A strand of blond hair escapes its binding and she pats it back in place. “Do you understand, Rimma, that we wish peace within our borders? That a dry crust of bread with peace is better than a house full of feasting with strife?”
“I’m Angel,” I tell her with a glance at my sister. Rimma sits quietly beside me, her arm in a sling, little expression in her drawn face.
Simone’s eyebrows arch as she glances toward Priest.
“They’re changing,” Priest replies. “Rimma is here as well.”
“I want to address her,” Simone says, not sure where to direct her eyes. “Unbend the light.”
“We’re not light-benders,” I remind her. “We aren’t Touched. I don’t know why you see only me.”
“Rimma’s here?” Simone clarifies. Her gaze shifts from me to Priest and then to Jeph for confirmation. At Jeph’s nod, she sighs and continues. “This feels highly…odd.”
“Very odd,” Priest acknowledges, “and part of the reason we’re here.”
Taking her seat, Simone directs her question to me. “Is that why you seek a forgiveness of her banishment?”
“Yes,” I reply. “We traveled to Sanctuary with the Fortress soldiers to invite the descendants to join us before their shield wall fell. Something terrible happened there.”
“Unconscionable slaughter happened there,” Simone asserts.
“I wasn’t there to witness,” I tell her weakly. “I stayed at the camp and Rimma won’t speak of it.”
“She’s right,” Rimma whispers in confirmation, words only Priest and I hear.
“Hundreds of the People were slain,” Simone edifies us. “Men, women, and children. Many of them Touched. You’re informing us that Rimma participated?”
Beside me, Rimma nods, and I answer, “Yes.”
“This hardly elicits sympathy.” Simone’s blue eyes pierce me, dagger sharp.
“She’s breaking.” Priest leans forward, studying my sister, and I wonder if he seeks out the flow of energy through her channels. “The world is breaking her, Simone.”
“Perhaps she’s simply evil,” Cash suggests.
“She believes she’s evil,” Jeph speaks up. “Horror at her own nature buries her emotions. I perceive the darkness of fear and suppression concealing an empty void.”
“And this is supposed to indicate a profound change?” Cash asks. “Something worthy and redeemable?”
“It marks a shift,” Priest argues. “An opportunity for healing we can provide here at the Colony.”
As they discuss my sister, I watch for her reaction. She is dissected and analyzed, the core of her pried open for debate. She sits quietly, her energy a mere flicker in a poorly fueled fire, her soul brittle. I see the flutter of life, but Priest and Jeph speak the truth, and if the flame were to gutter out, I doubt she would care. When I clasp her hand, I feel only the slightest squeeze of warmth in reply.
“Your motives aren’t entirely free of self-interest,” Cash asserts with a glance toward Priest.
Before Priest can respond, Simone raises a hand. “That claim isn’t without merit.” Priest nods in acknowledgement and leans back in his seat.
“I wish a less biased opinion,” Cash informs the Council.
“Less biased than Jeph?” Simone asks.
The bald councilor waves an impatient hand. “A corroborating opinion, then. Despite your glares, I have the best interests of the Colony at heart. We banished Rimma for murder, extenuating circumstances, but murder nonetheless. Our judgments aren’t whims to be set aside at leisure or they become meaningless pronouncements. Arbitrary laws don’t serve justice.” Cash’s dark eyes seek mine. “Our gate stands open, and we have newly arrived People among our citizens who must understand our ways as fair and just. Will Rimma accept an opinion of one of the People?”
My sister sits up straight and nods yes. I filter through the possibilities of what this might mean, not ready to give her answer, my breath eddying in my chest. How can this possibly work in our favor? Rimma’s head swivels toward me, questioning my silence. “Say ‘yes,’ Angel.”
“Are you certain?”
“He’s not wrong to ask it,” she replies.
With a glance at Priest, I reply to the old man, “Rimma agrees with you.”
A pause follows as Cash pinches his lips and blinks in surprise. He clears his throat. “Well then, I would like Shy to offer her opinion.”
Rimma inhales sharply, her rigid posture recoiling in fear.
“Shy?” I breathe. “From the River Walkers? She’s here?” Priest nods and rubs his forehead in what seems an attempt to erase his concerns.
“So be it,” Simone announces and sends for Shy.
My sister faces me, her weak grip turned to iron. “Leave the room,” she begs me. “I don’t want you to hear about Sanctuary.”
“No, Rimma.” I draw my chin back, balking at the suggestion. “I’m not leaving you here alone.”
“But Sanctuary,” she pleads, and suddenly I understand her fear. She’s not afraid of losing her appeal to the Council; she’s afraid of losing me.
“I love you, Rimma, we’re one.” I lean toward her and touch my forehead to hers. “Peace, sister.”
Soft murmurs fill the quiet room as we wait. I share the moments gazing at Priest while I grip Rimma’s hand. My hope melts slowly from my bones, pooling on the floor. Perhaps we’ll have this night together, and then? In sending families here from the Fortress, I’ve sorely damaged the relationship between Mikel and the Colony. It’s no longer safe for Priest to travel there. In a broken world, my choice to exercise mercy has no less an impact on my life than my sister’s choice to kill.
The door opens and Shy enters, the tiny woman hobbling slowly down the center aisle between the benches, using shoulders for support. Her teardrop head bears a pink scar near the pointed crown. Bulging blue beneath the narrow forehead, her eyes barely blink; rose petal lips offer few hints of emotion beneath a serene face.
Priest rises to offer his seat, but Shy remains standing between the first row of benches, her small hand on my shoulder. I don’t know whether I should look at her or make room or smile.
“In peace, I have come,” Shy says to the Council, and even Cash bows his head in deference.
“We apologize for any inconvenience,” Simone replies gently. “Tonight the Council decides whether to forgive the sins of a banished member who pleads she’s redeemed, or whether our original judgment should stand.”
“I’m not redeemed,” Rimma whispers.
Shy’s huge eyes swivel slowly to Rimma and back to the Council members.
“Rimma was banished for the murder of a River Walker named…” Cash purses his lips in annoyance.
“Sloot,” Simone fills in the name. “One of the men who broke her arms and raped her.”
“She also fought at Sanctuary with the Fortress soldiers,” Cash adds.
“For whatever reason, most of us can’t see Rimma,” Simone explains. “Or Angel, at one time or another.
“They are rent in two,” Shy replies.
“Yes,” Simone acknowledges, “so Priest has attempted to explain it. You, however, are Touched with vision and know Rimma from her time with your people. Therefore, we request your opinion. Do you perceive a change in her worthy of forgiveness?”
Shy steps haltingly around me to stand before Rimma. My sister meets the woman’s blue eyes that stare searchingly through her.
“Ram?” my sister asks softly.
The childlike woman gives an almost imperceptible shake of her head.
“Glory?” Rimma asks, her eyes glistening.
“There is no Glory now.”
“And Mercy?” My sister’s tears fall before the answer.
“No Mercy.”
Her face buried in her hands, Rimma cries, pale hair falling forward and hiding her shame.
Shy faces the Council. “She is cleansed with blood, and through the shedding of blood there is forgiveness. She continues to break, and when utterly broken, shall be made whole.”
29
~Rimma~
During the past month, my intermittent invisibility has provided me with some relief from the pressures of human expectations, of facing the consequences of my actions. Angel and I seem to alternate in a pattern hinting of randomness, influenced more by strength of emotion and presence than by those we meet. Here there is little need to protect, and I’ve begun to release my wariness, my suspicious nature, my belief that the world rests on a bedrock of cruelty.
Angel never cared for her invisibility, telling me she felt somehow diminished, a rootless soul at the mercy of my choices. I understand that now, especially when my decisions produced such havoc. I haven’t told her of our mother or sister, or that I killed our sister’s father. That terrible secret I hold close, untrusting of its power to destroy me. Angel’s choices raise no such chaos, leaving me content to linger in her shadow.
My friendship with Chantri and Tannis survived, though I’ve no desire to reclaim my weapons or patrol. The bow I once admired hangs by its stock in the storeroom, untroubled by any interest on my part. Chantri is pregnant, a tentative, barely-shared secret in a world where children often perish before their first breath.
After she finishes vomiting up her morning meal and spitting in the crisp weeds, we sit in the shade by the seep-springs sharing cups of tisane.
“I feel like fucking shit,” she moans. “Is this normal? Has it always been like this, or am I the victim of some cruel joke?”
“I think it’s always been this way,” I respond.
“It’s amazing the human race survived at all.” She sips a swallow from her cup, gargles, and spits. “Gah! Pfft.”
“How’s Tannis taking the news?” I ask as the man joins us. Just released from the night’s watch, he kneels behind her and massages her shoulders.
“You mean is the old man spewing his oats?” she asks, narrowing her eyes. “He pampers me, thinks I’m fucking helpless.”
“Don’t think she’s surly about it either,” Tannis assures me. “And I’m taking it just fine. The People don’t exactly keep track of which children belong to which men, at least not among the Owl Creek.”
“He’s excited about having his
own
,” Chantri tells me. “His own little Tannis, the poor thing. Hard to imagine a baby that fucking ugly, huh?” She laughs at his grunt, but I recognize the hope in their eyes, the absence of the fear that plagues each Fortress family. If this child survives, it will live with the Colony’s welcome and blessing.
My sister has resumed her love affair with Priest, and I believe she hopes for a pregnancy too. Despite the toll the broken world takes on the process of procreation, she also brims with untarnished dreams, hope and innocence I vowed to protect. I no longer sneer at her happiness, at the pungent smell of sex on her skin, at the shitty grin Priest wears at all hours of the day.
While Tannis dotes on the spiky-haired woman, I leave them to join Angel in the fields, another of Kya’s silly hats flopping on my head. Midsummer slowly sidled over the canyon’s rim along with a respite from the spring rain. Now we’re watering and weeding, harvesting the bounty of summer’s labor and planting for a fall crop. With the added hands from the Fortress and the People, our winter stores grow.
Caked in dirt and dust, sweat streaking the grim on my face, I’m hoeing a little trench a half-inch deep, as Angel shuffles along in a squat, dropping bush-bean seeds in the soil four inches apart. Behind us, others cover them up and water.
“Do you miss Mikel?” Angel asks me.
The hoe pauses for only a moment. “Sometimes.”
“Did you love him?”
“Sometimes…maybe.”
“Do you regret coming here?” She persists with this line of questioning despite my one-word answers.
“No, Angel,” I reply, glancing down at her. She keeps her eyes on the seeds.
“Do you think you’ll find someone else?”
“Find someone else?” I repeat, leaning on the hoe to get this conversation done. “You mean to fuck? Because, yes, there are plenty of men and women willing to fuck?”
A frown twists her mouth as she squints up at me beneath her matching grass hat. “I mean to
love
, not
fuck
,” she huffs with exasperation. “Not only fuck anyway. Gah! You’re so aggravating.”
“You started it,” I inform her.
Dropping the argument, we return to our tasks. I chop and scrape at the hard soil and drag the hoe as I step backwards. I do miss Mikel, the comfort of his bed, the release I began to find in his sex, the feel of his hands and skin, that small taste of intimacy when I’d forget to ruminate over my day. He lacked complication, was who he was, nothing more or less, nothing to be cyphered or guessed about, his desires and opinions transparent as rainwater. I didn’t care that he used other lovers to spread his seed. Would I now? Would the farmwoman, gritty with toil, entice his lust as much as the mysterious descendant of Heaven, Biter slave turned leather-clad warrior? Does any of it matter? Not at all. I hope in time, those versions of Rimma might burn away, their bones clattering to my own private bone wall.
“I’m content here,” I tell Angel, pausing in my labor. “I don’t want to leave.”