After the Fire

by Will Hill

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  He holds it out. “Something that belongs to you.”

  I frown as I take the folder and open it. Then my heart stops dead and my whole body goes numb because I’m holding the envelope I took from the filing cabinet in the basement of the Big House. It’s crumpled and dirty, and it’s obviously been opened, but my name is still clearly legible on the front.

  “Have you read it?” I ask, my gaze fixed on those eight scrawled letters. I didn’t mean to ask him that – it was just the first thing that came out when I opened my mouth.

  He nods. “I’ve read it.”

  “And you just happened to have it in your pocket?”

  “It was released from evidence yesterday afternoon,” he says. “Doctor Hernandez would have returned it this morning if your session hadn’t been cancelled. He told me to bring it when you asked to see me.”

  I stare at the envelope. Part of me, the same part that never wanted to tell anyone anything, wants to ask Agent Carlyle whether he would have given it to me if I hadn’t just told him the last thing he wanted to know, but nothing good would come from knowing the answer to that. Instead, I slide two sheets of paper out of the envelope with trembling fingers, unfold them, and start to read.

  My dearest Moonbeam,

  My journal is missing, which means it is only a matter of time before I get taken to Father John to answer for what’s in it. I don’t know what is going to happen then, so this is a worst-case-scenario letter. I don’t think he’ll kill me – although I wish I was more sure about that – but if he Banishes me, there are things you need to know. Because I know he won’t let me take you with me. I know it.

  The first thing is that THE LORD’S LEGION IS A LIE. It’s a lie, and I will never forgive your father for bringing us here, and I’ll never forgive myself for letting him. I’m so very sorry.

  The second thing is that Father John is far more dangerous than anyone understands. He believes the Final Battle is coming, believes it with all of his rotten heart, and HE WANTS IT TO COME. He will make it happen if it doesn’t happen on its own, and people will get hurt, or worse. I can’t see any other way for this to end, and my only hope has been that we wouldn’t still be here when it does.

  But I think you know this already – or suspect it, at least. You’re much cleverer than me, Moonbeam. You always have been. So keep your eyes open, trust your instincts. Believe that I LOVE YOU and have always tried my best to protect you. Keep yourself safe. BE SAFE.

  If they Banish me, you’re going to hear things about me after I’m Gone that will be hard for you. I don’t know what they will be, because most of them will be lies thought up by Father John, but at least one thing will be true – that for A LONG TIME I have been trying to find a way out of this place, for both of us.

  I asked Shanti to hide us in his car when he left, but he was too scared to do it. I can’t blame him for that, I suppose. I tried to leave after the Third Proclamation, but Father John stopped me. He didn’t care about me – he never has – but he cares about YOU, Moonbeam, and I know he watches you closely.

  I should have left after The Purge. That was our best chance, I see that now. But I was scared, Moonbeam. I was scared of the world Outside and I was scared of raising you on my own. By the time I realized what was happening, it was too late. I’m sorry I wasn’t stronger. I’m sorry I let you down.

  So whatever they say about me after they Banish me, whatever they call me – a Heretic, a Servant Of The Serpent, and God knows what else – just know that I tried to find a way out, and that I’LL KEEP TRYING. I WILL NEVER STOP TRYING.

  I know you resented me for persuading Father John to choose you as a Future Wife, and I’ve never blamed you for that. I understand it, I honestly do. But I did it because there are things about the Legion that I tried my best to keep from you, things that I hoped you might never have to find out.

  The Third Proclamation isn’t real. IT IS A LIE, LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE.

  Most of the children born since it was issued are NOT Father John’s, no matter what anyone says. The real fathers are men who crept into rooms that were unlocked by the Centurions and into the beds of girls who have never been ALLOWED to know that what’s being done to them is wrong. In the real world beyond the fences, the men would spend years in prison if anyone ever found out. Inside the Legion, it is what passes for normal.

  Nobody talks about it, and the girls are warned never to tell anyone the truth. The only ones whose doors stay locked at night – WHO ARE OFF LIMITS, AND THEREFORE SAFE – are those girls who have been promised to Father John. GIRLS LIKE YOU, MOONBEAM.

  I don’t know if you’ll ever forgive me for pushing you towards him, but try to understand that it was the only way I could keep you safe. Some of your Brothers had started looking at you when you were still just a little girl, and it scared me so badly, because I couldn’t be with you every second. I couldn’t sit next to your bed every night, watching your door. Getting you promised to Father John was the only way I could protect you until I found us a way out, and I didn’t realize until it was far too late that all I’d done was make escaping so much harder.

  I didn’t understand that he would never let anyone take you away from him once you were promised. That he could never let you leave him.

  I thought I was being so clever.

  I’m SORRY, my little Moon. I’M MORE SORRY THAN YOU’LL EVER KNOW. I would have climbed the fence with you in my arms if I hadn’t been sure they would have caught us before we reached the highway. But they would have, and our punishments would have been awful. I don’t care what happens to me – I haven’t for a very long time – but I couldn’t put you in danger. I just couldn’t. You are the only thing that still matters to me.

  So here’s what you have to do. If they Banish me – and I’m sure they will, because Father John won’t take the risk of letting me stay once he’s seen my journal – I want you to tell EVERYONE that I deserved it and I want you to mean it with all your heart. I want you to MAKE THEM BELIEVE YOU. Stay close to Father John, NEVER EVER stop looking for a way out, and stay safe until I can come back and get you.

  I WILL COME BACK FOR YOU. I WILL COME BACK AND TAKE YOU AWAY FROM THIS TERRIBLE PLACE AND WE WILL NEVER LOOK BACK. I PROMISE.

  This is your grandparents’ address – if you make it out on your own, GET IN TOUCH WITH THEM. They will help you, and they will know how to find me.

  Michael and Anne Dalton

  364 Green Harbor Lane

  St James, WA

  78046

  I love you more than you could possibly know, my little Moon. I know I was hard on you, and I know you believed that I didn’t care, but I was SO SCARED of drawing attention to us, of anyone ever suspecting what I was trying to do.

  I’m sure there have been times when you didn’t think I loved you – I DON’T BLAME YOU FOR THAT, and I hate myself for giving you reason for doubt. But love is a dangerous thing inside the Legion. Father John demands absolute obedience and devotion, and he is jealous and he is cruel.

  The truth is this – YOU ARE THE BEST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED TO ME and I will spend the rest of my life trying to make up for what your father and I did to you.

  Be careful. Stay safe. And never stop looking for a way out. NEVER STOP TRYING.

  I LOVE YOU.

  Mom

  I look up at Agent Carlyle and instantly squeeze my eyes shut – the concern shining out of him is just too much for me to handle.

  I try to process my mom’s letter, to find the edges and work my way into the middle, but it’s too big and my brain and my heart feel like they’re broken. I summon the list of questions I’ve always wanted to ask her, a list that is never far below the surface of my mind, and realize, with something that almost – weirdly – feels like grief, that most of them have now been answered.

  She did love me. She did.

  She loved me and she tried to find a way out, to leave Father John and The Lord’
s Legion far behind us. She tried so hard, even when she knew the trouble she would be in if anyone found out.

  And the coldness I always hated about her, that always made me feel like she didn’t care about me at all? If I take her letter at face value – and I guess I have to, given that it’s all I’ve got left of her – then the distance she always kept between us was calculated rather than careless; a deliberate attempt to appear unremarkable while she worked on our escape behind the scenes. Even promising me to Father John – which she was right, I had never completely forgiven her for – was done for a reason I couldn’t have been expected to understand at the time, to keep the darkness at the heart of The Lord’s Legion away from her daughter.

  To protect me. To buy time.

  To buy us both time.

  I open my eyes and look at the names and address she wrote down. Her mother and father. My real family, the one I’ve never known.

  “We tried to contact your grandparents,” says Agent Carlyle. “Your grandfather died seven years ago, and your grandmother eighteen months later. I’m sorry.”

  I nod, although I never met them and two more dead people just feels like numbers at this point. I feel nothing. I don’t know if I can feel any more. I think I might be permanently numb.

  “So they died before my mom was Banished,” I say. “When she was still inside The Base.”

  “We sent a team up to the town where they lived,” he says. “In case your mother had gone there asking about them after she left the Legion. None of your grandparents’ neighbours remembered seeing her, and the county courthouse has no record of anyone attempting to access their estate.”

  “So she just disappeared into thin air?”

  “There hasn’t been a death certificate issued in her name,” says Agent Carlyle. “But I’m afraid that’s pretty much all we know for certain.”

  Something shrivels up inside me. I feel it shrink and disappear, and it takes me a second to realize what it was. When I do, I feel its departure like a punch to the gut.

  The last flickering ember of my hope is gone.

  “She never came back for me,” I say. “The letter says she won’t ever stop trying, but she’s been Gone three years. She never came back.”

  He stares at me, his eyes full of profound sympathy.

  “Do you think she forgot about me?”

  He shakes his head vehemently. “I don’t believe that for a second,” he says. “Not one second. And neither should you.”

  “Do you think she’s dead?”

  “Moonbeam…”

  “Tell me the truth,” I say. “Do you think she’s dead?”

  “I don’t know,” he says, although his eyes tell a different story.

  “Okay,” I say.

  “I’m sorry, Moonbeam. I truly am.”

  I feel nothing. I feel numb.

  “I said it’s okay.”

  “We have people searching,” he says. “If she’s out there, they’ll find her.”

  They won’t. But that’s not your fault.

  “I believe you.”

  “I approved the investigation team personally,” he says. He clearly wants to convince me there’s still a chance. “They’re the best at what they do. Don’t give up.”

  Too late.

  “I won’t,” I lie. “So what happens now we’re done here? Where do you go next?”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he says instantly. “I’ll be around whenever you need me. Just say the word.”

  My smile stays fixed in place. I really want to believe him, but I don’t have any Faith left.

  It’s all used up.

  There aren’t as many of us as there used to be.

  It’s been more than a month since the fire, since my surviving Brothers and Sisters coughed and spluttered and staggered away from the only life any of them had ever known. The daily routine hasn’t changed: I meet with Doctor Hernandez in the morning and sometimes Agent Carlyle sticks his head through the door of Interview Room 1 and says hello. It’s nice when someone makes an effort to come and see you even though there’s nothing you can do for them.

  It feels honest.

  Rainbow was the first to leave. Doctor Hernandez told me her grandparents had been trying to persuade the Government to let them take her out of the Legion for years; with both her parents dead, it didn’t take very long for a judge to sign her over into their custody. I saw her just before they arrived to collect her, and it was like she couldn’t decide whether to be scared or excited. Grief still hung over her like a cloud – I think it will be a long time until it breaks apart and drifts away for any of us, if it ever fully does – but the prospect of leaving the grey corridors of the George W. Bush Municipal Center, even with two people she had never met, filled her face with happiness. It was a joy to see it, even though it hurt my heart when she wrapped her little arms around me and hugged me and told me she loved me and said goodbye.

  Since then, Aurora and Winter have gone to an aunt and uncle who live in Hawaii and Lucy has gone to live with her grandmother on a farm in Iowa. We throw a little party in the Group Therapy room every time someone leaves, with chips and candy and jugs of orange drink, and some people cry and everyone tells each other to be safe and look after themselves. One or two of the youngest kids still say “The Lord is Good” but it doesn’t really feel like they mean it any more; it feels like an automatic reflex, like they sometimes forget that they won’t be in trouble if they don’t say it.

  Honey is still here, and so is Jeremiah, and ten others. Some of them will be leaving soon, to live with relatives that Agent Carlyle and his colleagues have tracked down. But some of them, including me, either have no living family or – and this is never said out loud – don’t have anybody willing to take them in. I asked Doctor Hernandez what will happen to them, and he said they’ll eventually go to foster families, men and women who take in children who aren’t theirs and look after them.

  It seems to me that the existence of those people is far better evidence that The Lord is Good than anything Father John ever told us.

  “I want to talk about anger,” says Doctor Hernandez. “Is that okay with you?”

  I smile. “I feel like we’ve covered that once or twice.”

  He smiles back at me. “I didn’t mean for that to sound as ominous as it did,” he says. “What I meant was, I’d like to talk about how we start to move on from anger. Move past it.”

  “All right,” I say. “That sounds good to me.”

  He nods, and sits back in his chair. There’s no recording machine on the desk these days, and he’s far more relaxed than when we first started talking to each other. He was so careful with me in those early days, as though he was afraid that one ill-judged comment might cause me to shatter into a million pieces. Then, when Agent Carlyle started to take the lead in questioning me, it felt like Doctor Hernandez saw me as a puzzle to be solved, as some kind of objective challenge to his professional skill and experience. Now he talks to me like we’re friends, and even though I know we aren’t, not really – I don’t exactly see us hanging out if and when I finally leave this place – I like things a lot more this way.

  “You have every right to be angry about what you experienced,” he says. “You should be angry, and I’d be worried if you weren’t, to be totally honest with you. We’ve worked through a lot of it in this room, but I want to make sure you’re processing your anger, that you’re staying focused on keeping it manageable. I don’t want it to consume you.”

  “It doesn’t,” I say.

  He nods. “Are you angry, Moonbeam?”

  “Yes,” I say. I don’t lie to him any more.

  “With who?”

  “With Father John.”

  He makes a quick note in one of his books, but even that doesn’t bother me like it used to. “What about your mom?”

  I shake my head. “I’m not angry with her.”

  “Amos Andrews? Jacob Reynolds?”

  “No and no.
”

  “Luke?”

  I pause for a second, then shake my head.

  He narrows his eyes. “Are you sure?” he asks. “You know you can tell me if you are. It’s okay.”

  “I’m not angry with any of them,” I say. “I was. For a long time I was scared of Luke and I was angry at my mom and I hated Amos and Jacob. I’m not saying any of them were blameless for the things they did that made feel like that, not at all. But most of it wasn’t their fault.”

  “Whose fault was it?” asks Doctor Hernandez.

  I smile. “Are you going to make me say his name again?”

  “No,” he says. “I don’t think that’s necessary. I’m going to say it though, if that’s all right with you?”

  I shrug. “Say whatever you want.”

  He rolls his eyes, but there’s a smile on his face. “What about Father John?” he asks. “Can you imagine a time when you might no longer be angry with him?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know,” I say. “I hope so.”

  “Can you ever imagine forgiving him for what he did?”

  “No,” I say instantly.

  “Are you—”

  “I’m sure.”

  “He lives in a place called London,” says Honey. “I have to take an airplane for ten hours to get there.”

  I smile. “I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

  She nods. “When I talked to him on the phone he told me he would sit next to me and hold my hand the whole way,” she says. “I asked him how old he thought I was, and he got all embarrassed. I think I’m going to like him.”

  “He’s your mom’s brother?” I ask.

  She nods again. “Apparently I’ve met him before,” she says. “He says he came to see me in the hospital when I was born. My mom never mentioned him though.”

  “I guess that figures,” I say. We’re sitting in the Group Therapy room and I’m trying really hard to keep my smile convincing, because I’m happy for Honey that she’s leaving, so happy I could burst, but I’m going to miss her so very much.