—JEREMIAH 29:13
That morning, while Zeke watched superhero movies in the kitchen with Max, Agnes prayed.
She prayed so hard she began to weep, her face a mess of salt and wet. She didn’t know, at first, whether she prayed for guidance—or for mercy.
“God,” she said. “I know you want me to visit the human Nest. I know that like Jeremiah’s well, it’s only waiting for its chance to speak.” She exhaled. “But I don’t want a destiny, please. I only want to be an Outsider, unafraid and unattached.”
She pictured Danny’s face, how close they’d come, last night, to kissing.
And hadn’t she earned a moment’s respite? A moment’s peace?
If God took over her life, she could be many things—powerful, sainted, wise—but never that one thing she’d always been denied.
If God took her life, she’d never be free.
On her knees, she felt untethered, adrift. The shock of so much newness had collapsed her. The Outside, the strengthening prayer space, even her near-kiss with Danny had drained her. But worst of all was the thought—curdling into certainty—that she’d come to Gila to become a prophet.
A hateful idea, not least because it still tasted, to her Red Creek tongue, of blasphemy.
And yet. She couldn’t deny that she knew things she shouldn’t—couldn’t—know. Huge, painful, unwieldy things.
She flinched, recalling the sound of Sarah Shiner’s scream in the prayer space.
That shriek.
“God,” she whispered. “If I can’t change Your mind, then tell me clearly. Who am I supposed to be? What do You want me to do?”
A tentative knock on the door. “Can I come in?”
Jazz.
Agnes straightened quickly, wiping her swollen eyes. “Yes. I’m all right.”
The Outsider took one look at her face and hurried forwards. “No, you’re not. Oh, Agnes.” Jazz wrapped her tanned arms around her neck. She smelled of cinnamon. “I understand completely.”
“You do?”
She nodded vigorously. “You’re caught between two worlds. But I can help you.”
Agnes looked skeptically at her. “You can?”
“Did you know I used to keep butterflies?”
Agnes shook her head, bewildered. What did butterflies have to do with anything?
“Monarchs.” Jazz’s words turned melancholy. “Every spring, I’d raise them from caterpillars. Max thinks I’m crazy, but I really, honestly believed… that they told the future.”
Agnes couldn’t hide her smile.
Jazz blushed, hurrying through her speech. “Really. Like, if ten of twelve were healthy, I was going to have a great year at school. But if only six made it out of the cocoon, I’d get injured at cheer practice and have to sit the whole season out.”
“What happened last spring?”
Jazz looked away. “The spring before Petra, a parasite infected my cocoons. They took weeks too long to hatch, and when they did—wasps came out.”
Horrified, Agnes looked more deeply into Jazz’s syrup-colored eyes. Was it possible that signs and symbols had guided the Outsider girl to this place, as the prayer space had guided her? Was it possible that God had brought their unique little group—Danny with his science and his nightmares, Matilda with her motherliness, Jazz with her eccentricities, and Max with his superheroes—together for a reason?
Her pulse leapt into her wrists, knowing exactly what she’d have to do to answer that question—see the human Nest—but she still wasn’t ready to do it.
The idea of giving up her own life in service of something illimitable… not to mention the idea of seeing Nested people…
Jazz grabbed her hand. “Come on. I know just how to make you feel better.”
Agnes had no choice but to follow the excited girl through the stacks to the BIOGRAPHY section, where she slept with Max.
She was startled to see only one sleeping bag spread before two pillows. She felt seared, thinking of Danny—and quickly stopped herself thinking.
“This is my stuff.” Jazz’s luggage overflowed. A rainbow of blouses, dresses, hair ribbons, and shoes. She plucked from the pile—jean shorts and a lavender top.
“Agnes, you need a change. A big one. And I think this is your color. ”
Looking at those insubstantial clothes, Agnes’s cheeks burned. Surely Jazz couldn’t be serious?
A memory slithered out of the shadows. She was six years old at the watering hole—with the Jameson boys, and just as naked. Father had screamed at her.
If I ever catch you naked outdoors again, I’ll kill you.
Only now Father wasn’t here. Maybe Jazz was right that she needed a change.
The Outsider girl turned her back, giving her privacy. Agnes took a deep breath and let her dress fall to her feet. She zipped up Jazz’s shorts and pulled the top over her head, waiting for the transformation—but nothing happened. Though dressed, she felt utterly naked. Beaming, Jazz guided her to the storm window.
Agnes stared sadly at her reflection in the thick glass.
She didn’t like to see her skin so exposed—it was like seeing a tree stripped of its bark. Her thoughts remained trapped in Red Creek’s hateful net, but it wasn’t only that.
This isn’t my future.
Change was coming, yes. But she was never meant to be an Outsider.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It just isn’t me.”
Jazz’s smile slipped. “Really? You’re sure?”
Agnes was.
“You really do look wonderful.” Jazz, reflected beside her in the glass, paused. “Wait. Will you try one more thing?”
Agnes nodded. She’d try a hundred different garments if it made her new friend happy—but her final decision would be the same. She was no caterpillar, capable of blooming overnight. She was only and always herself.
Jazz darted to her bag, returning with a scarlet satin ribbon, shiny and startlingly bright.
Agnes gasped.
“Your hair is incredible. It must be waist length? Maybe you could tie it with something colorful. What do you think?”
Stunned, Agnes let the Outsider’s deft fingers undo her braid. She closed her eyes, remembering back to her earliest childhood, when her mother used to plait her hair.
Jazz began threading ribbon through her braids. Agnes wasn’t sure she’d like it until she saw her reflection.
Her eyes, her face, were strong, serious, determined. Somehow the bold ribbon emphasized those qualities. Once she would’ve reprimanded herself for vanity. Now she nearly preened. She knew her poor sister, ever fond of the mirror, would approve.
Jazz clapped her hands. “You like it. I can tell.”
“Thank you,” she breathed. “I’ll wear it always.”
And especially, she thought, tonight, when I go to see the human Nest.
This token of love from an Outsider was the final piece of armor she needed.
The shining scarlet—that vibrant, forbidden color—reminded her of what she’d been through to come so far. And she couldn’t help but wonder what she might be capable of, if she pushed herself only a little further.
In the mirror, she saw at last the beauty Danny had claimed to see. A beauty mixed with strangeness and, most strikingly, with strength.
In the mirror, Agnes lifted her chin.
The hour had come to learn what God would ask of her, here on the Outside.
36
BETH
Man is like to vanity: his days are as a shadow that passeth away.
—PSALM 144:4
Cory’s screams drove Beth into the street on their sixth day living inside the abandoned church.
Terrible screams, like stakes piercing her heart.
“I’ll be back,” she told him. “I’m going to find medicine. I swear, I’ll come back as fast as I can.”
His hands clawed the altar cloth they used for a blanket and his eyes bulged in their sockets. He didn’t look like the boy she’d
kissed at the canyon’s edge. He hardly looked human.
He’ll die tonight.
Outside, she gripped her elbows and tilted her face towards the white, indifferent moon, wishing herself blameless.
It was undeniable: Cory was dying because she’d been too foolish to flee Red Creek when she’d had the chance. He was dying for her mistakes.
Her legs tensed, yearning to run. To race into the night and never look back. But she couldn’t—not now.
“Don’t mess this up, Beth,” she scolded herself. “It’s almost over. Don’t ruin it like everything else.”
She adjusted the tattered lace of her wedding dress around her waist—her starved hips bony compass points—brushed her sweat-damp hair from her face, and hurried in the direction of the midwife’s hut.
She would sell her soul for medicine, for something, anything, to temper Cory’s pain. She’d tried calling the hospital from the landline in the Prophet’s office. She’d tried over and over again, but the phone only rang. It felt bewildering, like a punishment. She imagined spiteful Outsiders ignoring her, laughing at her because she called from Red Creek.
The birthing hut was her last hope. It was against the Laws to ease the pain of childbirth, but were the midwives as faithful as they seemed? Or had someone secreted a bit of Outsider medicine for emergencies?
The hut was a quarter mile down the road. Off the beaten path, so people couldn’t hear the labor screams. She pushed open the thick, wooden door—like a cellar door, almost—and shut it behind her.
Inside, darkness and horror.
In Red Creek, giving birth was God’s punishment for being female. The air reeked of eucalyptus, lavender tincture, and human fluids. Mothers were expected to birth on an earthen floor. Cold seeped through her shoes as she walked. There were lanterns at the entrance, in case of midnight labors. She lit one and raised it over vats and buckets for catching blood.
Horrible.
Her skin crawled at the thought of touching anything in this dreadful place, but she was determined to help Cory.
Furiously, she emptied jars of crushed thyme and minced sage, looking for hidden pills, secret bottles. She ripped through the drawers of the desk—cheaper and smaller than the Prophet’s—and riffled through a pile of moldering linens. She upended baskets of grisly tools—forceps and clamps and knives—desperately searching.
Nothing, nothing, and more nothing.
Outside, wind gusted, howling.
“What were you—sheep?” she screamed at the absent midwives. “How could you follow every stupid rule?”
She slid down the wall, collapsing, despairing.
The room smelled of blood. She caught sight of herself in a full-length mirror, and her reflection shocked her. She looked ghostly in her filthy wedding gown. Her eyes hollows, her hair unkempt. The beauty she’d prized so highly had gone. She hardly recognized herself.
In the mirror, she saw her mother.
For the first time since the bunker, she let herself cry. Bawling, weeping like a child.
She felt cold—dreadfully cold. Her arms ached for the warmth and comfort Cory was no longer able to provide. They ached to hold the twins, the sweet little girls who loved to nuzzle into her embrace. If she closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around herself, she could almost feel them.
Almost.
With a sob, Beth opened her eyes and spotted something on a table.
A heavy book. A legendary book.
The Book of Begats.
She blinked, surprised it hadn’t disappeared into the bunker along with the midwives. Red Creek’s families were large, their genealogies multibranch and confusing. To keep lineages straight, every birth was recorded in that one great volume, like the section of the Bible that read like an interminable list: and Isaiah begat Methuselah, and Methuselah begat Ezekiel… and on and on, forever.
Chewing nervously on the split ends of her hair, Beth perched on the edge of the bed, examining the leather tome more studiously than she did any of her Sunday school work.
Red Creek’s births and deaths webbed over dozens of pages. Her mind crowded with names and faces, with ghosts and memories and dreams. Her lantern flickered, casting odd shadows, as the names of the dead or dying scrolled past.
Somewhere near the back of the book she found her own family. Her mother’s name was marked with an X. Written beside it was a single word: Outsider.
She traced her family’s lineage back to the first of the Rollinses—to Jeremiah and his second wife. That second wife’s name was scratched out as if Jeremiah had meant to erase her, but Beth knew her already.
She was Sarah Shiner, the girl he’d kidnapped from the Outsider town.
Sarah Shiner, her great-grandmother.
God blesses runaways. She remembered those words from the Old Testament. Even though Hagar ran from Abraham, He’d blessed her and her son, Ishmael.
Beth’s thoughts swirled.
Two women in her family had successfully fled Red Creek: Agnes and Sarah. Though it pained her to think beyond Cory’s death, she couldn’t help but wonder if that meant that she, like Agnes, had a destiny waiting for her Outside.
For the first time since the bunker, she closed her eyes and prayed.
God, are You watching me? God, are You there?
It might’ve been her imagination grasping wildly for comfort. But in the dark, she had the sharp, distinct feeling that she was—and was not—alone.
Cory was still, too still beneath the altar cloth.
Seeing him, every muscle in her body weakened.
God forgive me. I wasn’t here.
“Cory.” Beth groped her way to his side. “Cory, can you hear me?”
She placed a hand on his chest and felt it rising, falling. But she sensed death hovering like a specter, looking over her shoulder into the face of the boy she’d very nearly loved. The boy she should’ve loved, if it hadn’t all gone so wrong.
A tear rivered down her face.
She was sure he was too far gone to speak. Then, after what felt like ages, he did.
His mouth worked, but the words were bubbles on his lips—thin puffs of breath.
Jesus, Agnes, she thought frantically. I could really use some help.
“It isn’t over,” he whispered, his voice dry as autumn leaves. “For every flood there is an ark. For every exile… a prophet.”
He was delirious. Babbling. She put her hand over her mouth to stifle a sob.
When his eyes rolled up into his head, she didn’t shrink or scream. She rested her palm on his sweaty forehead and waited for the convulsion that would end his pain.
His back arched. She leaned forwards to hear his final words.
“It can’t all be for nothing.” He ground his teeth. “It can’t, it can’t!”
“Shh,” she soothed. “Be peaceful, Cory. It’s all right.”
“It’s not all right! We left them to die. They’re all dying, down there.” The muscles in his neck stood out like ropes. “Agnes must come back! Agnes must be here!” He clutched her hair with shocking strength. “Bring her back. Promise me you’ll bring Agnes home.”
He went limp.
Beth rocked back on her heels, a jealous terror pounding in her head. It was awful and wrong and unutterably selfish to feel this way as Cory lay dying, she knew that—she did.
Still, bitterness consumed her. She’d never forget that, in the end, even the boy who loved her didn’t want her, or ask for her, or say her name.
In his final hour, he wanted Agnes instead.
37
AGNES
The Lord will rise up… to do his work, his strange work, and perform his task, his alien task.
—ISAIAH 28:21
Once again, Agnes was sneaking out in the middle of the night.
Not out of her trailer to meet a boy—but out of the library.
She went to meet God.
She packed her bag with Beth’s diary, her phone, and one of Matilda’s flashl
ights. She kissed Zeke’s cheek (thinking, Just in case), then strode quickly through the library halls, praying she wouldn’t wake anyone.
How would she explain herself to Danny or Matilda, if she did? Even Jazz, with her firm belief in the divinatory power of butterflies, would think she’d fallen off the deep end.
She followed the cobbled path, remembering the message inscribed on the lip of the well in 1922: There is no greater sin than to deny God’s gift to you. She despised the patriarch who’d etched those words. But might the message still be true? Though she’d only been a child, she had denied God’s gift. After Mrs. King shattered her knuckle, she’d almost smothered the prayer space for good.
In the Bible, sin didn’t just mean hurting other people. From Deuteronomy on, sin was any life lived out of harmony, and out of tune, with God.
Her footsteps faltered. She was terrified.
Only in the prayer space would she find the strength to carry on. She stepped into it, opening wide and deep.
Minutes passed, punctuated by the click of her boots. Beyond the well, the cobblestones became a dirt path, then the path, too, disappeared. Nothing but saguaros and boulders marked the desert outskirts. The human Nest had nowhere to hide. The stars sang above, the earth below, and in between…
The sight of the Nest tore her inner world asunder.
The tower of crows was one thing, but these were people.
She guessed that sixty men, women, and children with shining hard skins were clinging tightly together. Petrified. They trembled like a great tuning fork.
Agnes held very still. Then she touched the ribbon in her hair, drawing strength.
She stepped closer—it was a Gordian knot of legs, arms, red glowing eyes. It was impossible to pick any single person apart. They might have been made that way. Shaped from the beginning into a many-eyed statue.
When the wind swept their crystal bristles, those bristles stirred. When the light of her flashlight disturbed a red-marbled eye, it blinked.
Her knees weakened, wobbling.
“God,” she whispered. “Why am I here? What do you want me to see?”
She closed her eyes, leaning hard into the soundscape. She heard the emotion and passion underlying God’s song. She heard sadness and pathos; grief and regret.
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