Katharine Tarvainen
St. Gregory the Great Writing Group (co-leader), St. Bede Writing Group
The scars were her downfall. It was hard to convince the man who caught her that she wasn’t a habitual Flame Thief when her hands and arms were covered in burn marks.
He marched her through the tunnels to the village hall where the Ember Guards sat in judgement for crimes against the Flame Law. The green glow of the Flames lit their faces as they heard the man’s evidence and saw the woman’s scars; those shining streaks of skin spelled out her doom.
“Her kind are best left to the Dark,” the youngest Guard declared.
The woman glared at him. She was sure this scrawny youth had never lived a minute without Flames.
“Better yet, leave her to the Sun,” a Guard with a grizzled beard chimed in.
The hall filled with harsh laughter and the woman’s heart beat faster. To many in the village, the Sun was even more mysterious and terrible than the Dark.
The Captain of the Ember Guards raised his hand for silence.
“Why don’t we perform a little test of the Sun?” he asked.
A confused murmur rose up among the Guards.
“We’ve lost a dozen Woodcutters this month alone,” the Captain continued, gesturing to the woodpile. “They stayed out past Darkset and we haven’t seen them since. At that rate, how long will it be until we run out of fuel?”
Anxious whispers rippled through the assembly. They had all been raised on stories of the dangers that awaited them if the Flames were allowed to go out. For generations, parents had passed on the words of the old sorceress who first brought the green-glowing Flames to the village. She showed them how brightly the Flames lit up their homes, assuring them that they would now be safe when the Sun abandoned them to their nightly Darkness.
As the villagers’ eyes filled with the sight of the Flames, their heads filled with questions. Why did the Sun leave them at night? How could they trust that it would rise again every day? Why not use the Flames to order their days in their own way? So the villagers shuttered their windows, dug tunnels under their roads, and spent their hours avoiding the Sun and feeding the Flames.
“The Sun probably burned the deserters,” the bearded Guard now said, “And rightly so. But what does that have to do with this Flame Thief?”
“Yes, they probably burned, but no one knows for certain,” the Captain explained. “I say we bring her out just before Darkset and come back with proof of what the Sun can do.”
As the hall rumbled with dark laughter and plotting, the woman wrapped her arms around herself, burning away her fear with a fierce resentment.
A few hours later, by the green glow of their Ember Lamps, the Guards and their captive crept through the dark forest towards the sea. They brought the woman to the edge of the cliffs and drew back to the forest, awaiting the judgement of the Sun.
The woman gazed across the inky sea to where the sky was beginning to grow lighter. She looked back over her shoulder and saw the Guards’ Ember Lamps glinting through the trees where they waited. She was trapped. She faced the cliff’s edge again and saw a sliver of light beginning to rise above the water. Her heart pounded and tears rolled down her cheeks as fear finally overtook her. If the Sun burned her to ashes, who would miss her? No one. In fact, she was no one, just a convenient pawn in someone else’s game. She closed her eyes, bracing herself for that familiar, searing pain of burning flesh.
Among the trees, the Guards watched the woman’s lengthening shadow creep towards them as the sky grew brighter. Suddenly, the Sun burst above the horizon, dazzling them with a pure, white light. It seemed at first that the woman had been consumed by the Sun’s rays. Yet, as their eyes adjusted, the men saw that she was still there, glowing as if made entirely of light, without a mark upon her.
The woman felt a gentle warmth envelop her and a light breeze blow across her tear-streaked face. She opened her eyes and beheld the Sun-drenched world: the waves below her reflected thousands of tiny, glittering Suns and, high in the sky, wisps of clouds glowed pink and gold. Then she turned to face her accusers and gasped.
Scars, blemishes, and imperfections of every kind now shone forth from the bodies of the Ember Guards as they were caught by the Sun’s light. The Guards stood with mouths gaping and eyes wide with disbelief until the Captain whipped around and darted back into the forest. One by one, the others followed.
The woman didn’t feel triumph at this retreat. She had seen their hidden wounds, and how well they matched her own, and could only feel a deep sorrow. She regretted every scar—those she held and those she gave—but her remorse seemed such a small thing in the face of so much pain. Weeping, she fell to her knees in the dust.
The woman’s tears made a pattern of sorrow on the ground beneath her. She reached up to wipe her eyes and stopped in astonishment: her hand was clear and bright without a trace of imperfection. She stretched out her arms, turning them in the golden light of the Sun, and couldn’t find a single scar. She was clean.
She stood and saw a path she hadn’t noticed in the Dark, winding along the cliffside. It led down to a small village with fishing boats along the shore. She took a shaky step along the path, then another. When she was halfway down the cliffs she paused. A man stood before a fire on the beach, cooking something. How did she know these people would even want her? What if it was the same as the old village?
The man spotted her, waved, and called out, “Come, have breakfast with us!”
He gestured to a table nearby where other men and women were gathered, laughing and talking in the Sun. The woman looked to the fire again and saw that the flames were a beautiful orange color. She hurried down to join them, knowing in her heart that she would never steal another Ember.
Back among the shadows of the trees, the Ember Guards marched silently towards their village. As the Captain looked ahead, he was startled to see how dim his Ember Lamp appeared. A pool of Sunlight spilled across the path in front of him and his eyes followed the beam of light up to the tree-tops. His companions watched in silent terror as the Captain set his Lamp on the ground, threw back his cloak, and stepped into the Sunlight. A few moments later, he let out a shout of joy and turned back towards the others. His face shone, his eyes glistened with tears, and there wasn’t a single scar upon him. The other Guards stood frozen, clutching their dim Lamps, as he strode past them, back down the path, towards the morning Sun.