The Dark Citadel (The Green Woman)

by Jane Dougherty

  The bell of the small local temple began to toll for evening prayers, and men, hastily washed and changed from their work clothes, poured out of the tenements in the seedy area on the way to devotions, adjusting prayer shawls and the obligatory white skullcaps. Zachariah dragged his feet, his eyes fixed on the ground, drawing the disapproving glances of some of the men. He slouched into his own doorway as the main door was flung open, and a small wiry man hurried out. Zachariah found himself in a head-on collision with his givenfather. The little man clicked his tongue in an expression of distaste, and a hard hand caught Zachariah behind the ear.

  “Will you never learn the times of devotions? How many years have you idled home and had to run to the temple with the dirt of the streets on your hands and face?”

  “Well it won’t happen again,” Zachariah shouted, his dark eyes deep pits of rage, and held up the crumpled paper. “From next week there’s no more school for the likes of me. All I’m fit for is to fill potholes with asphalt and reset cracked paving stones!”

  Helios narrowed his eyes at the implied insult then slowly nodded his head. “First thing tomorrow you get yourself down to the House of Registration. You’ll need a work card, your first job assignment, and don’t forget, a new ration card. You’ll be a worker—no more kid’s rations for you. Oh, and you’ll need to go to the clothing distribution centre to get your work clothes.”

  Zachariah looked at the older man coldly, at his watery eyes glittering with cupidity. More ration points, a wage coming in at last. He turned into the doorway in disgust. He knew what Helios would do with the extra points, drunken old get.

  “Get yourself presentable and down to the temple. I’ll see you there.”

  With a final glare, Helios turned and hurried off down the street, leaving Zachariah to plod up the four floors to the apartment.

  He closed the door with an irritable slam, startling Bricta, his givenmother, who pivoted her bulk to glare at him. She wouldn’t ask what was the problem. As far as Zachariah could remember she had never asked him about anything. They had never liked one another: she because Zachariah had been foisted on her when her own son died of a brain fever, he because he had been wrenched from his own mother and reallocated when his father was killed in an accident at work. He’d had a little sister too, Sarah. He remembered her name and that she had black pigtails and laughed a lot.

  But that was all. He never knew which family took her, was never supposed to care. He often told himself he didn’t, but it wasn’t true. He remembered being happy, and although he clung to it, the memory was fading like a pleasant dream. He wondered dismally if he would ever know how it felt again.

  His givensister had married, so it was just the three of them now: his sharp, irascible givenfather; his bovine givenmother who rarely spoke except in sighs; and Zachariah, dark, smouldering and furious with life, the Wise God, and the Giving.

  Bricta snorted a greeting and carried on stirring the soy gruel. Zachariah splashed water on his face and dried himself hastily. He grabbed his prayer shawl from the back of the door and threw the hateful piece of paper that signalled the end of his schooling forever onto his bed and closed the door. He still saw it though behind his eyes, and the image taunted him all the way to the temple. Tomorrow it would be transformed into a prison sentence. Tomorrow it would be registered and there would be no going back, ever. A life of Helios and Bricta until he was forced to marry a cow-like girl just like his givenmother.

  The subject of women was the only point on which Zachariah found himself agreeing with the Elders. Which was why the idea of an imposed marriage made him so bitter. If the Elders were so convinced of women’s natural mediocrity and sinfulness, why did they force intelligent boys to marry? Zachariah would have liked nothing more than to devote his life to research, discovery, or invention. His mother, the real one, the one who he was sure had loved him, used to say he had an inquiring mind, that he should work hard at school.

  The memory of his birth mother came back to him with such unusual clarity it brought tears to his eyes. He wiped them away hastily, but the germ of an idea was there, behind the pain and the desperation. Tomorrow might not be such a black day after all.

  * * * *

  Since the day his family was split up, since he and Sarah were dragged away by the guards, Zachariah had carried with him the memory of the suffering in his mother’s eyes. Mothers were not supposed to feel affection for their children, but he could not explain the warmth that came from her any other way. Her gentle eyes watched over his dreams at night, and he still heard the murmuring of her voice as she told him stories to help him go to sleep. He had vowed that one day he would find her. As he set out the next day for the House of Registration, Zachariah’s heart pounded with excitement. Perhaps that day had come.

  The House of Registration was where the vital statistics were kept, including all changes of name, status, and address. On the dreary morning Zachariah went to register as a worker, it was full of men registering births, their children’s weddings, or the collection of a givenchild. The same clerks dealt with everything. There was no joy in the House of Registration and very little sorrow. It was not manly to show emotion. The clerks used the same bland tone with everyone, whether it was to register the death of a stillborn child or the loss of a family ration card.

  The clerk clicked open Zachariah’s file and was about to make the changes to his status and print him out his new cards, when Zachariah coughed.

  “Excuse me, but there’s someone waving to you over there.”

  The clerk peered across the hall. “Where? I can’t see anyone.”

  “No, he’s stopped now. He thinks you’ve seen him. He’s gone back into the office right over on the left, by the door.”

  The clerk frowned. “The supervisor? What does he want now? As if I haven’t enough to do.” Muttering in annoyance, he got up and made his way across the room.

  Zachariah flipped the screen around. He had all of thirty seconds to read as much of the file as possible before the clerk realised he had been tricked and came storming back in a fury. He wasted the first seconds staring in stunned disbelief at the paucity of the data on his file. How could a human life be reduced to so few words? The file gave his name and date of birth, and the names of his birth mother and father. He had been their first child. The date of his father’s death followed, then his own reallocation to new givenparents and change of name from Deodato to Givenchild.

  There was nothing else. Nothing that hinted a family had been destroyed, nothing to mention that Zachariah Givenchild had ever had a sister called Sarah, that their mother had been dragged from them and forced into a marriage with a complete stranger. The injustice of it brought the sting of angry tears to Zachariah’s eyes. He shook them away and glanced over the partition wall of the cubicle. The clerk was obviously looking for the supervisor.

  Feverishly Zachariah typed in his mother’s name. The screen changed to reveal a list, a long list of what looked like dozens of Brigid Deodatas! He scrolled down the list, too fast, and had to backtrack, looking for the only exact date he had, a date he would never forget—his mother’s second marriage. The fateful date caught his eye. He checked the rest of the data: Brigid Deodata’s dates of birth, marriage, and birth of her children. A son, Zachariah, was first—he had the right Brigid.

  Next entry, dated three years after his own birth, was the birth of a son, Ishmael. So Sarah was not his real sister? He had a brother? How come he had never known?

  He blushed with shame because he knew the answer: he had known, must have done. Even a ten-year-old would have noticed his sister was officially called Sarah Givenchild. He just hadn’t cared enough to remember. Nobody ever cared.

  A second wave of anger and helplessness hit him as he wondered where his brother was now, and how he could find out. But the unusual sound of raised voices across the hall tore him away from his speculations—the clerk had discovered the trick. His supervisor was next to him holding a
phone to his ear. The man was speaking quickly, angrily. Zachariah almost panicked; telephones were rarely used in Providence and only in emergencies. He was in deep trouble.

  It didn’t matter though; he had it. He clicked on the link, and his eyes homed in on the only detail he wanted to know—where the guards had taken his mother when her family was dispersed. He had seen his mother’s new address. His hand reached out to press the key to clear his mother’s file, when a message flashed across the screen: Access error.

  Then another: Security check.

  The screen froze. He punched the key, but nothing happened. He could neither close nor open files—access had been shut down completely. He glanced up at the clerk. He was hurrying over, an unpleasant grin on his face.

  Zachariah’s eyes flew to the exit. It appeared to be clear. He bolted, leaving the precious information starkly visible, the cursor fixed in place, the address underlined in red, for even the fool of a clerk to see.

  * * * *

  Zachariah ran through the dusty streets in the direction of the builders’ quarter. If he was quick he could surely get there before the guards. His mind was a pitched battle of conflicting emotions: elation, apprehension, shame, and fear. He knew what he had done was unheard of and possibly unpardonable. He didn’t feel like a rebel or a subversive, nor did he feel ashamed that he wanted to find his mother. She was the only woman he had ever felt close to, the only one he had ever respected, and they had taken her from him. Instead of his calm, comforting birth mother, they had given him Bricta. Bricta was no different from any of the slow-moving, dull-witted females who bore Providence’s children.

  There were so many things he didn’t understand. As he pounded along the uneven paving stones, pushing against the flow of workers going home, he found himself looking furtively at unknown faces and wondering if this man or that loved his wife, his children, his parents, or was he as indifferent to them as the Elders would have him be. Most of the faces were closed and weary-looking. Zachariah doubted love played much part in their lives.

  The workers would have to wash and change and hurry to the temple for evening devotions before they even thought about anything else. They would go home and eat and fall into bed with the hollow ache of dissatisfaction, without even asking after wife and children. The dull, grey routine had become what they cherished most, a refuge from despair. Hoping and dreaming were too painful: emotions hurt.

  His heart thumping as he neared the right street, Zachariah wondered what he would say and what would happen next. He dared not slow down in case the fear that was filling his belly made him turn and run back to the meagre comfort of the apartment with Bricta and Helios. He had to find his mother now. Right away. Before he lost his nerve. He turned into his mother’s street at a run.

  The evening shadows had lengthened to fill the roadway and the doorways, the sky was obscured by a desert dust storm, and the first street lights would be glowing weakly in the richer neighbourhoods. Men were still filing out in the direction of the nearest temple, occasionally throwing Zachariah a questioning look, but none wishing to get involved with a dusty, out of breath young man who was not in his rightful place.

  He was there! His mother’s was the ground floor apartment; a hand was closing the shutters from the inside. He ran, shouting, “Mother! Mother! It’s Zach—” The name hung half in the air, half stuck in his throat as a hand was clapped across his mouth and his arms were twisted roughly behind his back. He struggled free and screamed again, “Mother!”

  He just had time to peep in through a half-closed shutter, just time to see a slight grey shape moving silently and quickly from the stove to the window. He had almost, but not quite, time to see her drop the dish on the table as she passed and turn her dark, startled eyes in the direction of the clattering sound outside her door.

  Even above the noise the guards were making, Zachariah heard the angry noises coming from inside the house, a man shouting, the woman’s voice raised in fear, crockery smashing, a child crying. Zachariah struggled as they dragged him away, biting the guard’s hand. Hot tears of rage and frustration blurred his vision.

  “Mother!”

  * * * *

  Zachariah was locked in a cell in the House of Correction. He had not been charged and had no idea what was to happen next. Justice was summary and arbitrary in Providence. He wasn’t even sure who meted it out. But he did know he had committed a cardinal sin: he had broken the taboo of ignorance, and he had dared to show attachment and affection. There was no place for his kind in Providence.

  Chapter 7

  Ezekiel was just coming up from the night shift when he heard the news of the population cull. Beyond the arc lights and the towering constructions of the pithead, the Hemisphere stretched, invisible, keeping out the terrors of the night. His gaze darted everywhere, seeking out armed thugs in the unlit streets, half-expecting to find Black Boys in riot gear waiting for the surfacing miners.

  Instinctively he drew closer to the group of Ignorant men preparing to leave the site. The streets appeared quiet, but he knew the news was not just wild rumours. The underground tunnels were full of evil; why would the streets above be any safer?

  His eyes narrowed and the muscles of his stomach contracted. Despite the glare, he caught a movement, a sliding and a fluttering just beyond the reach of the lights. It was only dusk, not deep night. The demons were growing fearless, and he thanked the Mother his own were safe in Underworld, the Ignorants’ secret city beneath Providence.

  The dark times were returning, just like in the old stories. Evil was dragging Providence back into the shadows, to the place of eternal torment. Fear brought out a cold sweat on his brow as a name took form in his head, a name that was too dreadful to be spoken aloud. Gehenna.

  It was then he heard the shriek. The crystal Hemisphere kept out the desert noises for most of the inhabitants of Providence, but not for those who lived at the edges of the city. The demonic sounds of the wasteland spread terror in the Ignorant neighbourhoods of dilapidated tenements, factories and mines in the sectors closest to the Hemisphere. Ezekiel looked up anxiously, searching the veils of darkness for a sign of the demon, but the Providence sky of late evening was a thick soup of brown sand and angry black cloud. He shivered and grabbed his brother-in-law’s arm, hurrying him out of the colliery. It was a fortnight since they’d been on the same shift—Ezekiel wanted a word.

  Ezekiel was an Ignorant and the Ignorants were different from other people. The Ignorants did the unpleasant work; they swept the streets, worked in the slaughterhouses, and the sewers. They worked at night, out of sight, and they lived in the grey tenements of the outskirts, where only the crystal dome lay between them and the beasts of the desert.

  Stories were told about the Ignorants, that they neglected their religious duties. Because they could not read, they sang songs when the other men were reading the Book. They lived on the scrapings from the slaughterhouse floors and worse, so it was said. And their women gave birth in secret so their children would not be given.

  But the Ignorants were also feared because they remembered things everybody else had forgotten, about the times before, about the Green Woman and her enemies. Ezekiel knew the inhuman shriek that rang out as he stepped out of the lift cage was not just the cry of a sandwraith or what the Elders called souls in torment. It was a servant of Abaddon, the great serpent.

  “There’s another one.” Dan, Ezekiel’s brother-in-law, shuddered and pulled his thin jacket tighter. “Same as the buggers we hear down in the pit sometimes. Did you hear what Bragi and Nat were talking about before the Flappy Trousers came and shut them up?”

  Ezekiel nodded. “I saw the faces on ’em too. The Flappy Trousers are scared stiff. They can dole out any punishment they like for seeing things that aren’t there, but they know as well as you and me there’s something up.”

  “’Course they do! You won’t catch any of them going down the side shafts to find out where the moaning’s coming from. The
y wouldn’t even go looking for Toby, Big Skadi’s husband. Remember? Not after the boys said they’d seen him dragged down that disused shaft by one of those things that aren’t there!”

  “The darkness is growing, Dan, all of the mineshafts are full of it. The supervisors won’t let on, but even they’re starting to feel it. I heard a rumour they’re closing a couple of the abandoned shafts until the problem is sorted out.”

  “Problem!” Dan snorted. “What they don’t like is it’s holding up the work, when the lamps keep going out and the props fall down for no reason. They don’t give a toss about the lads who’ve gone missing, or been dragged up from the deep shafts half-mad with the heebie-jeebies.”

  Another wild cry rent the air, and the Ignorant miners hunched their shoulders higher and hugged the walls, keeping to the darker shadows cast by the tall buildings. Dan started nervously. “By Old Pimply Arse, that one sounded close!” He grinned but his eyes betrayed his fear as he peered overhead.

  The shadows obscured the sky and seemed to hang lower, reaching through the crystal, sending searching, elusive tendrils to scrape the rooftops. Dan caught Ezekiel’s eye, and they exchanged worried glances before pushing the pace harder, eager to be home.

  “They’re trying to get in,” Ezekiel whispered. “If they can’t get through the Hemisphere, they’ll find a way up through the mine shafts. That’s obvious.”

  “But what do they want?” Dan’s voice sounded pale and thin in the darkness that was filled with the dying echo of the demon scream.

  “She’s moving, Dan, she must be. And the Black Demon wants her.”

  “You know what that means, Zeke?”

  Ezekiel nodded in silence. He was thinking of the stories of the return of the Green Woman. She had the power to mend the broken Pattern and bring back the days of the old stories when the world was green and the Ignorants were the Danann people.

  He looked at Dan, at the eager expression on his face. “You’ve heard what they’re saying about her, that she plans to destroy Providence—”