Cold Ennaline (2 page)

“Why would he let evil things come through the holes?”

“I don’t know. I will ask the Bishop. Perhaps the god is testing us?” Father Nerve shrugs.

I feel something against my leg and look down. The twins are arguing with each other in sign language, out of Father Nerve’s line of sight. Right now Ro is boasting:
I am the cutest
. Ray returns with:
We are identical, idiot
. The three of us learned sign language when we were kids, so that we could communicate to each other during blessings and miracles.

Stop it
, I sign quickly.
You are both cute.

The ride back to the temple is quiet. I try to fill my head with nothing but thoughts of the god, but it’s hard with the twins so close. I do love them. They are beautiful and sweet and they’re my best friends. They come from a good family, and they are blessed by the god. Any other girl would be delighted at the idea of getting to marry one of them. But for me, the thought of being married, of being intimate with them, leaves me cold.

Not for the first time, I find myself wondering what’s wrong with me.

A
S
COMPANIONS
to Father Nerve, we live in the temple. We have since we were eight years old. We sleep in bunk beds in the companion dormitory. Every morning we wake up and perform our cleaning duties, and say a prayer with Father Nerve. Then we go to school, where the twins are popular and I am not. After school we read the texts Father Nerve gives to us, and make visits to others of the faith. Sometimes we perform blessings, sometimes we perform miracles, and sometimes we just talk. Some people’s biggest problem is that they are lonely.

The school we go to has a mix of kids from the faith and the faith less. Us kids of the faith tend to hang around together, except for the twins, who move easily between all social groups. A trail of hopeful faith less girls follows them wherever they go. I guess they’re hoping that the twins will suddenly renounce the faith and fall in love with them. I feel this is unlikely. The twins may seem fun and irreverent, but they are deeply dedicated to the god in a way even I have trouble understanding.

The faith full girls are too smart to believe the twins will marry them. Most of them already know who their intended is, anyway.

The day after we perform our miracle at the Evans’s, Ray and I have a physical education class together. The school always splits up the twins so they’re in different classes. The reason for this is because it “helps them find their own individual personalities rather than thinking solely as a twin,” although I don’t think Ro and Ray have ever had any trouble with that.

Today’s class, like most physical education classes, involves a choice between running laps around the oval track and playing basketball. Our school doesn’t have many resources, and there are too many kids for everyone to play basketball at the same time. I prefer running anyway. Our school is situated on a hillside, and the track has a view of all the surrounding farmland. The different colors of grains give a patchwork effect to the landscape—squares of green, yellow, and orange.

I’m on my first lap when Ray starts jogging beside me. He moves easily with each stride, taking one step to every two of mine.

“Hey, Enna,” he says.

“Hey, Ray,” I say, slowing my speed a bit so I can talk without panting.

“About what you said yesterday….”

“Yeah?” I have been dreading this conversation. I
should
have said I wanted to marry Ray, not Ro. Ro is pretty cool about everything, but Ray tends to overthink things the way I do.

“You were messing with us, right? You don’t want to marry Ro more than me?”

“Yeah, I was messing with you.”

“Good.” Ray puffs. “Do you think we could all be married? We were wondering about that last night. I don’t feel it would be right if we weren’t together.”

“You can’t marry three people together, Ray.”

“Ro says there’s nothing in the faith that says it can’t happen. And once upon a time Ro and me were one
being.
A single cell. It’s almost natural for us to be wedded to one woman.”

“Why are you so eager to get us married?”

“Because we’re fourteen and this is when people start talking about this stuff. I asked around today, and three guys in our class have already been matched up with another girl from the faith.”

“So? We’ve got plenty of time.”

Ray groans. “You might not be hearing a lot about getting matched up, but we are, Enna. I’ve heard Father Nerve talking to our father on the phone. Both of them have been getting inquiries about us. Lots of parents want their daughter to marry a Piedmont. And if we don’t move soon, we’ll wind up betrothed to someone else, someone who’s not you.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe I’ll be a terrible wife.”

Ray stops running and catches my arm. “Why would you say that?”

“I….” I come to a stumbling halt. “Look, like you said, you’re Piedmonts. You’re from an important family. I’m an orphan. I’m a bad match. There are better girls out there. Maybe even twin girls.”

“Ennaline,” he says, and his face isn’t annoyed or upset, just concerned for me. “Oh, Ennaline. What’s really wrong? Is it something we did?”

“No. It’s not that. It’s….”

It’s what? I don’t know what to say. How can I explain to him that I don’t think I’ll ever be ready for marriage? To
anyone
. The things I hear other girls talk about—their crushes, their desires—seem alien to me. I can’t even imagine what it would feel like to experience the urges and impulses they seem to be suffering from every day.

But I’m rescued from having to say anything by our physical education teacher.

“Ray, Ennaline, keep running,” he shouts.

So we run. I try to keep as far ahead of Ray as I can, until he gives up chasing me.

I
REMEMBER
the exact moment when I realized I was cold in a way other people were not. I was eleven years old. I was in the school yard at recess, sitting with a group of other girls from my class. At that point in our development we hadn’t yet segregated ourselves along the lines of faith full and faith less. We were watching a group of boys chase the ball around the solitary basketball court.

“Roland’s so gorgeous,” said one of my friends, a faith full girl called Linda. “Ugghhh, I want to be his girlfriend so bad.”

“Ray is
way
cuter,” said Shelley, one of the faith less. “I’m going to invite them to my birthday party. They can go to birthday parties, right, if they’re faith full?”

I shrugged. “Yeah, I think so.”

“We’ll play spin the bottle,” said Shelley. “You got to promise that if I land on one of them, you’ve got to dare me to kiss them. Or dare them to kiss me. Because it’s my birthday.”

“Yuck. Why would you want that?”

Immediately all the girls swiveled to look at me.

“Um, because they’re hot?” said Cindy.

“Because they’re super kissable?” said Linda.

“Seriously, Enna, you’re so weird,” Shelley said.

I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to kiss someone else
willingly
. I understood people had to do it when they were married—an obligation, I thought, a duty to the god. But given the expressions of my friends, I was smart enough not to say as much out loud. Instead I shrugged.

“Geez, Enna, you actually live with them,” Shelley said. “I can’t believe you haven’t, like, tried anything with them. I know you’re faith full but… damn!”

“Just not my thing,” I said nervously, and Cindy coughed the word
lesbian
into her hand.

“Not that either,” I said.

“You’re so weird,” said Shelley again. “The twins are seriously gorgeous.”

“I’ve lived with them for most of my life,” I said, thinking fast. “I don’t see it. I’m too used to them. They’re like my brothers.”

I’d said the right thing. The girls all started nodding, as if that explained my strange, strange reaction. I was still confused, but relieved I’d managed to cover up my mistake. Even at eleven I knew how quickly you could go from the in-group to the out-group by saying the wrong thing. I figured I’d work out why people wanted to kiss each other later, when I had time to explore the question on my own.

But things didn’t work out like that. I spent days, weeks, months, thinking hard about how I felt about other people. I loved the twins, I really did—I loved them
so much
, I didn’t think I could live without them
—
but I didn’t want to kiss them. My feelings for them were there
in my head
, strong and almost passionate. But when it came to the point where my body was meant to react, to follow the lead of my thoughts, there was nothing.

I was cold.

Cold Ennaline.

I
DON
’
T
wait for the twins after school and walk back to the temple alone. My head feels muddled, and I need to talk to Father Nerve. I’m sure he’ll be able to give me guidance. I don’t want to tell him about my coldness, it’s too embarrassing, but I can at least ask him what he thinks about our matchmaking. At the end of the day, no matter what’s wrong with me, I am a devotee of the god. Whatever the god wants from me, I will do.

Father Nerve’s temple wasn’t always a temple. Before he came to the faith, the temple was two giant barns that lay in the middle of his property. In the winter he used them to store hay bales; in summer they stood empty. It took all the local faith a full two months to transform the barns into a temple, converting the high ceilings into a split level, and adding internal walls to create the dorms, library, and kitchens.

From the outside, it now looks like a modern Christian church, with a high-domed roof and stained glass in its front window. All around it lay fields of yellow canola. I’ve always felt that Father Nerve’s temple-barn is the perfect place to pray to the god—our god, after all, is the god of farmers.

I walk through the canola to the temple’s great wooden doors. After knocking and receiving no reply, I enter, stepping into the main chapel.

Light streams through stained glass to illuminate the pews below in green and gold. As I walk down the aisle I see only a few people kneeling and praying. It’s not uncommon for the chapel to be practically deserted at this time. Most of the faith full are farmers and landowners, and they come to service at the end of the day, when their work is finished.

There is no sign of Father Nerve at the chapel altar, but its base is the head of a giant pig, recently bled. An offering to the god. The pig’s soft pink face looks untroubled, despite its present predicament. I’ve heard that pigs are smart animals, almost as smart as people. Perhaps the pig knows that to be given to the god is a great honor.

I keep looking for Father Nerve and eventually find him in the library among the leather–bound, old books he collects. He is sitting on a wicker chair, reading from a large folder. At first he doesn’t notice me, and I have to cough twice before he raises his head.

“Ennaline.”

“Father Nerve.” I bow my head.

“It’s good you are here. You should have a look at these.” Father Nerve beckons me over. “I went to see Father Andine today. He is seeing holes in his parish, too. Holes even wider than ours. One or two of them have broken the surface.”

My selfish questions about matchmaking and the twins are immediately pushed to the back of my mind. Father Nerve’s folder is filled with photographs. He turns one around to face me. It’s a picture of a grazing pasture. Along the center of the earth there is a great tear, as if an earthquake has ripped it open. I notice the grasses at the edge of the hole have grown higher and thicker than the rest in the pasture. I can’t tell if this is because the animals don’t dare to graze near it, or something else.

“Father Andine sent me the photograph yesterday. I went there today.” Father Nerve shakes his head. “It was like the Evans’s house. There were dead animals, burned from the inside out. There were strange meaty lumps growing on the stalks of corn. I could feel the evil there. And yet….”

“Father?”

“The grass is growing thicker where the evil escaped. What does that mean?”

It’s not often I see Father Nerve confused. “Did you speak to the Bishop?” I venture.

“Not yet. I spoke only to his companion, who told me to prepare. Prepare what, I said. He said he wasn’t sure, but that the god was waking.”

Since I was a small child, I’ve heard faith full people say that the god is waking.
He is almost awake, he is preparing to rise, he is nearly here….
I don’t want to doubt Father Nerve or the Bishop, but it’s hard not to. I bite my lip, holding back my reservations.

“I’ve been reading all the books I can,” says Father Nerve. When he says books, he means books of our faith. “There are eyewitness accounts, you know, from the last time the god woke. They mention the holes, some visible, some breaking the earth. They talk about the overgrowth—they call it the
greening
.”

“So it’s normal?” I ask. “Well, normal for the god?”

Father Nerve shakes himself. “Yes,” he says, sounding more sure of himself. “Yes, it
must
be normal. The god is announcing himself to us. He is telling us to prepare. We’ll have to—”

He doesn’t get to finish; we are interrupted by the twins, who come bustling into the library, swinging their bags by the straps. They’ve brought a friend with them, a kid I don’t know, an athletic, handsome kid with brown hair. He’s older than the twins, maybe seventeen, and is dressed in smart, foreign-looking clothes.

“Theo,” says Ro—which is apparently an introduction.

“From the neighborhood,” Ray explains.

“Hi,” says Theo.

It’s not unusual for the twins to bring faith less kids to the temple, but it seems strange to me that they’ve brought Theo into the library. The library isn’t off-limits, but at the same time we aren’t really advertising its existence to the public, either.