She slipped away, tiptoeing out of the cave’s narrow mouth. A steep slope pitched from their shelter to the muddy ground below. She clambered down carefully, knowing she could easily break a leg from that height if she fell.
She expected to feel dawn’s chill and the drizzle of what remained of last night’s rain. But she felt nothing. Not even air. Because she wasn’t in the muddy ravine.
She was in Sunday school, facing the dusty, green chalkboard. Staring at Mrs. King’s broad back, just as if she’d never left home.
Is this real? Is it a dream?
Chalk screeched and her stomach dropped. That sound was too real for any dream.
She glanced back, looking for the cave—but there was only the schoolroom wall. A broken pipe in the ceiling dripped, and the air smelled of rotten fruit.
Her Sunday school teacher’s hand moved quickly, looping cursive letters. Then she stepped back, hand on hip, to examine her work.
Why Perfect Obedience Produces Perfect Faith
Agnes prayed Mrs. King wouldn’t turn around, because she was dead, dead, dead. The dog had attacked her in the church; she’d succumbed to the fever. She couldn’t be standing here, writing with chalk.
Agnes opened her eyes.
Mrs. King turned, grin sly. “Agnes,” she said coldly. “You’re late. Sit down.”
Titters of schoolgirl laughter. She looked dazedly for her customary chair. There it was at the front, but Beth’s place beside it was empty. Sweat collected at her hairline as she made her way, hip knocking against a desk’s sharp corner.
“Clumsy,” Magda hissed.
But you’re dead, too. Or Nested.
The weight of the past was crushingly heavy, a hand forcing her down. She sank into her desk chair—sank deeper than she’d expected. The desktop was level with her collarbone, just like when she was a little girl.
Small, useless, and insignificant.
A future wife—and nothing more.
Mrs. King crossed her arms over her bust. She’d never stopped smiling her sly, toothy grin. “Now take out your books.”
Automatically, Agnes groped for her book bag—and it was there, real, solid, and familiar. Without taking her eyes off the dead woman, she unzipped it and placed a heavy book on her desk. Mrs. King marched furiously towards her, and finally Agnes looked down at what she’d assumed would be her Bible.
Danny’s textbook.
In her panic, she knocked the book open. It flopped to chapter seven: AN ETIOLOGY OF JUVENILE DIABETES.
Mrs. King snatched the book up before she could move. She scanned the pages.
What was she doing with a text like this in Red Creek? What was she thinking, reading medical texts at all? It was against the Laws to dabble in such magic.
“Please,” Agnes squeaked. “It’s a mistake.”
“This,” Mrs. King snarled, “is a mortal sin.”
With shocking strength, her Sunday school teacher tore the book in two.
“What’s that in her hair?” Suddenly, Magda’s hands tangled in her braid, yanking her neck backwards. Agnes squirmed, struggling to get free. Magda’s fingers closed around the scarlet ribbon Jazz had woven through the strands, and she tore.
Agnes cried out.
Magda backed away, grinning and holding the ribbon and snatches of mouse-brown hair.
“Blasphemer,” sneered Mrs. King.
A nightmare. Just a nightmare.
She moaned, bowing her head towards her desk.
You’re not in Red Creek anymore. You ran. Reading Outsider books is not a sin. You’ve seen a library and a new town and made new friends.…
But deep down, she didn’t believe it. Nor could she believe that God had ever singled her out. Inside, she felt empty, chilled.
“Stretch out your hand,” Mrs. King commanded.
Though every nerve in her body screamed at her to run, Agnes flattened her right hand on the desktop. Around her, the other girls talked, laughing like nothing was wrong.
Fear writhed in her stomach as Mrs. King raised her Bible high.
“What is God, Agnes?”
“God is love.”
Slam.
The pain, so immediate—and so familiar.
“What is God?” Mrs. King demanded again.
Like the little girl she’d once been, Agnes whimpered. But she couldn’t lie about her faith now. She couldn’t tell her accuser what she wanted to hear: that God was the judge, the destroyer, the whisperer in the Prophet’s ear.
Mrs. King raised the Bible over her shoulder, preparing to strike again.
“Connection!” she gasped desperately. “The thread that runs through everything!”
Slam.
She felt her knuckle give way, a sickening, flattening crunch. She swallowed, and her mouth tasted of bile.
“One last chance, Agnes. What. Is. God?”
She couldn’t remember.
She’d known God once—she’d even believed He’d spoken to her at Gila’s human Nest. But all that seemed a fantasy.
The prayer space.
Agnes swayed in her seat.
How had she so quickly forgotten the power that protected her?
Closing her eyes, she searched for it.
“What are you doing?” Mrs. King snapped. “Look at me, right now!”
Agnes ignored her.
At first, she couldn’t hear anything.
But reaching for God, she remembered that this was a test, and understood that she was here to prove that Red Creek hadn’t broken her, that her new faith was stronger than the ghosts of her past. Terror lapped at her insides, but she didn’t give up.
She grasped her power. Her hands heated with a fire hotter than any she’d ever felt; the backs of her eyelids glowed crimson. Her heart hammered in her throat but she didn’t back down. Nor did she dare open her eyes.
Think about God, wide and deep.
“What is God, Agnes?”
She shouted at the top of her lungs. “He’s a sound, you witch! A sound in the prayer space. The song of redemption!”
Agnes opened her eyes and saw Mrs. King and the schoolgirls for what they really were: a snarling pack of infected wolves.
“God is sound, a song that lives in everything.”
Crimson-eyed wolves, their tongues lolling, stared at her.
Wolves. They were only sick wolves all along.
Agnes shouted, “He’s singing even in you!”
And like that, she had it. The strongest hold on the prayer space that she’d ever experienced. It gave way to a feeling so vast and powerful she lost the sense of her own body, her own skin. Now she was the air, and trees, and those poor infected animals, too. The layers of the world peeled backwards, revealing the truth.
With a tremendous upwelling of joy, she understood God as she never had before, as a fluid, flexible substance, like the prayer space itself.
The Prophet had always described a bearded man in the sky, but He wasn’t like that. She didn’t even have any sense that He was male. Her impression of God was more like her impression of water, breath, or thought. Something you could lasso, use, push, and stretch—if it let you. But ask nicely, because it was dangerous, too. Elemental and vicious, passionate and old.
She looked up at the sky.
Thank God. The sky.
“Agnes!” Matilda screamed from the mouth of the cave, her rifle at her shoulder. All the Outsiders stood behind her, looking down—and Zeke, too, his face white with terror.
“Agnes, get back! Right now!”
It was like a voice calling from another world. She exhaled, watching her breath curl and steam in the air, still dewy with past rain.
She knew what they must see: a dozen gem-hard wolves circling her, snapping their jaws, their bloodred teeth. The others couldn’t understand that they snapped and snarled with anxiety, menaced as they were by the prayer space.
She gave her power a little shove. The wolves yipped, falling over their heels. She fe
lt sorry for them. These creatures had once been formed of fur, gristle, and bone, but Petra had replaced all that with a sheen the color of rubies.
With a snap, Matilda cocked her rifle.
“Don’t!” Agnes shouted. “You don’t have to hurt them.”
“Agnes,” shouted Danny from the cave’s height. “This is crazy! Come back here.”
“Watch, Danny. Just watch.”
She took a step forwards and the trembling animals stepped back. They moved all at once and all together. She did it again and again. Soon the wolves were keening, their crystal skin bristling. Then, they fled.
Agnes was sweating, overheated. Her right hand throbbed, the knuckle broken. The scarlet ribbon dangled freely from her unraveling braid.
All at once she knew why red creatures feared her.
I’m the antidote. Somehow, I’m the cure.
“Yes!” Zeke whooped. “I told you she was safe! Demons can’t hurt the righteous!”
She grinned, because for the first time, she felt righteous. And more than righteous—powerful.
Matilda tried to grab him. “Zeke, don’t!”
But he was already sprinting downhill.
He ran towards Agnes and the wolves, his faith in her shining like a beacon. He’d tucked his insulin cooler under his arm.
Agnes’s mind was clear, her happiness complete. The wolves had retreated, and the prayer space was hers to keep. In a moment, she’d have her brother in her arms. Joyfully, she laughed.
Ezekiel had nearly reached her when he tripped over a mud-slick stone.
He went sprawling. The cooler flew out of his arms, flipping end over end in the open air.
No.
It struck the earth at the unluckiest angle, bouncing back into the air. It careened from rock to ground, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
In horror, Agnes clapped her hands over her mouth, forgetting the pain of her crushed knuckle. The plastic latch broke open. More horrible still was the unmistakable sound of those crystal vials shattering into so many bewildered shards of glass.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Danny running towards her. Running fast.
She’d passed the test. The prayer space hadn’t abandoned her.
But Ezekiel’s medicine—
It was gone.
PART THREE
42
BETH
Petra showed us painfully and by necessity: As long as we draw breath, we are all capable of miracles.
—AGNES, EARLY WRITINGS
Beth’s hands stopped glowing as color rushed back into Cory’s face. His eyes batted open and tears streamed down her cheeks.
We saved him, Agnes. We did.
“A miracle,” Cory breathed. “My leg. It feels—”
“I know, Cory Jameson, I know.”
He ran his hands over his thigh, his face luminous with wonder. His wound no longer oozed pus or smelled of death. Miraculously, his skin had woven itself back together without leaving so much as a scar. He sat up, bent his leg forwards and back—then started laughing uncontrollably, laughing from the center of his belly, loudly and fully.
“Can you believe it?” His laughter was contagious, and Beth laughed with him.
“No.” He wiped the tears from his eyes. “I really thought I’d bitten it.”
“Look.” She poked his thigh. “Like it never happened.”
He jumped, bounced on the balls of his feet. Then he sank back down onto the dusty basement floor and opened his arms.
Beth kissed him, staggered by his life, his strength, and for a warm moment, their troubles melted away. They lay on the dusty floor, kissing and loving until their lips were swollen, chafed.
“Oh, Beth,” he spoke into her hair. “How’s it possible?”
“Agnes gave me her blessing,” she whispered. “She said, God bless you in your time of need. I got chills like the words were—”
“Powerful.” Cory looked awestruck.
She whooshed out a breath. His father and Mr. Hearn had left the church only a short while ago, but Cory didn’t know a thing about it. He hadn’t heard Matthew admit that their people had sickened. He didn’t know everyone they’d ever loved had already been lost. Every muscle in Beth’s body rebelled against the necessity of telling him the truth, but he had a right to know.
“Cory.” She cupped his face in her hands. “Listen to me.”
His face was painfully innocent. “What?”
“They’re dying,” she said. “All our family.”
She told him everything she knew. Told him how his father had proved himself a coward, running from the bunker, from Red Creek. And she told him, though it felt like chewing broken glass, that his brothers and mothers were dead or dying.
After, he cleared his throat. “You know what we have to do now, right?”
“Leave,” she said decisively. “We need to get the hell out of Red Creek.”
He looked at her, shocked and offended. “No, Beth. Of course we can’t go.”
“Why not?”
He was still looking at her like she’d kicked a puppy. “Because your sister is a prophet, that’s why. An immensely powerful one. Beth, she can save them. All of them.”
She closed her eyes, feeling the blood pulse behind them. A monstrous effort, not to imagine the twins turning red, or Sam vicious as Magda had been.
“Cory.” Beth felt shattered. “Agnes isn’t here.”
“So, we’ll bring her back.”
“You don’t know what it was like, watching you die. I can’t spend another night here.” She sought for a way to make him understand. “This is a bad place. A cursed place. Can’t you see that? Nothing we do here could possibly do any good. I just want to leave. Start over.”
“You said something, while I was dying.” Cory spoke sternly. “Something about loving me. Was it true?”
An hour ago, she’d seen death in his blue eyes—she knew she had—but all his boyish life had been redeemed. She had her sister to thank for that; her sister, and her sister’s God.
“Yes,” she admitted. “I do love you.”
“Then prove it. Help me bring Agnes home. Jesus, Beth, help me save your brother and the twins. They don’t deserve to die in the dark.”
She groaned, knowing he’d already won. Worse, hope was building in her body at an alarming rate. What if God had some plan for her still? What if she could save her family? Wouldn’t it be worth it, then, to stay?
“What makes you so sure Agnes can save anyone?” Beth demanded. “What makes you so sure even she can do any good?”
“She saved me, didn’t she?” Cory said. “She saved me through you.”
Beth chewed her thumbnail, thinking. Agnes wouldn’t have left Red Creek without leaving some way to reach her, just in case. A number, a mailing address, a clue.
But it meant going back to her trailer, and she’d rather leap from the canyon’s edge than face the memories that festered there.
Cory took her hand. “My brothers, my mother…”
His skin—so warm, so undeniably healthy. A miracle.
“All right,” she snapped. “Let’s try. But I don’t like this, Cory Jameson. You’ll owe me.”
“Of course.” He shot her one of his knee-weakening smiles. “Don’t you know it, sweet Beth? I owe you my whole life.”
43
AGNES
Never deny the God you feel to be real. That feeling is your heart; it is all you have.
—AGNES, EARLY WRITINGS
The Outsiders couldn’t get out of the ravine fast enough. On the precipitous, scraggy climb to the road, Jazz stumbled twice, cutting her palm on a stone. Blood snaked down her forearm, ringing her wrist like bracelets, but she never stopped moving, never stopped climbing. Matilda ran awkwardly with her rifle, but she was quicker than she looked, and Max carried Zeke in his arms like a bride. Once, Agnes paused to look back down at the broken glass sparkling at the bottom of the wash, but Danny kept her going,
his hand hovering beneath her elbow. In the eyes of the Outsiders, Agnes recognized pure, animal terror.
Seeing the red wolves, they’d all seen fever, petrification, and imminent death.
All except for Ezekiel, who’d trusted her too much.
On the roadside, Matilda bound Agnes’s injured hand with thick gauze, immobilizing it.
“A dirty break,” she kept mumbling. “That, my dear, is a very dirty break.”
Agnes’s hand looked alien, swollen to the size of an eggplant and just as purple. It had been rebroken at the third knuckle—the exact wound she’d sustained as a child. Through shock’s gauzy veil, she was insensible of the pain.
She kept thinking: Had Ezekiel really lost it? All his insulin? Was it really gone?
Agnes brushed Matilda off as she tried to stand, but the earth and the sky switched places. She lost her footing and fell hard.
Pain went off like a firecracker, knuckle to wrist to elbow. She clutched her arm to her chest. Above her, Matilda faded in and out of focus.
Inside Agnes’s heart, God spoke once more. His words, bright and clear, resounded between her ears like thunderclaps.
Your test is over. Now return to Zion.
Zion? She wanted to scream. God, if I knew where the promised land was, wouldn’t I be there already?
Then—whoosh—her candle went out.
Agnes woke inside a blue nylon tent. It was brand-new, and the air smelled plastic.
Matilda’s face hovered over hers, frowning. The prayer space had burned through her insides like wildfire.
She tried to sit up, but Matilda pressed her back. “You need to rest.”
“Zeke’s m-medicine,” she stammered. “We need… we have to…”
“Zeke’s with Max. I just checked him; he’s fine. It’s you I’m worried about.”
Matilda helped her swallow a few pills—ibuprofen.
“Sounds like a Hebrew name,” Agnes croaked.
Matilda chuckled. Then she performed Agnes’s first-ever physical.
Strange objects appeared in Matilda’s hands: a stethoscope for listening to her heart and lungs, a blood pressure cuff, a fancy thermometer. A rubber mallet and a pulse monitor that clamped onto her finger. Matilda measured, frowned, double-checked, then took down the numbers in a little wire-bound notebook, muttering results.
Agnes at the End of the World Page 23