In a thick fist, Ram holds up a string of ears, each bearing a wired bead through the lobe. “No one defies the pack,” he roars. “No slave disobeys his master. Justice is done.” He hands the ears to a group of gathered men.
“What are they doing?” I ask Tarra.
“Anyone who lost a claim may choose another from the pack’s unclaimed slaves,” she replies. “Greeb and Dooly can pick new doves.”
“What about Mari and Sendra?”
Tarra’s eyes scan my face as she shakes her head. “You don’t understand any of this, do you? They aren’t doves anymore, Rimma. By dawn, they’ll each have twenty men between their legs.”
The night-fires burn. Drums hammer in my ears, batter my heart so I can scarcely breathe. Biters pound and stamp their rabid dance; women gyrate and bare their breasts. Men howl, baying at the bitter moon, the heartless stars. They fuck Mari and Sendra outside the firelit circle until the women can’t walk. Mag forces us to stay and listen to their pleading sobs.
The knife in my pocket sears my thigh, eager and angry for blood. My hand trembles, fingering the blade through my trousers. If I could, I would slay them all, stand in their midst and spin a rampant circle, my steel blade singing as it severs their necks, spraying me in a shower of warm, slick Biter blood. Angel cries beside me, hands over her face at the unfolding horror, the agonizing choices. She must sense my murderous rage, feel the heat of my skin steaming through the frigid air, know that I’m on the verge of reckless insanity. “Peace, Sister,” she begs me in a frantic whisper, but how can I? How can I find peace among Biters, with this?
Like a barbarian king, Ram presides over the festivities from the deacon’s ornate wood chair, his throne, dragged to the courtyard’s pavers from God’s House of Law. He rises to his feet, hands lifted to the Biters as the drumbeats slow and die.
“Midwinter,” he calls in a deep voice. “Tomorrow the long nights of the Stone Moon surrender to the birth of a new year. We pay each day a high price for life in the broken world. Those of you from inside the bone wall believe there is no toil but by your hands, no suffering but by your wounds, no death but by your people, no reason for your hardship, no sense to our choices, no pack but that which is no more. We survive in a world broken by your ancestors. You find our ways cruel, but without us, you would perish by your own birthright. Your blood makes us stronger; your blood is our reparation. With us, you and we will survive.”
As Ram lowers his bulk into the heavy chair, Angel raises her tearful face to gaze at me, the questions in her eyes beckoning answers. I heard what he said, and if he or she thinks my fury submits to awkward wondering, they’re both wrong.
“We will hear the lore of the bone walls,” Ram orders. “Give way for Shy.” An opening in the ring of Biters permits Shy a place by the fire. A woman in a child’s body, Shy hobbles like a crone, hands moving from shoulder to shoulder to keep from teetering. Her head is almost bald and teardrop shaped, wide at the bottom and narrowing to a pointed ridge at the top. Eyes round as blue pools bulge from a smooth face, her lips curved like tiny pink petals beneath a dainty turned-up nose. Ram lifts his daughter onto his knees and holds her steady.
“In ancient days,” Shy begins, “old books told of gods and angels, devils and deceivers, of the making and breaking of the world.” Her small hands glide gracefully though the air as she talks, as if she would paint for us a picture of the words she perceives. She appears not to blink, the light voice of a child smoothly echoing an ancient tale imprinted in her memory long ago, a tale I’ve no interest in hearing. “Prophesies came to pass, books burned to ash, gods and devils long ago dead.” She pauses to swivel her misshapen head, her eyes goggling at Biters and descendants alike.
In the beginning, the greatest of gods created into the formless and empty void, the heavens and earth. Of his eyes, he made the sun and moon, which he set among the white stars that he might behold his creation by light of day and dark of night.
He toiled to set the clay to spin, the sky to blue and storm. Of his blood, he spilled the rain to carve the rivers and sate the sea. Of his body, he sowed the seeds of life and from his flesh burst a fecund world of plant and tree, laying over the land between the seas a verdant green. He gazed upon the work of his hands and saw it was good.
With his breath, he breathed life into the waters of the sea and set it teeming. Breathed life into the winged birds of the sky. Molded with his fingers and breathed into the living creatures that roam the land, each according to their own natures. He gazed upon the work of his heart and saw it was good.
And of his thought, he created man in his likeness and woman that he might live in companionship. To them he gave the seed-bearing plants and fruit-bearing trees. To them he granted mastery over the fishes in the seas and birds in the sky and every wild creature that crawls and runs upon the land, that they might shepherd this new world. He gazed upon the work of his dreams and saw it was good.
Thus in seven days the heavens and the earth were fashioned in all their vast array.
In the beginning of the end, what was done would be undone.
For man in his covetousness forsook the gifts of the great god and bowed to the deceivers who feared not to speak evil of grace and charity, believing themselves their own deceivings. They with feigned words made man a slave of his desires, promised him liberty, when they themselves were the servants of corruption.
In pride and greed, man closed his eyes to the shelter of the sky, thus the sun was set to scorch with fire and the moon to chill with ice.
In gluttony and sloth, man poured his foul in the rivers and springs of water that flowed to the sea, and every living thing in the sea died and the land dried. In envy and lust, man scourged the life of the fields and forests, and disease broke out on man and beast; thus the land was plunged into plague.
In wrath and fear, the deceivers shouted their righteousness into the air. Forsaken and astray, zealous with false beliefs and dread to hope, man took up sword and shield. Flashes of lightning rent the sky, peals of thunder shook the mountains and the great cities of the nations crumbled. Every island drowned as the seas rose up in mighty tides. From the sky, huge hailstones, fire, and ash fell on the People.
Thus in seven days the
heavens and the earth were broken in all their vast array.
The deceivers, laden with plunder, sought to
escape the pollutions of their creation. In secret voices, they whispered among them:
“Let us build these Gardens and stand walls around them. The glory is ours, for we are the righteous and chosen of God; rewarded with license on every side. Why else be blessed with such bounty, but by God’s desire.”
Then in slow procession, one for every ten thousand men entered within the walls. One for every ten thousand women abided within the walls. One for every ten thousand children sheltered within the walls. So they found peace within their walls and security within their strongholds, no violence in their land, nor ruin or destruction within their borders.
Beyond the walls,
the tens of tens of tens of thousands trembled, for
terror and fear lay upon the whole land. The fields went fallow, and beasts bore no calves or lambs. The rivers ran with fire, and seas belched up their foul and bloated bodies. Plagues and pestilence befell man and his descendants, harsh and prolonged disasters, and severe and lingering wars. And the people came to the Garden walls and begged for entrance.
And so said the deceivers onto the gathering hordes:
“Mighty God, bless us. Saved are we by our devotion to your laws and renunciation of the wicked. We offer no succor among the righteous but cast the sinful from our gates. We deny the tainted and corrupt safe harbor within our moral ranks. We are the merciless sword of your justice, keepers of the covenant, the Saved.”
The people in the parched and broken world rose up in fear and desperation, and descended onto the Garden gates. A great horde of fury marched on the mighty walls, those in back pressing blindly on those at the fore until bodies leapt in screaming pillars of flame
. They could not save themselves from the power of the walls; just as fire consumes the forest and sets the mountains ablaze, so were they devoured.
Ten-thousand times a thousand men blazed upon the walls. Ten thousand times a thousand women flared upon the walls. Ten thousand times a thousand children perished upon the walls. And the white bones clattered and rattled and formed mountainous bone walls around the Gardens of the deceivers so they would be reminded of their own ruination.
14
~Angel~
“I want to see it.” Rimma’s eyes glow vermillion in the writhing light as she stares at the flames. She speaks to no one in particular, but the question buried in her words is for Mag. She’s learned to ask permission.
One colossal blow at a time the harsh truth of our lives hammers us down. No longer safe, no longer warm, no longer guaranteed food or shelter, no longer guided by laws, we survive in a broken world we scarcely comprehend. The choices we control have changed, if we bear choices at all. Now the very foundation upon which we understood our place in the world crumbles. We join the ranks of monsters.
Too much of Shy’s narrative overlaps with ours, the words too similar. Our peoples have suffered no contact for centuries, so how could she know the prayer of God’s Assurance? How different those words sound when the dark side of righteousness pivots its face to the light. I witnessed our shield wall’s destruction of a desperate, frightened people, the sizzling flare of blue fire, the crackle and hiss of power, the clacking jumble of thousands of bones piling at its base. Could the perfect earthen ring surrounding Heaven contain the bones of hundreds of thousands? How do I envision millions, billions dead at the breaking of the world? I don’t know what those words mean.
“I want to dig into the bone wall,” Rimma repeats, turning a hard face to Mag. My sister vibrates with tension, a pot with a rattling lid ready to bubble over.
Mag’s cheek rests against her staff, her hands overhead, a twisted body hanging from sinewy arms. Her back curves like a sickle, hip jutted out, eyes narrowed into feral slits. “Need to see for yourself, eh? Ground’s froze.” She taps the base of her staff on the stone, her thin gray braids swaying.
“Thaw it,” Rimma says coolly.
“Hmf, suppose that can be done,” Mag concedes. “Hard knowing your people did all this. Wonder if they ever thought about what they was doing to
you
. Suppose they didn’t care much.” She sighs with a glum smile, a glint of compassion for the pain of our downfall as if we now stand on the same side.
In the morning, a wet coverlet of snow blankets the courtyard and pathways, fallow fields and lost harvests. Snow sparkles, pristine, a welcome reprieve from the dreariness of mud and pallid sleet. I wonder if anything of Heaven’s bounty will survive this cold after centuries of summers. Our orchards appear dead, skeletal hands with gnarled fingers clutching crookedly at the sky. At least the wind draws back its bite as we trudge down the West Spoke. Close to forty descendants join this pilgrimage behind Mag as she rides Glory’s broad back. Eight armed River Walkers accompany us, more than enough, I suppose. None of us seems intent on escape after the string of ears and the punishment suffered by Mari and Sendra.
A shovel over her shoulder, Rimma marches at the fore, leaving dark footprints in the snow. I scurry to keep up, bundled in my blanket, blinking at the sun’s glare. Ahead of us, the earthen wall rises twenty feet in the air. If not for the old metal fence, we could march right over it now, our shield gone as if it never existed. The fence forces us to the open portal, a rusting gateway, its presence disconcerting without the glimmering skin around it.
Bending forward, Glory bulls his way to the top of the steep wall, small grunts escaping his nose with each step. Rimma follows with me behind her, my hands grasping at the frozen clods of dirt, almost crawling up the incline. Just shy of twenty of us stand at the top with half a dozen shovels. I remember when Rimma and I used to slip through the east gate, abandoning the lush, green Garden of Heaven for the barren world. Now, as I stand here I notice no difference in the landscape, the bleak wilderness stretching, stark white on all sides as far as the horizon.
“Stand back, Glory boy,” Mag instructs, shooing us all away from where she stands.
“Getho.” Glory smiles happily as he backs up along the ridge beside me.
Rolling her neck and shoulders, the cracking of her joints audible in the silence, she grits her teeth and pinches her lips, jaw thrust out and pointing to a spot on the earthen wall a few paces distant. Snow slowly melts in a widening circle, revealing the wet soil beneath. The ground steams, a gray-gold mist rising in the sunlight. The ring of exposed dirt expands under my feet and I feel the earth’s warmth caressing the air around me. Near the center, where Mag focuses her attention, the ground dries and fissures as if cooked by a summer sun. Small tufts of yellow grass and weed smoke and briefly flare with ardent tongues of yellow fire.
Sallow-faced, pale as the dissipating steam, Rimma steps backwards, looking sick to her stomach. Mag’s eyes find her, a crooked finger beckoning her to the circle’s center. “No point in dawdling, Dove. It’ll only freeze up again.”