The Warrior

The Fire

On the way back to Sprague's house, I thought over what Father Benson had said.  I knew forces of evil were behind all of this madness, but the Devil himself?  I overheard one sermon on the Devil a few years before.  He was evil.  He swore to return to Earth one day to reclaim what is his.  I never believed he was real.

Sprague stopped at the local community center on the way home.  He was signing papers at the front desk.  I was looking at a cork board that stretched out over an open wall of the center.  Farther down, a girl was removing posters with human language and a picture of another girl whom I recognized.  It was Blitzen.

She noticed me looking.  "You don't have to worry about my sister anymore," she said, a tear streaking down her face.  She was almost laughing.  "They found her dead a few hours ago."

"She was missing?" I asked.

"For the past two years, the worst of my life.  My dream has been to find her, but when I do, she's gotten herself killed."

"She looks familiar.  What was her name?"

"Well, her real name was Blitzen, but I always called her Blitz since she hated having the same name as a reindeer.  It's German for flash.  Our parents named her that because she was born so quickly back in Berlin.  Two hours.  They came here when I was born."

I knew how to introduce myself now.  I offered her my hand.  "I am Orion."

"I'm Donner," she said, shaking it.

"Is that not a reindeer as well?"

"It's German for thunder.  They never had the same traditions in Germany so we wound up with the same names as Santa's reindeer.  At least Donner wasn't as bad as Blitzen, or so it seemed.  My parents called her Blitz too, which is German for lightning."

"Lightning and thunder?"

"It seemed so stupid at the time, but I miss her so much."

"Donner, I think I knew your sister."

"Excuse me?"

"I met your sister a few days ago."

"Really?  Was she okay?  What was she like?  Did she ask about me?  Did she say anything about her family?"

"Was she a well-mannered person?"

"Oh, she was the nicest person you could know.  She graduated from university with hopes of being a doctor a few weeks before she went missing.  She volunteered at the retirement home twice a week.  She went to church every Sunday!"

"She seemed a little far from that."

"My sister never had an evil bone in her body.  The most unpleasant thing she's ever done was keep the cat in when she was told to put it outside or put an empty milk carton back in the fridge.  Even doing that made her break down and tell the whole world she'd done wrong."

"Did you hear how she was found?"

"Our parents don't speak very good English.  I was with my fiancée in their house making zwieback when the phone rang.  My mother answered the phone and wasn't able to understand the guy on the other end, so she handed it to me.  I wish I said I was too busy and handed it off to someone else.  My insides tightened and my knees gave out when I heard she was impaled by the spire of a skyscraper."

"You did not do anything wrong."

"I could have tried harder to find her.  Sometimes I used to think I would see her in a crowd or spot her in the park, but I was just seeing things.  Maybe if I looked for one more hour or asked around for one more day, I would have found her and brought her home.  I guess fate had other plans for us."