Reddish mud splatters on the hem of my skirt and my soaked blouse clings to my skin. The rain feels bitterly cold, the clay softening, slick and sticky. “I’m going back,” I shout to her, turning away, arms wrapped around my shoulders as I hurry toward the riverbed. The rain roars in my ears, the landscape painted gray. At the steep bank, Rimma grabs my shirt from behind, yanking me backwards and ripping the thin cloth. We both slip, flailing to the mud. I’m spitting angry, pushing her off me, swatting her clawing hands away and screaming at her to let me go.
“Look!” Rimma grabs at my arm, a corner of my skirt gripped in her muddy fingers. “Look,” she yells in my face. Our tiny river surges in a russet torrent of raging mud and water, thundering through the riverbed. Tree branches, weeds, and leaves sweep by, tumbling in the murk. The body of a drowned animal rises to the surface, flips over, and descends. Upstream a tree rolls and catches, twists free, sucked into the current roaring by us, branches reaching toward us with skeletal fingers. We scramble backwards from the bank as the tree spins and streams by.
“We’re trapped,” I cry, the gate of Heaven awaiting us on the other side of the river. The Biters that I’ve thrust from my mind for weeks howl in my thoughts.
“I think the river will sink back down.” Rimma lets go of my skirt and wraps an arm protectively around my shoulders, offering to warm me.
“How do you know?”
“It’s the rain,” she says, sounding so certain. “And the riverbanks; something carved those. When the rain ends, the water will go down.”
“Are you sure?” I wipe my muddy hands on my skirt, and wet hair from my face.
A shrug rolls off Rimma’s shoulders with the cold rain. We sit side by side and wait for the storm to pass.
Twilight rises over the shield wall, the rain a chilling drizzle, the clouds slate gray. From outside, the wall forms a dome, a sparkling bowl tipped over on its rim, twinkling with blue light as if laced with a thousand shooting stars. How can something so strong be so fragile, something so safe prove so perilous?
The river’s roar subsides and Rimma stands at the bank’s edge, peering down and beckoning me. “We can cross.” I follow her down the bank, shivering, both of us sliding and falling in the slick clay. We wade across in a panic and clamber up the opposite bank, sighing with relief as we run for the gate. The heavy door creaks shut and we scamper up the East Spoke toward the heart of Heaven, our wet skirts slapping at our legs.
The gold filaments glow softly in the windows of God’s House of Law, the courtyard and pathways almost deserted as we dart toward the barn with hopes of splashing ourselves clean of mud in the goats’ water troughs. Rimma pours icy water over my head with a bucket as my teeth chatter. “Quiet,” she hisses.
“I’m trying,” I complain, grabbing the bucket from her in a snit. “Your turn.” The water dribbles over her as she shudders. Bending over the trough, we scrub at our blouses and skirts, the effort hopeless. “Thank you for saving me,” I whisper, my clammy hand taking hers. She feels colder than I.
Outside the barn, night lies warmly over Heaven, lamplight flickering, shield wall buzzing like an angry bee. I dart across the pathways, from the barn to the rear of the granary, behind the women’s residence, past the dinner-hall, scurrying around the hub to the rear of God’s House of Law. Rimma steals silently along on my heels. I turn the corner to start up our ladder to safety and freeze. Rimma melts unseen into the ivy behind me. My mother stands by the metal rungs in her apron and bonnet with Deacon Abrum grim-faced at her side.
**
The only three in God’s House of Law, we congregate near the dais at the room’s fore. Deacon Abrum’s bulk occupies an embroidered velvet chair, threadbare, but still one of Heaven’s better seats. His ruddy face radiates displeasure mixed with divine patience. His black robe implies this is an official conference.
Still dripping, I stand before him, a dirty dishrag of a woman, the mud on my clothes glaringly plain in the light, my hair plastered to my head, face fearfully contrite. My mother stands beside me, head down, her hands clasped before her as if she too bears the guilt of breaking God’s law. And so it’s written, we bear the shame of our forebears and they of us, unless the deacon decides otherwise.
“Do you require an explanation as to why you stand here?” The Deacon’s voice rumbles softly through the room as he raises a busy eyebrow.
My eyes glance quickly at the stern face, my nod noncommittal. Rimma no doubt sprawls on the belfry floor, an eye pressed to one of the bell-rope holes, listening. She told me if I’m ever caught to speak as little as possible and to tell the truth only if my accusers already know it.
“You are aware that leaving Heaven constitutes grounds for banishment?”
Again, I nod, my lips caught between my teeth. Rimma insists they won’t banish us the first time, not so soon following the massive deaths at our gate, but the word alone sends a chill coursing up my spine.
“You vex your dear mother. Doesn’t she have enough weighing on her heart?”
My own heart lurches as I glance at her, hoping she’ll look up at me and accept the apology scrawled across my face. She doesn’t twitch as a single tear tracks down her cheek.
“Speak up, Rimma,” the Deacon demands.
“Uh, yes,” I stammer, for a moment startled that he’s confused me with my sister.
Offering a hand, Deacon Abrum beckons my mother to stand beside him and she obeys, placing her hand in his. “Bria has begged me to spare you, and I’ve agreed,” he says with an air of forbearance as he raises a thick finger to my frown. “But if you fail to heed this warning, and I learn that you venture again outside our walls, placing all of Heaven in jeopardy, you will face judgment before the deacons and elders. And I won’t oppose a call to cast you out.” He leans forward, dark eyes sharp with threat. “If I catch you outside the shield, I will slam the door then and there. Do you understand me?”
“Yes.” I reply, no longer listening, my eyes staring at my mother’s hand as he fondles it.
“This is God’s Law, not mine,” he adds. “Let us speak Our Promise.” He bows his head while I study the muddy hem of my skirt, whispering the words, “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.”
I climb the ladder to the roof first, my mother following slowly behind me, her face determined. Rimma waits for us at the top, her silver eyes smoky diamonds. I stagger away from her to the roof’s shadows, the weight of the deacon’s threat bearing down on me less than his sweat on my mother’s wrist. I sink down among the creepers, shivering, tears squeezing into my cupped hands.
With a sigh, my mother steps onto the roof, takes in our little habitat in a swift glance and draws herself up to face Rimma. She stands only inches taller than we, and despite Rimma’s muddy ragwear and stringy wet hair, my mother appears the more beaten of the two, her face weary beneath the plain bonnet, the drab apron enhancing her frailty.
“You’re fucking him,” Rimma accuses her.
“If you mean I let him paw me and rape me, you’re right,” my mother snaps back. “Your father isn’t the only one who makes sacrifices.” The vehemence of her words slaps Rimma’s face like an open palm and she staggers backwards. “I spread my legs to save you. I’d do it again and again, but it will only work this once, Rimma. From this point forward, you are the only one who can save yourself.”
Rimma’s lips mumble words I can’t hear, a stammered apology or explanation or wish, her hand pressed to her cheek as if rubbing away the phantom sting. Heaven is falling, crashing down around us in a thunderous, booming rumble while the shield wall still stands. Its final collapse won’t mark the beginning of our demise, but the end.
My mother grabs Rimma’s wrist and yanks her into an embrace as Rimma’s hard shell cracks, falling away in thick chunks beneath the heavy weight of tears.
7
~Rimma~
I’ve taken my mother’s words to heart, though perhaps not as she intended. She would prefer to find me donning my humble bonnet over plaited hair, unassumingly plain apron cinched around my waist with a fat, loopy bow. Nothing would please her more than my presence in the House of God’s Law, in the fields or kitchen, milking goats, herding sheep, shoveling chicken shit, or giggling with the children of Paradise. In my mind, none of that will save Angel or me when Heaven falls.
That night I slit our skirts with a knife, right up between our legs, carving through all the little scraps of fabric some industrious woman stitched together into a drab piece of cloth. I sewed them back up into trousers with a skill that would have made my mother proud. Nowhere have I heard that God disdains trousers—at least not yet.
Our brown bonnets and aprons never returned and if Deacon Abrum tolerated our bare heads and loose tresses before, he can scarcely fuss over them now. We diligently pull our weight around Heaven, completing our chores at a frenzied pace and then retreating to the pine forest for
training
.
Useless to a fault with weapons, Angel watches and claps as I hurl my spear or dance wild, swirling steps with my sickles. Weeks ago, I gave up on flinging knives, the skill proving far more challenging than it appears. No matter how I compelled them to stick, my assortment of kitchen knives merely clattered clumsily against the trees and bounced to the dirt. I concluded that throwing-knives are different from those for chopping potatoes and carving chickens, and left it at that.
My spear is a broom handle sporting a paring knife at one end, secured with two little metal straps I worked free from the pipes inside the hub. The easiest of my weapons to handle, I launch it over my shoulder, stab invisible attackers, and crack their jaws and arms, trip them up and smash their faces in. Bloody business, sure to call on all my courage. “I need an opponent,” I inform Angel, wise enough to worry that my ghostly combatants offer little resistance. She blinks at me in alarm. “Not you,” I groan. We tried that. She winced and closed her eyes every time I thumped her stick.
“Switch to sickles,” she suggests helpfully. She’s sitting on the viewing stand, her legs dangling over the edge, arms resting on the lower rail.
“I need an enemy for those as well,” I mutter, propping the spear on a tree and retrieving my curved blades. My arms swing in giant loops and I twist side to side, loosening my shoulders and spine. Once ready, I assume my opening stance, right sickle up, my elbow slightly bent, blade just above the ear but not too close to my head. My left sickle rests near my hip, wrist turned out. My feet are parted, one in front of the other for balance and for quick advance or retreat. From there my weapons slash inward and out again into a mirror image of my starting position. After that, it’s all random and fluid, depending on how my invisible attacker approaches. My bloody blades fly in a dazzling blur as I jump and spin, slicing through imaginary skin. It’s the best I can do until I stand face to face with real Biters.
When I finish, Angel tromps down the metal steps to join me. “Is anyone coming?” I ask her.
“No.” She puffs out a worried breath.
“Then let’s go.” I wipe my sleeve across my sweaty forehead and start toward the gate.
For all her quibbling, Angel’s at least agreed to keep our flower jar watered and stuffed with fresh blooms. She grabs our bucket and trudges behind me. “One day we’ll find the door locked behind us,” she warns me.
“It only takes a few minutes,” I argue as I grab the crank. “I’ll go while you guard the door.”
“No, we have to stay together.” She assumes her place opposite me and we heave on the wheel, creaking it around as the bars grumble noisily back. For a moment we pause, listening for voices and then haul the gate open a crack.
It’s not raining, but each week the wind feels colder. The forest’s leaves that for several weeks wore plates of gold now flutter crisply brown to the earth. Flowers scattered in the blowing grass wither, our favorite yellow plumes gone to seed. The broken world dies all around us.
Kneeling by the grave, Angel plucks dead blooms from our blue jar, and we scour the pocked ground for replacements, venturing farther than we should along the riverbed. When she’s satisfied, we scramble down the bank to fill our bucket as best we can in the trickling water. As usual the mud displays the imprints of animal visitors, delicate tridents left by hopping birds, the padded paws of our coppery pup, little half-moon pig toes and pairs of pointy teardrops not unlike our goats.
“Rimma,” Angel murmurs as I scoop water into the bucket with my cupped hands. Her eyes are focused on the mud, on the bare footprint of a man. She points farther down the riverbed, a path of Biter prints at the water’s edge. My finger to my lips for silence, I tilt my head toward the bank in the direction of the gate. At her nod, we creep up the incline, fingernails clawing into the dry dirt, feet chopping footholds in crumbling clay. I crawl out of the riverbed and freeze, still on my hands and knees, my sister whimpering beside me.
“Huh, well, well, oh my, oh my.”
My eyes flick up to the two Biters facing us, a bent-up crone and a smiling giant behind her. I scramble to my feet, dragging Angel up by the arm. “Run!” I shout and shove her to the side, prepared to use my body to knock the old woman to the ground and distract the giant. “Run, Angel,” I scream, but my sister backs into me, almost tumbling us both down the riverbank.