“What are you looking at?” Elias said between gasps for air.
David and Isaac wilted under his gaze. Their faces appeared troubled, and their eyes shunned her.
“The Bible says rape is a sin,” Isaac said, a slight tremor entering his voice.
“She offered herself to me willingly!” Elias took a step forward, his bloody fists balling into weapons once more.
“You’re right,” Isaac stammered. “I forgot that. You’re right, it wasn’t rape.”
Elias glared at the two, who nodded agreement, the fear bending their backs into postures of submission. Elias glanced at her, and the first troubled look clouded his face. A hint of shame? He resembled a trapped water buffalo, seeking an escape from some bog he’d stumbled into. Not shame, then—fear.
His eyes drifted to Ishan and his face relaxed. A sneer curled his lips, and he kicked Ishan onto his stomach. Then he tore off the boy’s blood-stained robe, leaving him naked.
“You can’t kill him,” Kayla said. “We had a deal.”
“I won’t kill him.” Elias grasped the backs of his companions’ necks. He squeezed, and they contorted in pain. “You will each do to the infidel what I did to her, or I will break your spines.” He eased his grip and they gasped.
“We won’t tell what you done,” David said.
“I know you won’t,” Elias said. “Because you will share my guilt. Shame will ensure the boy’s silence as well.” He squeezed harder and they writhed. “Do you understand?” They both nodded.
The giant kicked Kayla’s crutch toward him. “Use this.”
Ishan met her gaze. “Don’t look,” he said through a swollen mouth missing two teeth. She rotated her head and squeezed her eyelids shut, but couldn’t block the sounds …
After they left, Kayla crawled to Ishan. She cradled her love’s battered body in her arms and rocked him as he stared into the mocking blue sky.
She silently recited words from a book she’d read by Darwin. “In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment.” Was that all life amounted to? How could God reward the sadistic Elias with prosperity while discarding noble Ishan?
Then the words attributed to the Greek philosopher, Epicurus, forced their way into her mind.
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence come evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
Chapter 3
Kayla hid in the brush just beyond the clearing, waiting past midnight as the last of the campfires settled to embers. It had been six months since the trade caravan’s departure, six months wondering whether Ishan would return. His tent crouched behind his father’s. Earlier in the day, Nazeem claimed his son refused to see her.
It can’t be true.
Ishan’s proposal of marriage haunted her, a distant dream of a past life filled with hope. During their excruciating journey home after the attack, she pleaded with Ishan to report Elias’s crimes, but he refused, promising suicide if she divulged his shame to anyone. Elias proved smarter than she’d suspected. Even when Nazeem threatened to beat her in his attempts to learn who had attacked his son, she stayed true to her promise.
During the week the monk treated him, Ishan spoke to no one—including her. On the Sunday after the caravan departed, she’d been forced to listen to Minister Coglin preach the Golden Rule while Elias shot her smirks from the front row. Once, he blew her a kiss. David and Isaac dodged her gaze, and rushed past when the service ended.
In the ensuing weeks, her monthly flow failed to arrive. If the council found out, they might drive her into the wilderness as a whore, just like her mother. Who would believe her if she accused Elias? But the trauma went far beyond any punishment the council could impose. For days on end she lay in bed and refused to eat or speak. The Bible claimed God created the pain of childbirth as punishment for Eve’s disobedience. Was this her punishment for reading the forbidden books?
She sought solace in prayer and God’s holy word. The monk’s worn Bible was one of the few with actual printed text. Most in Potemia’s Christian settlements were hand-copied versions assembled from primitive paper and littered with errors large and small. Some had entire pages skipped. As originals vanished to fire, flood, or simple age, copies were made from copies until reconciling the actual words of God became difficult.
When her monthly flow returned, a glint of hope flared within her for the first time since the ordeal.
And now Ishan is back.
Kayla slipped into his tent like a whisper. The autumn breeze trailed her with the empty fragrance of the approaching dry season. Ishan slept on a rug to the side of the sparse interior, and her heart ached with longing as she moved toward him. Staring at his shadowed profile, her hand drifted toward his cheek.
My beautiful, kind, loving Ishan.
Her fingers stopped within the warmth of his skin.
“Ishan,” she said. Her hand settled on his shoulder and his eyes opened.
“Kayla?”
“I’m here, my love.”
As he rose into a sliver of moonlight, her breath caught. The map of Elias’s brutality lay etched across his face.
“Don’t look at me.” His hand blocked her gaze.
“Do you think I care about scars?”
Ishan turned away. “Looking at you reminds me of …”
She cried, but his eyes only stared blankly, unseeing, devoid of life.
Calloused hands seized her shoulders and jerked her backward.
“Leave him alone!” Nazeem shouted. “Haven’t you Christians done enough to him?”
She thrashed free of his grip, threw herself before Ishan, and took hold of one of his hands. “Don’t desert me!” But his eyes remained unfocused, his hand unresponsive.
Nazeem twisted his fingers into her hair, digging into her scalp and hauling her out like a sack of camel feed.
“Ishan!” she screamed. Her words drifted into the sparkling constellations of the night as if carrying her soul into oblivion.
***
As the dry season approached its end, preparations for Easter commenced. But Kayla took no part in such festivities. She continued her chores of cleaning stables, milking the cow, collecting the eggs, and assisting the monk with his patients, but her movements lacked their previous spark. She read neither the Bible nor the books from the desert. Her search for knowledge, answers, and a cure for her deformities seemed pointless without Ishan.
Standing alone in their cabin, Kayla gazed at the woodpile concealing her once-precious books. I’ve abandoned you as Ishan abandoned me.
Maybe this final devastation represented God’s punishment for seeking forbidden knowledge—her own lost Eden. Or a continuation of the curse she’d been born with, the punishment bleeding into her generation from some unknown misdeed of her parents.
Kayla opened a hidden trunk and removed one of several surgical knives from the place in the desert.
The curse would end with her.
The blade of the scalpel settled against her throat with its promise of release—an encore performance of her standoff with Ishan long before. This time, he wasn’t here to save her.
Some of the ancient books claimed there was no reward or punishment after death. In one book that had disintegrated to ruins, she rescued these few words: Is man merely a mistake of God’s? Or God merely a mistake of man?
Heaven, Hell, or oblivion? She’d soon have the answer.
Her arm tensed for its terminal act, and she inhaled a final breath.
A loud snap shattered the silence.
She jumped, and the scalpel slipped from her fingers. Frantic thrashing and a high-pitched squeaking led her to a crate where the monk stored grain. Behind it, a mouse struggled to free one of its rear legs
from a trap. Its tiny chest fluttered and pulsed like the wings of a dragonfly.
Seeing the looming giant, the mouse jerked its body side to side in desperation.
“Don’t be frightened.” Kayla dragged the crate aside. A trail of wheat trickled onto the floor from a gnawed hole in the wood. “You poor thing.”
She released the spring-loaded bar and gently lifted the mouse free. Its foot flapped loose, connected by a sliver of tendon and skin. Its whiskers twitched, and its eyes darted wildly. Kayla’s throat tightened. It had sought food. What great crime was that?
Grabbing a strip of cloth, she bound its body so it couldn’t move, snatched the scalpel from the floor, and shoved the sharp end into the hearth’s flames.
When the blade glowed red, she placed two fingers on the damaged leg. The mouse’s eyes closed, and a stab of empathetic pain cramped her own leg.
“I’m sorry, little one,” she said, with tears forming in her eyes. Chloroform would kill the tiny creature. “Your foot is beyond mending. You will die from infection if I don’t do this.”
Her hand trembled as she pressed the blade into its leg—cutting, cauterizing, and amputating the doomed appendage.
The mouse squeaked, and a tiny puff of smoke rose from the burned flesh and fur. Then it lapsed into unconsciousness.
In the following days, she hid the mouse, whom she named Puck, in a small box in her sleeping nook. She replaced the food crate and reset the trap so the monk would have no inkling of her secret patient. But she also rendered the device harmless by disconnecting the spring.
Changing the tiny bandages and feeding Puck sugar water with a hollow reed became a ritual, yet, day after day, his eyes remained closed. In the evenings, she prayed for the tiny mouse. Had God sent him to stop her from taking her own life and damning her soul forever? The timing seemed too perfect for coincidence.
On the third day, Puck’s eyes opened. She stroked his head and he looked up at her.
She told herself that she imprisoned Puck for his own health. When this excuse finally wore thin, she released him outside their cabin. The three-legged mouse scampered around in the grass, and she cried.
“Thank you for saving my life,” she said as he looked back at her. Then Puck squeaked up at her and scaled her sack of a dress until reaching her shoulder.
“So you’re staying after all?”
In the following months, Puck rode on her shoulder or in a pocket when she went outside, although the mouse hid from the monk, as if sensing that this was the enemy who had maimed him.
***
Kayla waited in church after Sunday mass, the walls seeming to vibrate from the fire and brimstone flung from the minister’s tongue. The congregation filed out like sheep after a close shearing, the weight of their sins lifted from their souls and a renewed sense of divine purpose filling their faces with confidence.
Elias seemed immune to guilt or fear of the Lord. Even now, ten months after the attack, Kayla’s hands trembled every time he smirked at her on his way out of the church. It seemed God had no desire to punish him for his evil deeds. Minister Coglin announced after the sermon that his son would marry Hannah, the golden-haired daughter of the most prosperous farmer in their settlement.
The monk stood near the exit, chatting with Minister Coglin about the latest news gleaned from the wider sphere of Potemia; intertribal disputes, the tobacco harvest, and even some arcane theological questions. Their friendship seemed genuine, and the monk often told her that the minister’s every action, even when handing down a harsh punishment, came from a heartfelt concern for the well-being of his congregation, both in this life and the next.
Minister Coglin glanced across the church in her direction, and Kayla averted her eyes.
What if he sees into my soul and learns my secret?
“But what of the Trinity?” the monk asked, and the minister turned his attention back to him.
“There’s nothing polytheistic about it,” Minister Coglin said. “Consider how your childhood self, adolescent self, and adult self are all a part of the one you. If you brought all three together at the same moment in time, they would still all be the same person. God’s three manifestations exist eternally in a co-equal and co-substantial triumvirate.”
“Well put,” the monk said. “You are a man of great insight.”
“You are the one person I can talk to about such things, my friend.” Minister Coglin placed a hand on the monk’s shoulder and frowned. “How are you feeling, by the way?”
“Oh, you know how it is with age.” The monk laughed. “I suspect the Lord must have some reason to keep me around.”
As the last of the congregation exited, Matthew and Maria Carroll walked up to Kayla’s corner bench at the back of the church. She struggled to her feet with the help of her crutch and bobbed her head. Matthew held his wide-brimmed hat in his rough farmer’s hands, while a traditional white headpiece covered Maria’s hair, as God demanded of all women in church.
Matthew spoke to the point. “We aim to hire you as a tutor for Suzy.”
Kayla froze, speechless.
Maria smiled. “We heard you reading the Bible in Sunday school.”
Kayla’s eyes fled to the monk as he chatted with Minister Coglin. Didn’t he see how she needed him?
Matthew nodded. “Your fine speaking of the Holy Word is a sure token of God’s favor.”
Didn’t they see her face? Most thought it a mark of Satan.
Kayla dipped her head, but her throat imprisoned her words like floodgates.
This is my chance to be useful, to find a place of service in the community. Why can’t I speak up?
Maria and Matthew exchanged a glance at the awkward silence.
“We take reading God’s word very serious,” Maria said. “So it’s distressing for us to see our Suzy missing this glorious gift at nine years old.”
“I-I would be happy to tutor Suzy.”
The two parents nodded and walked away. The monk shook hands with the minister and joined her, leaning on his cane for support. By the time he reached her, his breath rasped past his throat in ragged gulps. When he caught his breath, he chuckled at her expression. “You look like you’ve had a visit from the Holy Ghost!”
“Even more amazing,” Kayla said. “The Carrolls hired me to teach Suzy!”
***
Two months later, Kayla and Suzy sat at a rough-hewn table with a large book open between them. The well-maintained mud-brick fireplace and a refurbished rain-collection barrel posted outside the door testified to the family’s discipline and prosperity. Suzy’s younger brother, James, sat at the other end of the table, torturing a captured beetle by systematically plucking out its legs one by one. Kayla’s stomach churned at the sight, but it wasn’t her place to scold someone else’s child, so she bit her lip.
“Go on from where you left off,” Kayla said.
Suzy nodded and leaned forward over the book, her face screwed up with concentration. “And the woman said unto the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, “Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest you die.’ ”
The little girl looked up. “Will I go to Heaven when I die?”
“If you live by God’s commandments, he will reward you in Heaven,” Kayla said.
“Kayla is exactly right.” Maria set a plate of honey cakes on the table. Both children grabbed one.
“We’re so pleased with Suzy’s progress these past months,” Maria said.
Kayla smiled and ate one of the honey cakes. “I’m the one who’s grateful. Because of you, the Tuttles and Smiths have also asked about tutoring their children.”
“That’s wonderful!” Maria said.
Matthew strode in from the main room and rested a hand on the head of each of his children.
“Don’t forget Puck,” Suzy said.
Kayla glanced at Maria, and she nodded with a sm
ile. Kayla held a bit of the cake up to a pocket she’d sewn just beneath her left shoulder. “Wake up, Puck.” The little mouse’s head popped out and sniffed the morsel. Then his tiny paws took hold of it and stuffed large chunks into his mouth.
“Hello, Puck!” Suzy said, while her brother eyed the mouse silently.
“You’re a marvel to have tamed him,” Maria said.
After finishing his snack, Puck retreated into his cloth burrow.
Matthew cleared his throat. “Have you asked Kayla about the Easter Procession?”
A wave of anxiety spilled into her veins. She avoided such public gatherings, since no one wanted a monster scaring the children at a celebration.
“I intended it as a surprise,” Maria said. “But I suppose this is as good a time as any.” She turned to Kayla. “We hoped you and the monk would join our family next week in the march from God’s Acre to the church.”
Kayla swallowed despite the dryness in her mouth. “That’s … so kind of you, but I don’t have anything to wear for an Easter Procession.”
Maria dashed out of the room and returned a moment later, holding a hand-stitched white dress.
“I suspected as much, so I made you this as thank you gift.”
“I don’t know what to say …” Kayla caressed the hem of the dress as if it might vanish at her touch.
“We consider you family, now,” Maria said.
Kayla hugged her, the closest she’d ever come to having a mother. “Of course, I’d love to join you.”
Suzy clapped her hands in excitement. “It will be so much fun, you walking with us in the parade!”
“It’s a procession, not a parade,” Matthew said.
Maria gathered the dress and took Matthew’s hand. “I have a couple more things to finish on the dress, so we’ll leave you to the lesson.”
They left, and Kayla settled back to work.
“Okay now, continue reading,” she said to her student.
Suzy’s brow furrowed as she deciphered the words one at a time.“And the serpent said unto the woman, ‘Ye shall not surely die. For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.’ ”
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