Cold Ennaline (3 page)

“You’ve got some lovely old books, here,” says Theo airily, his hands on his hips as he looks up and down the shelves. “The twins said you wouldn’t mind if I had a look. I love antiques.”

Father Nerve doesn’t know how to react to this. There’s something subtly insulting about calling our books of faith “antiques.” He gets to his feet, closing his folder with a snap. I know that no matter what happens with Theo, the twins are going to get a good telling off before the night is over.

“I’ll leave you all alone,” I say quickly and squeeze out of the room before Father Nerve can get started.

I
N
THE
end I don’t talk to Father Nerve about matchmaking. It seems selfish to talk about myself and my future when there’s a possibility (however small) that the god is waking. So, a few days later, I decide to swallow my pride and book an appointment with the school counselor, Mrs. Fane.

I don’t really know what to expect when talking to a counselor. We faith full don’t have confession like Catholics. We try not to talk about our feelings—it’s important to show restraint, to be in control. We are here to serve the god, not to gossip. Nevertheless, I’m really happy that Mrs. Fane agrees to see me the following day.

Mrs. Fane’s office is tiny, more of a cupboard than an office, really. On the walls are fading old posters about the dangers of smoking, peer pressure, and drugs. Mrs. Fane herself is a fading, middle-aged woman with curly hair. She came from New York originally—how she wound up out here in the middle of faith full country is anyone’s guess—and you can still hear it in her voice.

“Ennaline Whitehall, isn’t it?” she says as I sit down.

“Yes.”

“Can I get you anything before we start?”

I shake my head.

“Are you… is there anyone else who should be here with you? Anything I should know about… well, about…?” She looks and sounds incredibly nervous. “I’m sorry, but I’m a little at a loss about the conventions here. I don’t want to insult you or offend you. It’s the first time a faith full student has come to talk to me.”

Great. “You can treat me like any other student,” I suggest.

Mrs. Fane nods. “Very well, then, Ennaline. Why don’t you start by telling me why you’ve come to see me today?”

“I feel cold,” I blurt out.

Mrs. Fane frowns. “It’s summer, Ennaline,” she says.

“No, I don’t mean… like that. I mean I don’t feel anything for the twins. I love them. I’m probably going to be married to one or
both
of them. But I don’t want to do anything with them.”

“And by anything you mean… something physical, right? Like kissing? Being intimate?”

I nod. “And the rest.”

“Ennaline, you’re fourteen. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

“They aren’t trying to get me to do anything. But I know that if I marry one of them I’ll have to, and I don’t… I don’t have that feeling in me. Everyone else seems to, everyone wants to date, everyone wants to have a boyfriend, but me.”

“There’s no shame in being a late bloomer.”

I’m starting to get frustrated. “When am I supposed to get those feelings, then?” I ask. “Everyone else got them when they were in grade school. How late of a bloomer am I?”

“It’s okay, Ennaline. This is a safe place. You don’t have to raise your voice.” Mrs. Fane leans back in her chair. “Forgive me, I’m still struggling to understand. You don’t feel any sexual desire for any boys?”

“No,” I say, twitching at the terms she’s used, but glad we’ve finally found a common understanding. “I feel nothing. I feel… love, friendship, happiness, anger, all that stuff. But nothing… sexual.” It’s difficult to get that last word out. I don’t think I’ve ever said it aloud before.

“What about girls?”

“Not girls, either.” I can say this with certainty. I have looked at pictures of women undressed, and even stolen looks at girls in the showers at school. I feel… I feel
something
there, sometimes, but not much. Nothing that would qualify as desire. Mainly it’s curiosity.

“Are you scared of sex?”

“No. Maybe. A little. But I’m scared of a lot of things. I’m scared of exams and I’m scared of playing hockey with the older girls and I’m scared of the god, to be honest. But I still want to do those things. Exams not so much, but you get what I mean. I can get over being scared. I
could
have sex, if I had to, if it was what the god wanted from me. But I don’t want to.”

“Does it disgust you?”

“A bit. But mainly it seems sort of useless and pathetic. I don’t understand it.”

“Has anything ever happened to you that might make you less interested in sex?” Mrs. Fane frowns—I can tell she’s trying to work out how to phrase the question. “A traumatic event?” she tries.

“No,” I say. “Nothing like that.”

“Okay. I think I understand you now.”

“What should I do about it, then?”

“What do you want to do about it?”

“Well, I don’t really know. Is it a medical problem? Or is it just me? Is it just the way I am?”

“A lack of sexual desire can be medical, yes. And it can be linked to mental health problems. If you like, I can organize a doctor’s appointment for you. But it doesn’t sound as if you have any other troubles, do you?”

Briefly I think about the awakening god. “Not really.”

“All right, then. What I’d like you to do, Ennaline, is try not to worry about it.” She must see the disbelief written on my face, because she goes on quickly, “I know, I know, it’s hard. But I don’t know why you aren’t feeling these desires. Maybe you’ll feel them later, maybe you won’t. But it’s not a bad thing. It’s not going to stop you being happy right now. So focus on that, okay?”

“What about the twins?”

“Why don’t you talk to them about it? See how they feel?”

“Ugghhh,” I say, feeling my face go red. Even the thought is embarrassing. I’ve never even
breathed
the word sex in the twins’ presence.

“They’re nice young men,” says Mrs. Fane. “And they’re from your faith full world, aren’t they? They aren’t going to tell stories behind your back. Perhaps they’ll be more understanding than you think.” She smiles. “I’m not telling you to tell them. I’m just suggesting it as an option. You do what you think is best.”

“Okay.”

“Is there anything you’d like to talk about?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You know, you can always come back to me if you’d like. If anything changes.”

“Okay.” I find I’m feeling slightly better about things. I manage a smile.

“I hope I did okay,” she says, rising to open the office door for me. “Like I said, you’re the first faith full student who’s come to me.”

“You did very well,” I say. “Thanks, Mrs. Fane.”

I leave. In the hallway outside I see the twins talking animatedly to their new friend Theo, who seems to go to our school now. I pass them by, waving, and then double back, peering around a corner to look at them. There’s something suspicious about Theo, but I can’t put my finger on it.

T
HAT
EVENING
we have a large service for the god. The twins and I stand outside the church in our formal robes, greeting the faith full as they arrive. A tall, very good-looking older man is one of the last people to arrive.

“Roland, Regis,” he says to the twins.

“Father,” say the twins in unison.

From the way they say
father
I realize they don’t mean a Father of the faith but their
actual
father. This is Father Piedmont. I’ve never met him before, and I can immediately see the twins in him. The features are all there: the dark eyes, the thick hair, the well-formed mouth, and sharp chin. Father Piedmont has a reputation among the faith full for being both severe and dedicated. He’s very close to the Bishop.

“Has Father Nerve been teaching you well?” Father Piedmont asks.

“Oh, he’s very good,” says Ray nervously.

“He’s brilliant,” says Ro. “We’ve done lots of miracles.”

Father Piedmont’s gaze finally settles on me. “Is this Ennaline? The one you’ve told me about?”

“Yes, this is her,” says Ro.

“A Whitehall,” says Father Piedmont, rubbing his chin. “I knew a Whitehall once. You’ve no family in the faith, have you?”

“No, Father. My grandmother died when I was eight, and Father Nerve took me in. I’m a child of the faith full community.” I smile, to show I’m grateful. I truly am. I’ve no idea where I would be without the faith and Father Nerve.

“The boys tell me you’re a devoted follower of the god,” says Father Piedmont. “Have you been betrothed, yet? You must be fifteen, sixteen?”

“I’m fourteen, and no, I haven’t.”

“Same age as the twins.”

“Yes, Father.”

Father Piedmont strokes his chin again. I can see him mentally pairing me up with one and then the other of his sons. My plain face beside their beautiful ones.

“Thank you for your time, Ennaline,” he says eventually, and then, “Boys,” to the twins as he steps into the temple.

When he’s gone, I realize that I’ve been holding my breath and let it all out in a rush. The twins look at me, and I see my own nervousness reflected in their faces. I don’t blame them for being intimidated by Father Piedmont, even if he is their father.

“So, our dad,” says Ro, shrugging. “Hope he didn’t freak you out.”

“I’m fine,” I say.

“Yeah, you look fine,” says Ro sarcastically. “Come on, let’s go to the attic. We can listen to the sermon from there.”

The temple’s roof is curved, a remnant of its history as a barn. There’s a small attic region near the very top. Only part of it has floorboards, which are roughly hammered into place. The rest is thick crossbeams, each one wider than my body. If you don’t want anyone to find you, it’s a good place to sit and listen to the goings-on in the chapel. All the conversations at floor level echo up to the ceiling, rising like hot air, but the attic is too high for anyone else to hear you
talk.

Privacy sounds like a great idea to me, so we leave our spot by the temple doors and grab a ladder. The twins let me go up the ladder first, because I’m a
lady
. We crawl along the crossbeams until we reach the section of the attic with a floor. We lie there, our heads peeping over the edge. Father Nerve has just begun his sermon, and the temple’s pews are crammed with the faith full. I notice there are more people than usual, even for this time of the day.

Maybe they too have heard that the god is waking, and want to make sure they’re making the right preparations.

Beside me, the twins yawn and stretch out their long bodies. Their movements are perfectly matched, from the pointing of their toes to their little sighs as they relax.

“Crazy turnout,” says Ro, tuning in to my train of thought.

“If our dad’s here, it means that something big is going to happen,” says Ray.

“Or he wants to lock Ennaline into a marriage contract,” says Ro.

“We can’t talk about that,” says Ray. “It’ll freak her out.”

“What? Why?”

“I don’t know. She won’t tell me.” They’re starting to talk about me like I’m not even there. “I don’t want to pressure her.”

“You don’t? I do! If this falls through, who knows who we’ll wind up with?” Ro puffs out his cheeks. “Linda from school? She’s so mean, half the class avoids her. Even the teachers avoid her….”

I remember what Mrs. Fane said. I should tell them. They’re my best friends.

“I don’t feel… attracted to you,” I say.

The twins blink at each other.

“What, both of us?”

“Yes.”

“Oh no,” says Ro, mock-horrified. “She’s not that into us. Could have fooled me, you spend pretty much every waking moment with us.”

“Yes. You’re my friends.” I bite my lip. It’s so hard to talk about this stuff. A life as a chaste and dedicated member of the faith hasn’t really taught me the right vocabulary for this situation. “I’m not joking about this, Ro. I don’t feel anything for you. I don’t… I don’t have any desire in that way. I’m going to make a poor wife for a faith full man.”

And that’s the heart of my problem, really. The god is a god of fertility. He is the god of our fields and flocks. He is the god of our food and the god of our fecundity. He sleeps now, but we see his dreams around us in the birth of every child and the planting of every harvest. If I don’t have the desire to… to have
sex
, as Mrs. Fane crudely put it, how can I truly serve the god?

“I don’t get it,” says Ray.

“It’s not babies, Enna,” says Ro. “You don’t need to have babies now. It’s a betrothal. The whole… the
intercourse
parts come later. In four years.”

“It’s not about babies! It’s….” I take a deep breath. “It’s about passion. Desire. Um, romance. I don’t want to… to do that kind of thing with you. And I might never want to. I’m cold.”

“Wait, do you mean you’re a lesbian?” Ro asks uncertainly.

That’s a word I didn’t think I’d ever hear the twins, or any faith full man, say. I shake my head.

“Oh, okay. No girls, no boys, no us.”

I’m so embarrassed. I can feel my ears and cheeks burning. It’s good to get all this off my chest, but now that it’s out in the open, it makes me feel naked. I’ve been accused more than once—although not by the twins—of putting up walls to keep people out. Now those walls have come down, but there’s nothing warm or welcoming behind them, just more walls.

“That’s about the whole of it,” I say.

The twins sit up a bit and start fidgeting around. I can sense them
signing
behind my back.

“We love you, Enna,” says Ro, after a minute of rapid, silent discussion. “We’ll get through this.”

“You know we’d marry you anyway,” says Ray. “Whatever happens.”

“Thanks. But you shouldn’t.”

The twins go quiet. I hang my head over the attic’s edge again. Below us Father Nerve is warning his flock of the signs and symbols of the rising god. Cracks in the earth. Strange winds that destroy and smash. Disfigured or burned-out livestock. Overgrowth of plants and crops. The death of dogs. Stalks of corn and other grains that set themselves alight and burn with a blue flame. And a trail of bad luck and misfortune, striking only those who worked in the fields.