41. Fire
She had been born a merchant's daughter. Young as she was, she'd understood that they were neither poor nor rich, that her mother's swelling belly was going to be another mouth to feed, and that her father's increasingly lined mouth meant future beatings if she were incautious. She'd understood that her father believed children should be seen and not heard, that her mother was too ill to play and that the girls down the street had more than enough marbles for her to join them in a quick game when the yelling started. So she'd gone, quiet as a church mouse, and disappeared out her bedroom window when her father in his towering, quiet fury had erupted and her aching, tired mother had exploded back.
They'd played five rounds that morning, and she'd managed to lose them all, something unusual for her luck. She could remember later that her lead marble had been the strange shade of orange salamander skin, and that the girls had wanted her to keep it, saying it was too ugly for their sets. She'd dropped the shiny trinket into her pocket around dinnertime and crept back, uncertain if the fight had concluded.
The very red flames of the fire engulfing her house had made her stop walking. She'd run forward then, screaming, and a man had snatched her, pulling her away from the blistering heat. She'd watched, uncomprehending, as their beautiful house collapsed on itself like a wilting flower, red tendrils of flame rising into the sky. She'd wept unknowingly as the screams inside the house quieted and died, her body wracked with tremors. While the neighborhood worked tirelessly to extinguish the fire, Oriole slipped away into the crowd. There was nothing left for her there but the bones of her former life.
Others were always curious about her method of fighting. The few who knew the story of her awakening as a ninja were more curious. It seemed unthinkable to them to fight the same way her parents had been murdered.
They didn't understand that the sounds of explosion covered the sounds of screaming.