Faith of the Fallen

Father set down his spoon. "Nicci, dear, I employ skilled workers. That he has ten children is not going to shape steel, now is it? What can the man do? What skills has he?"

"If he had a skill, Father, he could get work. Is it fair that his children should starve because people won't give him a chance?"

Father looked at her as if inspecting a wagonload of some suspicious new metal, Mother's narrow mouth turned up in a little smile, but she said nothing.

"A chance? At what? He has no skill."

"With a business as big as yours, surely you can give him a job."

He tapped a finger on the stem of his spoon as he considered her determined expression. He cleared his throat. "Well, perhaps I could use a man to load wagons."

"He can't load wagons. He has a bad back. He hasn't been able to work for years because of his back troubling him so."

Father's brow drew down. "His back didn't prevent him from begetting ten children.

Nicci wanted to do good, and so she met his stare with a steady look of her own. "Must you be so intolerant, Father? You have jobs, and this man needs one. He has hungry children needing to be fed and clothed. Would you deny him a living just because he has never had a fair chance in life? Are you so rich that all your gold has blinded your eyes to the needs of humble people?"

"But I need-"

"Must you always frame everything in terms of what you need, instead of what others need? Must everything be for you?"

"It's a business-"

"And what is the purpose of a business? Isn't it to employ those who need work? Wouldn't it be better if the man had a job instead of having to humiliate himself begging? Is that what you want? For him to beg rather than work? Aren't you the one who always speaks so highly of hard work?"

Nicci was firing the questions like arrows, getting them off so fast he couldn't get a word through her barrage. Mother smiled as Nicci rolled out words she knew by heart.

"Why must you reserve your greatest cruelty for the least fortunate among us? Why can't you for once think of what you can do to help, instead of always thinking of money, money, money? Would it hurt you to hire a man who needs a job? Would it Father? Would it bring your business to an end?

Would that ruin you?"

The room echoed her noble questions. He stared at her as if seeing her for the first time. He looked as if real arrows had struck him. His jaw worked, but no words came out. He didn't seem able to move; he could only gape at her.

Mother beamed.

"Well. ." he finally said, "I guess. ." He picked up his spoon and stared down into his soup. "Send him around, and I'll give him a job."

Nicci swelled with a new sense of pride-and power. She had never known it would be so easy to stagger her father. She had just bested his selfish nature with nothing more than goodness.

Father pushed back from the table. "I. . I need to go back to the shop." His eyes searched the table, but he would not look at Nicci or Mother. "I just remembered. . I have some work I must see to."

After he had gone, Mother said, "I'm glad to see that you have chosen the righteous path, Nicci, instead of following his evil ways. You will never regret letting your love of mankind guide your feelings. The Creator will smile upon you."

Nicci knew she had done the right thing, the moral thing, yet the thought that came to haunt her victory was the night her father had come into her room and silently stroked her brow as she had held two of his fingers to her cheek.

The man went to work for Father. Father never mentioned anything about it. His work kept him busy and away from home. Nicci's work took more and more of her time, as well. She missed seeing that look in his eyes. She guessed she was growing up.

The next spring, when Nicci was thirteen, she came home one day from her work at the fellowship to find a woman in the sitting room with Mother.

Something about the woman's demeanor made the hair at the back of Nicci's neck stand on end. Both women rose as Nicci set aside her list of names of people needing things.

"Nicci, darling, this is Sister Alessandra. She's traveled here from the Palace of the Prophets, in Tanimura."

The woman was older than Mother. She had a long braid of fine brown hair looped around in a circle and pinned to the back of her skull like a loaf of braided bread. Her nose was a little too big for her face, and she was plain, but not at all ugly. Her eyes focused on Nicci with an unsettling intensity, and they didn't dart about, the way Mother's always did.

"Was it quite a journey, Sister Alessandra?" Nicci asked after she had curtsied. "All the way from Tanimura, I mean?"

"Three days is all," Sister Alessandra said. A smile grew on her face as she took in Nicci's bony frame. "My, my. So little, yet, for such grownup work." She held out a hand toward a chair. "Won't you sit with us, dear?"

"Are you a Sister with the fellowship?" Nicci asked, not really understanding who the woman was.

"The what?"

"Nicci," Mother said, "Sister Alessandra is a Sister of the Light."