The Firefarer

Part Four: Animum / Chapter One: The City of Shrines

"You see, Andre, if you'd bothered to read scripture and not works of Pagi blasphemy you'd know these things. And don't roll your eyes at me like that."

"Like what?" Andre sneered. Vito didn't like it when she sneered. That reminded him of brother Achill's harsh sarcasm. But then he remembered that Achill was dead, and that his memory was deserving of prayers, not contempt.

"You asked me a question, that's all," he continued, ignoring her. "The Pagi cannot work or live within the City of Shrines. Not unless they renounce their corrupt arts and pay a penance. And so, I'm sorry but you're very much mistaken if you think your cousin serves as a Prefect."

A wasp buzzed around his hair and he swatted at it in irritation. It flew away, only to return, hovering a permanent inch from his left ear. Three days of trekking along dusty, sun-baked tracks had turned his legs to lead, conjured blisters from his toes and heels, burnt his forehead and nose. His beard and hair were damp with sweat, his belly ached with hunger.

Andre had proven to be less skilled at tickling fish than at poaching birds, pulling no more than a few bony troutlet from streams and brooks. Much to his disgust, she had resorted to stealing eggs from the farms they passed through, forcing him to run from the villagers' angry cries like a common thief. But when he explained the sinfulness of her crime, she merely shrugged and suggested that he might care to go hungry. He had watched her later as she cracked open an egg, tipped back her head and gulped it down in one as if it were an oyster. She had devoured two more before he caved in to his rumbling belly and spinning, food-starved brain. Seizing one, he broke it over his mouth, resisting the urge to gag as the yolk slithered down his throat, the juice crawling through his beard. Andre had stared at him for a moment and then laughed. "Be careful, Vito. Your unnameable one might strike you down with a thunderbolt for that." Unable to endure her mockery, he had stamped over to a brook to wash the evidence of the crime from his face.

Far in the distance, Animum emerged, no more than a thin grey line on the horizon, yet the sight inspired hope. And zeal. "The point is, Andre, that you Pagi twist the truth with your art. You make a poor copy of our world. You would improve on that which shouldn't be improved, amplify what is already sufficient, drain our existence of all reason. What the Church offers is a haven from such corruption. You are no more than poor mimics ˗ we offer the truth. Even the primitive Ruach grasp that."

"They're not primitive." She paled, her grey eyes rippling with anger.

Vito gazed at her in surprise. "A Paga defending the Ruach? Praise to the Mystery for it worketh miracles."

"Shut up. Do you hear me, Vito? Close that saintly trap of yours before I shove my fist into it."

"Charming. You know I'm beginning to doubt you are a Paga after all ˗ more likely the daughter of a ... a common vagrant and a whore, the oaths and threats that come out of your mouth."

She snorted at that, plucking a long blade of grass from the verge and wrapping it between her thin, tapering fingers. He remembered then, with a pang of discomfort, that he had dreamt of those fingers again the previous night: he had imagined them smoothing down his hair, trailing across his temples, his cheeks, resting on his lips. The dream had stirred parts of him: parts which he knew to be sinful. As a monk, his life was bound to the Mystery, to seeking union with it. Union with a Paga would foul his spirit, would doom him to wandering after death between the realms of the Mystery and earth, a wraith to be summoned by the Ruach.

When he had woken that morning to find Andre lying some yards away from him, sleeping with her head resting on her satchel, his heart had flooded with relief. It had been a dream after all. Then he was down on his knees, meditating, praying, desperate to rid himself of any remaining shreds of sin or impurity before it was too late. He had turned to find her sat cross-legged, plaiting her long hair, her gaze cool and scornful as if she knew the desperate thoughts that lay behind his sudden act of repentance.