Vanessa wonders, as she always does, why the commandments use words like “thou” and “thy” when she has never heard anyone talk like that. other than when reciting the shalt-nots. Even the pastor doesn’t talk like that. She imagines saying to Fiona, “Shalt thou invite me to thy house after school, that I may play with thy dog and eat thy cookies?” and has to bite her tongue to keep from snickering. A baby starts shrieking, a long howl that turns rhythmic as her mother starts bouncing her, cooing the shalt-nots into her face like a lullaby. Thou shalt not allow thy wife to stray in thought, deed, or body. Thou shalt not allow women who are not sister, daughter, or mother to gather without a man to guide them. Thou shalt not kill.
After the shalt-nots, the collection plate is passed, and the needle. Father has it in his lap and is sucking blood off his finger. You don’t have to do it until you reach fruition, but Vanessa, always precocious, started when she was eight. She carefully takes the needle, inserts it into the pad of her finger, and squeezes a drop into the red, gelatinous puddle. Afterward, the clotted blood will be poured over a crop field that’s struggling. To Vanessa, whose family has never had to farm, the crop fields are huge holes all waste goes into: animal dung, human waste, blood, dead bodies. She tries not to think about the fact that her food comes out of those holes as well.
Talking is forbidden after the service, until the home worship is complete. Her fingertip tastes like metal. Getting up, people file out of the pews and up the long steps to the doorway. Vanessa glances hopefully at the sky, but it’s a bright blue. She smells heat in the wind. The last few weeks before summer are always the worst.
They walk home quietly, nodding at other families processing toward the church; services will repeat all morning. Once they reach their house, Father opens the altar room, which has a separate entrance. Most houses don’t have special rooms for their altars, but Father built one when Vanessa was a baby, and soon the other wanderers followed suit. Mother cleans it faithfully, with a rag and soapy water, but it always becomes dusty. Motes twist and whirl, glittering in the sun like tiny weightless birds.
The altar is made of a light wood, polished and carved in a way that Vanessa has never seen an island carver achieve; it’s a piece Father found in the wastelands. Propped up on the altar is a tattered copy of Our Book. The originals have dwindled to dust, and part of the pastor’s duties is carefully scribing new ones. Next to Our Book is a beeswax candle speckled with tiny black dots—gnats must have found their way into the wax as it cooled—and a picture of the first Adam, Philip Adam, and his family. Father says it’s not a drawing, but a way to capture a moment in time that people used before the scourge. Like the pictures in the schoolbooks, but glossy and vivid and alive. Vanessa assumes this means that people back then were almost gods. How else could they capture time on paper?
Philip Adam stands tall and strong and blond, smiling like he’s about to laugh. His dark-haired wife is partly turned toward him, gazing at him with adoring eyes, her hands placed lightly on his side. Next to them is a lanky boy, tall but without breadth, grinning awkwardly and showing too many teeth. On the other side is his daughter, thin like his wife, too thin. She’s dark as well, her shadowed eyes like holes in her head, her mouth a dark line. At their feet a baby with an impossible tuft of blond hair looks wary. You could have more than two children, back then.
On the island, worshiping God is about as useful as worshiping the sun: words of praise or words of pleading are unlikely to move either. God sits high and untouchable, a creator with nothing more to create, a father who lost interest in his children ages ago. It is the ancestors, those godly men of yore, who watch over the mortals on the island. It is their strong, capable arms that greet the dead into heaven or strike them into the darkness below. Any prayer is passed from their lips to God’s ear, as well as any lapse or blasphemy. “The ancestors see everything, everywhere on the island,” says Our Book, and for a time in her childhood Vanessa felt like she was defecating for an audience of thoughtful ancestors.
Each family will be worshipping its ancestor right now. Other families are gazing at drawings or relics of Philip Adam, one of the first ten ancestors, and offering him their words of worship. It seems somehow licentious that more than one family can call Philip Adam their own. When Vanessa marries, she will praise a different ancestor, which will be strange; she has spent so long gazing at the miraculous picture of the handsome blond man that she worries the next ancestor will be a disappointment. They say Philip Adam was a genius. He wouldn’t sleep for nights on end, scribbling copious notes that would eventually be condensed into Our Book, then lapsing into trances, having to be fed and cleaned while he wept. He gathered the other ancestors and urged them to the island before the apocalypse he foretold. He was the first pastor too and planned the first church.
“In your name, Philip Adam,” Father says, kneeling in the dust and touching the picture with a reverent finger. “In your name.”
“In your name,” parrot Mother and Vanessa, while Ben says, “In name.”
“First ancestor, bring us strength. Teach us wisdom. Reach to God with your arms, bring Him into our lives, wind Him around our thoughts, bury Him within our breasts. Let the men be strong like trees, and the women like vines, the children our fruit. And when we sink into the earth, gather us into your arms and take us to God’s domain, and let us not look downward into the darkness below.”
“Amen,” say Mother and Vanessa. Ben has gotten distracted by a small shimmering moth. Mother pinches him, but this only makes him yowl and clench his small fists.
Chapter Three
Amanda
Mrs. Saul the wanderer’s wife, with her pinched face and tart tongue, is not whom Amanda would have chosen to perform the ritual, but she was available and Amanda was impatient. They step into the birthing building, Amanda’s candle flickering and dancing lightly over the tightly hewn walls. The wood is swollen with the stale, metallic smell of dried blood, the leavings of hundreds of squalling infants and wailing mothers. Amanda wrinkles her nose; Mrs. Saul notices and snaps, “Haven’t you been to a birthing before?”
Amanda doesn’t answer. She has, one time. Mother took her in order to show that she was doing her maternal duty, although Amanda suspects she didn’t fool anybody. They sat silent and morose as Dina Joseph, the goat farmer’s wife, screamed and thrashed and delivered a dead infant, deep blue streaked with scarlet and white slime. Dina sobbed, and Amanda felt irritated that she was forced to witness this raw, bloody grief. She glanced at Mother, who looked bored, and suddenly thought, We are utter defectives. At least, when we’re together. As if reading her mind, Mother glared at her, and Amanda glumly returned to staring at the blue pile of flesh and gore in Dina’s heaving arms.
Mrs. Saul sighs. “Do you know the ritual?”
Amanda has heard the stories at school, about babies being sliced out of screaming women, examined, and placed back inside, but she doesn’t trust her informants. “Not really,” she says.
“Well, no matter,” Mrs. Saul says briskly. “It won’t kill you, and then you’ll know. But take care it is kept secret. Men do not know of this, nor should they. This is women’s business. We are the ones who need to prepare ourselves.”
Amanda nods. “Mrs. Saul?” she asks.
“You’re an adult now,” Mrs. Saul replies, “and you can call me Pamela.”
“Um,” says Amanda. The idea of calling Mrs. Saul by her first name seems blasphemous. “Why does it have to be a wanderer’s wife?”
“You would prefer someone else?” inquires Mrs. Saul icily.
“No, no, it’s not that,” lies Amanda. “I’m just wondering. Why.”
“Because as wanderers’ wives, we hold power, and we are as wanderers among the women,” says Mrs. Saul grandly, and Amanda nods, although she’s doubtful about the accuracy of this comparison.
They are silent, breathing in the bloody air, and then Mrs. Saul says, “Are you sure you want to do it? Many don’t.
There’s nothing wrong with waiting until the birth.”
“Yes. I’m sure.” Amanda pauses. “What do I do?”
“First, take off your dress.”
Amanda grabs the hem of her skirt and pulls it over her head, then for good measure unties the cloth binding her swollen breasts, so she stands naked. Mrs. Saul squints at her and says, “About four months along?”
“About,” says Amanda.
“You are thirteen? Fourteen?”
“Almost fifteen.”
“A good age for your first child. Lie here, let me get some straw.” Mrs. Saul scoops up a pile of hay in the center of the room. “Lie back, legs straight.” Amanda obeys, peering at the dim ceiling. “This will be painful.”
“I can handle pain,” replies Amanda stiffly.
“I believe you can,” says Mrs. Saul, and Amanda stares at her, suspicious. Is Mrs. Saul paying her a compliment?
Reaching into the pocket of her dress, Mrs. Saul pulls out a small knife, instantly ablaze with candled reflections that leap and twist in the rippled metal. Bringing it to Amanda’s breastbone, she begins singing.
She doesn’t sing words, but rather a tune with nonsense syllables, a melody that wavers like the candlelight. She has a low, husky, beautiful voice that Amanda never dreamed could emerge from Mrs. Saul’s sour throat. The knife lightly traces downward from Amanda’s sternum to where the swell of her belly curves upward. Taking a deep breath, Mrs. Saul begins cutting. She doesn’t cut to muscle, but enough to break through layers of skin, and blood begins to bead and swell in glossy vermilion spheres. Amanda is mesmerized by the slow incision, the freezing-cold line on her skin that turns boiling and steams with agony in the knife’s wake.
“Breathe,” says Mrs. Saul, breaking off midsong, and Amanda does.
Once Mrs. Saul is done, Amanda gazes down at herself. Mrs. Saul has cut an impossibly neat, straight line down her rounded stomach, all the way to her pubis. The song lulls her, carries her to and fro, toward and away from the pain. Cool blood trickles down either side of her belly, striping her ribs and turning her into some strange animal in shadow.
Mrs. Saul pauses in her tune, and Amanda takes the opportunity to whisper, “Now what?” But Mrs. Saul only glares at her and resumes singing. She opens a small, thick cloth bag and takes a breath as if to steel herself. Her ropy hand rises with a handful of something white and crystalline, and she quickly, violently smears and pushes it into Amanda’s wound.
Screaming, Amanda arches, feeling cracked open, the torment burrowing deeper and deeper into her flesh. The line of pain blossoms, a searing crimson flower, sheds arcane patterns on her belly that burn bone-deep. She can’t get enough breath to wail all her agony, and she pants, sobs, chokes.
“Breathe,” says Mrs. Saul.
Amanda tries to turn, but Mrs. Saul’s hands are firmly on her abdomen, pressing on each side. She’s not sure how long she lies there, writhing and gasping like a beached and gutted fish. As the pain begins to recede, wave upon wave softening and retreating, her attention fixes on Mrs. Saul’s hands.
“What do you feel?” she whispers.
She can tell from Mrs. Saul’s face. Clenching her eyes shut, she tries to move something inside her gut, shove her baby into life. After a few minutes she opens her eyes once more and sees that Mrs. Saul has tears streaming down her face.
“It’s a girl,” Amanda says accusingly.
“It’s a girl,” says Mrs. Saul, nodding, her song done. “She didn’t move at all. She just stayed silent and still, despite the pain. It’s a girl, may the ancestors help her.”
“The ancestors don’t help anyone!” shouts Amanda, and can tell by Mrs. Saul’s face she’s gone too far.
“May they forgive you,” Mrs. Saul says loudly, punctuating each word.
“May they forgive me,” repeats Amanda meekly. Her blood-smeared belly aches and twinges, and she bursts into tears. Mrs. Saul moves to her head and strokes her hair soothingly.
“It’s all right, Amanda,” she whispers. “We were girls. We are here now. Our daughters will endure. Think of the summers, think of the love you will have for her.”
All Amanda can think of is a filthy winter, time spent trapped in her bed by bonds of flesh, clenching her teeth against a scream, over and over and over.
I won’t do it, she thinks. I won’t do it. And then, By the ancestors, I have to do it all over again. She weeps with a grief so strong it flows through her veins like a sickness. Mrs. Saul puts her arms around the recumbent Amanda and lays her head against Amanda’s throat. Her hair smells comfortingly of goat’s milk and dust and salt.
“Weep now,” whispers Mrs. Saul. “Weep deep. When you are through, rise and return to your husband with a cheerful face. Endure. I have done it and so can you.”
Amanda’s daughter, too late, kicks and circles in her womb.
Chapter Four
Caitlin
Caitlin has a recurring dream that she dreads, of a world without summer. A world where the rains never come and everything goes on the way it did before. A world where there is heat without freedom. Sometimes she worries that she’s going crazy, like the Solomon boy who gabbled and banged his head against the walls. His parents patiently waited for him to die so they could have another, more useful child, but he stubbornly survived for years, and when he suddenly vanished everybody knew what had happened. Caitlin would rather not have that happen to her.
When she wakes from the dream, she grabs her ears and pulls until they hurt. The thread of pain running through her head brings her back to being Caitlin, who is not crazy, who knows there has never been a world without summer, and there won’t be one now.
Caitlin is almost to her summer of fruition, but with any luck she won’t bleed soon. Some of the girls look forward to the summer of fruition, and she knows she should. Afterward, she’ll get married and live somewhere else. Joanna Joseph says that everyone enjoys it, but if you don’t you can drink things that help you enjoy it. Caitlin isn’t sure what scares her more, going through it as Caitlin or becoming not-Caitlin, and waking up afterward with no idea what happened to her.
In Caitlin’s mind, the summer of fruition is as terrifying as the wastelands and the darkness below. Father talks about the wastelands a lot. Caitlin’s father is not a wanderer, but he claims they tell him terrible things. Late at night, Caitlin mulls over his stories, lengthening and embellishing them until a nightmare blossoms from the grisly seeds. She pictures scenes so horrifying that sometimes she cries for the wasteland children, even though she’s not completely sure that there are wasteland children. Although there must be, since she was one. But that was long ago, and she can’t remember it.
As for the darkness below, Mother says she won’t have to go as long as she is good. And so Caitlin tries her best to be very, very good.
Mother is very, very good. Sometimes at night, if they can tell by Father’s snores that he won’t wake up, Caitlin crawls into bed with her. Mother curls around her like a warm, sheltering blanket. They can’t sing songs or talk the way they would during the day, but Mother hugs Caitlin so tight and safe that she almost can’t breathe. It feels good, the pressure. Sometimes she can sleep, then. Caitlin has heard there is a syrup you can drink that makes you sleep through just about anything. She’s afraid to ask about it and hear a firm no, preferring to dream of a golden-thick world where sleep comes like a breath, unconscious and inevitable.
Every day after school, she tries to help Mother as much as she can. The house chores must be performed quietly, unobtrusively, never bothering or annoying Father. It’s hard to keep up with what needs to be done, as Caitlin’s house is falling down around her. Mother is skilled at quietly scrubbing and sweeping so that dirt and dust are collected and discarded, but Father has forgotten to rebuild soft spots in the wood. Every couple of years, men must apply a tincture made by the dyer to prevent mold from blossoming, but Father has forgotten that too. The walls are a luxurious riot of black and brown,
plumes branching from a spot on the bottom of the wall and flaming up to lick the ceiling in swirls of tiny dark spots. She and Mother will sometimes take cloths and patiently scrub, or even use their fingernails to scrape off the stains, but their efforts never do any good. Caitlin can see pictures in the mold, the way people see things in clouds. A tree. A butterfly. A monster.
Other buildings sometimes seem almost too clean, too intact, the walls uncomfortably dry and staring and bare, the frightening freedom of not needing to know what parts of the floor to avoid. Stairs that she can run up and down with abandon, instead of deftly skipping the rotting steps.
Life must be lived this way because of Father, who does not like to be disturbed. He takes the instructions of the ancestors to keep patriarchal order in his home very seriously. It embarrasses her that everyone thinks Father beats her, but she knows that it’s just because she bruises so very easily. Father sometimes jokes that she’d bruise in a strong wind. If he lays a hand on her leg, it bruises. If he pulls on her arm to punctuate a point, it bruises. Sometimes she doesn’t even feel it. Caitlin hates the marks; it’s like her body is a tattletale, blabbing everything that everyone else’s body keeps silent. Her body is so garrulous, with its bruises and pink marks and maroon spots, that she rarely talks, not wanting to add to the din. If she can’t be smart or pretty, she can be quiet. And good.
Caitlin is a rare first-generation child. Mother and Father came to the island when she was a baby. A lot of the children used to ask her what she remembered from the wastelands, but the honest answer is nothing. She asks Mother, who says she doesn’t remember either. It would seem odd to someone else, but Caitlin thinks she is telling the truth. Mother is so wonderful, but she’s different from other mothers: thin and pale and curling into herself. If by a miracle there is nothing left to do, sometimes she’ll just sit at a table for hours, staring into space. If Caitlin asks what she’s thinking about, she’ll half smile and say, “Oh, I’m just…” and never finish the sentence. When Father is in the room she instantly reverts to shadow, skittering around the edges, magically removing plates and wiping counters without actually being seen.
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