An hour later, while my father meets with the other men determined to change places with Paradise’s children, my mother and I steal into the women’s residence and collect our bedding. The three of us will sleep in the library, my parents intent on spending the night fornicating, permission or no.
For a brief moment, I’m mortified at the blatant disregard for God’s laws, the flagrant sin, and wonder if this perversity is rampant throughout Heaven, the cause of our troubles after all. But I know it’s not, or it’s too late, or it doesn’t matter. I don’t know what to think, so I carry my bedding to the library and fashion a bed on the floor behind a bookcase.
Filaments flutter their shadowy wings on the ceiling. The imminent end of all I know looms above me like the sagging shelves of heavy tomes. Sleep eludes me, partly due to the soft grunts, sighs, and muted conversation of my parents. Partly to the ache for Max between my thighs and the wish that he and I would have that grown-up, moaning farewell. My chances at love seem very far away now, my future stolen from me. All I possess is the utter horror of what lies ahead tomorrow, the next day, the next day, the next day, forever until I’m dead.
**
In the pallor of dawn, we drift like sallow ghosts, a Heaven of lifeless wraiths lurching numbly through the heart of our Garden. Their faces aglow with beatific grace, elders and deacons praise God between the grand pillars of the House of Law. Lit by a crackling blue sky, they spew lavish speeches, fling imposing words at my ears such as glory, heroism, and salvation.
Of two thousand descendants in Heaven, close to a third are children, and though I’ve no certainty, I assume the same of other Gardens. Why then do I count little more than a hundred men and a handful of wrinkled women standing armed on the paving stones? Why are there no elders or deacons? Does this mean we will accept only a hundred children? What of the rest? Will we add only a hundred to the defenders’ ranks? Will so few be enough?
The same unspoken questions seem to echo in other ears. Fear etches every face, all dark-ringed eyes unnaturally wide with dread. Though I yield not a sound and feel no sensation of weeping, my cheeks feel moist with tears. Tidal waves of fear and despair heave inside me, break through my frail defenses, spill, flood, and recede. I want the world to stop spinning, the next moment to never come, and I want time to speed up, to race ahead and finish with this agony. A shameful, sinful part of me hopes the Biters have already attacked, the refugees of Paradise reduced to lifeless meat, their rescue no longer required.
His bulk draped in a spotless, black robe, Deacon Abrum leads us down the East Spoke, a virtuous march to triumph. Chin up, his mouth expounds on the benevolence of God, on the righteousness of His laws, on the many rewards we shall reap for Heaven’s great sacrifice. To the rest of us, it’s a funeral march, the tempo of our footfalls a dirge. I bear my father’s hammer; my mother drags his wooden spear; he carries a kitchen knife tucked in his belt. We both hold his hands, squeezing. Not one of us speaks.
Sunlight shimmers beyond the shield, golden shafts of light slanting through our pines. Here in our orderly forest most of us are to pivot and retreat to the heart of Heaven. My father kisses us and we embrace, words of love and regret spoken until our throats ache. His gray eyes reflect the morning’s sunrays despite his doom. “If all goes well, I’ll return by nightfall and the children will rejoin their families,” he says, a useless attempt to assuage our fears. “I’ll meet you in the library.” He smiles and kisses my mother, his hands in her flaxen hair. “I love you. Pray for me.” He pats my head and leaves us to walk the stone spoke through the trees with God’s other lambs to the metal portal that will deliver him to the broken world.
My mother keeps a strong grip on my hand as we trudge with the other women back toward our homes, her face a clay mask carved with cracks. My body rebels, shaking, on the verge of igniting. My legs need to run, to escape from the invisible, oppressive weight of Heaven. I rip my hand from my mother’s grasp. “I have to see Max,” I shout at her as I dart back toward the trees. “I haven’t said farewell.”
“Rimma,” she demands, running after me. “Rimma!”
“I’ll be a moment,” I yell, refusing to listen or glance back, my skirt clutched in my fists. I run for my life, knowing she will race after me, but that I’ll outpace her, lose her in the forest, my hideout. My sprint from the spoke feels wild, my mutiny out of control, the pain of dead twigs slapping my face and arms, a reprieve from the terror in my heart. A stick scrapes my leg, drawing blood, but I dare not stop. Her frantic voice calls in my ears, farther away, ringing with desperation; she doesn’t know where I am.
Ahead of me stands the east gate, a place I’m not welcome or wanted. The hem of my skirt in my teeth, I jump for a low branch, flip over, hook my knees and scramble up, my shoes barely holding to the ragged ends of broken branches. My apron catches on a sharp stick and rips as I yank it free and press on, ignoring the scratches on my arms. The climb eases, sappy branches well-spaced for my size as I haul myself up. I now see the east gate clearly and beyond it glimpses of the broken world. A little higher, the boughs thin and my view opens.
Inside our wall, deacons and elders ascend the zigzag stairs to the narrow platform, shoes clanging on metal treads. The descendants of Paradise scream on the other side of the shield, begging us. I hear the words over and over again, breaking through the jumbled stridency of wails and shouts, promises and pleas. “They’re coming. They’re coming!”
A string of smokeless cook-fires burns at the edge of the stick forest across the dry riverbed. On the barren land between trees and river, I set my eyes on them, hundreds of Biters. From here, they look filthy-skinned with dark hair in long tangles, their bodies clothed in animal leathers and fur, tatters of ancient apparel, or draped with blankets. They heft their spears, hone their blades and shake glinting weapons in threat as they howl.
On the platform, Deacon Abrum raises thick hands, his deep, rumbling voice booming over every head and reaching through the wall. “We are here to save you. Heaven will open its gates.”
His words ripple over me in a wave of confusion, the meaning dawning on me as I cling to my branch in stunned silence. God has granted us a reprieve? I hold my breath as I seek my father among those gathered, afraid to believe salvation is nigh. I find both him and my mother, her hand in his as they stare at each other. All along the shield wall, the descendants of Paradise cheer and weep. A laugh bubbles up with my tears as a prayer of thankfulness bursts from my lips, the words lost in the eruption of joy. As I call to my parents, I notice my father’s face, so drawn with sorrow it pains me. He shakes his head and my mother’s forehead drops to his chest. I sway, clutching the branch, as I realize that’s not what the revelation meant.
“We have a hundred of Heaven’s souls,” the deacon shouts, “who guided by God’s mercy have agreed to assume the places of a hundred of your children. Hurry your children to the gate and then retreat back so we may begin the exchange.”
The people on the earthen wall remain rooted in place, faces of liberation contorting into visions of panic.
“Fuck you all to Hell!” a man roars from behind the shield. Chaos explodes among Paradise’s descendants as they bellow their rage and swarm toward the gate with their children. A brawny man hammers a fist into the face of anyone blocking his path, a blond child wailing in his other arm, her mouth gaping, eyes pools of terror. Fights erupt where the press is fiercest, fists pounding and flailing as parents shove through the throng, little ones wedged between them, screaming. In the frenzy, children are ripped from their parents’ arms and thrust backward while others ram their way forward. A cluster of women with infants falls in the shoving and the panicked crowd stumbles over them, trampling them.
I scream for them to stop, gripping the tree to keep from tumbling. Deacons shout and wave their arms, demanding calm with voices drowned beneath a sea of fear. Deacon Abrum folds his arms over his bulk and waits, a contemptuous frown dragging down his jowls. Biters watch the madness with savage glee, pumping their weapons at the sky and howling with predatory hunger.
The turmoil on the other side of the shield staggers to a halt as many retreat from the battle, eyes wide in horror and dismay. Others seem to awaken, bloodied with the realization that the portal to Heaven remains firmly closed. In a deathly trance, they leave their terrified children outside the gate, babies lying in the dust and dirt, red-faced and screaming, toddlers with pinched eyes and open mouths as their cries go unanswered, older children collapsing and wailing for deaf parents, some bruised and bleeding. The adults back away, force themselves to retreat, faces twisted with anguish. Six hundred children pock the ground outside the gate of Heaven. The only sounds breaking the silence overflow with despair.
After a moment of stern-faced reproach, Deacon Abrum nods. Deacons Elie and Solom crank the metal wheel at the portal, straining with the effort. Rusted bars scrape and squeal as they retract from slots in the door. My father, the man Barth, and Max slip through the widening crack first. I see my father reach for the nearest baby and hand the child through the doorway to my mother. Time stutters and pauses, each detail of the moment branded into my eyes: the child’s mother kneeling and weeping with relief, the expression of futility on my mother’s face, surety in my father eyes that this is God’s will and his calling—to protect the innocent, the hope of the world, even though this choice might cost him his life.
The exchange happens quickly now, Max handing back a grubby toddler, Barth with another infant. After a brief glance at my mother, my father blends into the throng from Paradise. A steady stream of Heaven’s descendants slips through the door’s narrow gap, pausing only for the child passed back. My mother accepts the children, handing them to other women lined up behind her. When the original hundred men and women of Heaven stand in the broken world, five hundred doomed children still crowd the gate.
Deacon Elie with his nasal voice and haughty airs sighs and steps through and I wonder at my shock. For a few plodding moments, the gate stands open as a handful of elders respond to the final whispered pleas. Then a mighty roar shatters the remaining fragile shards of hope and Biters swarm toward the riverbed. The gate to Heaven slams shut; the crank screeches, bars plunging through steel slots.
My arms wrap the tree’s bole as the parents of Paradise scramble for their children at the gate. Biters run, bare feet stirring the dry clay, chins raised, bellowing and yipping their war cries as brandished weapons strike the air. In a wave, they disappear into the riverbed and then scramble up the nearer bank, their bestial jeers deafeningly loud, pounding my chest like a fist.
Now I see the blood painted on their faces, fire soot smearing their arms and chests, feathers, claws, and tails woven into their hair and flapping on their leathers. Several attackers carry other Biters on their backs; thin, twisted creatures, warped distortions only half human. A hundred paces away the Biters stop to shoot feathered shafts from long curved bows, skewering men, women, and children, screams rising as victims fall and writhe in the dust. Biters scoop up rocks and fling them with tethered slings, stones slamming into skulls and shattering bone.
The Biters shriek and screech with terrifying elation, their shafts and stones pounding into the descendants and sending up snapping flares of blue light when they miss and strike the shield. Deacon Elie’s head caves in, blood whipping into the air in a crimson arc. Arrows burrow into chests, necks, bellies, and limbs, scores of descendants twisting, screaming, and falling. The women and children stand on the earthen ring sandwiched between the defenders and the shield wall. I search for my father, but can’t find him, and I won’t close my eyes.
The savage horde bunches and then begins to fan out. An old Biter, a legless woman strapped to the back of a giant man squawks and thrusts a gnarled fist at the sky. The landscape ripples and Biters leap from invisibility, roaring, belched from the very air. The perimeter thickens, bulging eagerly forward as rocks and shafts continue to pelt the terrified crowd. Our defenders have no bows, no slings, only farm tools and crude spears, pitiful against the ceaseless barrage.
A woman on the earthen wall screams as a rock smashes into her mouth, shattering her face. She teeters, flailing, and trips backwards into the shield. The wall crackles as blue light blasts through her body, incinerating her flesh, impaling her silhouette on my eyes. Her white bones clatter to the clay.
Biters raise their faces, tendons taut in their necks, chests thrust out as they howl, and in a ferocious rush, spears and knives raised, they plunge forward in attack. Bodies crash together in a terrible letting of blood. The Biters count so few against the descendants, but our hastily-crafted weapons are no match, our men inexperienced in battle. I see Max sink beneath the mass of bodies, his mouth gaping with pain and disbelief, blood on his face. Then fires burst and flare among the descendants, bodies engulfed in flames, blazing; spinning, screaming torches of human flesh and fat.
Panic and chaos tip into madness, all reason and humanity shredded by sheer terror, descendants clawing and striking each other as they attempt to flee the onslaught. Burning bodies stagger and fall as more flare up, the smell of roasting flesh thick. Bloody blades dig between bones, stabbing, and slicing, the Biters slashing wildly.
A group of men and women break through the assault and begin to run along the shield. Biters sling rocks, slamming several people to the earth among tufts of yellow weed. A flock of flickering steel spins through the air, lightning fast, pounding into flesh. A knife in her back, a woman screams among the flowers as a man drags his body toward her. In an odd bent-leg scurry, three Biters reach their quarries and cut their throats.