A Gift Upon the Shore

by Wren, M. K.

  “I . . . I just couldn’t believe you’d make such an accusation of someone who comes to you in her need.”

  “She has come to the wrong place! God said to Moses, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’ And I’ll not suffer a witch to enter this, the abode of the righteous!”

  All around them, the Flock stood silent, accepting that grotesque statement without so much as a murmur.

  And Luke remained equally silent.

  Mary cried, “Luke! This is Rachel—the woman who nursed you through your sickness and treated you like a son! Can you face her, can you face your god and call Rachel a witch?”

  Luke let his head fall back, eyes closed, before he turned to the Doctor. “Brother, I owe her my life. How can you say—”

  “You owe this daughter of darkness nothing! I say she is a witch, and I say she will not set foot in the Ark!”

  “I can’t believe she’s evil. You don’t know her, you can’t know—”

  “I do know her! I see the mark of Cain on her when nobody else can.” He looked around at the Flock, then turned to Luke, pronounced with ringing contempt, “Or do you think you know better, Brother Luke? Do you think you can lead my Flock? Do you think you can lead them in the paths of righteousness? Because if you do, then I will step down, my Godly mission fulfilled, and you, Brother Luke, can take my place!”

  Mary watched the transparent transition of emotion in Luke’s face: shock, uncertainty, fear, and finally defeated compliance. He slumped, staring at the ground, and Mary remembered the scars on his back. Yet she felt not a trace of sympathy for him, for the pain so patent in his face. She looked at him and despised him; she wanted to spit on him. She shook with the intensity of her loathing and cried, “Luke, you coward! You pitiful, heartless coward!”

  Luke stood mute, and it was the Doctor who answered with a sharp, “Silence, Sister! Or I’ll know you’ve been tainted with her evil. I’ve given my judgment. She will go back to whatever hellish place she came from! You—you will turn your eyes away from me and go!”

  That was for Rachel. She was watching the Doctor with a dispassionate gaze that did not waver for his vituperations. She didn’t speak; she only looked at him out of her pain-wearied eyes and silently manifested her recognition and acceptance of a sentence of agonizing death.

  But if Rachel was willing to accept her fate in silence, Mary was not. The denial rose from every cell in her body, a flood of fear and grief that drove her forward, bore her to her knees at the Doctor’s feet. “In the name of your god, I beg of you—help her!”

  “Sister, don’t ask me to—”

  “Who else can help her? Remember the parable of the Good Samaritan! Jesus wouldn’t turn her away! You can’t—”

  “Get away from me!” He lashed out, his hand striking the side of her head, knocking her to the ground. She tasted the earth on her lips, heard Yorick barking, as the Doctor pronounced, “I have given my judgment!”

  And there was no appeal.

  Someone was helping her to her feet. She got her balance, looked around at him, at Luke, and while his eyes brimmed with baffled love, she waited, panting with rage, until he retreated from her.

  And the Doctor stood like a figure carved in stone, and she knew that if she beat on him with her fists—and that was her impulse—she would only bloody her hands. At this moment she recognized something about him that she had always known but found expedient to ignore. This man was insane. He survived because these frightened survivors of the ultimate holocaust sustained his delusions as his delusions sustained theirs. A closed loop of insanity. That was the way the world ended, not with a bang nor a whimper, but with a meaningless paroxysm of madness.

  Mary spoke into the pendant silence, spoke loud enough for everyone in the Flock to hear. “He has given his judgment. And Jesus said, ‘Judge not that ye be not judged.’ Look at him! He’s afraid!”

  “Be quiet, Sister!” He balled his hands into fists, his face livid with frustrated anger.

  But she only raised her voice. “Wasn’t Jesus the lord of mercy, who took in anyone who asked for help?”

  “Damn you, I said—”

  “But this man has condemned a woman all of you would call a saint if you knew her. He is afraid of Rachel because Luke called her a woman of wisdom, and he—”

  “To the church!” His face nearly purple now, he flung out his arms, pivoted toward the Flock. “All of you—go to the church!”

  Perhaps that’s what they’d been waiting for: a direct order. They knew how to deal with that. Mary stood silent as one by one they began walking up the road toward the Ark. There was Nehemiah, shuffling along like a man of ninety. And Adam, looking back at her in bewilderment. Enid, Hannah, Naomi, Leah, Esther, and the other women who had dressed her for her wedding. And Bernadette, who had provided her bouquet of wild asters and pearly everlasting.

  Mary turned her back on them and went to Rachel, again reached for her hand, seeking its strength, finding only heartbreaking fragility. And there was nothing she could say. The language of this despair was unknown to her.

  “Luke’s right,” Rachel said softly. “I shouldn’t have come here. It was a faint hope at best, and I knew it when I left Amarna. I’ll go now.”

  Mary nodded. “You won’t go alone.” She looked around for Yorick, found him pacing anxiously beside her, then she took Epona’s reins and started toward the gate.

  “Sister Mary!”

  She turned, saw the Doctor and Luke standing where she had left them, while behind them the Flock paused in their retreat.

  The Doctor said, “Sister Mary, you will not go with that daughter of Satan. Come here!”

  “Brother, I will go with her.”

  He took a step forward, pale eyes stark in his reddened face. “You carry our child! You can’t leave the Ark!”

  The despair fed the new rage that pounded with her pulse in her head. She shouted, “This is not your child and never will be!”

  Luke cried, “No! Mary, you can’t—”

  “Brother Luke,” the Doctor cut in, “control your wife. Bring her to the church!”

  Luke looked at him, hesitated, then started toward Mary. “I can’t let you go, Mary. You’ll have to come with me.”

  Mary didn’t answer that. She reached for the rifle behind Rachel’s saddle, jerked it out of its sheath, snapped off the safety, and looked down the gleaming barrel into Luke’s stunned face.

  He seemed to freeze, and in his eyes she read elemental fear. A sudden calm possessed her. The shaking of her taut muscles abated, she felt the stock smooth against her cheek, the trigger waiting under her finger. And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life.

  Luke pleaded, “Mary . . . please, Mary . . .”

  “Why?” She didn’t recognize her own voice, it was so guttural and cold. “Why should I show you any mercy? You want to live by the Doctor’s rules, by the old Mosaic code? This is part of it—along with slavery, polygamy, and animal sacrifice. An eye for an eye, Luke!”

  “But, Mary . . . I love you!”

  Her hands flexed on the rifle, and she heard a voice—Rachel’s voice—pleading with her not to kill, not to kill Luke, but the voice barely reached her consciousness. She stood with her finger tight on the trigger and laughed until she knew she was on the brink of tears, and she became acutely aware of herself, of Luke, of Rachel, of the Doctor, of the Flock waiting and paralyzed with fear. She saw the entire tableau as if she were outside it, no longer a part of it.

  Eye for eye. Life for life.

  But it didn’t work and never had in the thousands of years since that philosophy was invented. She despised it as she did the Doctor’s arrogance, as she did Luke’s cowardice, yet she had nearly succumbed to it, just as she had years ago. Why was it so sweet in its promise of satisfacti
on, that ancient philosophy of revenge? As sweet as ignorance that wraps its nakedness in the shining trappings of faith.

  Mary didn’t lower the gun. She didn’t move. “Luke, I won’t kill you for the sake of revenge, but neither will I go back to the Ark. If you try to take me by force, I will kill you. So, go on, Luke. Go to the church with your prophet. And wait for the day of judgment.”

  In the silence that followed, she could hear the distant bleating of goats, the soft clangor of cowbells, the murmuring of the Jordan in the cool shadows of firs. None of the human occupants of this pleasant landscape moved or made a sound until finally the Doctor shouted, “Let her go! Let her go with her witch sister!”

  But Luke stood gazing at Mary, his eyes flooded with tears. “Mary, you can’t take our child. You can’t . . . leave me. . . .”

  She tried to remember why she had loved him and found no answer within her.

  “Luke, if you love me—” Her mouth seemed to balk at the words.

  “Oh, Mary, of course, I do. You know I—”

  “If you love me, you’ll bring me some food, blankets, bandages, and any medication that might help Rachel.”

  His mouth sagged open, and he glanced over his shoulder. The Doctor like a good shepherd watched this wayward lamb to see that it didn’t stray too far. The rest of his Flock waited.

  Luke gasped, “Mary, I can’t do that. The Doctor wouldn’t—Mary, you have to understand. He’s held us together through all these years of tribulation. He is the Ark. And the Ark is our only hope!”

  “Then you have no hope.” She lowered the rifle, caught the glint of gold on her left hand, and slipped the ring off her finger, tossed it at Luke’s feet. He stared down at it, but made no move to pick it up.

  She turned and looked up at Rachel, but neither of them spoke. Mary whistled for Yorick and led Epona out the gate. When she closed it, Luke was still standing there, watching her. She looked past him, past the Doctor, past the Flock, to the Ark.

  Now she understood why it was built as a fortress.

  She took Epona’s reins and started down the road, and it was only then that she realized she hadn’t once in the six months since she entered this gate set foot outside it.

  She pressed a hand to her body, waited for some movement there, but felt nothing.

  Why had she brought Rachel here?

  Mary only asked herself that question after she had a fire burning and two of the pots from the nesting camp set steaming on the grate, one filled with water, the other with the meat of the rabbit she had shot at the side of the road.

  She put another piece of driftwood on the fire. The chill of evening had already set in. She was wearing Rachel’s jacket, grateful for its warmth over the wool blouse that had seemed too hot only hours ago. But her head was bare. She had taken off the scarf as soon as they left Canaan Valley. Now she looked west toward the sun poised blinding orange a few degrees above the horizon. This was one reason she’d brought Rachel here: the sea, seemingly infinite, shining with a filigree of reflected gold. The quiet surf braided ephemeral strands of foam to cast upon the sand. I am here . . . I am always here. . . .

  This was the campground where she and Luke had spent their last night before they reached the Ark. The wind in the black lace of the spruce trees that canopied this site whispered with ghosts of memories.

  But she had brought Rachel here for practical reasons. There was no place along the road inland to the Ark with enough open space to camp, and no place where she could find water. The creek south of this site bubbled noisily, cold and fresh. Mary could hear Epona stolidly cropping the grass on the bank.

  She squinted into the sun. “Rachel, there might be a green flash.” And as soon as the words were out, she almost wept.

  She had to discipline her thoughts to keep them out of certain byways of memory. She had to hold on to the mantle of numbness that had enveloped her since they left the Ark, that enabled her to resist the rage and grief and guilt that would paralyze her if she recognized it.

  Rachel was oblivious to the possibility of a green flash. She seemed asleep, although her breathing was labored. At the foot of one of the spruces, Mary had prepared a bed of sword fern to cushion the sleeping bag, and over that laid the bearskin. But Rachel’s bandaged leg was uncovered, pillowed by a fold of the bearskin. She couldn’t tolerate any weight on it. Yorick lay motionless and awake beside her.

  Mary didn’t wait for the green flash. She went to the picnic table where she had opened Rachel’s packs. Rachel had brought only the essentials for camping, including a few matches wrapped in foil and some jerky and smoked fish. And the first-aid box. In it Mary found scissors, tape and tape sutures, an antiseptic spray that had no doubt lost its efficacy long ago, a bar of soap, strips of sheeting for bandages, and an aloe leaf. A braided cloth cord was coiled in one corner between a twenty-cc vial of morphine and a single twenty-cc disposable syringe.

  Why had Rachel brought only one syringe, and why such a large one? They had plenty of these disposables, of all sizes, at Amarna.

  Mary knew the answer, but she channeled her thoughts away from it. She looked around at Rachel, felt the numbness shiver, ready to fall away. No. Hold on. Hold on to that. She hadn’t looked at the leg yet, and only now did she face the real reason for her reluctance.

  She had given up hope.

  Mary silently castigated herself for that lapse. She could kill Rachel with pessimism.

  Maybe the wound wasn’t as bad as she feared. Maybe with care and nursing, it might heal. It was possible. She had to believe it was possible.

  There was no alternative but to try.

  She took the first-aid box and the pot of hot water to Rachel’s erstwhile sickbed. Yorick raised his head, watching her. She knelt beside Rachel, saw her lips tremble in a grimace of pain. Even in sleep she still felt the pain. Mary pressed her palm to Rachel’s forehead. The skin was hot. Her pulse, when Mary found it, was weak and erratic.

  “Rachel?”

  Her breath caught, sighed out when she opened her eyes. And Mary saw in her eyes, sunk deep in bruised sockets, something that lashed her with fear. The last time she spoke to her father before he died in that ticking cubicle in the hospital, she saw in his eyes the same indefinable shadow she saw now in Rachel’s.

  No. You have to try. You have to try.

  Rachel said, “A fire going and supper cooking . . . all the comforts of home.”

  “I’ll have supper—such as it is—ready in about half an hour.”

  “I’m . . . not really hungry.”

  “Well, you’ll have to eat something. Rachel, you have to keep up your strength—or build it up again.”

  Rachel studied her for a moment, absently stroking Yorick’s head. “I know, Mary. You have to try.”

  Mary was startled at that. She had almost forgotten the nearly telepathic communication that had developed between them over the years; they knew each other’s minds so well.

  “Yes, Rachel. I have to try.”

  “It’s hopeless, you know, without amputation.”

  “No!” Mary shook her head. “No, it’s not hopeless.”

  Rachel’s gaze fell on the first-aid kit. “Help me sit up so I can see what you’re doing.” Then when Mary had assisted her into a sitting position, she said levelly, “You’ll have to cut the old bandage away. I haven’t . . . been up to changing it for a couple of days. You have hot water? That’s the only thing I know to clean it with. I’ve been putting aloe on it and that antiseptic spray—not that either one of them does a damn bit of good. I just didn’t know what else to do.”

  Mary didn’t know, either, but she started by easing off the ankle-high hiking boot, then the wool stocking. She tried not to show her dismay when she saw Rachel’s swollen, discolored foot. In the yellow light of the fire and the sunset sky
, the skin had the look of dark, age-patinaed bronze. Mary began cutting the bandages, staying to the inside of the leg, away from the brownish patches. And as she cut through tape, cloth, and gauze, the foully sweet odor made her light-headed. She glanced up at Rachel’s face, saw her lips compressed against pain, eyes haunted with dread. Yet she managed a smile. “Malodorous little beastie, clostridia.”

  Mary stopped cutting. “What?”

  “Clostridia,” Rachel repeated with grim nonchalance. “It’s the little beastie that causes gangrene. Of course, it’s a camp follower, so to speak. The real soldiers are staphylococcus and streptococcus. Blood poisoning, septicemia, cellulitis. It all comes to the same thing in the end. The microcosm constantly breaks down the macrocosm.”

  Mary’s throat was too dry for her to speak. Trust Rachel to research her killer thoroughly.

  No! Not her killer. Not this time. The microscopic legions would not be triumphant this time.

  Mary finished the cut to the top of the bandage. The brownish exudate was too liquid to form scabs that would glue the gauze to the wound, but viscous enough so that she had to ease the gauze off, constantly aware of Rachel’s hands locked on her knee to combat the compelling reflex to withdraw from pain. The wound was thus revealed slowly, inch by inch.

  The machete had cut into the leg just above the ankle, baring the shinbone, then curved upward around the calf, ending at a point a handsbreadth below the angle of the knee. Rachel had tried to close the wound with tape sutures, but the swelling had pulled the edges apart, and the tapes hung like broken bridges across a riven canyon. The skin was dusky, and surrounding the wound, mottled, purplish blisters gleamed moistly. Shadowy tentacles of red reached toward the knee.

  Mary got her trembling under control, ordered the muscles of her face into an expression of calm. “Rachel, you did a hell of a job on this.”

  Rachel laughed, although her forehead and upper lip were beaded with sweat. “Like they say, if you’re going to do something, do it right.”

  Mary cut off a piece of the cloth bandage, dipped it in the water—still hot, but not scalding—and began gingerly cleaning the wound. The smell was dizzying, but she closed her mind to it and to Rachel’s clenched hands, her muffled gasps of pain.