The Firefarer

Part One / Chapter Three: People of the Pagi

"Vito! Vito, wake up!"

Vito stirred, groaned, coughed. Something heavy weighed upon his lungs. It hurt to breathe in and it was an agony to breathe out. Above him the world whirled into view and a face loomed above his own, long plaits tickling the raw, burnt skin of his cheeks.

From somewhere deep within, he conjured up a name ˗ a strange name he had only learnt that day. Or had he always known it? "Andre?"

"Why did you run back in there, Vito? You nearly died!"

"I'm not dead, then?" He twisted his head from side to side, taking in the ravaged green of the pastures, flames still devouring the monastery to his right.

"No. Of course not. I pulled you out."

"You?" Someone had been in the chapel, but it was not Andre. He recalled the Ahi's wild, wolfish eyes, his skin imprinted, it had seemed, with flames as he raised his spear above his shoulder. With a gasp, Vito sat up, the ground swaying as he rose.

Andre's hair was singed at its ends, her face smudged black with soot, her clothing inexplicably wet.

"I soaked my clothes in the well." She tugged at her sodden jacket. "Then I came inside. You were lying on the floor. The fire had nearly reached you."

"And there was no one else?" He dragged a shaking hand down his face and beard. A sticky paste, the residue of sweat and soot, coated his palm.

"No."

"No...no Ahi?"

"Vito, if the Ahi had still been in there, they would have killed you." Her voice was patient, tired.

"But I saw one of them. He held his spear above me."

"Vito, you were half-crazed. Delirious. Perhaps you imagined it."

He shuddered. The man had been there. He had lain beneath him, waiting for the end, praying for death. Of course he could not explain why he was now alive to tell her so. He may have been maddened by fire, by the slaughter of his brothers. But he had not imagined the Ahi.

"Perhaps he wanted me to see him."

"Vito, he wasn't there!"

"You seem to know a lot about these people." A dark suspicion wormed its way inside his head. "Perhaps you're one of them...perhaps you led them to us."

Her pale face twisted with anger and she jumped to her feet. "So that's all the thanks I get for saving your life is it? Do I look like I make a habit of rescuing idiot monks from buildings?"

 Seizing her satchel, she dragged the strap on over her head. "You need to warn your high Prefects Vito, and believe me it's a long way to Animum. I was going to offer to accompany you there, but somehow I don't feel like it now."

And with that she stalked, lank and loose of leg across the grass, disappearing as the pasture rolled down towards the dusty track on its southern flank ˗ the road to Animum.

Vito watched her go, gripped by a strange, hopeless fear. He was alone now for the first time in his life. Yes, he knew the way to Animum, and yes he understood his duty to warn those high Prefects that nothing, not even the ancient monastery of Fons was sacred to the Ahi. But to venture out into that world by himself, a monk who had never strayed beyond the village, who knew nothing other than how to pray and care for birds and sing the praises of the Divine?

He saw Andre and her theft of those two doves in a different light now. A Paga she might be, but she could at least fend for herself. And, in his heart, he knew that he could not. And so, dragging himself to his feet, he picked up the end of his robe and yelled: "Stop! I'm sorry. Stop!"