“They think you’re dead anyway,” Herr Stoltz said. “They won’t be sifting much through the wreckage of the barn. They’ll count their own heads and assume that the missing are dead.”
There was a peculiar freedom to that. Not having to say goodbye to my parents. Being able to slip away into the dark. Which was what we intended to do.
Elijah’s gaze was on the jar. “The . . . culture can be divided?”
“
Ja,”
I said. “It should be broken into pieces, daughter cultures. To bring it to people who want it.” I tasted some bitterness in my voice, and fell silent to keep it from overtaking my speech.
Elijah nodded. “I will take some to the soldiers and leave with them.”
I blinked at him in startlement. “You won’t stay?”
He shook his head. “No. They need to know that the elixir works. And they have the ability to cover a lot of ground, reach a lot of people.” He glanced at me. “I hope that you will forgive me for not watching over your parents.”
I sighed. “They would not allow you to.”
Alex challenged Elijah. “And this would fit within your definition of what God wants for you?”
Elijah shook his head. “I have come to accept that I have many amends to make on my way to heaven. I have broken my vow of obedience to the church. But the Bishop would turn me out anyway, for taking the ‘poison.’ There’s no other choice.”
“What about your father?” I asked. Elijah was the last surviving son of his home. He had been determined to do all he could to be there for his father, and now . . . I felt that, in some ways, he was a toy soldier. He always was one to be told what to do. If not the Elders, then the army men.
“My father will not understand. But I am a man now. My choices are my own, for good or ill. If I am a tool of the Devil, then . . .” Elijah trailed off, and shrugged.
I had not ever heard such reasoning from him. Perhaps if I had heard that months ago, things would have been different. He seemed resigned now. Broken, in a way.
Now, all I could offer him was my friendship.
“And the two of you?” Herr Stoltz prompted.
Alex and I exchanged glances. “We will not go with the soldiers,” Alex said.
“No?”
“Not after how they treated us,” I said. “There is a capacity for cruelty there. While I can understand that the ends justify the means, I won’t support it.”
Alex nodded. He reached across the table to take my hand. “It’ll just be the two of us.”
“Come with us, Herr Stoltz,” I urged.
The old man shook his head. “I would not get very far. I’m too lame to follow.” His gaze fell on the jar. “But I will take a portion of this elixir. For safekeeping, with the rest of the secrets. In the event that things change around here . . . some may wish for the elixir long after you’re gone.”
“Unlikely, but understood,” Alex said. I could see that he’d had enough of this place. I wished that I could have shown him the good in it, what was bright and shining. But it seemed that all he saw was the cloudiness.
“When will you leave?” Herr Stoltz said.
Alex squinted at the orange light. “Tomorrow morning, Herr Stoltz. If that’s all right with you.”
The old man nodded. “
Ja
, that’s good. That will give me time to feed you properly. And to pray for you.”
I reached out for the hands beside me, bowed my head, and began the Lord’s Prayer. For Alex and me, for the Hexenmeister and Elijah. And most of all, for my old home, which seemed so dark and so lost.
***
There were few rooms in the Hexenmeister’s house, but they were by far the most comfortable accommodations I’d experienced since the lake.
The old man had invited Elijah to sleep in his room. There were two other rooms, one with a guest bed, which was assigned to me, and one in which the Hexenmeister had set up a cot for Alex. Though we had been traveling together for months, Herr Stoltz wordlessly insisted that we maintain a sense of propriety. And I would not break the old man’s sensibilities in his house. Alex had been good enough not to grumble when he was half crowded out of the cot by Fenrir. The wolf was beginning to think he was human.
But again, I could not sleep. I tossed and turned, and my glowing fingers chewed the edge of the blanket tugged up to my chin. I despaired of walking the open road again. Winter was upon us, and I had no idea of where we would go.
Perhaps we could make our way back to the safety of the lake. Or perhaps we were meant to walk the earth as Elijah was going to, and spread the vaccine among the survivors who were left. We had not discussed or decided. It was only understood that we would go wherever we were going together.
But I would miss this place, this last bastion of my hope. I rolled out of bed and stared out the warbled glass window tucked under the eaves. Snowflakes spangled the darkness, a veil against the stars.
I gently worked open the window, lifting it up an inch. I wanted to smell the air of this place that I’d known as home. I wanted to feel it, unhurried, unwatched, to sense some of the joy that must surely still remain in it.
I heard singing.
My pulse quickened. It was a thin, faint sound, vaguely singsong and unaccompanied by instruments. I knew the song—my lips worked around the familiar words from the
Ausbund
.
It must be Sunday night. I was ashamed to admit that I’d lost track of the calendar days in our time on the road, as obsessed as I’d been with the hours of sun and night.
I bent closer to listen to that pure, joyful sound. Amish youth gathered on Sunday nights, unaccompanied by parents, to socialize at the schoolhouse or various barns. In summertime, we gathered in open meadows. The Singings, as we called them, were our magical hours of freedom. They were the times to find partners, to gossip and giggle and play among ourselves, under only the watchful eyes of God.
I frowned. I knew that the soldiers had imposed a curfew. It was surely too dangerous to be roaming out at night. And yet . . . some of the young people must have rebelled, must have sneaked out of their parents’ houses to revisit this simple joy and normalcy. The Singings were a much-loved tradition, hard to abandon.
I breathed deeply of the cold, clear air. A snowflake slipped past the window and melted on my glowing hand.
I wanted to eavesdrop on this, just one last time. I wanted to know this fragment of joy again that would forever be taken from me. I would not hear those voices again in heaven, and the only time was now.
I dressed quickly in the dark, snatching my shoes and my heavy English coat. I paused for a moment outside Alex’s door. I heard Fenrir snoring behind it. I thought to ask Alex to come with me, to experience this sublime thing that was part of me and part of this world.
But I didn’t think he’d understand. He’d consider it to be an unnecessary risk, sentimentality. He would not want me to go. He would capitulate, finally, and come with me if I insisted. But this was something purely for me, something I wanted to do alone.
I turned away. I padded down the stairs and jammed my boots on my feet. I tugged open the door and slipped out into the dark.
Snow was falling fast, leaving more than an inch on the ground. I lowered the hood of my coat to cover my face and plunged my gloved hands in my pockets. Snowflakes became trapped in my eyelashes and stuck to the velvet interior of my hood. I had walked alone across this land many times without trepidation.
But never with this sense of yearning.
I made my way across a field, toward the old schoolhouse. It was a one-room structure, built with thick walls and heavy white wood siding to withstand the ages and the winters. Lights were on inside, warm and yellow lamplight. I approached, keeping to the shadows. Holding my breath, I peered inside a window.
This was a much smaller group than usually attended the Singings. But there were still almost two dozen young men and women inside the blackboard-lined walls. The women sat on one side and the men on the other, with their
Ausbund
hymnals open on their laps. I saw girls I’d walked to school with and boys who’d helped my father harvest wheat and haul produce. I saw a girl who had wanted to become a schoolteacher making doe eyes at a boy who was apprenticed to the blacksmith. There was innocent flirting and blushing, surreptitious giggles and flashes of smiles.
It seemed so ordinary. So lovely. I stood outside in the snow with my breath fogging the glass, wanting desperately to be that naïve again. I wanted to be on the inside, feeling that warmth and hope for the future. My fingers pressed against the cold glass, smearing light against the pane.
There was no going back. I knew it. But this spark of warmth gave me some hope, hope to spark life into my memories and sustain me going forward.
I turned away.
And was confronted by the glimmer of red eyes in the darkness.
“The night belongs to us, little one.”
Wind snagged in my coat, billowing it around me like a black flag. Red eyes converged in the white, embedded in shadows. I counted six, seven pairs of them. They were in Plain dress. I recognized them as members of a family who lived on the edge of the settlement—the father, mother, and four children. There had been a baby, I recalled, but I didn’t see it among them.
“No,” I said. “It doesn’t.”
I lowered my hood. Green light reflected from my skin. I could see it shining in the snowflakes.
The creatures paused, squinting. This was something that they had never seen. I could sense their confusion.
It gave me enough time to slip around the edge of the building, to the door. I burst inside like a gust of wind, a force of nature.
The singing broke off abruptly. I slammed the door shut behind me, locked it. Eyes looked upon me in fear and trepidation. These young people knew me. They knew that I had done something terrible to myself. They knew that they should neither speak to me nor look upon me.
But they were frozen in shock, in that moment, at my wild appearance, at my heavy breathing and panicked expression.
“The Darkness,” I panted. “The Darkness is outside.”
The silence fractured. Wails and chatter broke out. The young men and women rose from their benches, coming together in the middle of the room in a tangle of arms and voices. Some rushed to the windows.
“No!” I shouted. “Don’t look at them. They will bespell you.”
One of the young girls began to cry.
I knew that it was only a matter of time before the vampires called to them, summoned them outside. They knew these people, could draw them out by that simple tie. I had to keep them from listening.
I jammed an
Ausbund
under the nose of the nearest girl. “Sing,” I commanded. “Listen only to the words.”
“What should we sing?” she gasped.
“Start at the beginning. And don’t stop until dawn.”
There was panicked murmuring. Copies of the
Ausbund
were gathered from the floor.
Something scratched and growled at the window.
“You must,” I said. “Sing to the Lord and pray that he keeps you safe.”
One voice began, then others. The young men and women huddled in the center of the floor, far away from the windows. The song rose up, reaching up to the dark rafters.
My heart hammered in my chest. I sang too, feeling the old songs swelling within me. I had always felt the most at one with God while singing. It was a sense of being a part of myself, part of a larger collective will.
But I was not still. I scurried around the classroom. I snatched up yardsticks, ripped down a loose piece of chalk rail. Any piece of wood that I could find was torn free and gathered in my arms. I broke the edges of the yardsticks under my shoes, to make sharp points. I emptied a duffel bag full of volleyballs and jammed the stakes into the bag. The balls rolled around my feet.
A girl tugged at my skirt. “What are you doing?” she whispered.
I lifted a jagged piece of chalk rail. “Going to fight the Darkness.”
Eyes fell upon me.
“Alone?” she gasped.
“Stay here,” I said, loud enough that the others could hear. “Keep singing until the sun comes up. Lock the door behind me, and do not open it for anything.”
I took my coat off, let it puddle in an inky shadow on the floor. I rolled up my sleeves. The sack of makeshift stakes swung over my shoulder, I opened the heavy door to face the Darkness.
I slammed the door hard, heard the lock snap shut behind me, the sound of voices that shook the glass. I swallowed, feeling the cold cutting through my thin dress and realizing that the Darkness had gathered while I was inside.
There was no longer just one family. I saw a dozen more pairs of eyes milling around the schoolhouse. I recognized a carpenter, a dairy farmer, and the daughter of the blacksmith.
These were my people.
And I meant to kill as many of them as I could before they got to the young people inside.
I clutched a stake in my hand.
The carpenter came to me first. I aimed for the space of white shirt beneath his arm. He reached for me, flinched, and I drove the stake deep into the ribs. Black blood stained snow as he staggered back, landing in the skiff of perfect white.
I reached for the next stake. A stray nail cut my palm as I hurled it at the blacksmith’s daughter. She shrieked, clawed at my arm as I drove it into her right eye.
Part of my soul collapsed in on itself and covered its head as I worked. But the rest of my soul needed to protect the people inside the schoolhouse. I was tired of fighting, of running, and wanted to simply make a stand. And there was no better place to do it than with God’s music ringing in the back of my skull. My lips worked around the song, and I tasted snowflakes.
I kicked, fought, punched, and stabbed. The other vampires were wary, coming in twos and threes. They realized that they could not touch my skin, though they tried. The sleeve of my dress was torn from my shoulder, and my apron strings were snatched away. One of them grabbed me by the waist. I leaned back and pressed my cold, burning cheek to his. He screamed and let me drop like a hot coal, the side of his face smoking.