Abel obeyed, tilting back his head.
She was a long time counting his teeth.
“Shall I undress, Sister?”
“Not yet,” she answered curtly. Taking his jaw in hand, she turned his face to either side, then peered into his eyes as though something were to be found there. With what seemed a begrudging satisfaction, she released him and started back toward the convent. “Follow me,” she said over a shoulder. “Sister Eve will want to see you.”
Watching the sister walk away, Abel’s resolve faltered, and he found that he wished only to stay with his flock in the courtyard next to the well, where it was safe. As the sister mounted the steps to the convent doors, she turned to see him unmoving.
Turning, she called, “She won’t come to you. Not out here. Not among your animals.”
When Abel still didn’t move, the sister placed one hand on the banister and took one step back down. Some of her abruptness faded, and she seemed more forgiving, or at least kinder. “You came here freely,” she reminded him. “Yes?”
“Yes, Sister.”
“And you may leave freely. Now—or at any time.”
Though uncertain of that, Abel crossed the yard and started up the stairs. Dying among the sisters was better than what would become of him if he went back to the mountains. As he passed the sister, she stopped him with a hand on his arm, and tapped his crook with light fingers. “You may leave this outside.”
The convent was a place of well-swept spaces and dark corridors. Following the sister’s swishing habit, Abel found himself blinded in turn by light and darkness as they passed through bands of sunlight falling through thin windows. He knew there were other women; he heard muted laughter through closed doors, and spotted them clustered at the ends of corridors. He didn’t mean to stare, but he’d seen so few in his life.
The sister abandoned him in a room partitioned by tattered linens draped from the ceiling. Peeking behind them, Abel found only a second door, narrower than the one he had passed through. On his side of the room was one window facing the eastern plains. Through this opening he fit an arm and part of his shoulder, but could go no farther. Should things go wrong, it would offer no egress. When the second door opened, Abel retracted his arm and turned to see the partitions breathing in a draft.
“You are the one who brought animals to my home,” said a tired feminine voice.
“A gift,” Abel said. “All of them are pure.”
“A gift?” Slow currents dragged the sheets as the unseen speaker moved behind them. “You think there is something here to be bargained for, that you bring gifts?”
“No, Sister. I just . . . they’ll need care when I’m gone.”
“Then you should have left them in the settlement. We have our own flocks to tend. And pure or not, we keep our beasts outside the walls.”
“Forgive me,” Abel stammered. “I saw no animals. I thought—” He stopped himself, suddenly sure that nothing he thought would matter to the sisters, certainly not this one. He frowned toward the narrow window.
“Where did you come from, shepherd? Not from the settlement. I know all the men from the settlement.”
“Through the mountains, Sister.”
“Ah,” she breathed. “The mountains. One must be cautious of things which come from the mountains. And where are you going, shepherd, that you would abandon your flock to a convent of sisters?”
Abel hesitated. It might not be too late to leave.
“‘Even the fool seems wise when he shuts his mouth,’” the sister said. “Is that not so, shepherd? You would do well to remember that we already know why you came. I only want to hear you say it.”
“I’m sick,” Abel told her. “Dying.”
The sister’s cruel laughter sent ripples through the sheeting. “A waste of words, to tell me that,” she said. “Sick is the only kind of man there is. And dying the only kind that comes here. Trust me, shepherd, we smell it on you. We smelled you in the hills, and we smelled you last night by our well. Even over the stink of your animals, we smelled you. But sickness is your condition, shepherd. Not your desire. Why are you here?”
Abel remembered the lioness on the mountain, her hands so nearly like his. “There are many abominations in the mountains, Sister. I would not add to their numbers.”
The curtains huffed outward in agitation. “Men,” the sister scoffed. “You only think you know what you want. When your time comes your minds fail you, as well as your bodies. You grow restless.” She drew a sudden, luxurious breath. “You reek. But we women . . . don’t you remember what we become, shepherd, when our time is on us?”
“No, Sister. I—”
“We get hungry.”
A vague, swollen shape pressed to the fabric, rippling upwards, creating an impression entirely wrong for one frail sister. It might only have been a draft. “You don’t know hunger like this,” she said. “You don’t know hunger like mine.”
Too afraid to turn his back on the partition, Abel backed away. For the first time since entering the convent he cursed himself for leaving his crook outside, though he didn’t believe it would be of any use now.
But as rapidly as she had risen up, the sister subsided. “No,” she declared in a voice deeper than it had been before. “I am only human . . . like you. Subject to the desires of the flesh. But I have not yet been tempted enough by any man to stand before me. Is this why you came, shepherd? To tempt me?”
The idea shocked Abel. “No, Sister. Never.”
“How many years have you lived?”
“I don’t remember.”
“No,” she agreed. “You would not be here if you did.”
The sister then pulled a slow, savoring breath. “You’re afraid,” she said.
“Afraid of you, Sister,” Abel admitted. “And afraid to die.”
“All men are afraid to die,” the sister said, not unkindly. “Which is why you all seek us out, we who move our race toward its true home. We whose burden it is to ensure the purity of our generations. We who shape the final two who will stand before the god on the last day, not as a man and woman, but as Man and Woman. As vessels to carry us all to Paradise in the marrow of their bones. As long as they are not found wanting—as long as they are pure.”
“I know the stories of Paradise,” Abel said. “But you must forgive me, Sister—I believe none of them.”
“Yet here you stand. In a convent.”
“I was wrong to come. If you allow it, I’ll go.”
“Allow it?” the sister said. “Tell me, shepherd: when the wolf falls upon your flock, do you not rise up to fight, whatever the cost?”
“I do, Sister,” Abel answered.
“And when a lamb strays, do you not go forth and bring it back?”
“I do, Sister.”
There was silence for a little while, and when the sister spoke next, her voice had turned weary. “Where would you go, if not here?” she asked. “Back to the mountains? To the abominations waiting to devour you?”
Abel looked to the thin window. “My flock—”
“Will be cared for,” the sister told him. “For I, too, am a shepherd.”
Abel heard the thin door on the Sister’s side of the partition open. “You fear needlessly,” she said in parting. “This is not a place of death, but of consummation. Fortunately for you, there is one here who will have you. To her you will cleave, and in her you will be sheltered. She is the one who will show you what you’ve come so far seeking, but are too afraid to ask for.”
Abel was led to another empty room, where the sister to whom he had been given was already waiting. Like the rest of them, she wore a plain brown habit, but on her gaunt frame it hung as though on a rack of bones. Her hood was pushed back to reveal a shaved scalp and sallow complexion. One hand covering her mouth, the famished sister faced him eagerly.
“You’re the shepherd,” she said through skeletal fingers.
But it was the tapestry on the wall that captured Abel�
��s attention. Looking past her, he marveled at creatures large and small, things he’d never imagined. Here was all of Paradise in faded thread. And at its center, the hub around which all else revolved: a man and a woman. He stepped closer, leaning forward to see such tiny figures and what surrounded them.
Following his eyes, the sister touched the weave. “Children,” she said.
Abel pulled back, startled to realize how near to her he had come. Moving closer, she slipped an arm possessively through his, and Abel felt a terrible heat burning through her habit. Lightly, she touched the two figures at the center of the tapestry, who stood beside a tree from which vines draped to the ground. “Adam was the first father,” she explained. “And Eve the first mother.” Her fingers shifted to the smaller images around them. “They made little ones. Children. And from those children—” she waved her hand in the air, “all of this. From two we came; to two we shall return.”
Abel was conscious of her eyes on him as he glanced down. Now that her hand was away from her mouth, she kept her lips pressed tightly together. Clutching his arm, she pulled his attention to another scene, showing him a child emerging from a bloated and suffering woman. “You see?” she said. “We were once capable of such things. Just like the animals. Just like your sheep.”
Abel averted his eyes, disgusted. “Humans are not animals.”
“No?”
“There are no children,” Abel said. “There never were.”
“Never? Then how did we get here?”
“Not like this.”
The sister smiled at the corners of her mouth. “If you could make a child, what name would you give it?”
“I can’t make a child,” Abel said.
“But if we could?”
“Adam,” Abel answered. “As my father named me.”
“A hopeful name,” the sister said with approval.
“He would change it. As I did.”
Without releasing her hold on his arm, the sister turned toward him, and her hands slid down his arm. Lifting his hand in both of hers, she pressed her cheek into his palm. Her skin felt taut and feverish. Eyes closed, she turned her face into his palm.
Abel jerked his hand back when the sister bit him. Angrily, he shoved her away. He raised a hand to strike her—and would have—but that she cowered, face hidden and fingers once more covering her mouth. Abel looked at his hand. The double row of punctures left by her teeth on the heel of his palm were very small, and perfectly spaced.
Abel found his crook exactly where he had left it beside the door, and seized it with relief. Rushing down the steps, he stumbled at the last and spilled into the courtyard. Even as he pushed up, he was whistling quick and sharp for his flock. The sheep hurried over themselves in their haste to follow their shepherd from the convent.
The poison took hold beside a shallow creekbed in the long light of evening. Struggling for every breath, Abel stopped to stare into the setting sun, unable to go on. His mouth had gone dry, and his lips cracked with fever. His flock milled round him stupidly, bleating as he shivered. When his crook slipped from numb fingers, he hadn’t the strength to retrieve it. Not long later he sat heavily, slumped forward. Because they were there in his lap, he stared at his trembling hands—at the purple bruise from which the sister’s poison spread.
He had enough strength to lift his head when she approached from the west, her habit rustling through the long grass. She knelt in front of him to measure his condition, and he offered no resistance when she took his shoulders and pushed him gently to his back. And there were the brightest of the stars, dim and quivering. He only wished he could see more of them. Leaning over him, the sister felt his forehead and caressed his cheek. She smiled for him, showing many sharp teeth.
“I’m not mad that you ran,” she comforted him. “Men always run.”
He wanted to speak, but she sealed his lips with a hot finger.
She removed his clothes and folded them into a neat pile. She had brought a skin of water with her, and a rag, and used these to wash his body with great care. Her hands were kind, and she left no part of him unclean. This task complete, she produced two soft cords and bound him at the knees and ankles. Then she shrugged out of her habit, revealing a flushed and emaciated frame. She knelt by his feet and clasped them in her hands, head lowered as though to kiss his soles.
“You mustn’t struggle,” she instructed him. “You’ll only hurt us.”
But he did, and his resistance caused them both suffering. At his waist she found it necessary to crack his wrists to keep him from injuring her. Bit by bit, she forced him into herself with a starved determination. It took a long time, and he begged only a little at the last, just before his strength failed him.
When it was done, she slept in the crushed grass there beside the creek.
After two days beneath the open sky her distended skin began to harden. Bones bowed and flexed; organs surrendered their shape. Waking, she dragged herself toward softer ground to dig herself into a shallow pit with hands that no longer felt like her own. She pried rocks from the clay, and stacked them over her swollen body. Their weight pressed her down, and the chill mud sapped her warmth. Her thoughts slowed, and she gave them up readily to dissolve into the bloated shell of her old shape. There, she joined the new life already stirring in the muck.
Naked and alone, Adam shouted into the darkness at the edge of the prairie. At first, he was frightened by the unfamiliarity of his own voice. As a result, his noises were timid. But there was strength in his chest, and in his back and thighs; and when it woke to him he was reassured. Arms thrown open to the vivid stars, he celebrated the fact of himself with triumphant whoops and wordless cries.
When he had shouted his throat raw, he returned to stand over the shallow grave from which he had risen. At the bottom lay the offal of his birthing: the desiccated husk that had been his mother, the partially digested bones of his father. Looking on these things, he remembered consuming, and being consumed. He remembered the digging of the grave, and how hard it had been to breathe under so many rocks.
“I will never forget,” he swore to the grave.
Then he wondered if his father had once sworn the same.
“I am not my father,” young Adam declared.
By moonlight he bathed in the creek, marveling at the unblemished perfection of his skin. His hands were broad and strong, uncalloused from years of wielding the shepherd’s crook. He found the clothing his mother had folded and laid aside: the shepherd’s cassock, as well as her own habit. He made a fire and wondered whether he would keep the name his father had wanted for him—and almost immediately decided he would. It was, he remembered saying, a hopeful name—better for a son than for a father. When that was decided, he wondered where he would go. He would not return to the mountains from which he had come, nor to the convent for his sisters to fawn over. His way lie to the east, into the plains. He wanted the rising sun in his face.
He slept close to the fire that night, his mother’s habit his only covering. In the morning, he kicked dust over the ashes and filled his grave with rocks. Dressed in his father’s cassock, he took up the shepherd’s crook and struck east. He did not know where he would go, or what he would find there, having resolved only to keep the convent forever behind him. He called for his sheep as he went. They were out there somewhere—not terribly far. They would be glad to see him, he suspected. They would know him.
About the Author
Greg Kurzawa studied theology without purpose before being handed a career in information technology. He and his incredible wife are busy building a happy family. Some people mistake him for Gage Kurricke, with whom he co-authored Gideon’s Wall.
Found
Alex Dally MacFarlane
Star Anise
Star anise was the contents of one drawer in my spice cabinet: was worth one good energy cell—or three not-so-good ones, or six bad ones, or eight that provided barely any power at all.
I had never tr
aded for just one energy cell. None remained.
At this last asteroid, I had not traded for any. I had found its interior spaces open and airless, blast-marked, most of its equipment broken or gone, debris—shards of metal, rock, old synth materials, blackened bits of bone—still lodged in some deep crannies. In such a small asteroid, a sudden equipment failure could be unsurvivable. I knew this.
It shook me to see it true, after the changes and losses and accidents we had adapted to.
As I confirmed my trajectory and fired my small thrusters two times, once to get clear from the asteroid and once to push me to the next asteroid—just a bright dot in the distance, lost among the stars like another granule of salt—I couldn’t stop myself thinking: What if Aagot had lived there?
Bay
I placed a bay leaf on my tongue.
I maneuvered my craft carefully into the landing crater: a process as natural, as easy as an asteroid’s spin. Still, I sighed with relief when my craft hooked into place. It wouldn’t survive a crash.
After triple-checking the integrity of my suit, I drifted out onto the asteroid’s surface with my spice cabinet.
Cut into another part of the asteroid was a landing bay built for spacecraft far bigger than mine: craft that would have arrived to collect platinum and iron and enough liquid hydrogen to fuel their onward journeys. A story. A dream of the past. If I could land in the landing bay, I wouldn’t have to go outside for the meters it took to reach the small airlock—outside, where the stars waited like teeth for my suit to fail—but its use required too much energy.
When the people from Cai Nu arrived, would they be welcomed into the asteroids’ landing bays?
I winced. I wanted to think of something else.
I pressed the bay leaf to the roof of my mouth.
The people of this asteroid had barely opened their mouths before the words ‘Cai Nu’ fell out. They gathered around me in the small communal room, wanting my words even more than my spices. “I have cardamom,” I said. “We managed to get it growing again.” And a few people sighed longingly, before one of them asked what people were saying privately, face-to-face—instead of on the inter-asteroid comms—about the impending arrival of the Cai Nu people. Almost everyone who lived in the asteroid was holding onto the poles running along the room’s rock walls. I counted over twenty people. Though I recognized many of the faces, not one was Aagot’s. “I don’t know much more than what’s on the comms,” I said, reluctant to admit that I rarely listened to the messages my craft picked up between the asteroids. I knew that the Cai Nu people would arrive in less than a year. I knew that our lives in the asteroids would end.
Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 83 Page 4