Episode CLXXXVII - Patients

Day One.

They told her in ones and twos, coming to the church to pray, to seek advice, to understand.  "They're saying that it's a siege now."  "How long do you think we can last?"  "Is this the will of your God, or will he come and save us?"  Faces upturned in hope, or downcast in despair, or staring straight ahead in shock and confusion.  "How did this happen?" they asked and Sarah had no answers, only compassion.

Day Three.

Panic began to set in for some.  There were arguments in the streets over the most trifling commodities.  "We need that jelly, who knows what we'll have to resort to soon!"  "I've sold out of all my china, how am I going to make a living now?" "No one's getting hold of my frillweed!"

Sarah tried to mediate, tried to explain that people needed to focus on what was important.  Mostly she was just ignored, but on one occasion and woman actually pushed her over so that she landed in a heap in the ash.  She stood up shakily, dusted herself off and returned to her church.

Day Six.

All the hoarding, fighting and panic-eating was taking its toll.  Most people were having to resort to the rations the Former Baron and his closest companions were doling out daily.  They were not exactly meagre - everyone was getting exactly what they needed, but compared to what they had become used to amidst the Colony's prosperity, they seemed slim pickings.

And so many turned to Sarah.  "You're one of them, aren't you?" they asked, "Can't you get us some more?"

But Sarah wasn't sure she was one of them.  They didn't involve her in all their planning meetings, didn't consult her on anything of great import.  She was starting to feel like a pariah and wondered if her self-created role of pastor to the Colony had separated her further than she had intended.

Is this the price I have to pay? she asked in her prayers at night.  Is this the sacrifice I have to make?

Doubt whispered to her in the darkness.

Day Ten.

The Stoneskins had been testing their defences.  They did it in the middle of the night, when they were least prepared.  The Mosskind did their jobs well, and the gun emplacements kept most of the enemy at bay until a skeleton force of Militia could be assembled to man the walls.  Even so, it was a close call and dawn broke over a shaken people.

The number of people attending her service that evening was much larger than usual.  A trickle of new arrivals had been appearing over the past week, but that night the number nearly doubled.  Sarah read them passages from the Epistles she didn't even understand herself and they searched for hope amidst the cryptic language.

She didn't know what to tell them.

Day Twenty.

There was no denying it: things were getting desperate.   Rations were already beginning to get low, the portions handed out from the now well-guarded warehouse seemed to be getting smaller and smaller and Sarah could tell from the faces of Siren and Ellis when they assured her that there was no more they could give that things were even worse than they appeared.

People were losing hope.  Just the night before one of the poorer merchants had made an attempt over the wall, leaping to the ashen ground before anyone could stop him.  He managed a couple of hundred metres before a Stoneskin arrow brought him down, his blood turning the ash to paste.

Sarah devoted herself to understanding the scriptures with Theophilus at her side.  His greater experience as a believer did not mean he was any more knowledgeable about the book they held than she was, but together they were able to glean more than either would alone.  She found the Psalms in particular to be of some assurance and, as the long nights wore on, found that her ever-growing congregation did too.  She found it so hard top preach hope to them, however, when she wasn't sure what hope there was.

Her prayers at night grew longer and she often fell asleep on her knees, or with a psalm open in front of her.

Day Twenty-Five.

Her congregation really was growing.  Already it seemed that half the Colony was there every evening, listening as she worked through a passage with them, and, as their faces lit up with an understanding that seemed so often to elude her, she began to realise that she was getting it too.

"And so we can see," she told them, the truth dawning on her even as she said it, "that this is not about knowing more about God, but knowing Him as you would a friend, a relative, even a lover.  It is about relationship and it is one in which He himself never fails, regardless of what we have done.  And that, my brothers and sisters, is the beginning of our hope - but it certainly is not the end."

She finished the service with a smile on her face and her prayers that night were full of thanks, her own, and those she could read on the faces of those who had listened and spoken to her afterwards.

Day Thirty.

It didn't seem to matter anymore - the siege.  It didn't matter that they were trapped, that their resources were running low, that there seemed no physical hope for those within the walls of the Colony - not to Sarah, at least, and neither did it seem to get her congregation down as it once had.  They were all growing into something deeper, she realised, something better.

That didn't mean there was no suffering, no despair.  It didn't mean that every day was easy and every night full of innocent, dreamless sleep.  It didn't mean that the hunger didn't hurt, nor the fear creep in around the edges of silent moments.  All these things were as true as they had been in the days and weeks before, indeed many of them had only become more so.

What it did mean is that Sarah was finally beginning to understand that the hope she had been given - gifted with - was different from the hopes of the world around her.  She had a hope beyond the merely physical, beyond the day to day and it was so much greater, and so much more certain in the words of her Bible, that it made the misery pale in insignificance.  And better yet, she knew that she was not alone - that there was a strength in their solidarity and, more than that, a strange beyond which filled her every day, which reminded her that all the suffering in the world had already been felt, already been dealt with.  All that was left was to endure it patiently.

The real surprise, though, was that she had thought she had understood all this before.  Jen had explained it first, and Rupert, then Thomas in the quiet moments they had shared together.  And she had lived it all already in her journey across Shadow with Frostfire and Dimsun, Diana and Seargent Jansen, Doctor Barkham and her guilt.

And yet now - now! - it all seemed clearer than it ever had before.  Now something was being forged within her through the fires of this struggle which she could never have imagined before.  Now, she knew, she was being refined for a purpose, but it was not for her own glory - no.  It was for His.

She spoke with passion from the pulpit of her makeshift church and she saw in the eyes of those who listened that they were beginning to get it as well.  Hallelujah!

Day Thirty-One.

A knock at the gates of the Colony.  A familiar, gravelly voice calling, "Open up," as crossbow bolts and gatling guns are aimed towards the speaker and burning eyes, the colour of deep, winter ice, flicker with anger and anticipation.  "Open up," he says again and Sarah can feel her blood chilling at the sound, "And bring me the Former Baron and his friends."

"Frostfire," she finds herself whispering, as if it were not her voice, as if it were not even her life.  And then that voice came a third time.

"Time to parley."

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