Bloodfire (The Sojourns of Rebirth) (5 page)

Catelyn stretched out her arms and legs like a cat, flexing
her fingers and toes as she prepared to get up and return to her
roost to deal with the extra rations she'd been debating the fate of.
Her mind was still clouded with thoughts of the past which often
bubbled up from her unconscious mind to plague her and try to
pull her down into despair.

However, this time her ruminations proved somewhat
useful as a sudden flash of insight struck her as she got to her feet.
In her most recent trip through the hallways of her memories, her
recollections of her father, and his valuable lessons, suddenly
reminded her of one of his problem solving techniques.

Just as they did now, his words and his wisdom would
often come to her at times when she felt as though she could very
easily have just given up and let her life go, and they had always
motivated her to see things differently. And that is exactly what
she did now to solve the situation with her excess food.

She knew that it was too much for her to eat by herself,
and storing the food was out of the question. Throwing away that
much food would be a crime to her. There was only one way to
solve her problem. She had to share it.

But as she had reasoned before, she couldn’t simply show
up at the marketplace with a box of food, without it drawing a
whole lot of unnecessary questions about where such a bounty had
come from. And her father had told her to think about things in
reverse to see them from a different vantage point, or turning them
upside down.

And so Catelyn sprang lightly from the roof as the sun
slipped down below the horizon, the wood roof slats still warm
beneath her soles, and returned to the inside of her roost. She took
her father’s words, and his idea, and applied them literally.

She gathered up all the food from the cache, which she had
wrapped in individual parcels, placed each one carefully in a large
box that she used for keeping dry goods, and then without a trace
of mirth, proceeded to turn the entire contents of the box upside
down.

The parcels tumbled out, spilling all of the food onto the
floor where they rolled, and bounced everywhere around her feet.
With her bubble, she both heard the low muffled thumps of each
package as they hit the floor, and felt the vibrations of each impact
through the soles of her feet. It both sounded and felt to her like
distant thunder rumbling on the horizon.

She mentally mapped the location of every scrap of food as
they fell, and they formed a clear mental image in her mind as they
were scattered and strewn around her. As she bent down to begin
picking up the first of the packages, a smile crept across her face.

Later that night, she took the food out of her roost the
same way she had carried it in. Six separate trips, with her pockets
packed with individually wrapped bundles of various foods. Only
instead of delivering the food to a single location, she spent that
night skulking from building to building, placing bundles of
wrapped food in window sills and garden beds and other obvious
places, so that the owners of the homes where she delivered the
food would find it the next morning.

Each home she stopped at got a single parcel, with the
exception being that she left two packages at homes where she
knew that there was a chosen family with a child.

Afterward, she returned to her roost exhausted, but
satisfied. Once again, she whispered a prayer to the Divines, who
had shown her what she should have seen for herself. It was not
lost on her that since losing her sight six sojourns ago the Divines
were still guiding her steps and helping her to find her way.

A small voice of doubt, one which she was familiar with,
tried to claw its way up from inside but she pushed it back down,
burying it deep. Feeling good about herself, she crawled over to
her blankets, curled up without undressing, and fell fast asleep.

Despite the pride she felt at her own generosity, when
dreams finally came, they brought forth more painful memories of
her past.

Catelyn stood motionless amidst the remains of her old
life.
It was almost another prayer before that young girl moved
a muscle. The words of the Imperial soldier rang in her ears like a
curse as she stood numbly in the cold, hollow shell that had once
been her home.
“You’re useless now.”
He was right, she knew. She had only seen ten sojourns.
She was blind. She was alone, and had never been apart from both
of her parents before. She had no idea how to survive on her own.
She was going to die.
Why is this happening?
she wondered.
No answers came to her. She felt nothing but emptiness
and crippling fear, and in combination, they paralyzed her.
She tried to picture her parent’s faces as they had been
when they had been alive, just a few prayers ago. But the only
visions of them that came to her now were of their last moments;
of their blood-soaked faces and bodies slumped on the floor,
pleading for mercy. And then the sobs came uncontrollably, as she
thought about how she would never again feel her father’s gentle
hands enclosing her in his strong embrace, or hear the soft
crooning of her mother’s voice as she sang with Catelyn before bed
each night.
She cried until her ribs ached from the exertion.
When the sobbing finally subsided, she reflexively wiped
at her eyes with the backs of her hands, expecting to feel the warm
moist tracks that her tears would have left down her face. But
instead of tears, she felt the ragged holes in her flesh where her
eyes had been burned away.
Her heart turned as cold as ice as she let her fingers
explore the damage that had been done to her. Grooves of raw
flesh ran in rivulets across the upper half of her face, like the tracks
of permanent tears carved into the shape of a mask. The pain was
gone completely now, surprisingly. The flesh beneath her fingers
was rough to the touch where the bloodfire had burned her, a stark
contrast to the smoothness of the surrounding skin. Feeling with
her fingers, she could tell that her eyes and the sockets were
melted together into a bulbous mass of scar tissue. Even here,
where the damage was the worst, she felt no pain.
She had never heard of bloodfire before this day, but it was
clearly something unique to have done so much damage and
caused so much pain, only to leave behind nothing but scars. Scars
which were now an unforgettable part of her life. Whatever it was,
bloodfire had marked her, branded her, made her a child of its
own.
In the same way, the words of the Imperial officer had
marked her in another way.
“You’re useless now.”
Catelyn repeated those words in her head and tried to find
the lie in them, but she couldn’t. Not without lying to herself.
“I am useless now, aren’t I?” she whispered softly to
herself. “What am I supposed to do?”
But then, almost as soon as she had formulated that
thought and the words passed her lips, her father’s words sprang
up from somewhere deep inside of her, almost as though he were
right there to correct her, teaching her another of his many
lessons.
“Sometimes, when you’re stuck on a problem, it helps to
turn things upside down, or turn them around, so they’re
backwards,” he would say, and Catelyn remembered trying really
hard to understand what good that would do, but it never had.
Although it hadn’t helped her when she had asked questions about
her lessons from the books they had given her on mathematics or
history, she set aside her doubts and fears and clung to these
words now like a lifeline. They were sacred to her now; his words
were the last connection she had to her father.
“Sometimes, when you’re stuck on a problem, it helps to
turn things upside down, or turn them around, so they’re
backwards.”
She thought again about the words of the Imperial soldier,
and then her father’s words, and she pondered how this would
help.
“You’re useless now,” she whispered, the words beginning
to lose their power, in favor of the ideas that her father had left for
her.
“...turn them around...”
Now, you’re useless
, she thought to herself.
Now. You’re useless.
Now.
And Catelyn knew the answer to the questions that now
defined her.
Maybe I am useless now, but I don’t have to be useless
forever. I’m alive. I’m still here. Thank you, father.
Her heart swelled with gratitude as she realized that it
must be the Divines who had come to her in that moment. She had
been helpless, and so they sent her father’s spirit to her, to remind
her of his words. She said a silent prayer to the Divines, thanking
Them for watching out for her in this moment.
Faith in the Divines was one of the things her parents had
told her about again and again as she was growing up, and she
believed it with everything that she was. She had to.
She could have been killed by the intruders, or by the
Imperial soldiers. But she hadn’t died. There had to have been a
reason. The Divines had intervened. And then, they had come to
her to remind her of her father’s words. There could be no other
explanation. She knew it.
She didn’t know how much more they would help her, only
that they would. All Catelyn knew with certainty was that she was
still alive, and that the Divines had made it possible. She very
much intended to honor the gift of her life from the Divines by
doing everything she could to stay that way. She may not know
very much about how to do that yet, but she knew that she had to
try. She felt that in the very fiber of her being.
A smaller voice within tried to find purchase, and that
voice whispered difficult questions. It wondered where the Divines
had been when her parents were being attacked and murdered, but
she pushed the voice aside. She had no room left inside her for
such doubts right now.
Something that she had thought just a few moments ago
came back to her, and she revisited the idea. She was not a child of
the bloodfire. She was a child of the Divines. It was time to act like
it.
Blind, alone, and wearing nothing but rags, Catelyn knew
it would be harder than anything she had had to do before, but she
trusted that her life was now in the Divine’s hands.
She stopped focusing on the darkness that was now her
world both figuratively and literally, and reached out her hands,
using them to probe in front of her. She gently took a step forward,
her legs stiff from standing motionless for so long.
Although she had a vague recall of the layout of her home,
during the melee and in the confusion of the pain from the
bloodfire, she realized she no longer had any idea where in the
house she was. She would need to find her way slowly, fumbling
with her hands and feet, listening with her ears. Tentatively, she
moved to where she thought the kitchen wall should be. The trip
seemed to take prayers.
Finally, when she touched cool brick under her fingers,
she sighed in victory and pressed herself into the wall, feeling the
firm comfort of the solid surface beneath her fingers. Slowly, but
with determination, she reached out with her hands to feel her way
along the wall, shuffling to the side, both hands outstretched and
sweeping in broad arcs up and down the wall.
Once more, it felt as though it took forever before she
finally reached a corner of the wall. She pictured her home in her
mind, and guessed that she was near the small table where her
family ate their meals. She reached out, but the table was not
there. She groaned inwardly at the failure, realizing for the first
time just how much she had taken her sight for granted.
Where is it?
she wondered.
No longer confident about where she was in the house,
Catelyn had to decide what to do. She stopped moving and tried to
explore her surroundings using her other senses. She could hear
sounds in the distance, but they were muffled and indistinct and
completely unhelpful. She smelled burning from somewhere to her
right, but it too was vague and gave her no clues as to her location.
The wall felt like any wall, featureless and undefined. The ground
under her feet was wood, like the kind she was used to feeling
inside her home, but the rough beams felt colder than she
remembered.
Am I even still inside?
she thought bitterly.
Where am I?
Feeling frustrated, she tried to conjure up more helpful
advice from her parents, but this time, it only led her to begin
sobbing again, kneeling down and thinking about how she would
never see or hear or feel her mother or father again.
The sobbing this time only lasted a few breaths, and still
no tears came.
When she regained her composure, she reckoned that the
rest of her life would be up to her. Her and the Divines. She
muttered the most sincere prayer she could, trying to remember
the sacred words that her parents had taught her all those sojourns
ago. Truthfully, although her parents reminded her daily of their
own faith and belief in the Divines, they had stopped praying
several sojourns before, and Catelyn was only half sure that she
knew what to say to beseech them, but she tried anyway, calling on
Them to hear her pleas and guide her with Their sheltering hands.

Most holy Divines, You’ve given me my life.
I don’t understand why but You saved me.
And in doing so, You’ve made me Your instrument.
I wish to do Your will, but I don’t know how.
How can I follow You when I can’t even find my way?
Please send me a sign, something to guide me.
Please, Divines. I am Yours. Guide me.

Catelyn waited patiently for a response, but no call from
on high came. She received no instructions, recalled no bits of
wisdom from either of her parents.

Nothing happened.
Again, that small voice crept into her thoughts from
somewhere deep inside her, questioning why the Divines were
even worth considering after what They had just let happen to her
and her parents. And just as before, Catelyn stifled these thoughts
and pushed them away.
She reminded herself of some of the other teachings of her
parents; that the Divines’ plan was a mystery to all, and that they
more often than not helped those who helped themselves. The
small voice inside her continued to badger her with doubts, but
now was not the time to think about such things, and she realized
that whatever happened from here on, the first thing that she
would need to do is to just keep moving.
Catelyn knew that she was standing on the threshold of
the rest of her life. She continued to put one foot in front of the
other, until she finally made it out of her home and slowly began
shuffling her way down the hallway of her building.
She advanced along the wall, feeling carefully with fingers
and toes, and listening for the sound of any approaching thing or
even worse, person.
Life in the Seat was hard enough without the
disadvantages she now had, chief among them being only ten
sojourns, and the complete loss of her sight. Even the most
hardened criminals tended to stick together in packs for mutual
support and protection; a fact that she had learned firsthand from
her father when he sometimes described the altercations he got in
as part of his job. Catelyn wasn’t supposed to know about the
danger he faced each day, but he always told Sera before they fell
asleep each night. Their hovel was small and Catelyn was always a
light sleeper.
Being caught out alone in the Seat was generally thought
to be a sentence of death, or at the very least an easy path to
becoming a victim.
Catelyn might have more book smarts than street smarts,
but she was smart enough to know that she should fear what the
thugs that roamed the city would do to her if they found her. It
made her wary with every step she took toward the outside world.
She stretched out with all of her awareness and senses, in the hope
that she would feel or hear any who would approach her.
As she advanced, shuffling her feet forward along the wall,
the cool bricks of the wall seemingly the entirety of her world, a
strange sensation startled her. Her outstretched right hand, which
had been scrabbling against cold rough brick for what seemed like
prayers, suddenly had grown warm.
She pulled her hand back instinctively, fearing that she
had touched something hot and burned herself. As she pulled her
hand to her chest, she realized it wasn’t hot enough to damage her
hand, but she had felt the heat so intensely that it had startled her.
She stretched her hand once more out into the air, and
again felt the warmth on her skin, rich and deep and triggering a
familiar feeling she’d experienced before. A smile crept across her
lips as she recognized the sensation.
Sunlight!
She experienced a feeling of giddiness as she considered
all the ramifications of the sensation and what this told her about
her situation. She now knew, for example, that she had reached the
end of the hallway, where a large portion of the ceiling had
crumbled away, opening the hallway to the open air. Her parents
had tried for sojourns to keep the hole patched, but after every
violent rainstorm, the patch would come apart and they would
need to start all over again. Eventually, they had just given up.
This meant that she was mere paces away from stepping
outside, and seeing what the Divines had planned for her. As much
as she wished that she could, she knew she couldn’t stay here any
longer. If the Imperial soldiers didn’t come back for her, eventually
scavengers would when they heard about what had happened to
Tomas and Sera. It wasn’t safe for her here anymore. And
truthfully, Catelyn would never be able to sleep here again,
knowing that her parents had been disemboweled right there on
the floor of their living area.
She didn’t know yet where she was going to go, or how she
would survive, but she had faith that it would work out according
to the Divine’s will. She felt a flicker of something taking root
inside her heart. It was too early for her to call it hope yet, but it
was a spark, and right now, a spark was good enough to keep her
putting one foot in front of the other.
Best of all was the feeling of the sunlight on her skin. She
had always loved the warmth of that sensation in the summer
time, and she would still love it, with or without her eyes to see it,
but just now she took it as a sign.
She stepped out slowly into the patch of sunlight. Finally,
she could visualize this part of her past in her mind’s eye. She saw
the mold and mildew covered plaster, and the gaping hole where
the rain came in, and pictured herself moving into the purest
orange tinted rays of light. With each step, more and more she felt
it embrace her whole body, from the sensation of the tiles beneath
her bare soles all the way to the radiating warmth she felt at the
crown of her shaved head.
Standing now, feeling the sun beat down upon her bare
head, reaching up with her hand, stubble scraping against her
tender palm, she thanked the Divines for sending her this sign,
and for allowing her to recognize it and find the energy and the
will to go on. To take another step, and then another.