overly noisy.

Taul was a difficult infant, prone to
screaming throughout the night, making it impossible for anyone to sleep. 
Neither could we work, or study during the day.  We snapped at each other
incessantly, blaming one another for our bad humor, which made an already
difficult situation simply unbearable.

“One less person in this house is a good
thing,” Embo remarked, as the two of us air kissed and mumbled false words
about how we might miss one another.

I took a bus across the continent, the
cheapest means of travel I could afford, having saved coins from every bit of
sewing in the last year.  I rented a room in a boarding house adjacent to the
university’s campus, which included a shared bath, a well-worn cot, and access
to a communal kitchen. 

After settling in, I walked about the
campus, relishing my new found freedom in this grand atmosphere of higher
learning.  My eyes soaked in the ancient stately buildings, the green swept
lawns bordered by blossoming cherry trees and the beautiful, intelligent
students congregating beneath them.  I felt blessed to be here amongst them,
although I considered myself just as worthy and smart.  Unfortunately, neither
my blessings, nor brains were sufficient to keep me there.

Within six months’ time, I had run out of
funds.  Within six months’ time, I was expelled from the university.  In our
tiny ghetto back in our little corner of Farku, my scholastic abilities were
impressive.  In this great university, in this once great Imperial city, my intelligence
was only slightly above average, while my study habits were exceedingly poor.

It was my own fault.  Never before had I
been so far from my grandmother’s protective wings with so much excitement at
my disposal and the freedom to take advantage of it all.  And, I did, for in my
six months at the university, those learned professors taught me only one
thing.  I was part of the generation that would see our hopes dashed.  We had
lost both our parents and siblings to the Disease.  We had watched the once
brilliant Empire crumble around us, and with it, the promise of our future. 
The precipice was directly ahead, with a path guaranteed to be steep, so there
was nothing to do but celebrate; drink, dance, and make love. 

I took this lesson to heart and I partied
with the best of them.  I lived for the moment because they convinced me that
was all I would have.  The future was bleak, the learned men said.  There was
only now, and now would be gone by tomorrow, so live for today and never look
back.

Six months later, I was alone, unable to
pay for my room, with no classes to attend.  My so-called friends had no use
for me anymore either.  Without my university admittance, I was no longer one
of them.  Instead, I became one of the many nobodies who lived upon the street.

It was spring then, and fortunately, a
warm one, for without anywhere else, I found myself spending each night on a
city park bench.  That was if I could find an empty bench.  Otherwise, a tree
or patch of scraggly grass would do.  Once or twice, I tried to sleep on
cement. 

During the day, I went in search of
employment, something that was becoming more difficult to obtain, especially
for a young Karut woman from Farku.  At night, I lay wherever I might, my coat
and small bindle bag as a blanket and pillow, staring at the sky and wondering
where I would end up. 

Sometimes, I would imagine myself in the
motherland, a place I had never been to, nor ever desired to be.  Yet, it gave
me comfort in a way, imagining myself sleeping upon the forest floor, beneath
these same stars, as my ancestors had done for centuries before.  If they could
survive as this, certainly, so could I.  If they could brave the wild animals
of the night, I could brave the creatures who roamed these city streets. 

Although, I quickly became adept at
defending both my person and place for the night, with Grandmother’s needles
and shears at the ready in my pocket, my homeless adventure ended quickly when
the brief spate of warm spring weather turned into a deluge of torrential
spring rain.  The few shelters in the city quickly filled, as well as all
doorways and abandoned buildings, thus increasing the urgency for me to find a
place out of the storm.

I could return to Farku, but I was
determined to avoid that at all costs.  I would not go back and admit my
failure, especially so soon.  I resolved to keep trying, even if it meant I
would take up the needle and thread again, and so with my grandmother’s letter,
I approached the Palace gates. 

The guard took pity on me.  That could be
the only explanation for his generosity.  I sincerely doubted that the
recommendation of an elderly Karut woman, who had once sewn for the King’s
mother, held any weight.  Neither was it my appearance, for I was wet and
ragged, my hair knotted and filthy, my clothing dirty and torn.  Still, I
landed inside at the behest of the Royal Seamstress.

Living in the palace was little different
from the university boarding house.  In fact, the university was better, in
that my bed was entirely mine.  At the palace, I shared a bunk with two other
girls, who I never saw awake, nor ever learned their names, although I knew one
was a housemaid and the other, a cook. 

The housemaid was tidy and after her, the
sheets were always pulled tight and the bed nicely made.  When her schedule
briefly changed and the cook became the one who preceded me, she left a tiny
mountain of crumbs, as fine as grains of sand, scattered throughout the sheets.

In our room, there were eleven other bunks
with thirty-six girls overall to share the bathroom and showers.  Our meals
were taken in the servants’ cafeteria and our two sets of uniforms were washed
every week.

My job as seamstress-apprentice was to
repair those same uniforms, for the staff had a habit of acquiring holes and
tears.  When I proved I could darn well enough or reweave with the best of
them, I advanced to new construction where I sewed together caps.

Six months later, instead of acquiring a
university education, I was promoted to the title of Seamstress and placed on
the King’s staff.  Had there been a queen or even a princess, I might have
preferred to design their beautiful gowns, but there was neither, both having
been lost to the sickness several years prior.

Instead, I was given the King’s own
trousers to hem, his cuffs to take up or let down, his buttons to replace, his
aiguillettes and epaulettes to reweave.  For this, I was also given a purse
full of coins, which on my weekly day-off, I took into the city and deposited
in a bank. 

I spent a few coins on clothes for myself,
for on that day-off, I chose not to look like a seamstress-servant, but rather
a woman of means enjoying herself about town.  Once a week, I treated myself to
a nice meal in a restaurant, and once every two months, I went to a salon and
had my hair styled.  It pleased me inordinately to pretend I was someone else
here in the Capitol City amongst the planet’s most well-to-do.

On one such day in the beginning of the
autumn when the last of the sun’s warmth was turning the marble building into a
million shades of pink, I was returning from my outing to the city, strolling
lazily among the palace grounds.  I was reluctant to retire to my shared bed
and the work day that would commence in precious few hours.  The grounds looked
so pretty and inviting, encouraging me to waste my sleep-time amongst them. 

The icicle fountain, made entirely of
glass, was turned on, an exceedingly rare occurrence in those days.  Spewing
brilliant streams of water, in every color imaginable, the structure rose from
the courtyard like a giant mountain.  Surrounding it were roses in as many
colors as the fountain’s streams.  It was a magnificent sight to behold that
night, made only more so by the rising of the two golden moons.

With a satisfied sigh, I sat down on a
nearby bench, enjoying the music of the trickling waters and the emerging halo
of the celestial lights overhead.

At that moment, I felt as if I was living
in a world suddenly infused with magic.  I did not regret any choice I had made
then, despite having still a needle and a thread, instead of a university book
in my hand.

“Do you mind if I sit down?” a man asked,
interrupting my silent reverie and stealing my eyes away from the color-filled
pageant before me.

I waved my hand dismissively, while at the
same time sidling over to the edge of the bench, even though there was plenty
of room for him and more.

He settled in, his weight shifting the
bench slightly in his direction.  For half a minute, he sat prone, as if
holding his breath, his body filled with tension, before he moved again,
leaning back, relaxing into his seat.

He coughed.  He shifted his weight.  He
lifted one knee and crossed one leg over another.  He fumbled in his pockets until
he produced a cigarette. 

“Do you mind?” he asked politely, his
accent clipped and highly refined.  “Or, may I offer you one?”

I shook my head.  I didn’t smoke, and
neither did I care to have to breathe the exhalations of his. 

“I would prefer that you did not
contaminated the air which we much share,” I replied haughtily, feigning the
accent of the high-born, who lived in the beautiful suites above us,
surrounding us on either side.

He paused, clearly startled by my
reprimand, the cigarette flicking nervously between his fingers.  The tension
upon this bench increased, but I had claimed it first and would not willingly
relinquish it without a fight.

Now, lighting the cigarette with a match
he drew across the bench seat, he took a long drag before exhaling over his
shoulder, the one opposite to me. 

“I shall breathe this way,” he remarked. 
“It shan’t affect you.  It shall not stain those beautiful teeth that you
obviously prefer to hide.”

I didn’t deign to respond and instead of
smiling, I profoundly frowned.  I may have also sniffed a little, or made some
other noise, for on his next drag, I heard him chuckle.

I tried to ignore him, preferring to watch
the sunset and the ascent of the moons.  I sat this way, my back turned to him
until he finished his cigarette and tossed it on the ground.  Smashing it with
his foot, he leaned forward on the bench, running a hand through his waves of
dark, disheveled hair, whereupon a wayward lock fell directly in front of his
left eye.

“It is the last of the summer,” he
commented, trying to draw my attention back to him.  “We are fortunate in this
lovely night.  I fear that soon the rains shall begin.”

“Indeed,” I muttered and though I tried
not to look his way, I found myself studying him with the corner of an eye. 

From where I sat, I could not discern the
color of those eyes, or his curly hair, nor could I tell whether he was old or
young, or if I knew his face. 

“Did you know this fountain was originally
commissioned by the Great Emperor for his beloved wife?  This place was the
very center of the courtyard of their once magnificent Imperial Palace.”

I didn’t know this and neither did I
respond, which he took as a reason to continue his explanation.

“The roses that surround us were once a
great garden, another testament to her.  He was quite the romantic, the Great
Emperor was, or at least, that is what we have been taught to believe.”