We had dinner beforehand, but I struggled to eat even though Mom made Swedish meatballs, which I loved but were a lot of work for her in her current state. I begged her not to but she insisted.
“I want to do nice things for you,” she said. “Please, Alissa, let me be your mom and take care of you.”
I had such a sense of trepidation that I kept having weird itches and little electrical nerve pains that shot down my arms and legs.
“Lissa’s got ants in her pants,” Carrie said, laughing. She was still too young to fully grasp how scared I was, but Mom and Dad were not.
“I’m sure it’s an honor that Father Joshua is going to give you some lessons in using your wand,” Dad said.
“Yes…” Mom took my hooded cloak off the rack and swirled it around me. She tied it and put up the hood. “It’s cold out,” she said.
I don’t know what she thought she was protecting me from, with a mere piece of wool and a ribbon.
I wondered, later that night, how much they knew about what was going to happen.
I walked to the temple and I heard some soft murmurs and music inside. My stomach dipped even more. I was afraid I might throw up. The priestesses were with him. I didn’t want to knock. I wanted to run home.
I knew if I did, Mom and Dad would force me back out. They wouldn’t let me defy him. And Mom was now only three weeks away from her due date. I didn’t want to upset her.
I rapped gently on the door.
Father Joshua opened it and immediately grabbed my shoulder and pulled me in. “There you are, Alissa. You’re late.”
“Forgive me, sir…”
“Mm, I do like that soft little voice of yours,” he said.
The room was dim and saturated with a thick scent of incense. One of the priestesses was holding a guitar but she had stopped playing. All of the priestesses were clad only in their undergarments, which covered their arms to the elbows and their legs to the knees, but were very silky and sheer so I could see the dark spots of their nipples. I flushed, horrified that I had even looked at them long enough to observe such a thing.
“You brought your wand,” he said. “Good.” He lifted his own wand and tapped it to mine. I felt a tiny shudder from the connection spell he had placed on the wands.
How dare you, I thought, and my thoughts hardly felt like my own. This wand is centuries old. It is seasoned and powerful. Your wand is a joke.
My wand didn’t want to be connected to his anymore than I wanted to be connected to mine, but I didn’t want to get caught thinking wicked thoughts.
Father Joshua glanced at one of the priestesses and she rose and took off his jacket, folding it and placing it on the altar. Then he started unbuttoning his shirt. At this cue, the priestesses all pulled their undergarments off their heads. Not a single one of them had anything on underneath.
My itchiness and my pounding heart exploded into pure panic.
“This must be a mistake. I shouldn’t be here!” I said.
“Of course it is not a mistake,” Father Joshua said. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. I won’t touch you until we’re married. This ritual is what allows me to connect to the Ethereal spirits. Alissa, are you afraid of seeing your leader contact the spirits?”
“This can’t be right,” I said.
None of the priestesses would meet my eyes. Their movements were mechanical. I could tell they had done this countless times. Now I knew why their souls were so broken. They were rubbing massage oils between their palms and helping to ease his clothes off, exposing all of him, rubbing his skinny arms and legs. I had only seen the male organ on small boys before, but his was a stiff ugly thing surrounded by a dark nest of hair, and one the priestesses stroked it as he groaned.
He was watching me like my unease gave him greater pleasure.
Now, my stomach turned decisively and I leaned against the wall, vomiting the dinner.
He chuckled. “Soon, you will think nothing of this. It will be your pleasure to help your leader connect to the blessed spirits. Ethereals love the pleasures of the flesh and if it were not for you girls, I could not do my job half so well. Aren’t you honored? Assure my little wife, girls. She is truly special.”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s right.”
Winona walked up to me and pulled me to my feet, her hand rough around my arm. “Give your leader your respect, Alissa,” she said.
“Winona…be gentle,” he said, before letting out a groan as the priestesses rubbed and caressed him all over.
I refused to look at him. I kept my eyes down. Winona tried to tear my cloak off of me. I gripped the ribbon that tied it at my neck as tight as I could.
“It’s all right, Winona, there is a time for that later,” he said. “Sister Alissa can keep covered. She is not promised to me yet. Sweetheart, I want you to take your wand and press it to my skin.”
My eyes were filled with furious tears. I still wanted to run from the room but I knew they would stop me, and I was scared for what would happen after that. But there was no way in hell I could accept what was happening.
“Alissa, do what he says,” said one of the priestesses—Della, the youngest one—with a note of panic to echo my own in her voice.
I tapped the tip of my wand against his shin. That seemed like the most impersonal place I could touch him.
“You’ll like this order,” he said. “Close your eyes.”
I did, gladly.
“Concentrate on your wand and absorb the power I am feeling.”
The last thing I wanted to do was absorb anything from him. I could already feel something resonating from my wand into me, and it was making me tingle with some sort of dark pleasure, but at the same time—it was evil. It was disgusting. I could feel that he enjoyed controlling all of us and the fear we felt, and that this was what fueled him even more than the physical touch. I could feel that soon he was going to reach some kind of satisfaction and it would all be because we were afraid.
I yanked my wand back.
He was polluting my magic with something that wasn’t right. I knew it instinctively.
“You’re Sinistral,” I said. “The spirits you’re talking to aren’t Ethereal at all. They’re demons.”
He laughed, a laugh that started low and soon rose into almost a screech of glee as the priestesses were rubbing him down, stroking his organ and then he forced her head down to put her mouth on him. At the same time, Winona blocked the door. I was trapped here, forced to witness this. The moments seemed eternal. I tried not to look at anyone, but the room was so small that it was hard to pretend this wasn’t happening. Hi grunts and groans filled my ears.
He reached some kind of satisfaction and then he immediately shoved the other girl away and stood up to come at me. He grabbed my chin. I was still in tears of anger, speechless. I could feel my wand burning in my hand.
How do I use it? How? Please—please—
I felt like I was so close to some sort of knowledge but I couldn’t get to it and I was helpless.
He smiled at me, and then he struck me with a backhand so hard that he knocked me against the wall.
“I am the highest of Ethereal warlocks,” he said. “I am the only man who knows how to lead all of you to safety when the dark times come. The Ethereals have granted you all an honor to be here with me now. What you say is a crime of the highest sort, Sister Alissa. Do you realize that?”
My face was burning from the strike, which was so hard I felt like he had knocked my jaw out of place.
“Do you realize that? Remember that you have a family whom I think you love and would want to be safe when the end comes.”
“Y—yes, sir…”
“Are you sorry for what you said?”
My gods, but I did not want to say I was sorry. Every fiber in my being bristled with resistance, and I forced myself to think of Mom and the baby and Carrie, to make myself speak so I could protect them.
I’m going to have to go through all of
this to keep Carrie safe… Maybe if I obey him, he will be good to all of them.
“Yes…I am sorry,” I choked out.
“Good girl. You will not speak of anything that happened here tonight to anyone, and if I ever find out you have, you will be punished thoroughly. But if you obey me and are a good girl, I will make sure you have all the blessings of the spirits.” He pointed at the ground. “Stay put and I will get dressed and walk you home.”
The priestesses helped him back into his clothes and then he opened the door, his hand on my back. He shut all the priestesses up in the altar house. I was silent, forced to walk at his side.
“I am very pleased with Alissa’s first session,” he told my parents. “She has a lot to learn but I have faith that she will learn, and I could not be more pleased that the spirits have blessed me with her as a wife. You should be very proud of her.”
“We are,” Mom said softly, her hand on her pregnant belly.
I knew what I had felt when I touched him, and it wasn’t Ethereal at all. It was pure evil.
Chapter Seven
Alissa
A few days later, Mom sent me to the store for groceries. She was on bedrest now and I was managing everything for her; making all the meals, getting Carrie sent off to school, and keeping the house sparkling clean. We didn’t have cars in the village, outside of the one ‘official’ car that belonged to Father Joshua, so many women took a wheeled cart to the market. I was dragging the big wheels over the cobblestone paths. I took a long way around just to avoid passing Father Joshua’s house because he lived right next to the market.
When I’m pregnant, I bet he will demand that I walk to the market because it’s so close, I thought. I already sensed that he relished cruelty. It was like something I had always known deep down but tried to hide deep inside was now bubbling up and haunting my thoughts. Something in my gut was screaming and it never went silent.
At least I won’t have to walk far, I told myself.
I walked into the door of my house with two brown paper sacks on my hips, and Father Joshua was sitting in our living room.
Waiting for me.
I almost dropped the groceries, to find him here. In my home. Just…sitting there. One of his arms was spread across the back of the couch. Dad would still be working. Carrie would be getting home from school in another hour.
“Is my mom okay!?”
“She’s in bed,” he said. “Where she should be. But you and I have a little business today.” He stood up. “You’ll be moving in with me soon, but the rules for what I allow in my home are very strict. I am the father of all of you.” His finger found a stray hair that had escaped my head covering, and he tucked it behind my ear. “Everything in my home must be completely pure. So I’m going to look at your things, and tell you what you can bring with you.”
Every day since the revelation that I must marry him, things got worse and worse.
I bowed my head. It was all I could do. I was struggling not to scream.
I had books in there…
How hard would he search?
Oh gods, please. Please don’t let him search too hard.
He walked up the stairs, like it was his own house. Mom was in bed down at one end of the hall, and my room was at the other. I glanced furtively toward Mom’s bed, but she might even be sleeping. She only had the strength to take care of herself right now. I didn’t want her to be bleeding on the floor ever again.
Father Joshua walked into the room where I had spent my entire life. My sacred space. All mine.
“Your own room,” he said. “Aren’t you a lucky one? Your mother didn’t have so many children, did she?”
“No,” I said. She was bleeding on the floor. And she had to go to you and ask to be forgiven.
“You are much fuller of hip, so I think you will bear me many good healthy children,” he said. “As long as you keep your thoughts pure and healthy, of course. That is the main thing all women must guard against. Those tainted thoughts you are prone to having. Men don’t really understand…do we? No. Men are very simple in comparison. I’ve never met half so many men who struggle with their duties the way women do.” As he went on and on, he was opening my drawers, rifling freely through my clothes and trinkets, looking at them all. Photos. Handkerchiefs. My underwear. He took a pair of them and balled them in his hand, sticking them in his pocket, with a brief glance at me as if daring me to say something about it. All the while, still talking as if nothing had happened. “This is why nearly every human religion acknowledges that women have to be managed. The ones that did not—well—this is why we used to have trouble with witches being burned and drowned. You will settle into your rightful place, Alissa, as long as you don’t fight your fate.”
He threw open a drawer and found the children’s books.
“Those are just little children’s stories,” I said hastily. “I read them to Carrie. They’re very wholesome and old-fashioned.”
“They’re not on the list,” he said.
“No, I know, but they can’t possibly do any harm.”
“Alissa,” he said, with deliberate, searing patience. “Why do you think the Ethereal spirits have given us a list of books to read?”
I shook my head.
“Answer me,” he said.
“Because…those are the books that tell us the things we need to know and the lessons we need to learn…”
“Why do you think these books are not on the list?”
“They can’t possibly know these books even exist! They don’t know about every book ever written, do they?” I couldn’t help arguing back. “There are new books published every day and nothing has been added to the list since you became the leader!”
“Everything you need to know is in those books,” he said. “There is no need to add more to the list. If a new book comes along, they will tell me about it when I commune with them.”
His eyes dared me to protest any more. It will not end well for you if you do.
I understood, remaining still.
Every day, every moment with him would be like this. I understood that too. It would be a clash of wills, and he would never have to give in because he was our leader and all the power was in his hands. Would I ever give in?
Could I fight against it my whole life?
But what other choice was there?
I thought about what submitting meant, and now in my mind, it had something to do with what I had seen the priestesses do, and my stomach twisted, threatening that I might vomit again.
He was gathering all the books into his arms now.
“Please—Carrie loves them so much when I read them to her!” I said. “It’s just something for us to do together as sisters! There’s no harm in it.”
“We’re going to burn them tonight,” he said. “Are there any more?”
“No.”
“These are all books for little children. You’re telling me you don’t have any more? As you got older?”
“No, sir,” I breathed.
He threw all the books back in my drawer and wrenched it out of the chest.
Then he started tearing my room apart.
He knew I was lying. I was too nervous to lie convincingly, and no wonder. I had always been a good girl, and I loved my family. I never wanted to lie to Mom and Dad. Occasionally they made me do something I didn’t enjoy but they always explained to me patiently why it had to be done, and I had trusted them. I thought no one would ever hurt me.
He lifted my mattress, tore my pillows and covers off the bed, went through my closet, and then—then he lifted the rag rug.
Immediately, he saw the floorboard that lifted up just a tiny bit from the others.
I was going to be sick. Oh, spirits. Please. Please let him spare me.
But so far, none of my prayers to the gods were turning out very well.
I heard the door open downstairs. “Mom? Lissa?” Carrie called from downstairs in her cheerful little voice just as Father
Joshua pried up the floorboard and saw books crammed in every available inch of space between the century-old planks.
“Don’t upset her,” I whispered. “Please just don’t scare Carrie.”
He picked up A Discovery of Witches.
I knew books like this were the most forbidden of all. Books about witches and the magical realms that were written by ordinary humans who thought they knew something. They were full of evil, corrupted ideas. Fantasies—I heard Father Joshua railing in a sermon—fantasies about laying with dark beasts, with vampires and werewolves—
He looked at me and laughed this very small, sharp laugh like he had satisfied an itch. Then he took the book and struck me hard across the face with it, throwing me toward the closet.
He threw all the books into the drawer, picked it up, and left.
I heard Carrie downstairs, her voice getting a little smaller. “Um—Father Joshua—where’s my mom?”
“She’s resting upstairs, dear.”
“Are you taking Lissa’s books?”
“Alissa was not supposed to have these books,” he said. “She understands now.”
“I—I love this one.”
“I will send you a new book that is okay for little girls to read,” he said.
I heard the door shut. Carrie was quiet downstairs. I wondered if she was scared of him and trying not to cry. He had taken everything, every ragged old paperback that someone had quietly passed our way as I and then Carrie were growing up, Ramona and Narnia and Redwall and Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. All of them were mended with yellowed tape, the covers creased, most of them having come from the time before Father Joshua’s tenure as our leader. I had memories of snuggling next to her in bed, sharing the excitement of cracking the worn covers open to escape to the worlds inside.
I vomited on my rug. I had never been prone to vomiting, but I was now. I wondered if there was some way he had already gotten me pregnant already. I didn’t think you could get pregnant without kissing at least, but what did I know? Maybe a man as powerful as Father Joshua had some way of making it happen.
Take Me Slowly (Forever in Their Thrall Book 1) Page 4