Gather the Daughters

by Jennie Melamed

  It is not only the young ones who left home after hearing of Rosie’s murder at the hands of the wanderers. There are older girls who were shyer, more frightened, but were spurred into action. They are still learning how to sleep during the day and live on clams, bloodberries, fish bones, and scraps of cheese. While they are able to rely on one another and themselves more than the little ones, they are little help apart from the supplies they carry with them.

  It is getting colder and colder. The sea has changed from a welcoming blue to a stippled, threatening gray. The grass frosts later into the morning, the sky fades icy and white. Trees turn yellow and brown, with leaves falling like a papery rain when the wind blows. Slowly, despite prior restrictions, the girls build their night fires larger and higher and hotter, returning to them to steep in the flaming warmth when their fingers or toes become numb. They sleep in bigger groups, layering themselves under damp blankets stuffed with chicken down, huddling together like skinny featherless hens. They discover previously unknown reserves of strengths even while battling chilblains, constantly running noses, and the threat of frostbite. And yet the chronic pain of their cold bones and whitened skin wears on them. Janey hears sobs at night, frantic whispers while girls chafe each other’s fingers and toes or plaster themselves body to body for warmth.

  “Do you think we can make it through the winter?” Mary asks Janey. “It’s still autumn and it’s so cold.”

  “I don’t know,” says Janey. “But what’s our other option? Going back for the winter, coming out again in spring?”

  “We’d definitely be let out in summer.”

  “Would we?”

  Mary looks appalled at the implication and says no more. A light drizzle begins falling from the sky, scattering sparking jewels on her skin and hair. She snuggles into Janey’s ribs. “If you can survive the cold, surely we can,” she says. “You’ve got no fat on you at all.”

  “I burn hotter,” says Janey with a laugh, neglecting to mention that she is cold, deathly cold, cold beyond shivering, all the time. The night fires are utter bliss to her, and during the day her bones ache and creak with icy chill, her flesh hardens and complains bitterly, her mouth feels coated with ice, and it is only when she puts cold fingers on her tongue to warm them that she realizes it is warmer than the rest of her. Sometimes, when a little girl comes to her for succor, Janey wants to keep that girl on her lap for hours, sucking in her young heat like some enormous winter spider with fresh, hot prey quivering in her web.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Vanessa

  Vanessa is woken in the middle of the night by a strange sound, like a high wailing. Rising quietly in her off-white nightgown, she glides downstairs carefully, in case a monster is lying in wait. The sound is now a howling cry emanating from the library, and she recognizes the voice: Father.

  Opening the heavy door, she sees him sitting on the floor, curled into himself, sobbing savagely like an angry child. Something is wrong, perhaps she is dreaming; men do not cry like this. Children cry like this, over anything from a broken cookie to a sister dying, and women cry like this when they deliver defectives or are beaten, but men simply shed a tear or two and are done with it, even if they are burying their own son. Something has gone wrong within Father, and part of her is so bewildered that she wants to creep back upstairs and pretend she never heard him. Steeling herself, she whispers, “Father?”

  He opens his arms, and she goes to them, only to find herself constricted in an embrace that crushes her ribs together so tightly she cannot breathe. Heaving, Father buries his face in her bare neck, tears and spit streaming out of him and dampening the shoulder of her nightgown, wet strands of beard sticking to her flesh. She pats him automatically, knowing this is what she should do, but something inside her quails. Of all the acts she and Father have ever performed together, this feels the most intimate, the most raw. It makes her want to shrink inside herself, so she can’t feel her own skin.

  Struggling to breathe, she waits for the intensity of his sobs to lessen, for him to raise his face and wipe it on his arm and apologize, but he simply continues to cry, his body convulsing and twisting with grief. “Father,” she says eventually. “Father, let me get Mother.”

  “No,” he gasps, loosening his hold so she can take a few deep breaths. “No. Please.”

  “What is it?” Vanessa asks, still tangled in a tearstained, muscular embrace and aching to disengage herself. “What happened?”

  “Vanessa,” he whispers, “my father was a wanderer, and his father as well.”

  This is beyond obvious, but she says nothing.

  “The things I have seen in the wastelands, the things I have seen…what I have protected us from. I have shepherded the island, I have carried on the teachings of the ancestors.”

  “Yes,” she says after a pause.

  “It is my life’s work, it is holy work, but—” Here he breaks down sobbing again, his forehead on her collarbone. “Vanessa, I’m not the only one who didn’t know, and…I don’t know how…”

  Suddenly Vanessa understands. “You found out,” she says. “You found out they killed Amanda and Rosie. You didn’t believe it at first. You thought the girls were lying, and then the rest of them, the wanderers, told you the truth. They waited this long…”

  He pulls back and stares at her. “When did you find out?”

  “I’ve known for a long time.”

  In an instant he is standing, rearing back, a creature of rage, but somehow she feels no fear. “You knew,” he says. “You knew and you didn’t tell me.”

  “I did tell you.”

  “But not so I’d believe you, you didn’t convince me!”

  They stare at each other, Father with tears streaming down his face, Vanessa calm and pale. Suddenly he collapses, sits on his haunches with his face in his hands, no longer weeping, but frozen like a trapped animal. Vanessa knows she should go to him. She has never seen him so defeated. She will have to soothe and comfort him for nights to come, but for now she turns on her heel and leaves the library, quietly mounts the stairs, climbs into bed, and falls into a dreamless sleep.

  Winter

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Vanessa

  It starts in church.

  The next Sunday. Vanessa is sitting between Mother and Father, half listening to the pastor talk about disobedience and the darkness below, when Mrs. Gideon, the farmer Gideon’s second wife, starts coughing. People are always coughing as the weather cools, but she coughs for so long that people start frowning in her direction. Vanessa turns around just in time to see her spray the face of Mrs. Saul the fisherman’s wife with flecks of blood.

  Everyone freezes, except for the pastor, who drones on. Mrs. Saul blanches, suddenly resembling Janey, with too-white skin and a smattering of dark freckles. Mr. Gideon puts his arm around Mrs. Gideon, who is dabbing at her bloody mouth in shock, and they stand up and stumble toward the stairs. Alma Gideon, the first wife, sits stock-still for a moment before following. Then everyone stares at Mrs. Saul, who wipes at her face with the edge of her coat, her eyes wide and horrified. Someone else has started coughing far in the back rows of the church, and all heads swivel in unison to see. Eventually that coughing quiets and the crowd’s attention drifts back to the pastor, who looks annoyed at the disruption.

  Later that evening, Mother tells Vanessa that Mrs. Gideon is dead. Vanessa is shocked; plenty of people die of sickness, but sickness usually takes a while to claim its victims. That night, Vanessa lies awake in the dark and thinks of Mrs. Gideon, who was nondescript and boring, but is now interesting because she is dead.

  The next day Hannah Adam’s baby dies. Mrs. Adam goes to feed her and finds the infant sprawled in a rictus in her cradle, her face azure and her tongue swollen. Vanessa’s house is too far from theirs to hear the screams, but Father tells them of the scene later. When Vanessa leaves for school, he warns her to keep her coat on, like coats can protect you from dying bloody. Or blue.

&nb
sp; Five more girls are missing from class: Edith, Leah, Mildred, Deborah, and Julia. In an already decimated class of only twelve girls, the absence looms hugely. Have they all gone to join Janey? The children look at Mr. Abraham out of the corners of their eyes, trying to read his expression, but he merely looks bored and launches into the day’s lessons.

  After school, Linda tells Vanessa that Mildred hurt her arm. Leah’s brother tells her that Leah is sick, but not that kind of sick. But then two days later, Mr. Abraham wipes his eyes and tells them that Leah is dead. Mildred is still absent, and Linda looks quiet and pale.

  The pastor likes to talk about the scourge, and Vanessa can’t help but wonder if it has come to punish the island for the girls’ disobedience. True, nothing is on fire, but surely this is the disease that scoured the wastelands. She asks Mother, who shakes her head but stays quiet.

  By the end of the week there is no school anymore. Mother tells Vanessa that she will stay at home and help her until the sickness has passed. She talks about it like a fun party, but her voice is strained and there are violet circles around her eyes. She cycles between offering an uncomfortable surfeit of affection and ordering Vanessa to mend seams and scrub floors. After a day of this, Vanessa bitterly thinks that she would gladly be in bed coughing up blood, given the alternative. The next day Mother seems to regret holding her captive, and she lets her outside to run around the house. Vanessa sees a few men checking on gardens or crops, and a few women hanging out laundry to dry. She waves at Jean Balthazar through her window, and Mrs. Balthazar waves back.

  Vanessa visits the chickens and watches them squabble, laughing as they peck one another on their tufted rumps, and then goes to throw rocks into the water at the beach, enjoying the serenely expanding circles on the calm surface. She is pretty sure this doesn’t count as running around the house, but after all, it’s not like she’s gone to join Janey.

  She ends up thankful for her brief disobedience. When she returns home Mother, uncharacteristically frantic, smacks her across the face, and then tells her that two more people are dead and she can’t go outside anymore.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Janey

  The girls have become accustomed to dodging roving parents and wanderers. The majority of them have been chased across fields, plunging into seas of muck or thick hedges to hide. Some have even clambered up trees to cling to high branches and wait out baying adults. And then, almost overnight, the hunt stops. Suddenly they are able to sleep through the day instead of jolting alert to crackling footsteps, and the quick, panicked scatter of night vigils becomes a thing of the past. The bolder girls walk freely through cornfields and orchards, taking large steps and swinging their arms in wide brash arcs, almost daring someone to come and snatch them. Nobody does.

  Most of the girls simply assume that the adults have given up. Laughing, they recount their most hair-raising tales of pursuit and beatings like veterans of a consummated war. Gathering in larger and larger groups, they sing songs loudly and hop about in frenetic games, celebrating their victory over the adults, the wanderers, the entire island.

  But the older girls remain uneasy, aware that this cease-fire could mean something other than triumph. “They’re plotting something new,” Mary tells Janey. “Do you think…do you think they would kill all of us?”

  Janey shakes her head. “That would be too much. That would turn people against them, if they killed a bunch of children.”

  “They’ve already killed a child, and that didn’t seem to change anything.”

  Janey shrugged. “They probably lied about how she died, and people didn’t know any better. But dozens of children, they can’t hide that.”

  Rosie’s death is lodged deep within Janey like a sharp black thorn. She is always aware of it; it cuts her flesh when she moves. Her impotent grief and guilt branch throughout her at unexpected moments, almost doubling her over. Whenever she sees the stunned, miserable Caitlin, Janey imagines how she could have prevented Rosie’s death. She could have screamed the right words. She could have overpowered the wanderers and sprinted away with her. Rosie, her unwanted protector. Rosie, the hopeful truth teller, presuming that adults would believe the tales of children and turn immediately against their guardians and idols. Rosie the angry, the rebellious, churning with fury she could never fully release. Rosie, cold and dead, bones broken, suspended in mud under someone’s winter field.

  “Well, if they’re not going to kill us, then what are they planning?” asks Mary.

  Janey shakes her head. “I don’t know. If I were the wanderers, I would arrange for every adult to come out at the same time, take all the girls they could, watch them constantly so they couldn’t go back, and wait for the rest of the girls to give up and come home.”

  “What do we do then, if they do that?”

  Janey shrugs. “Who knows? We might be at home, with someone watching us.”

  “They’d probably plant a wanderer outside your door. You’re the most dangerous.”

  “Very dangerous,” says Janey, smirking.

  “I’m serious.”

  Janey looks at her bony, dirty lap and snorts. “I’m hardly in shape to fight someone.”

  “It’s your mind.”

  “My mind.” Janey massages her temples, as if to soothe it. “My mind is tired.”

  After a few days, some of the intoxicating rebellion of strolling around during daytime fades a bit, and the sharper girls notice something odd: there are no adults outside. It might as well be summer. There are no women dipping buckets of water from the rain barrels, feeding chuckling white hens, or walking over to visit a neighbor. There are no men at work—no farmers pulling winter weeds, no fishermen fringing the beach with their wooden poles, no builders repairing roofs or windows. Even the children who did not come to the beach, who are much derided and pitied, are not walking to and from school, or chasing one another around in their thick sweaters, or toddling after their mothers and falling on their rumps. There is simply nobody in sight.

  “What if everyone’s dead?” asks Fiona. “What if the ancestors killed everybody except us?”

  “That would mean they decided we should be the only ones here,” says Sarah, looking intrigued.

  “But that goes against everything, Our Book, the wanderers, everything,” points out Violet.

  “Not to mention that if we were the only ones left, we couldn’t have children, so after us there would be nobody,” says Mary.

  “The island would be cleansed,” whispers Fiona, who tends toward the dramatic.

  “We need to figure out what is happening,” says Janey. Inwardly, she worries the wanderers are planning their mass murder, but she keeps her tone mild as she continues, “We need to go look into houses, see what’s going on.”

  “But then they’ll take us!” wails eight-year-old Eliza Solomon, who has inched forward to hear the conversation.

  “We have to know,” says Mary, looking troubled. “We have to know what’s happening.”

  And so Janey gathers Mary, Fiona, Sarah, and Violet, and leads a small expedition. There is nowhere in particular to go, so they simply walk through fields and grasses, trying to decide which door to knock on, where to find someone willing to give information without looping them into a beating and detention. As they skirt a hedge between the Balthazar cornfields and the Joseph potato plot, they hear a moan. Alert as a hound, Janey swivels her gaze around, and it alights on what looks like a dead body.

  Quietly, slowly, they move toward the corpse, flinching when it suddenly flings out an arm. Stepping closer, they see it is Lydia Aaron, the young wife of Mr. Aaron the dyer, lying slumped on the ground.

  “Mrs. Aaron?” says Mary anxiously. “Mrs. Aaron?” The woman’s hands shake frenetically. Kneeling, Mary lifts the sweaty head to her lap. “Mrs. Aaron?”

  Mrs. Aaron’s eyes roll back in her head, the orbs shining like tide-soaked stones, and a thread of blood slowly zigzags down her lower lip. She coughs, a deep hack
like there is mud in her lungs, and flecks of blood hang in the air like tiny red stars before collapsing to the ground.

  “By the ancestors,” whispers Violet. “She’s sick.”

  “She must be very sick,” murmurs Janey. “I’ve never seen someone cough blood like that before.”

  “Mrs. Aaron?” says Sarah hopefully. Mrs. Aaron groans.

  “She needs help,” says Mary. “Janey, get her some help!” Nodding and rising, Janey motions to the other girls, and they run toward the nearest house, the farmer Josephs.

  Janey pounds on the door, but there is no reply. Frowning, she pounds again. “Hello!” she calls, but nobody comes.

  They move to the next house, the weaver Gideons, and she knocks, then pounds, then calls, but the house stands silent, its windows blank and lifeless as dead eyes.

  Finally, at the fisherman Moseses’ house, they hear someone coming toward the door. “Who is it?” calls a woman.

  “It’s, well, it’s Janey Solomon.”

  The door creaks open, and Mrs. Moses stares at them. She looks haggard and underfed, her hair greasy and her eyes underlined with stippled gray skin. “What are you doing here?” she says in disbelief.