LITMIR.BIZ

       9.

       Clementine

      Something twists the night air around Clementine, dragging it through the narrow channels of the Old City’s streets, raising tiny dust devils of grime that disappear in the dark. A storm blowing in from the desert? No, something else. She follows the flow, drawn by the sense of something unfolding, until the bark of human voices reaches her. The shouts sound faint and distant, but it’s an illusion spawned by the wind blowing away from her; nothing is ever further than a stone’s throw in the clogged vessels of Jerusalem’s ancient heart.

      She hears the crackle like snapping twigs before she sees the glow, a nimbus of orange floating above the rooftops like a second dawn: fire, sucking the air from the alleys, gorging on the tainted oxygen. The calculation of its position comes to her unbidden, and panic sours the back of her throat; the flames are coming from the Mission. She runs easily, slipping through pools of darkness between scattered bubbles of yellow sodium light, the movement a liberation she could never enjoy in daylight hours.

      A small crowd lines the edges of the square around the Mission, watching the chapel roof burn as if it were a sacrificial pyre. A few figures, some robed, some ragged, scurry around the base of the white walls, leaning ladders against the gables the fire hasn’t touched yet, running thin hoses to grime-encrusted hydrants, relics of another age. At the centre of it, she recognizes Hilda’s bulk silhouetted against the flames: still, solid, a bulwark of calm amidst the panic surrounding her.

      ‘What can I do?’

      The older woman jerks around at the sound of her voice. Her gaze sweeps up and down Clementine’s foreign clothes, the question of where she has been unspoken.

      ‘It looks like it’s just the roof so far. If we can stop it spreading, we can still save the Mission.’

      ‘What happened?’

      ‘Later, Clementine. We’ll talk.’ Her voice is stern, but unthreatening. The anger in it is directed elsewhere. ‘Get to one of the ladders.’

      She follows Hilda’s pointing finger to a patch of white wall already darkened with soot. Two ladders lean against it at either side of the patch of blazing roof. One wobbles dangerously as a man bearing a thin green hose climbs to the top. She clutches it with both hands, but still it totters with every step the reluctant firefighter takes, threatening to slip away from its two tiny points of contact with the cobbled ground. As she leans her body against it, his movement vibrates through the quivering wood and into her, her entire bulk still insufficient to prevent the ladder’s metal feet scraping against the stone.

      At the top, the man waves a signal and someone at the hydrant gives a lever a quarter-turn. The hose gurgles next to Clementine’s ear and water trickles from the tip, bringing shouts and urgent gestures from the holder. The small robed woman operating the pump hesitates before giving the lever another quarter-turn. There’s a rushing noise and suddenly the water line starts twitching like an angry serpent. For a terrible moment Clementine imagines the hose’s plastic splitting like a bean pod, unable to withstand the pressure within, but in seconds the trickle becomes a fierce, sparkling jet.

      The ladder trembles against her as the hose-wielder shifts position to direct its flow into the heart of the blaze. She can see he’s trying to climb higher onto the ladder’s last rungs, but he keeps stepping back, sending new vibrations down through the wood. It must be the heat from the flames forcing him away. Her fingers grip the zip of her bodysuit’s high collar. She could pull it up to cover most of her face – it’s not fire-proof, but the nano-weave is tough and the insulation would stop her feeling the heat for a few minutes. She could do it. A few yards away, Hilda directs another shopkeeper’s ladder towards the blaze, but it’s too short for the Mission’s high walls. The debt she owes to these people burns in Clementine’s chest, but heroics bring attention. She might not get another chance to disappear.

      The wail of a siren drowns the thought. A red-painted, six-wheeled vehicle creeps from one of the alleys with a slowness that belies the urgency of its cries. The Old City’s narrow lanes do not permit speed. It stops directly behind Clementine, and something like a shiny gun on the roof of its cab swivels to point up at the fire. There is a roar of pumps and bright white foam arcs, dreamlike, into the heart of the blaze. It spatters onto the men on the ladders, but seems to land like soft snow, doing no harm. The fire simply dies. Its absence leaves silence, and Clementine stares in wonder at the roof, the nubs of blackened beams poking through the foam like boulders in the snow of a sudden, surreal winterscape, where moments ago flames crackled.

      The spectacle over, the crowd around the edges of the square fades away. The fire truck simply reverses back into the alley it appeared from with a whine of electric motors, presumably guided away by its driving AI. The ladders are carried away. The reluctant firefighters become themselves again, the memory of the blaze persisting only as an acrid stink in the air. Clementine follows the trickle of robed figures retreating into the Mission.

      When she gets to Hilda’s room, the older woman is sitting on the chair in front of the desk, not the bed, where they usually talk. ‘Where were you, Clementine?’

      For a moment she struggles to speak, wrongfooted by the question. Her comings and goings seem trivial after the Mission’s brush with catastrophe, but Hilda’s voice makes it clear she is quite serious.

      ‘I … I went to see some men about a job.’

      ‘At this time of night?’

      ‘They run a bar.’ The betrayal is acid at the back of Clementine’s throat.

      Hilda stares for six heartbeats before nodding silently to herself, as if in response to some internal dialogue. ‘I suppose that’s your right. This isn’t a prison. Why didn’t you tell me?’

      ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realize it mattered.’

      ‘Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe I’m a fool …’ Hilda’s words trail off.

      ‘I don’t understand, Hilda. What happened here? What’s going on?’

      ‘Perhaps you can tell me?’ For a moment, the older woman appears lost in thought. ‘No, no, forget that.’

      Clementine’s eyes close, her hands rise unconsciously to cover her nose and mouth as the implications hit home. Of course, what was Hilda supposed to think? This woman arrives, a self-confessed fugitive, and a day later, someone sets fire to the roof of the Mission.

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