Faith, Hope, and Charity

The Fire

That night, after most of the patrons have retired to bed and Scarak has decided to give me a four-hour break to sleep, I go into the room that I share with Hope and Faith. It's the size of the one Tress is sleeping in upstairs, but the room is choking on what's inside of it. We got rid of the desk and chair long ago, electing instead to have three floor mats on that side of the room and three bedrolls on the other, all in a line. Faith has been kind enough to make the beds, as she has done every day for years. She's sitting on her mat, mending some cloth. A bucket of murky water and some now-clean rags lay next to her.

"Is it already your break? I'll go into the hall if you need to sleep."

"No, that's fine. I'd like to talk to you about something."

She pauses as she is about to get up. She sits back down on the ground and begins mending the cloth again.

"Hope told me about the Zho; what was she like?"

"Curious. She asked me a lot of questions."

I glance over at the door and get up. Scarak took the lock off the door long ago but hasn't been able to remove the leather loop I nailed in there. I loop it around the doorknob and after tugging on it, I sit back down.

"She asked me if I wanted to run away."

"And what did you say?"

She looks up at me with the big green eyes that she has. She's expecting a different answer.

"No."

"Why not? Don't you want to go?"

"I do, but she wasn't willing to take you and Hope with me."

She smiles and her eyes turn into jewels sparkling with tears, "Thanks for not leaving us behind."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

There's a rapid knocking on the door, too light for it to be Scarak. Hope is standing outside, out of breath and pale.

"There's a fire in the kitchen."

I follow her back to the kitchen and find that the cooking fire has spread onto the floor, chewing at the floorboards. The odor of woodsmoke clogs my throat.

"What did you do?!" I sputter.

"I didn't do anything! I thought I saw a shadow move in front of the lantern and I turned around and when I turned back it was on fire!"

The fire is too big for me to reach the kettle of steaming water hanging from the top of the fireplace. The flames cackle as they stain the floorboards black.

"Grab some rags, towels, whatever! Smother it!"

I drop to my hands and knees, grabbing the apron that Hope offers me and throwing it over the flames. It's just big enough to cover the fire that has extended past the boundary of the fireplace. I can feel the leather heating up as I hold it down. The pain is almost cool on my hands.

"Hope! Grab something and dump the water onto the fire!"

She drops more washrags on the apron and I grab them, shielding my hands from the heat of the apron. The edge has started to smolder and the pungent smoke makes my eyes water. Hope sticks a large wooden paddle into the fireplace, tipping the pot downward. The lid falls off and drops in front of me.

I scream and back away quickly as the rest of the water rushes onto the fire.

What I thought was water.