Still, they worked at it, even going as far as risking Imperial attention and punishment by providing Catelyn with illegal reading material.
Naturally, in an Empire built on a foundation of oppression against its own people, thinking too much was the hallmark of an enemy of the state. Consequently, all books were forbidden by the Empire, and simply possessing a single volume would constitute severe consequences. Despite such intolerance for the notion of an educated populace, it was not a secret that books could be obtained through the black market, for a high price. The price was not high because there was a demand for reading material, but rather for the danger it represented to acquire and sell such taboo materials.
Perhaps as a small act of rebellion against the Empire that had forced them away from their lives, her parents willingly paid that price whenever they were able, but because of their fear of attracting attention to their daughter or themselves, and of course the extreme cost, their gifts were limited. Fortunately Catelyn was quite capable of taking care of her own needs in this area as well.
In fact, while other girls and boys she knew were playing games with sticks and rocks in the alleys and streets of the Seat, Catelyn was secretly reading both the books that her parents brought home, as well as other volumes that she found on her own by scavenging through the ruins of old homes and burned out buildings.
She had discovered six of them in a particularly derelict shell of a building this way, and from them she taught herself subjects even her parents did not know, such as language and grammar, philosophy and ethics, science, mathematics and even tactics.
Her parents, while not lacking in intelligence themselves, found Catelyn’s ability to grasp advanced concepts and ideas to be rather surprising. Despite her ability to understand a great many things, Catelyn still struggled to understand some of the more simple things like navigating the complex social dynamics of the other children and parents she had known growing up.
Once she had read through them, she realized that the books must have belonged to what the people in the Before would have called a “teacher”. She read each volume over and over, absorbing the knowledge from them over spans, cycles, sojourns, until she could just about recite them from memory.
She tried to share what she learned with the other children that she knew in her tenement block, but they simply weren’t interested. Not only did it seem beyond their comprehension, every one of them feared being caught with items and knowledge which carried such heavy penalties.
In addition, Catelyn quickly realized that her intelligence, and the knowledge that she acquired from reading these contraband books, meant almost nothing to her day to day survival in a place like the Seat. Out on the streets and slums, there was no benefit to understanding arithmetic, no use for proper spelling or diction, no philosophy to help her fend for herself against the accursed environment or the criminals who inhabited it.
All that mattered to surviving on the streets was learned on the streets.
Despite this, Catelyn was not afraid to learn everything she could from the volumes she collected. In fact, she grew so enamored with her finds and with the information contained within them, and in particular she was inspired by some of the teachings in the book on philosophy, that one day she decided to defy the Empire as blatantly as she could with them, and she marked them with her name. Her full name.
Catelyn was not supposed to have a full name, nor was she even supposed to know that she had a family name.
When Uriel III took control of the Empire, one of his earliest acts was to do away with all family names, part of a package of laws aimed at equalizing the social status of every one of his subjects, until there was almost no difference between one citizen and another. He destroyed the history of the great families and bade them to forget. He forbade both men and women to have any individuality of gender, ordering all citizens to shave their heads and maintain short hair, and refused women to paint their faces, the exception to this last rule being those who, like Catelyn’s mother, were sent to the soldier’s camps to satisfy them. He required that all clothing be cut to the same bland style, and in the same muted shades of grey.
All of this Uriel commanded, and set only one punishment throughout the Empire for any defiance of his exalted will; the pain of torture and ultimately death.
When families resisted, as they always did whenever the Empire deviated so strongly from a widely held tradition, the Imperial Army was sent in, as they always were whenever there was even a hint of opposition to the Empire, to obliterate not just them, but every living citizen that lived in a three block radius from them. Entire neighborhoods were “cleansed” for one family’s transgression; for the crime of keeping one’s family name, or wearing clothing with any colors not on the Empire’s approved list, or for letting their hair get too long.
As a result, to save themselves from such harsh treatment, very soon the citizens of the Empire began policing themselves, abandoning their surnames and exacting vigilante justice on any who resisted. Given the state of the Empire and the way individualism was stamped out, surnames carried little meaning at any rate. When seen from this perspective, it was not difficult for the citizens to quickly rationalize their way towards total compliance.
Perhaps it was Catelyn’s exposure to other ideas in the books she had read, but she couldn’t understand this kind of reasoning at all. She saw the flaws in the logic, and had no sympathy for those who willingly abdicated their own will to serve that of another. She questioned how one man could have so cowed an entire people, had made them forget themselves and their own identities.
But they did. People moved on, and willingly forgot. And so Catelyn and the other children of her generation were all born with but a single given name.
Catelyn often wondered if there were places outside the walls where people could still live with two names, or maybe even three as she had read in some of the books, and she envied them that small privilege. Both to honor that tradition, and to defy such illogical rulings, whenever she discovered a new book to add to her treasured library, she always wrote her name in the corner on the inside of each cover: Catelyn Bereford.
Catelyn was six when she learned her family name. Through her persistence, and with some gentle plying of her parents, she discovered one afternoon that her family name was Bereford, and that it was the name of a proud, honorable family. Her family had been respected and hard working, when Exeter had been a free nation.
She was so proud to have learned this fact that, even though her parents had admonished her against telling the other children, she made a point of promising herself that she would say something the very first chance that she got, and she didn’t have long to wait.
Every span, the chosen families around their tenement block gathered together to socialize. The parents told their kids it was so that they could have some time with kids their own ages, to laugh and play together. And while that was of course somewhat true, all of the children knew that it was really an excuse for the adults to take turns watching the kids in a big group, so that their parents could take it in turn to return to their homes to have some alone time.
Because the harsh reality of life in the Seat precluded parents from leaving their children alone, even for a moment, they grabbed every chance they could to retain some of the intimacy that had been lost by their unending responsibility.
The whole span after she had found out her family name, Catelyn had been giddy with excitement to share her new secret with the other children, and so after midday, when the neighbors gathered together, she first approached Lydia, a girl who had seen two more sojourns than her.
Catelyn rushed over to her as she sat in the dirt of the deserted lot where they were meeting today.
“Lydia, you’ll never guess what I found out!” Catelyn said excitedly.
Lydia looked up, her slack jaw open as she was filleting an earthworm with a rusty needle she had in one hand. Despite being older than Catelyn, Lydia was not partic
ularly smart, Catelyn knew. She had dull, vacant eyes and a distant look as Catelyn knelt down in the dirt beside her. But though the two of them didn’t share much in common, she was one of the only other girls that was even close to Catelyn’s age, and Catelyn felt something of a sisterly bond to her as a result.
She leaned in close to whisper in Lydia’s ear, a broad smile of pride on her face, and she revealed her name to the girl. When she withdrew and looked at Lydia’s face, Lydia was smiling broadly as well, and her face cracked into a riotous laugh. Catelyn was taken aback somewhat.
This was not exactly the reaction that she’d expected.
Lydia was laughing so hard and so loud that the other children looked over to see what was so funny. Two of them initially ran over to see what was happening, and like a flock of pigeons, soon that prompted all of them to come over. Suddenly Catelyn’s pride turned to ashes in her mouth, as she realized that soon, all of the children would probably hear her secret from Lydia, and then they would all be joining in on the joke. Though Catelyn still wasn’t sure what that joke was, or why Lydia found her name so funny to begin with.
The oldest of the children, a rather nasty boy of twelve named Marton who Catelyn had never liked, ran faster than the others and he stopped short and stood over Lydia, an expectant smile on his pock-marked face.
“What’s so funny, freak?” he asked Lydia.
Instead of saying anything, Lydia stood up, revealing to all the other children that she had laughed so hard that she’d lost control of her bladder. The other children all started to point at her soiled grey trousers, jeering at her for her incontinence, but Catelyn was still watching Lydia, as she stood on her tip toes and cupped her hand over her mouth, and whispered the joke to Marton. Catelyn flicked her eyes over to him, and looked him dead in the eye.
His blue eyes lit up and, almost as though she were watching him in slow motion, a great big smile appeared on his face and he turned to the other kids with arms outstretched.
“Hey! Cool it. All of you, listen to me!”
The other kids were still caught up in their mirth about Lydia’s wet pants, but she was totally unaware, and instead was looking at Marton’s face. Everyone knew that Lydia had a crush on him for some reason Catelyn couldn’t understand.
Finally Marton had enough.
“Knock it OFF! Listen!”
Being the oldest, and being tough and fast enough to thrash all of the younger kids if he wanted, Marton tended to get his way a lot. The other kids stopped their teasing of Lydia and settled down to pay attention to what he said. Unlike Lydia, Catelyn knew that Marton was actually quite smart, at least when it came to surviving and navigating the social hierarchy of children. But she didn’t like him, because the only thing he ever seemed to be interested in was bullying the others in their group. The other kids looked to him now.
“What is it, Marton?”
“What’d she say, M?”
“Why was she laughin’ so hard she peed her pants?”
With a withering look, Marton looked straight at Catelyn when he told them.
“You all know Catey over here’s just a big smarty pants, right? Well now she’s gone and found out she’s a smarty pants with a big smarty pants last name. But you want to know what’s so funny about it?”
The other kids looked on expectantly, eager to join in on the joke.
“What is so gods damn funny is that her family’s dumb name...is Barefoot. Can you imagine the odds? Catelyn Barefoot! How fitting!”
At this last remark, he pointed down at her feet, which were in fact bare, and covered with the dirt from the lot.
The other kids all pointed as well, and started to laugh the way that kids do when they find an easy target for ridicule.
“Catey Barefoot!”
“Ugh, pee yew, her feet must stink like dead dogs!”
“What a stupid name. Who names anyone Barefoot?”
Catelyn felt her heart shrink in her chest. She tried to correct them.
“Not Barefoot, Bereford. Lydia heard it wrong!”
Marton and the others ignored her, and he wasn’t content to simply let it go at that, either.
“Your parents are so poor. They can’t even afford you shoes, stupid.”
“Yeah, she’s probably got some nasty toe disease or somethin’!”
“Stay away, toe germs!”
Catelyn felt the tears welling up in her eyes, and that only made the kids more emboldened, and soon they were picking up handfuls of dirt and flinging it at her face.
“Here’s some more dirt for ya, filthy!”
“Get some shoes, loser.”
Marton then took off one of his own shoes and held it by the lace and swung it at her. Catelyn ducked, holding her hands to her ears to shut out the jeers as they all proceeded to take one shoe off, and pummel her back with them, shouting insult after insult at the state of her, and at her parents, calling all three of them worthless and stupid and poor.
Catelyn wasn’t sure how long it lasted but finally her father and one of the other kid’s fathers ran over to break up the fight. Catelyn was so mortified from the assault that she didn't even know how it had ended. One moment she was being pummeled, the next, she was alone except for her father.
Catelyn leaned up from where she'd been huddled, looked down in shame and sat in the dirt, trying to pull the legs of her pants down as far as she could to hide her bare feet. Her father stood over her, wiping the dirt from her clothes and trying to console her with soft words that she was trying to ignore.
When he saw that she wasn’t responding, he asked “Are you OK, Catey?”
“Don’t call me that,” she spat at him angrily, looking up at him with burning eyes.
He shied back from her anger, and she could see that he realized just how upset she was.
“I’m sorry.” He took a calming breath, and tried again. “Catelyn, are you OK?”
She couldn’t look directly at him, so she hugged her arms around her knees and sat silently. Being the kind of man he was, her father knew just the right thing to do, and he simply sat down next to her, hugged his own arms around his knees and stared off in the distance. Without saying anything, he was telling her everything, and she loved him for his understanding.
After a while, when her anger cooled, she looked over at him. And he looked back with his warm brown eyes, the barest hint of a smile on his face.
She couldn’t help but beam at him when he got that look. It was a look he reserved for only two people, and she was lucky enough to be one of them.
She saw no reason to keep her feelings a secret.
“Dad, how come you and mom never bought me any shoes?”
Her father rarely seemed flustered by anything she asked him, but this question was one he never expected apparently. He looked at her, started to say something, then stopped with his mouth hanging open. He closed it, then turned away and tried again.
“Catelyn, we’ve all given up certain things, in order for us to be able to save up enough to get certain other...things. Do you know what I’m saying?” When he said the word “things” the second time, he looked right in her eyes and she knew what things he was talking about. Her books.
And then she knew.
“Your mom and I talked about this, and we didn’t want to take things away from you if we could help it. She was actually the one who decided you could do without shoes for a while, because since you were little, your feet have grown half a size every span! And whenever we tried to put shoes on you, you’d pull them right off three breaths later. We honestly thought maybe you were going to grow flippers one day!”
She laughed at this, and leaned into him and he wrapped his strong arm around her. He reached out and scratched the top of her scalp, the way he always did. She liked to pretend that he was running his hand through her hair, but she had no idea what that really felt like.
“But listen, if you would rather wear shoes, we can talk about other things that we c
an…”
“No, it’s OK, dad. I don’t mind. I just didn’t like them teasing me about it, is all.”
He looked at her with such compassion and simply said “I understand. No one would like that. If it happens again, you tell me, OK?”
And then he stood up, held his hand out for her and she took it, pulling herself to her feet and dusting herself off.
“Whatd’ya say we get home and you read to me some more?” he whispered.
She simply grinned up at him, nodded and they walked home hand in hand.
Catelyn stretched out her arms and legs like a cat, flexing her fingers and toes as she prepared to get up and return to her roost to deal with the extra rations she'd been debating the fate of. Her mind was still clouded with thoughts of the past which often bubbled up from her unconscious mind to plague her and try to pull her down into despair.
However, this time her ruminations proved somewhat useful as a sudden flash of insight struck her as she got to her feet. In her most recent trip through the hallways of her memories, her recollections of her father, and his valuable lessons, suddenly reminded her of one of his problem solving techniques.
Just as they did now, his words and his wisdom would often come to her at times when she felt as though she could very easily have just given up and let her life go, and they had always motivated her to see things differently. And that is exactly what she did now to solve the situation with her excess food.
She knew that it was too much for her to eat by herself, and storing the food was out of the question. Throwing away that much food would be a crime to her. There was only one way to solve her problem. She had to share it.
But as she had reasoned before, she couldn’t simply show up at the marketplace with a box of food, without it drawing a whole lot of unnecessary questions about where such a bounty had come from. And her father had told her to think about things in reverse to see them from a different vantage point, or turning them upside down.
Bloodfire (The Sojourns of Rebirth) Page 4
