The Bone Wall (5 page)

A young woman on the earthen wall lifts her toddler. She draws my eye, red hair framing a serene face, her movements graceful, gentle, unafraid. Lovingly she kisses her little girl’s cheek, and then without a second’s hesitation, she flings the child into the shield. Azure light flashes and spits, streaks of power splintering up the wall. Before the child’s bones fall, the mother leaps, her own body incinerated in a blazing burst of light. Another child hits the wall, another, the shield blinding, burning with blue fire as mothers follow their children. Scorched bones tumble, clatter against each other as skulls roll. Mothers with babies in their arms hurl themselves into the wall, dozens now, the wall sizzling, exploding with sapphire light, shooting streams of crackling power in a web of blue veins through the entire shield of Heaven, and all I can do is close my eyes and scream.

I am breaking, splintering, my body cleaving in two, horror splitting my soul.
This cannot be
, I want to scream.
This cannot be!
I am no longer me, no longer in a world I recognize, the vision before me incomprehensible, raging mad. My arms gird the tree as my body shakes itself free, rending what I know from what I see. The wall hisses, showering sparks and flaring with brilliant light as bones knock and rattle, Biters howl and wounded men cry. Somewhere in all the insanity and gore my father is dying, my mother is screaming. We are all screaming.

4

~Angel~

My sister lets go of the pine, her eyes closed, her arms extended. She looks as though she might rise from the branch and fly, as lithe as a bird from our picture books. But she intends to die, to crash through the cradle of limbs and break on the soft needles of the forest floor. When she leans back, I reach down with my feet from the branch above to catch her with my legs. “Peace, Sister,” I whisper, and when she steadies herself, I slip down to the branch beside her. We close our eyes and ears to the horror, lost in our embrace.

When we awaken, the Biters have vanished. I doubt we slept, truly slept balanced on this branch, but we abandoned Heaven for a time, receded into a wakeful unconsciousness, present but not here. It’s my only way to describe this awakening. Rimma gazes at me, her eyes wandering my face, her face, truly, as if she’s just notices me for the first time. She blinks her eyes clear, and I almost see her mind working, weeding through her confusion.

“It’s Angel,” I say, helping her focus. “We’re in a tree. The Biters came…” She slowly peels her eyes from my face. “Let’s not watch,” I tell her, and though she nods, we can’t prevent our glances at the carnage. The descendants sprawl in a contorted, broken, bloody pile. Deacon Abrum oversees Heaven’s souls as we dig a charnel pit for the dead.

“He won’t bring the wounded inside the wall,” Rimma says, her voice drained of emotion. I think she’s right. A few women outside the gate wash and dress broken flesh. So few wounded lie among the ragged corpses, the Biters thorough in their butchery.

“Deacon Abrum should cut their throats now,” Rimma adds. “To save them from suffering.”

Her suggestion sends a chill up my spine, but how can I argue? They will die from their wounds, or survive only to starve or fall prey again to the Biters. “He’s retrieved our tools and knives,” I note, glancing at the sharp-edged pile inside the gate.

Rimma nods thoughtfully. “We’re going to need some of those.”

The wall hisses and pops. We glance quickly at the jumbled bones nestled beside the shield at the top of the earthen wall and then start our stealthy descent from the pine.

Dusk’s long fingers grope between the trees, the sky beyond Heaven streaked with smoky rose-rimmed clouds. Lampposts buzz and flicker on, glow brightly, sputter, dim, and settle into the soft hum of honeybees. Other descendants tread the East Spoke, heads down in prayer or despair, lips speaking words beyond my hearing.

At the forest’s edge, Rimma unties her bonnet and drops it to the pathway. She unravels her moonlight braid, ribbon discarded. The apron follows, settling into a plain, brown, rumpled heap on the stones.

“Why?” I ask, my hands protecting the bow at my chin. “What about God’s laws?”

Her gray eyes meet mine. “God’s laws are worthless, Angel. They’re shits and I won’t abide them.” She pinches her pink lips closed, savoring the taste of the curse still tangy on her tongue. I think she wants to smile at the flavor.

“Shits,” I declare. “Shits, shits, shits!” I yank on my bow and jerk my bonnet from my head, casting it to the pile. A snort of mirth escapes Rimma’s nose and I giggle, giddy with my recklessness as I spurn the doom of divine judgment. “Shits, shits, shits.” The loopy bow on my apron slithers open and I shrug it off, the mound of ugliness complete. “Shits.”

“Your hair,” Rimma reminds me.

“Oh shits,” I say at my oversight and shake out my braid. We laugh for no reason, the ghastly sound of fear shaking out of us until only tears remain.

“Fuck them all,” Rimma whispers when our gasping sobs falter. “Fuck them all to Hell.” It’s a curse, I’m certain, a powerful one, even though I don’t know what it means.

“Not everyone, Rimma,” I murmur. “Not everyone.”

“Not you,” she says quietly and kisses my cheek as she grasps my hand. We leave our womanly clothes heaped on the stone path with our childhood and walk home.

**

Near the hub, Rimma slips away from me, gone without a word, leaving me alone to find our mother. To my left, sits the women’s residence, a long, gently curving complex, three stories high with a slanted, tiled roof and huge glass windows. The lowest level opens to a raised stone terrace with an ornate balustrade and swooping steps leading down to the courtyard’s granite pavers. The top two levels have balconies overlooking the stone courtyard on one side and verdant fields on the other. Wisteria snakes through the balconies’ twisted metal rails, showering us with pink blooms and in some green-veiled corners wrenching the rails from their mortared anchors. It occurs to me that Heaven is like the wisteria, its surface beauty sublime as its hidden vines rip apart its very foundation.

Inside, our quarters overflow with women and children, soft words shrouding the tumultuous undercurrents of horror and grief. Heaven’s women pretend all will be well with false smiles and soothing lies as they wash grubby cheeks with warm cloths and offer food. The young children cry and cling, latching to new faces and bodies in a desperate search for security. I barely spare a glance as I wander through the tender scenes, each poignant, sweet, and without a more truthful alternative.

My mother isn’t there among the cooing women but in the dinner-hall, opposite the hub from God’s House of Law. Standing at the door, I find her seated on a bench, her head resting on her arms on the pine table, her face concealed in the shadow of her bonnet’s front brim. I think, perhaps, she sleeps, but she raises her head when the door clicks closed behind me. Her fair face appears haggard, eyelids thick and mouth slack, her slender frame suddenly frail and thin. My beautiful mother, still so young, appears ten years older in a single day.

Her hand reaches for me. “Rimma.”

A smile touches my lips, my sister and I so alike even our mother struggles at times to tell us apart. “Angel,” I tell her, slipping to the bench beside her and resting my head on her shoulder.

“Yes, of course,” she replies. “My angel.”

To speak further would spill our bubbled-up sorrow, so we sit in patient silence, waiting for the tidal flow of emotion to ebb back into its dark depressions.

“I’ve been cooking,” she says, a mundane task, the comment requiring no reply.

After a minute of nothingness, I offer up words of my own for our conversation. “I was in the trees.”

Her fingers comb through my hair at my temple. “Did you see?” I nod a reply. “He’s dead,” she adds. “For a single child…but perhaps for nothing in the end…other than a little time.” Her hand ceases stroking my hair and she draws back to study me. “Your bonnet and apron?”

“We’ve decided not to wear them any longer,” I inform her, no wheedling for approval in my tone.

“I suppose there’s little need,” she says with a sigh and unties her bows. Her bonnet plops to the tabletop along with her apron. I pull the ribbon from her braid and run my fingers through the strands, loosening them into buttermilk waves. She digs her fingers into her scalp and scratches furiously, a laugh and sob bursting from her throat at once.

An hour later, I discover Rimma on the flat roof of God’s House, lying on her back, arms behind her head as she absorbs the night sky. Somehow she’s hauled our blankets and pillows to the roof, our new quarters. I fumble with the knot of the satchel tied to my waist for the climb and sit cross-legged beside her. “I’ve brought food from mum,” I inform her as I place a loaf of bread on her stomach.

“Anything else?” she asks, working her way up. “I’m thirsty.”

“Water.” I hand her a blue jar with a leaky lid. “Cheese and pickles.”

Rimma’s face contorts with displeasure. “We need to be more resourceful if we plan to survive this.”

“Survive what?” I ask, bewildered by her statement.

“The fall of Heaven.” She scarcely blinks, as if she refers to a dull day of hemming or peeling potatoes.

The bread in my stomach threatens to heave back up. “Mum told me the Biters didn’t kill everyone,” I inform her. “They dragged some women and children away.”

“I heard the same.” Rimma returns a half-nibbled chunk of cheese to the satchel, lies back down and stares at the blue spider webs weaving through the shield’s canopy. She breathes deeply, as if trying to catch her wind, to contain her panic. “I suppose they’ll eat them over the next few weeks,” she says, her voice shaking.

What can I say to the horror of her vision? Nothing.

“We can’t pretend, Angel.” She turns her eyes toward mine, irises glittering with sparks of azure on an ink black sky. “We won’t survive on wishes and hope any better than we will on denial. We can’t make believe Heaven will last forever, and how could we possibly imagine that another Garden will allow us in?”

“What about God?” I ask.

“God?” Rimma’s mirthless laugh barks out of her, full of scorn. “I don’t think God exists,” she replies, her expression sober. “Or if He does, He doesn’t care a whit. Or perhaps He’s just malicious and cruel. If this is what He offers, I’ll do without. Better He doesn’t exist at all.”

“But…but…” I’ve no words to say, no argument in God’s favor, no excuses or examples of His grace.

“But what, Angel?” Rimma’s voice softens. “But what?”

“What do we do?” I ask.

“We survive.”

5

~Rimma~

“We’ve been saying ‘shits’ but it’s really ‘shit’ without an
s
,” Angel informs me, her blond head stuck in a thick book. “It’s called vulgar slang and it means excrement
and
defecation.” She taps a finger to her cheek. “It’s a useful word, I think.”

“Finally that old book coughs up something worthwhile,” I mutter. My elbows rest on the library table, my face sagging between my hands, a headache blooming. We’re researching what we’ll need to survive when Heaven falls and the library offers little help since half the words are mere gibberish. More diligent than I, my twin looks up the words defining the one in question and those definitions are equally baffling. Picture books prove far more helpful, but we found only one that serves our purpose, a book of ancient paintings with a few battle scenes. I ripped those pages out days ago and keep them tucked in my pocket for future reference, along with my map.

“Fuck means fornicate,” Angel declares, wide-eyed, as she continues her research of curse words. “Why is fornicate a curse?”

“I don’t know.” I shrug.

“Fornicating is divine,” Angel asserts. “We all want to fornicate someday, don’t we?”

“Maybe Biters fuck,” I suggest, pressing my palms to my throbbing eyes.

The explanation seems to satisfy her. She folds the book closed and deposits it on a shelf with a yawn. I flick off the fluttering filaments on our way out, my headache easing in the dim glow of Heaven’s night. Ivy rustles around the ladder as we climb to the roof of God’s House of Law where the two of us now reside.

Heaven has dragged itself from the grave’s edge and slogs numbly through the days. Angel possesses the heart for it, the compassion necessary to wade through a river of grief, enough patience for the onslaught of needy children. She can chat about a future here with a genuine smile, but not I.

As I lie on my back, the shield fractures above me, sapphire veins of a monstrous creature pulsing to a dying heartbeat. I can’t decide if the shield is friend or foe. For centuries, it has protected God’s descendants, His chosen, and in doing so left us vulnerable, completely unprepared—for everything. The more I think about what we need to survive in a broken world, the more I realize I know nothing. I can’t start a fire, hunt, forage, or fight. I’m a deluded, foolish child who thinks she’ll survive beyond a few days in a savage wilderness.

My fingers fumble in my pocket for torn pictures. I unfold them, the images barely visible in the dark, though I know them by heart. One shows a man with golden skin, his muscled chest naked as he rides a white horse, a charging beast seen only in picture-books. The warrior wears a plumed helmet and grips a round shield with a gold cross. He holds a spear poised for a thrust, its gold tip shining. The other picture reveals a woman, a queen I think, in blue and red garments, long blond hair streaming behind her, the teeth of a gold crown rising from her head. Her body is corded with muscle, her eyes matching the fierceness of the white horse she rides. Behind her, a shadow emerges from the murk, intent on her destruction. I don’t think she sees him. She aims her golden bow forward, silver arrow drawn back to her shoulder. It’s the bow, curved like a woman’s lips, that interests me.