I said nothing for weeks, tucking it beneath my mattress in the hope that I would forget its existence. I am well aware that the road to Hell is paved not with good intentions but with the smallest of sins—a contrary thought, a lie, a careless stitch left uncorrected. I suppose I was waiting for Sister Polly to become so entrenched in our ways that she would lose all desire to glance at anything from the World. Then I might be able to rifle through it and, seeing it for the dross it was, feed it by the page into the fire of our little stove. But something in me knew better. Something in me knew that the time would come when, as her friend, I would want her to have it.
“Here,” I said one night before extinguishing the candle that stood between us. “I found this not long after you arrived and could not bring myself to burn it.”
Her hand shook as she reached out to take it from me. “Far from Home,” she said, almost as if she were talking to herself. “An Englishman’s Voyage to Worlds Unseen. How strange. I hardly remember stopping to…” She looked up, suddenly secretive. “That this should be the only object I took not in service of keeping us fed and warm. And that it should be the only one to survive…” She looked up quickly and smiled. She had stopped herself before telling me something.
“Survive what?” I asked.
She flipped through the book’s pages without answering me, and while the fluttering sound sent chills down my spine, her face glowed with pleasure as her eyes scanned the words. How I wished she would put it away.
“I don’t even know why I chose it,” she said, looking up at me. “Just grabbed it blindly, I suppose.” She turned it over in her hands. “It’s an account of a journey. A distant one at that. If ever you wanted to know about the World you so despise, then this”—she stared at the author’s name—“this Horatio Wolcott seems a good man for the job.” She lifted the volume to her nose and breathed in the scent. “Here, smell it. It won’t poison you.”
I hesitated, then found myself bending down as if to kiss it. The book smelled of milled wood and leather harnesses, and though I knew I should be disgusted, the effect it had upon me was calming. We expect the things that are bad for us to give off some sign of their malignancy, but instead the little red book pulled me in. It promised something.
I drew back. Here was the Devil’s temptation pure and clear, for I had never before thought of allowing myself to be distracted from my steadfastness as a believer.
Sister Polly laughed at the look of alarm on my face.
“I…I should never have kept it,” I stammered. “I have told you that books are forbidden, and yet I offer you this. What must you make of me?”
She put it in her lap and gazed at me in silence. As I had never before shared a sleeping chamber with another sister, I had known nothing of the soft whisperings exchanged between girls when it seems as though the rest of the world is asleep. I had come to prize such time spent with my friend. Indeed, there were moments during the day when I could think of nothing else. Was this, too, the Devil’s work? I knew not, nor did I much care, for another fear loomed larger in my mind. Would the presence of the book ruin our nights? Would a souvenir from the past put an end to us?
“I make of you,” she said slowly, “that you are kind and brave to have rescued this for me. Shall we look together and see what wisdom it holds?”
“No!” I said. I felt a surge of panic, as though the book’s leather cover encased a box full of demons we might never be able to push back inside. “No!” I begged again, covering my ears. “Please, do not open it or look at what it says. You cannot be sure that it doesn’t hold all manner of…oh, please, Sister Polly. Put it away!”
Her regard was not unkind. “If it frightens you, then of course I shan’t open it. Here,” she said, sliding out from beneath her covers and tucking the book under her mattress. “I would give it back to you, but then I’d worry that, should some prying soul discover it, you would be blamed for the kindness you have done me. Don’t lose a moment’s sleep now. It is done—hidden and gone and never to be spoken of again.”
The candle sputtered into darkness of its own accord, and without its glow, the room went black. I closed my eyes, and while I remember thanking Mother for my sister’s grace, I fell asleep in the midst of promising that I would not let joy weaken my resolve to follow the narrow path. Please, Mother, I prayed as I traced the raised outlines of my markings, I shall remain in union with my sisters and brethren. I shall be better. Do not punish me further.
She must have heard my plea for mercy, for she answered it with the gift of true happiness. In the kitchen the following day, where Sister Polly and I had been told to remain after the breakfast clearing, I felt a lightness of spirit such as I have rarely known. There was Deaconess Eileen across the way, making mince for the pies, but it was not she who excited in me this tumult. Quite the opposite, for she is, I must say, a mean old wretch. I know that it is not right to judge another of my sisters, but Deaconess Eileen twists her pinches so fiercely on the young ones who do not heed her bidding that they are marked for weeks with rose-shaped bruises. I have tried to soothe them with hogs’ lard and comfrey. Even so, they stay and stay. Such long-lived remonstrances they are! The poor girls fairly jump into nearby cupboards to avoid the woman’s nasty hands. I have even heard them say that she sometimes appears by night at their bedsides to whisper into their dreams.
In the cool of the side room, however, there are only my Sister Polly and me, busy in our work to make the daily bread for the believers as well as for sale to the World. The money we earn allows us to buy what we cannot make for ourselves. Hence, we prepare extra stores of medicines, cloaks, bonnets, blankets, and seeds—all of them known to be of superior quality and thus well desired beyond our walls. In this way, we profit from the rich, the better to aid the poor and saved.
It is pleasant to labor in the dim light of the pantries and storerooms, to be surrounded by good smells and the presence of the kinder sisters who, under the darting eyes of Deaconess Eileen, rule the ovens with capable hands. Most of us change jobs every few months so that we may join in all of the chores that help to make The City of Hope a place of peace and equality. But some sisters are so practiced in their positions that they are kept on as teachers to help the rest move well through their work. Save for the Deaconess, the sisters of the kitchen are as sweet and soft as the cakes they bake, and other than the solitary hours I spend in the healing room concocting curatives and treating all manner of ills, I am at ease here as nowhere else, even in my bedeviled state.
Sister Polly and I. Together we measure into slant-sided dough boxes small mountains of flour tossed with sprinklings of salt and yeast. I whisper to her of the Deaconess’s faults. We pour milk heated with butter and sweetened with sugar into holes we make with our fingers. She laughs and feigns a stern look, reminding me that I am never to grow wicked, that I am to be good enough for the both of us. Then, it is to kneading that we give ourselves over, and we do so in time to a song my new believer has learned in Meeting. Such a pretty thing it is, too.
I have a little plum cake
A pretty little plum cake,
Will you eat a piece of it
Says blessed Mother.
’Tis my love and blessing
For my dear children
O how I love you so
I will be with you.
Soft and high, Sister Polly’s tone is clear. Indeed, I feel that she was made to sing, that it is as new a joy to her as to a young song sparrow, as new a joy to her as she is to me. I never saw what a somber life I led before, spending day after day in the company of old women who know much and young girls who know nothing at all. I take from one and give to the other, and rarely have I had the time or sense to wonder at my isolation. That Sister Polly should come to me at the same time as the Devil himself—this is the most blessed miracle I have ever known.
I have said that we are a group of believers, living in union. True, but when I think that we are also human, then I
see us in another light—brighter and more beautiful in some cases, harsher in others. Sisters my age are clever at joining together when they are in the presence of one who—for reasons she will never understand—was left on a doorstep as a babe to grow old among strangers. To these girls, I am an oddity because I have known neither the World nor the sort of mother who lives in it. I am naught to them but a walking, breathing book of rules. For though the sisters of whom I speak are the silly ones, their experience of the World binds them like an unspoken oath. They know to laugh at the same foolish sights, to whisper when I enter a room and then quickly look back at their work when they are certain that their mean-spirited stares have hit their mark.
Of course, the children are different—yearning to be loved, comforted, lauded, coddled. In moments of weakness, I wonder why no sister ever fussed over me as I do them. It is not that I am ungrateful for Elder Sister Agnes’s stern teaching. Indeed, I know that I am more capable of love for never having taken it for granted. But I also know enough of human nature to have noticed that one behaves towards others as one wishes to be treated oneself. My eldress was kind in her way, loving within the bounds of what is accepted here. That has always had to be enough.
Such thoughts are of little matter now, for my Sister Polly has chosen me as her dearest and there is none here who can turn her. Why, just last week, when Sister Columbine took her by the arm to pull her from my side and into some whispered intimacy, she turned back and caught me by the waist.
“You are kind, Sister Columbine, to invite me into your company,” she said, “but as I am only half myself without dear Sister Charity, you must take us as one.”
Sister Columbine forced a smile, and it was not long before she found an excuse to be on her way. How glad I was that my Polly and I were alone again, two parts of a whole.
Look! In the messy mixing of the dough, the Visionist has become covered in flour and the sight delights me. She is adept at many things but they are the coarser labors—the clabbering of cream, the scouring of pots, the carding of wool—such work as is done on farms that are too poor to have occasion to make fine-flour breads and spice cakes. In the kitchen, her delicate hands are clumsy as a colt’s hooves, and I must stop my work and bend double at the sight of her as she struggles with sticky strings of dough.
“You shall be wearing the midday meal long before it can be placed near the oven for rising!” I whisper, laughing. “Your face is white as a phantom’s!”
The older sisters often include me in their quiet merriments, but this feels different. Indeed, I am dizzy with happiness to be standing near to one who accepts me so completely.
“Well, then you too shall be dressed!” she cries. “A line here, another there…” She is running her powdery finger along my cheeks. “Three across your brow. There. You are an Indian spirit now, just like those we heard in Meeting. Shall we sing the song of Tecumseh, as did Elder Brother Caleb?”
Quo we lorezum qwini
Qui qwini qwe qwini qwe
Hock a nick a hick nick
Qwini qwi qwo cum!
Hack a ling shack a ling
Hick a chick a loreum,
Lal a ve lal a que
Qwi ac a qwo cum!
She is winsome, my dear friend, one who has become lighter with every passing week. It is as if her gift—though it has shown itself but once in its full glory—has lifted the sadness she used to know and replaced it with a child’s innocent pleasures. Indeed, the only time when I cannot reach her is when she catches sight of young Ben. It is not that she worries for his happiness—since his first miserable days, he has expressed nothing but great merriment as he speaks with Brother Andrew or makes mischief with the other boys. No, I believe that she pines for a time when she could hold his hand and be the person to make him laugh, when she existed to protect his innocent nature from the menace of the World. As she is not allowed to speak to him, and as there is no evil here from which to shield him, she has become someone he hardly notices. I believe that it is his indifference that breaks her heart.
On this morning, however, we laugh and dance, keeping our play secret from the Deaconess. Polly takes her arms and raises them above her head in the manner of Elder Brother Caleb, her feet jigging in a spritely fashion to the beat of the Indian song. She is smiling, and each time she whirls and catches my eye, her blue gaze fixes me. It cannot be, such elation! It cannot, and after several such turns, I am suddenly frightened, as though a dark spirit has walked across my conscience.
“We must stop now,” I say, touching her shoulder so that she ceases in her dance. “Deaconess Eileen will pinch us as she does the little ones. Let me wipe your face. Hold still.”
Polly freezes and makes blank her expression, eyes closed like a child awaiting a good washing. I cannot help staring upon her beauty—the way her face falls in soft pink slants from her cheekbones, the fine arch of her eyebrows, the thin pink of her lips. As I lift the corner of my apron to wipe clean her lovely skin, ghostly no more, she opens her eyes and pins me once again.
It is rare to look closely at another for a long time, to hold oneself in that tumble. No one has ever stared at me like that before—into me is more like the truth. But Sister Polly and I are frozen, and without a word passing between us, we make a game of it. I shall not blink, nor shall she. We stare and stare until tears fill my eyes and I find my mind has begun to wander. What lies within her? Her eyes alone show every emotion. As to what she can possibly glimpse in me, I cannot say, for though I know of certain aspects of my bearing, I have never held a mirror to my heart. Only to my faith, which has shone back unassailable. I break away and turn from her at the reminder, brushing the flour from my bodice, shaking hard my skirts. Straying from my purpose, I know I have been pulled close by an invisible hand, so close that I can feel the warmth of her breath on my face.
I look back at her cheeks and rub the corner of my apron gently over her skin. Then I tilt her head to the other side and do the same, setting her straight again.
“Why, thank you, Sister,” she says, curtsying and backing away.
In a twist of perception, she seems to sense my discomfort. “We must work this dough before it dries,” she says evenly. “Here, I’ll cleanse you of your Indian stripes.” And with quick hands, she wipes my face—skin on skin, licking a fingertip to rub clean a stubborn spot below my right eye.
She turns back to her kneading while I burn in the place she has touched and I recognize her power of spirit, that truly it is Mother who has caressed me and filled my heart. Mother Ann warms me from within. Mother Ann teases my brain into spinning. Mother Ann rules me. I step beside Sister Polly at the stone counter and begin the push and pull. We are in time, and as it is I who taught her the rhythm of kneading, we turn and pat the dough with flour in tandem, as though caught up in a dance. Push, pat, pull—like good believers, we labor as one.
When each of us has kneaded enough, we roll the mounds of dough into logs and break off equal-sized bits to make loaves—forty of them! Then we shape and set them on shelves near the ovens to rise. It is skillful work, and best of all, the Deaconess has left us free from bitter comment.
Taking up our towels and dipping them into a bucket of water we have warmed by the hearth, we wipe down the stone counter and make clean the workroom. We do so in turns, but then a game becomes of this as well and we race to the pail to see who can reach it first. There is much splashing, though we stifle the sound of our laughter as best we can, turning our faces into the sleeves of our dresses. Of a sudden, it is now Sister Polly who goes silent. She can barely breathe, so quickly have we moved in our diversion.
“I am blessed to have found you,” she says as soon as she can steady her voice. “You are the only one who has stayed by, who has not flown away.”
All is quiet about us, for our amusement has filled my ears with such clamor that a sudden silence pulses and rules the room. My heart hits hard and I cease all exhalation as she takes my face gently into her h
ands.
“Sister,” she whispers. “My sweet Sister Charity.” Then her lips brush mine so lightly, it is as though a moth has fluttered close by before retreating into darkness.
Simon Pryor
CHARRED RUINS, FROZEN ponds. What, you might ask, could the two possibly have in common? Though it happened long ago, the death of young Millicent Hurlbut has never ceased to haunt me. After all, it was responsible for not only my fated tumble into the bosom of the Hurlbut family but also an irrevocable separation from my own. I am telling you this—before I describe the weeks and weeks that followed the submission of my report—because it seems only right that I should attempt to explain the genesis of my corruption.
I knew James Hurlbut to have been a complicated youth, for we were schoolboys together. Kind in one moment yet quick to conjure mischief whenever boredom threatened to slow the empty hours, he lived in constant conflict with his better nature. I can barely stand to admit it now, but I liked the fellow and he liked me—even sought to impress. You see, where he was rich and born into the powerful family that had founded Burns’ Hollow, I was smart and embodied a kind of moral confidence that was foreign to him. In that still-innocent time, I think he understood that like apple trees possessed of a sour harvest when grown from the seeds of fallen fruit, each generation of Hurlbuts had germinated meaner and more profligate than the one before. As it turned out, he and his brother, Calvin, were no exception, but I did not know that then.
Their father, Amos, was perhaps the cruelest of the line, and James suffered mightily under his reign. The patriarch sensed his youngest son’s disdain and treated him all the worse for it. Forced to wear the foppish vestments favored by his forebearers, James worried ceaselessly about the punishment his father would devise should he soil his clothes. Amos tested James’s filial loyalty by making him deliver threats of all sorts to the families of his schoolmates. And I can still recall the fine spring day when his father came upon him as he attempted to woo an innocent schoolmate. “We’ve a maid prettier than that slut!” Amos bellowed as he and Calvin passed by in the family carriage. James, color rising in his cheeks, looked away from the girl with tears in his eyes. He was terrified of his father.
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