by Anna Oney
CHAPTER FIVE
During their journey home, Fawn decided to take a detour and parted from Pete, Clancy, Laken, and Hunter. She rode through the night and arrived at the willow tree early the next morning. As children, the McCord siblings were taken by Samuel to pray before the willow the way Gran had done with him. It was the same tree Wakiza and Gran’s pit bull, Stella, had died under.
Gran had written in her memoir that after Wakiza’s tribe was raided and his people were murdered, he and his sister, Ayita, were captured and spared. The siblings were later left with a married couple who they’d believed had welcomed them with open arms. The couple’s motives were brought to light when they sold Ayita to an Irishman by the name of MacClery to clear a debt. Wakiza came after MacClery with a hatchet as he attempted to load Ayita in a wagon. The Irishman shot Wakiza in the gut, and later, kicked the native from the moving wagon with Ayita calling out for her dying brother. Wakiza had crawled to the nearest shade of that same willow tree and succumbed to his gunshot wound shortly afterward.
Sixty-three years ago, Stella had been shot down and killed seven feet from that very tree. But not before attacking two of the three of Roland’s men from behind. At the time, she’d been trying to protect Gran from harm. She’d taken one of the men with her, tearing out his throat. The other she’d wounded by latching her teeth to his calf, and ripping through his flesh. According to Gran’s memoir, what kept her going through the kidnapping and altercation with Roland was the thought of being reunited with her brother, Griffin, and, perhaps, one day, meeting Stella in the afterlife.
Losing Stella had hit Gran hard. Through all these years, Fawn was certain of one thing she had in common with her grandmother, Emma. The bond between themselves and their animal companions was irreplaceable.
The sun broke through the swaying branches, warming Fawn’s cheeks as she knelt before the tree. Resting her palm against its trunk, she closed her eyes, and envisioned Jesus’ form.
“Dear Lord,” she whispered, bowing her head. “I know it’s been a while since we’ve spoken. Almost three years. I’ve never been more afraid than I am now. Please, please keep my family safe.”
She took a deep breath, removing her hand from the tree.
“And, if it’s not too much trouble, find that blind man. Tell him I’m sorry. I believe his monsters have arrived. In your name, I pray. Amen.”
The shrill bark of a dog tensed her shoulders. For a brief moment, Fawn assumed Gooner had wandered from Amos’s side and somehow sniffed out her location, but then it dawned on her. Gooner’s bark resembled more of a hoarse, “ruff,” than the sharp, explosive cry that came from behind her.
What fresh hell is this? she thought, facing the tree.
Dogs that weren’t part of a community had gone back to their natural roots. They lacked the skittishness that coyotes had toward humans and were considered more dangerous. Fawn never agreed with it, but they were often put down on sight.
Cautiously, Fawn rose from her knees, and turned to face the animal.
The dog sat in the middle of a square made of four pine trees. The spikey shadows of pine needles were draped over its white coat, making its red collar barely visible.
“Hello,” the voice of a girl said.
Nope, Fawn thought, shaking her head. That dog did not just speak.
“Of course, she didn’t, silly,” the voice spoke again. “Stella’s a dog.”
The dog seemed to smile as it tilted its head. Stella, Fawn thought, remembering Gran’s journal. Fawn’s eyes scanned the thickness of the trees, searching for signs of a young girl.
“Where’re your parents?”
“Dead,” the voice replied.
“Like, recently?”
“Oh, no,” she said, and giggled. “They’re decades dead.”
“Well,” Fawn said as she began backing toward Juniper, “I’m sorry to hear about your folks.”
“Don’t be. It’s not like we’re separated or anything. I see them almost every day.”
“Uh-huh,” Fawn mumbled, nearly colliding with Juniper. “I best be on my way.”
“You’re Fawn, right?”
“Yeah . . .”
“I’m Joy, but I’m also one of The Faultless.”
“The Faultless?”
“That’s right. The date of my birth is also the date of my death,” she continued, stopping Fawn in her tracks. “We’re the purest of souls.”
“You’re dead?” Fawn asked, scanning the tops of the trees.
“Yes, very. Souls who were denied life have a special place in Heaven.”
Fawn was immediately brought back to the night she’d been awoken by savage pains in her abdomen and the sensation of warm blood staining the furs she’d lain upon.
Was my Joshua given the same kind of treatment?
“If you died at birth,” Fawn replied, winded by the resurfacing of the painful memory, “then how are we having this conversation?”
“We’re free to choose the age we desire. I’m ten today. Tomorrow, I may be forty. It all depends on what kind of mood I’m in.”
“Is there some rule against you speaking to me face to face?” Fawn shouted up at the trees. “Why not show yourself?”
“I’m right above you.”
Fawn stared up at the willow and caught sight of two bare feet dangling from the highest limb — feet that hadn’t been there before. Joy leaned forward, revealing her dimple-cheeked face, and hopped from the tree. She hovered two inches above the ground before touching down and sweeping pine needles across Fawn’s feet. The sweltering sun fought through the branches of the trees surrounding them, illuminating the area in which they stood.
“I like to climb trees,” Joy said, swaying the coral fabric of her knee-length dress.
“Oh,” Fawn replied, admiring the girl’s divine innocence.
Joy smiled, displaying her dimples, and whipped each braid of her blonde, braided pigtails behind her shoulders.
“It’s a hobby of mine,” she said, walking the five feet to Stella.
“Mine, too.” Fawn ran her palm down the side of Juniper’s face and grasped the reins. “Until I learned what it felt like to hit the ground from eight-feet high. Damn near broke my collarbone. I was lucky to walk away with a dislocated shoulder.”
As Fawn struggled to grasp why Joy had appeared to her, the girl placed her hand on Stella’s head.
“After all these years,” Joy said, “I wonder what I would’ve been like if I’d been given the chance to be tempted by the things that tempt you today.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re tempted by many things, I’m afraid,” Joy replied, stepping forward. “Pride, sins of the flesh. Vengeance.”
“Have you come here to scold me?”
Joy held up one finger and shook her head slowly.
“You pray for the safety of the people you love,” she said, picking up a twig from the ground. Seeming to take Fawn’s nod as confirmation, Joy snapped the twig, and continued. “Their lives simply aren’t your responsibility.”
A gust of wind ripped through the swaying branches of the willow.
“Their lives are their own,” Joy whispered, as she and Stella transformed into pine needles and leaves, making a swirled departure above Fawn and Juniper’s heads.
“They’ve always been their own.”
***
Three hours later, Fawn found herself riding through the back barrier of her community. The familiar clang of Ezra’s hammer pulled Fawn toward his blacksmith shop. Smoke escaped through the hearth’s chimney. Ezra pumped oxygen into the fire using a leather bellow, preparing the fire to forge iron into horseshoes and arrowheads.
“Ezra,” Fawn called, as she rode up to the open entrance of his shop.
After a long day of stoking fires and hammering steel into submission, the thin material of Ezra’s sweaty shirt clung to his sculpted body. He had a talent for molding iron and Fawn often wondered if he’d had a han
d in shaping his entire form.
Ezra’s skin color was the exact opposite of Fawn’s. She had never witnessed racism, but had heard stories from the elders. After hearing them, she strove to get a better understanding. She had borrowed history books from Clancy’s library, and spent over four months reading up on the Nazi’s extermination of the Jewish people, England’s oppression of the Irish and Scotts, and the white man’s enslavement of black people across the world.
“Ezra,” she repeated, seeing that he wasn’t paying attention. “Ezra!”
The flames from the hearth reflected off his biceps, disrupting Fawn’s train of thought. Her mind drifted to that crisp, winter night five years ago, when they’d slept together.
Fawn had learned from her research that if she and Ezra had had intimate relations decades before the solar flare, he would’ve been lynched, and she would’ve been shamed and branded as an outcast. She had come to the realization that behaviors and beliefs that perverse and evil weren’t meant to be understood.
That night had marked three years since Ezra had lost his wife, Gypsy, in a house fire. Earlier that evening, Fawn had run into his son, Basiel, who’d said his father had sent him home.
After she’d parted from Basiel, Fawn had found Ezra in his shop sitting on the anvil, staring at the glowing embers on the hearth. She’d called his name, but he didn’t answer or turn around. She’d swayed between his tool stand and cooling tank, arriving at his back, and placed her hand on his trembling shoulder. He’d covered her hand with his, turning on the anvil to face her. Grasping her hips, he’d wept into her stomach, seeming to cling to her spirit for relief.
Gypsy had been far prettier than Fawn, but what Ezra had needed was affection. Fawn had figured their differences wouldn’t matter. One thing had led to another, and they’d ended up lying naked on her furs next to the hearth to keep warm. Outside the shop, it had begun to snow, and inside, a light layer of soot had covered parts of their skin. For the entire night, they’d lain intertwined, and watched the bare tree limbs and brittle grass be draped in white.
Ezra was a good man, a good father, and once, he’d been a good husband to his wife. Their relationship lasted for a year before Ezra had realized Fawn wasn’t the committing type, but they’d remained good friends.
“Ezra!” she shouted again.
Hammer in hand, Ezra turned around. The wrinkle between his brows was stretched into his forehead. He strode toward her, placing his hammer on the tool wrack with such force that he nearly knocked it over. Only a foot stood between them when he placed his soot stained fingers beneath her chin, raising her jaw.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he said.
“Not ghost. An angel.”
“Say, what?” he asked, and grazed her jaw, leaving behind a black smudge.
Basiel emerged from their supply shed outside the shop, cradling a bundle of nuts and bolts.
“Hey, Fawn,” he said, dropping a few of them on the ground.
“Basiel,” Ezra glanced back at his son. “You go ahead and deliver those to Mr. Gamby. I owe him for that supply of moonshine he dropped off last week. If you need me, Fawn and I will be at the house.”
“Yes, sir,” Basiel replied, and knelt to pick up the nuts and bolts he’d dropped.
Ezra exhaled, turning his head slightly toward Fawn.
“We can talk more about this at the house. It’s time for a break anyway.”
***
Thirty minutes after they’d arrived at Ezra’s cabin, Fawn had finished telling him of the young girl in the woods.
“Look, we’ve all heard the tale of Wakiza and your grandmother,” Ezra said. “I’ve never truly believed it. But since you’re coming to me with this, maybe it did happen. Maybe it’s happening again.”
“Maybe . . .”
Ezra sipped at a jar filled with Mr. Gamby’s moonshine, and then passed it to Fawn.
“Hunter stopped by a little while ago asking if you’d made it back home,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “How’re you two doing?”
“Why do you ask?” Fawn replied, confused by the sudden change of subject.
“You and I both know you’re not a woman to be kept. What’s it been now? Almost three years? You must love him.”
“Ezra—”
“I know Hunter’s said it. He told me so a year back.”
She remembered the moment Hunter had slipped in the “L” word while they checked the barrels for fish at the creek. It’d been a punch to both of their guts after Hunter had spoken the word. He’d stuttered at first.
“Fawn, I, I, lo—” and then it had spilled out louder than he’d meant it to. “LOVE you!”
That evening, her need for escape had risen the temperature of her cheeks and ears, giving them a reddish hue. She’d pretended she hadn’t heard him and continued pulling the barrel from the creek.
“He told you about that?” she asked, placing the jar of moonshine on the small table before her.
“Yeah, he said he wasn’t prepared for the silence that followed.”
“I haven’t mistreated him in any way,” she argued, pushing back the chair as she stood up.
“By not telling that man you love him, you’re mistreating him,” Ezra continued, despite the tears welling up in her eyes. “Anybody else would’ve left you by now. I left you before you could break my heart.”
“I—”
“Damn it, Fawn, Hunter’s a better man than most.”
“Why’re we even talking about this?” she asked, grasping at Gran’s cross around her neck. Reaching the door, she braced herself for what Ezra was compelled to say next.
“That girl in the woods,” he said, sliding back his chair. “She’s dead, and we’ll all be dead sooner or later. In the end, all that truly matters is that the people we love know we love them.”
Ezra always spoke the truth, even if Fawn didn’t want to hear it. How had Gypsy put up with it?
“What happened with your sisters and parents,” Ezra carried on, as Fawn faced the door, clutching at Gran’s cross. “It wasn’t your fault. You haven’t been able to say the word since their deaths. Let it go.”
Three years ago, despite her parents’ wishes, Fawn had gone on a hunt during one of their harshest winters. Every two years, or so, they’d experience a rough winter. That year had been the most unforgiving. The lakes, creeks, and ponds had frozen over, and the hunt had been scarce.
Fawn had jumped on the opportunity when she heard from Clancy that there had been sightings of buffalo twenty miles outside Stagecoach. The solar flare had broadened the buffalos’ horizon, spreading them from the grasslands of the North to the grasslands of the South.
Snow flurries had thickened the air, and her brisk pace had made her cheeks raw and cracked the skin around her knuckles. The hunt had been unsuccessful as she’d gotten ill her second day out. One of Clancy’s men had exhibited signs of a nasty cold. Unfortunately, she had ridden in coughing range of him. She’d returned home empty handed with a high fever.
Emma and Darby had met her at the gate and ushered her to the doctor’s headquarters. Upon their arrival, Cooper had set her up in the cabin with the orange door and diagnosed her with the flu. Within a week it was transferred to her sisters, who both had refused to leave her side. By the time Fawn had made a full recovery, Emma and Darby’s illnesses had transformed into something more potent to their lungs.
If she’d obeyed her parents’ wishes and stayed home, perhaps her sisters wouldn’t have fallen ill. Perhaps her parents wouldn’t have succumbed to the heartache of losing them.
Tears left tracks down Fawn’s cheeks as she opened the door and stepped onto the porch. A gust of wind brushed her waves of auburn hair behind her shoulders as she peered in the direction of her loved ones’ graves. The pear tree harboring their plots overlooked the pond. It was a solemn place to visit. So much so that she’d go out of her way not to come within the vicinity of it.
I’m sorry, sh
e thought, as she cleared the first step of Ezra’s porch. I’m so sorry.
CHAPTER SIX
August 15, 2086
The NWA had set up camp within each community’s walls three days after Fawn and Ezra’s discussion. They had portable generators placed right behind their main headquarters, giving life to their small electronics. Fences were raised around these generators, and they were guarded around the clock.
For an entire month, the NWA tasked themselves with scheduling meetings, performing physicals, and administering vaccines to every inhabitant of each community.
Fawn had made herself scarce, avoiding anyone she’d spotted with a syringe. She refused to allow some stranger to pump anything into her system, especially if she didn’t have a clear understanding of what it was. It didn’t occur to Fawn’s people that the NWA’s so-called “vaccines” could actually be something similar to the mark of the beast. She imagined a scenario in which a person wouldn’t be served food unless they’d been administered the juice.
Inside a tent designated as the “mess hall,” the NWA tasked themselves with distributing prepacked food. Fawn had prided herself on not indulging in their Meals, Ready-To-Eat a.k.a. MREs, and often escaped to the woods to hunt. The last thing she needed was to get accustomed to food being easily assessable.
Since the NWA’s arrival, Audrey had limited Reesa’s hunting lessons with Fawn to once a week. Fawn’s opinion hadn’t mattered. Pete was quick to remind her that Reesa was their child, not hers. She sensed it had something to do with her skepticism toward the NWA.
Fawn melted into the furs inside her tepee after she’d dropped off her kills with Jacob and Harland. A nap was on her agenda after a successful day’s hunt. She relished in her momentary solitude. Her eyes drifted upward, spiraling toward the top of the tepee, and coaxed her to sleep.
Despite the frigid air, hot sweat dripped from her nose with each stride she took up the steep hill. Midway, her knees buckled, driving her clenched fist, which gripped her bow, into the brittle, frozen grass. She kneeled there — body reeling from the severe cold — and prayed for the strength to continue the climb.