On the ground beside me, Rimma sleeps, her face starting to bruise, dark rings forming under her eyes. Mari and Larue sit within arm’s reach of me, staring at the pyre’s gray plume. Two years older than us, these women were doves too; all the young women of Heaven were doves, a fact that hasn’t saved us all. I cry at the horror lingering in the eyes of those whose legs were pried apart, their faces swollen, wrists wearing the fingerprints of their rapists. Larue bears those marks, fear squirming deep in the pupils of otherwise empty blue eyes. Mari appears untouched, her unblemished face framed by red curls as unique as my buttermilk hair, green eyes yet sharp with defiance.
A skinny black dog scavenges for food among us. I give it a piece of gristle that I couldn’t chew, and tentatively touch its coarse fur before it skitters away, nose sniffing the air. So much is new; so little makes sense. The Biters’ ways and words reveal a world utterly foreign to Heaven. I feel as though I’ve lived in one fragile book in a vast library where I understand only my words, my context, my story without any idea that the world brims with other tales. How can the same people who slaughtered Paradise’s children, love and care for children? Why do these women dance with abandon and entice brutal men to…fuck them in the dirt? How will we, sold and bartered like chattel, create lives worth living among barbarians?
As my mind wanders across the faces of descendants and Biters, a blond head catches my eye. My mother—alive. A blanket over her shoulders, she gathers with other women, touching her ear, blood on her fingers, recently ringed. The Biters have herded her across the pathway to another field. She sits beside a pregnant woman, talking, touching her hand to the round belly. I don’t recognize the woman; she isn’t from Heaven. That can only mean she’s a Biter.
Without waking Rimma, I add my blanket to hers, letting her sleep. I cross the pathway quickly, arms around me for warmth as the wind blows against my back. My mother sees me and scrambles up, threading her way through the huddled women to catch me in her arms and squeeze. “Rimma,” she cries, kissing my forehead in relief.
“Angel,” I correct her, tears springing to my eyes at her mistake. In the midst of all the horror, a silly matter to weep over, but I can’t contain my grief.
“Of course.” She holds my face, her lip cut and swollen before me, her wrists black and blue. A red scrape across the side of her forehead peeks from beneath her hair. She looks as though she was dragged on her face. “Did…did they…Are you…hurt?” she asks.
“We hid on the roof,” I explain, shaking my head. “The old woman, Mag, claimed us this morning.”
“She claims young women for the River Walkers,” my mother calmly informs me, as if commenting on the weather. Taking my hand, she leads me to the pregnant Biter, the woman a mystery, her long hair combed, her clothes tidy despite the stains. She smiles with white teeth from a clean face, dark almond eyes tilting up at the corners, warm with invitation. “Sarai, this is my angel. Sarai is from Utopia.”
“Utopia?” I murmur, stunned.
“She thinks Sanctuary and Retreat are still intact,” my mother adds.
“I believe so,” Sarai concedes, a hand on her belly. “I’m not sure it matters though. Seven months ago, in the spring, Utopia’s shield failed. Two Timbers was the lead pack, but Brothers of the Scar claimed me.”
“I don’t understand the…anything. No one’s told us anything,” I tell the woman. My mother sits and pats the ground beside her. She opens her blanket and wraps it around the two of us as I join her.
“That’s why I’m here,” Sarai says gently. “To ease the…adjustment. I know from experience that a little forewarning prevents mistakes and saves lives. The packs don’t need so many of us, so they tend to be less tolerant of disobedience when we most require their patience. Oh,” she laughs, closing one eye and pressing on the side of her belly. “A foot. Or elbow.”
Other women congregate as I stare at her round pregnancy, the horror rising in my throat so at odds with the serenity on her face. In Heaven, pregnancy was a rare privilege, a sacrament, a gift of God through fornication within the bounds of marriage. I have no doubt that Sarai was raped, no doubt she was abused, bruised and screaming. How could she appear so…content?
She must notice my distress because she shares an understanding sigh with me. “I know you have questions about this.” She pats her stomach. “But I’d prefer to start with something a little less terrifying.” I nod numbly while my mother tilts her head to my shoulder and listens.
“Well, I heard that in Heaven you refer to your captors as Biters. They refer to themselves as the People. And if they ever ate the flesh of men, they don’t now, at least none of the packs I’ve heard of. They’re protective of their territories and have their own ways, so pay attention, especially if you’re…traded.” She sighs wearily at that. “I’d soften the truth, but it’s impossible, so I’ll simply speak outright. We have five packs here, not one of them large enough to conquer a Garden alone, so they work together. Each pack claimed one Garden to loot, but they split the spoils…us. It’s more manageable for them.”
Nearly every woman’s hand rises to her tender earlobe, softly fingering the twisted wire and lumpy bead of clay. “The marking on the bead identifies your pack and your master,” Sarai explains. “Some of you are already claimed by those of power within your pack, some of you will be if you’re found productive or…pleasing. Many of you are marked only as general property to be traded, used, or abused at a whim. We have value, so we’re unlikely to be slain without cause, but there’s no law or code preventing it, at least among the Brothers.”
If she’s started with the lesser evils of our captors, I’d rather not hear the rest. We are mere possessions, dispensable. My chest tightens as it dawns on me that I’m trapped, forever without choices, free to be handed off at a moment’s passing, at the mercy of River Walkers or Black Dogs, Biters such as Greeb and Sloot. I could be traded to stranger after stranger after stranger, forced to live in the cold, beg for food, or spread my legs in an attempt to please. “What do we do?” I ask Sarai, my voice trembling.
“Get pregnant,” she replies. Every woman within earshot petrifies into silent blocks of stone, not a sound lost to the wind, not a breath stirring among us. “If you can, find a strong man with a good heart, and then do whatever you need to do to stick, so you aren’t bartered around. But by all means get pregnant,” she repeats, an odd urgency to her voice. “The broken world hasn’t been kind to the packs. Many women can’t bear children, many lose their children in the womb, many are born so ill they die within weeks or months. Even the men who will rape you and beat you blind are respectful of pregnant women. Among the packs, children are cherished. No child is abandoned; no child is parentless.”
Her words, so poignant and smooth with compassion, sicken my stomach. The glint of humanity she shares in her portrayal of the Biters plucks at the heart. I note it in every face among the women of Heaven. The hope of children, a squirming spark of fire in a future riddled with endless uncertainty and suffering. But it’s all lies to render us compliant, to twist our hearts and bend our minds to the desires of her masters. If Rimma were listening, she’d throttle the woman. “You’re wrong,” I inform her, my voice thick with accusation, my fear steeped with bubbling anger. “I saw Black Dogs butcher hundreds of children; I was there.”
Sarai’s hand strokes her belly, her almond eyes watching her fingers go round as she calmly responds, “The descendants of Paradise poisoned the water, killed every Black Dog child, every single one, most of the pregnant women and half of the mothers. Walk through their pack; they’re camp lies on your north road. You’ll find they didn’t kill anyone they could drag away. They would have saved most of the women and children of Paradise if they hadn’t fried themselves on your bone wall.”
11
~Rimma~
The other packs journeyed on within the week. First the Two Timber people, heading south to the ruins of Utopia for the winter, the snow too deep in the eastern mountains for travel until the spring thaw. All these words, weather words, features of the wilderness, passes and hollows, cliffs and ravines, waterfalls and fords, they’re all new, and I need to learn them to survive in this broken world, my world now.
The Clan followed next, trekking our river west, our puny waterway that I learned is a mere creek. They head to the “mighty” river, according to Rune, a river so wide I couldn’t step over it. I’d have to brave a bridge or a boat, two things he tries to describe that are hard to imagine.
Angel’s account of the Black Dogs turned out to be true. Is it possible to pity them and loathe them at the same time? Feel them justified and unpardonable? I want to murder them for what they did when others murdered them. My sister would err on the side of grace and forgiveness, I on the side of bitterness and slaughter, but I’ll admit to rampant contradictions in my feelings. I’m glad they’re gone.
Our mother is a slave—another new word—of the Brothers of the Scar. A common slave, one used at a whim. She prays for pregnancy, and at thirty-four, she’s not too old for her wish to bear fruit. Angel beside me, I stand by the eastern gate, a gate that now only marks an opening in an earthen wall, twenty feet high. Rune stands guard as we watch our mother walk away, laden with supplies, a last glimpse back at us with a brave face, cheeks smeared with dirty tears.
With Rune dogging me, inspecting me with his jade eyes, I refuse to cry. And what good would blubbering do me? I could wail my lungs raw for a year and nothing would look or feel or sound any different. Nothing I do will reverse time; the naïve little Rimma who trusted a just and gracious God was burned and buried in a mass grave.
The Brothers intend to travel south over Rune’s mighty, unimaginable river to a place called the South Tradepost. Apparently, Biters collect for a midwinter gathering there, a big fucking solstice celebration, where half the Brothers’ claims will be traded for weapons, clothing, boots, iron and steel goods, blankets, livestock, and baubles stolen from empty cities. My mother may find herself traded if she’s not pregnant. I turn to slog back to our camp, a last thought sitting quietly on my lips, “Spread your legs wide for the Biters, mother, every chance you get.”
“You’re Rimma, right?” Rune strolls beside me, tossing a stone from hand to hand, his gait easy over the pathway stones. He reminds me of Max in some ways, his height, his slender build, and the way he never looks directly at me, always askance with a secretive, quirked up smile. But where Max was tawny headed and fair, Rune is dark, skin sun-brown and long hair the same color as the fur cloak he wears over sinewy arms.
“I’m Rimma,” I reply, glancing behind me at Angel. She smiles, probably hoping I’m making friends.
“I can’t tell until you snarl,” he explains, “or grit your teeth and narrow them cloud eyes.”
“You don’t need to follow me,” I inform him.
“I sure do. You’re a runner. I seen it at the first, and Mag would have my head, sure enough.”
“I have nowhere to run.”
His stone snatched out of the air, Rune laughs. “Runners don’t run to get
to
a place; they run to get
away
from a place. Wouldn’t do you no good though. We’d track you down and maybe kill you, depending who snags you up. Best to do as Mag say. She’s pure demon with that stick of hers.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Wait ‘til after the first ones run,” he cautions me. “See what comes back. Then if you have a go, at least you know you better not get caught.”
When we enter the center of Heaven, winter clouds clot the sky, threatening snow. Mag rides Glory’s back, shouting orders. She points at us with her staff and Glory obediently trundles over. “Ram’s decided were staying put for the winter,” she informs us. “Good shelter and plenty to eat.” A middle-years man, the River Walkers’ chief, Ram, shaves his bald head and wears his greasy beard in two thin braids down his chest. He’s the largest man I’ve ever seen, not as tall as Glory, but harder, with arms thick as metal pipes, a sculpted chest, and an odor reeking of spoiled food and stale sweat. We’ve glimpsed him presiding over night-fires, but Mag keeps us out of sight when the heat’s up. Apparently, even she hasn’t the power to protect her doves when Ram’s hunting.
“I’m keeping my doves caged in the God house,” she says with a smirk, pointing for our benefit and then raises her voice so more will hear. “Heaven’s men sleep in the book house with a few bows trained on the door.” Her crooked finger jabs over her shoulder at the hub, but we know she means the library beyond. “Ram’s taking that little spot over there.” She gestures to the woolen mill and then waves her hand in the general direction of everywhere else. “Rest of you, just find a comfortable corner and don’t burn nothing down. Your fault if it’s cold. Shouldn’t a broken all the windows, eh?”
Angel and I continue to wear our filthy blankets, but we snatch up a few extra we find lying unattended in the sooty dirt by the fires. We enter God’s House of Law, glass crunching beneath our shoes, gray light easing through windowpanes lined with clear, jagged teeth. Most of the benches fueled night-fires, leaving an empty wood floor, encrusted with slivers of glittering glass and spatters of brown blood. In the dim light, three doves sweep, still in brown aprons as they drag tinkling shards into spiky piles.
“Cozy,” Mari’s sardonic voice quips behind me. She leads a flock of doves carrying more blankets. Since the Biters have removed our bonnets, her red curls tumble over her shoulders. Soot mars her cheeks and she smells mildly of sheep shit. “Now I’ll never get to bathe,” she growls.