My mouth closes. I disagree, as Keyon might.
“I see,” she says, her words clipped. She assumes her seat. “Let’s begin.”
Each of us details the events of those hours starting with Donnis’s first encounter with the Biters. When my chance arrives, I stand at the bench in clean trousers and shirt, my hair loose like Angel’s, all innocence, her spitting image but for the hidden gap in my teeth. The Council members question me, lead me through each decision beginning with the encounter in the barn.
“And what were you thinking in the barn?” Cash leans forward, sharp chin jutting, lips curled over his toothless gums.
“I was reacting,” I explain. “I’d no time for thoughts; that’s not how it works. If I’d stopped to consider each action that afternoon, you’d have at least three bodies outside the wall: Keyon’s, Donnis’s, and mine. The man had flinted a fire; he carried a knife and I was in his way.”
“You put out the fire,” Priest says. “That was a decision.”
“Probably a wrong one,” I confess. “If I’d focused on the Bi…raiders, Keyon might be sitting on this bench beside me.”
“Donnis stated that you arrived at the home to find him and Keyon under attack,” Simone continues.
“Keyon had already been stabbed. I killed the man before he could finish the job. Donnis was down and the man standing over him held a knife.”
“He would’ve killed me,” Donnis reminds them, rising to his feet.
“Yes, thank you, I don’t think we’re questioning that fact,” Simone says gently and returns her attention to me. “Tell us about the last man, the one with his hands bound behind his back.”
“Address your reply to me,” Jeph says, looking intently at my face through his blind eyes. I step toward him, so there’s no question. Starting with Tannis and our attempts to save Keyon, I describe the arrival of Chantri, Lucky, and Konnard with the prisoner. “I offered to take the rope from Konnard. I was tired, exhausted from the fight.” The truth as I recall it.
“Is that so?” Jeph asks calmly.
“Yes,” I reply. “My blood was slowing, my body shaking, shutting down.”
With a nod, he indicates for me to continue.
“Keyon had lost blood. His wound was deep, and I doubted he could ride.” I speak the truth. “I suggested that they might need Konnard’s help, since Tannis was lame and Chantri…limps. Konnard gave me the rope and went inside.” The truth. “I looked at the man, wasn’t really thinking about anything, just standing there watching while he sneered at me. Then the crossbow fired.” The truth.
“You don’t remember pulling the trigger?” Jeph asks.
“No. Just the bolt sticking out of his forehead.” I hold the blind eyes unflinchingly in mine.
“Do you regret killing him?” Jeph’s final question.
“Not at all.”
The truth.
20
~Angel~
With Priest beneath me, I bend forward, my hair a pale curtain around his face as I smile into his eyes. “Did you enjoy?”
“Um hm,” he replies, his hands on my hips. He rocks me a little, just to force a laugh and groan.
“No more,” I beg and slide to his side, tucked against him, my head on his withered arm, kisses reaching for his jaw.
“The Council has agreed to patrols,” he says.
“How romantic,” I sigh.
“My apologies.” He rolls up onto his elbow, gazing down at me. “Your sister, Angel. She skated through that inquiry by a thinner margin than she thinks. She survived it because Keyon died and because no one witnessed her shoot the man. But she’s arrogant and righteous, and that doesn’t sit well.”
“She’s angry,” I defend her. “For everything that’s happened to us, to her.”
“Not just angry, terrified,” he suggests softly. “I see it in her, feel it at both extremes, blazing like a firestorm and freezing her into a careless life. Nothing flows through her.” His finger starts at the crown of my head and slowly drifts down the centerline of my body to my swollen sex. “She’s afraid of everything, Angel, perceives every roll of chance as personal. What are her aspirations, her wishes? She longs for nothing, breaks everything down to its basest level in an attempt to control and ends up with an illusion of truth. She judges and hurts with her words because she can’t listen to others faithfully. Can you see it?” I nod, tears wetting my cheeks, lips pressed together to keep from quivering. He places his hand over my heart. “Her emotions overpower her or shut down her heart. She’s a warrior whose actions only reinforce her self-loathing. She’s terrified of love.”
“She loves me,” I squeak out, my hand covering my mouth.
“She does,” he says with a soft smile, “but tangled up with incredible fear. She’s dependent on you, ceases to exist without you, and therefore can never let you go. You’re her hope. Help her understand that she can’t kill without cause. ‘If they come for peace, take them alive; if they come for war, take them alive, and let each one go home in peace.’”
“Ancient words are easier said than lived,” I contend.
“Our aspirations stretch us to redefine who we are and who we’ll be. They’re not supposed to feel comfortable, to reinforce our routine reasoning. They’re meant to shake us loose, to challenge us.”
“She tried to save Keyon,” I argue, desperate to convince him. “She saved Donnis’s life. She fought to protect herself.”
“Not when she shot a bolt into the head of a man with his hands tied behind his back.”
“That was an accident, Priest.”
“Was it, Angel?” He sags onto his back and rubs the tension from his forehead. “I’m sorry, love.”
My mouth stays shut, not because I’m angry with him or think he’s unfair, but because I suspect the truth, and there’s so little within my power when it comes to my sister. He’s right…about everything.
“Are you saying Donnis should simply have given them the sheep?” It’s a sourly asked question, a challenge. Something about the whole ordeal doesn’t sit well with me.
“Maybe,” he answers. “Would Keyon be alive? I don’t know. I’d give a handful of livestock to have him back. Perhaps we should pull everyone to this side of the wall. Perhaps we’re baiting the People by steading outside the wall.”
At his final words, insight flashes through my thoughts. “It’s the wall.” I scramble up to sit beside him. “It’s your bone wall, Priest. One of your own design.”
His dark eyes search my face for understanding.
“When my ancestors broke the world, they built walled Gardens to protect themselves from the People and the world they’d poisoned. Millions, Priest, hordes I can’t truly imagine, perished outside our walls, flared against our walls, their bones piled up into an earthen ring twenty feet high. The walls saved us, prevented us from dying with the rest of the world, from being overrun by the sick and starving, but at a cost.”
“Explain,” he presses.
“It preserved a sliver of all we’d achieved. Just as your wall protects what the Colony strives to build. But walls also collect bones, both friend and foe.” I rise from the bed, drawing his shirt on and folding it around me, the smell of him on my skin. He rolls on his side to watch me pace. “What is a wall, Priest, but an invitation to breach, to set in stone a belief that what lies inside is ours and outside yours for the taking? If there were no walls, there wouldn’t be insides and outsides, no separation, no us and them. Perhaps the deceivers wouldn’t have broken the world if they’d no false walls of security to retreat behind, if they understood that they couldn’t escape, that no one survives intact in a broken world.”
“The deceivers were flawless at self-deception,” he says. “I doubt they possessed the vision to gaze beyond the end of the day.”
“But
you
have aspirations stretching you, shaking loose old reasoning, redefining you, creating a world without bone walls perhaps, all of us invested in the future together.” I sit on the edge of the bed and run my fingers over the contours of his chest. “We’d flow more freely wouldn’t we, without a wall to defend? The Colony wouldn’t be limited to a canyon, to what’s defensible, but free to expand into the wilderness.”
The wheels in his head grind through my words. My dream rings of innocent simplicity, I know, the world less eager for healing, less safe than I wish it to be. A wall is more than a metaphor, the violence beyond the stone barrier terrifyingly real. I have seen it, suffered it, and my sister far worse than I.
“The Council needs to rethink its messages,” I challenge him, leaning forward to capture his eyes. “Why place armed guards on a wall if you don’t mean to defend it? How is my sister supposed to interpret your directives? One way or another, Priest, she’ll end up another casualty on your wall.”
**
The Colony’s sheer pink cliffs and streaked stones hoard winter’s chill longer than the sloping lands beyond our gates. Shadows cling stubbornly to their amassed pockets of dirty snow and ice; the seep springs where water oozes from the cliff face are slow to thaw. But where the sun shines like a white brand, spring arrives overnight. We shed our cloaks and coats, crack open shutters, and sow last autumn’s seeds in fallow fields, new crops rotating through our gardens, just as we did in Heaven. We stake out new grazing, prune the orchard, shovel manure, thin and weed the tender sprouts poking up through clumpy soil.
My words have shifted the Colony’s thinking if only a few feet up the canyon’s twisted path. The wall stands, but unmanned, its wide doors propped open with stones the size of pumpkins. Our guards patrol the edges of our expanded community on horseback as peacekeepers, the word alone a symbol of progress.
A cool mask on her refined face, Rimma suffers the restraints I’ve placed on her, though I can see, when she appears in the morning kitchen with her bow slung on her back, that she’s a boiling pot, lid rattling as it contains the steam inside. Chantri and Tannis mind her, stick to her like glue, especially when the People step through our gate to trade, to sate their curiosity, or assess our value as a prize. The Council invites them to join us, to stead beyond the gate, but they rarely do in any number.
From the kitchens, I tag Rimma out into the morning, the stark line separating daylight from night-shadow descending the rock walls as the rising sun peers over the cliff’s rim. That sharp edge will travel the floor of the Colony until the sun flares overhead. Then at day’s end, a curtain of dusk will chase the tired light along the same path as the sun winks out over the western precipice.
Stretching and yawning loudly with his mouth gaping open, Tannis is already mounted on the tall bay, his two brown braids replace by a single long plait at his back. He sags forward, hands resting lightly on the saddle’s pommel. “Good of you to join us,” he grumbles at my sister.
“Slept in,” Rimma replies. “What’s the hurry?”
“Konnard rode in early,” Chantri informs my sister. Her chestnut nearly saddled, she’s fiddling to snug the cinch under the horse’s ribcage. “There’s a pack camped in the aspens; probably on their way north. A few of them showed up at the wall, looking to trade. Lucky’s at the gate, keeping an eye out until we arrive.” She slides a finger between the horse and cinch, and gives the animal a satisfied pat.
“Who are they?” Rimma asks, her body stock-still, her voice razor-sharp.
“River Walkers,” Chantri replies before her head snaps up to my sister, regret in her eyes. “Sorry, Rimma. I forgot…I didn’t mean to…”
“Rimma?” I whisper. My sister shudders, blood draining from her face. “Don’t go out there. Stay here with me today.” She ignores me, striding past me to the road leading through the fields to our wall. My skirt in my fists, I scurry to keep up.
“Rimma,” Chantri calls, “not a good idea. Wait!” She mounts up and whistles to get Tannis’s attention, jerking her head toward my sister.
“What?” He glances from Chantri to Rimma, eyebrows raised, oblivious to what’s happening.
My sister presses forward, her eyes riveted on the wall as if nothing else exists. I don’t exist.
“Rimma, stop,” I beg her. She halts and faces me, gray eyes laced with ice. Beneath the cold calm, I recognize panic, something feral fighting for survival, terror divorced of reason. “Please Rimma. We should go back. What are you doing? Come back with me.”
Ahead of us, shadows still bathe the wall, but I spot Lucky’s horse inside the wide-open gate, a group of People with him, all on foot. Rimma unslings her crossbow, cocks the string, and loads it. “Please, Rimma,” I implore her, my own panic rising with my tears.
The bay canters past us, Tannis riding for the gate. Chantri reins in front of us, blocking our way. “Rimma, back off,” she shouts. “Don’t be a fucking ass.”
My sister points her bolt at Chantri’s chest. “Get out of my way,” she growls, her voice bristling with threat.
“Try me,” Chantri dares her, the woman’s eyes narrowed to thin blue slivers. Chantri swings her own bow around, plucks an arrow from her quiver and has it knocked in seconds, aimed at Rimma’s heart.
“Stop!” I scream at them, though only Rimma sees and hears me. “Why are you doing this?” They’re frozen, quarrel tips nearly kissing, faces unrelenting, foolish and unforgiving. Rimma glances at me, lowers her point and pushes past the horse. Chantri exhales her held breath, bites her lip. “Help her,” I cry to a deaf world.