The Bone Wall (6 page)

I crumble the pages and toss them into the roof’s darkness.

**

When I was young, every day in Heaven was the same, utterly predictably the same. Not simply our routine, which was undeniably…routine, but the air felt clear, still, and dry, the temperature cool in the evening, warm during the day, the water hot or cold on demand, lampposts flicking on and off according to the sun, sprinklers squirting like clockwork. No birds chased insects in Heaven; there were no insects beyond bees to chase, no wild animals at all. We were antiseptic, untainted by the broken world, perfectly pure.

Now nothing is inevitable, except the persistent presence of change and the knowledge that our time in Heaven is ending.

No one strolls the East Spoke into the forest anymore, not even Angel and I. We go only as far as our chores demand. The wheat’s grain is firm and crunchy, ready for cutting, threshing, and winnowing, slow work even without so many of our men dead. Angel and I labor together, sharing blisters and complaints. I swing the scythe, the cradle’s long wooden fingers carrying the cut wheat and depositing it in a neat pile where Angel binds the grain into sheaves. We fill the cart halfway and then switch.

“We could keep this when we’re done,” Angel proposes as I hand her the scythe, her head at a tilt while she studies the tool.

“Sickles would make better weapons,” I say after a moment’s consideration. I’ve pilfered a few knives from the kitchen but nothing quite so menacing as a sickle’s curved blade. “Two of them, one in each hand, better for moving quickly.” My arms fly around me, my phantom sickles flaying a dozen Biters as I twirl, crouch, and weave. Angel laughs and claps when I bow at the end of my performance.

“Let’s walk to the gate,” I say, the urge undeniable.

“Why?” Angel asks, her worried eyes flecked with gold. She appears platinum from head to toe, paler than the gilded warrior in the picture, all of her the creamy yellow of young wheat.

“I don’t know,” I concede. Perhaps it’s the imaginary Biters slain at my feet or the spectral weapons flashing in my hands. Or perhaps I desire to initiate a cautious step along a looming path I’m destined to follow, as if testing the water with a toe before plunging in. The blood pounding through my veins tells me so. “Come with me…please, Angel.”

The scythe propped against the cart, we hike the East Spoke into the pines. Heaven stands as a silent witness to our expedition, except for the shield’s humming murmur and the soft padding of our shoes over the blanket of needles. Motionless boughs drape over our heads. It’s as if we’ve wandered into the unchanging landscape of a picture book.

The viewing platform is ours to climb, and we lean on the cool metal rail at the top. Outside the shield wall, an angry world flails, nothing static or hushed as it shifts in an endless tempest of movement. The wind slithers and hisses through thin grass and yellow weeds. Spindly trees sway, crack, and moan, leaves quivering like tiny clapping hands, tearing free to flutter and skid across the clay. Birds soar, hover, and dive, their shrill calls keening against a sky growling with storm clouds. Dirt and dust cough over the massive grave, clawing at the mound of earth, scraping it back into the wild land as if nothing of import lies entombed there.

“Do you thinks it’s cold out there?” I ask.

“There’s no snow,” Angel points out. “So I think it must be warm. Otherwise it would snow, wouldn’t it?”

“Perhaps it can be cold without snow,” I posit as my eyes rove the contoured landscape. “Do you think that riverbed is the one on papa’s map? Maybe there’s water at the bottom.” Digging in my skirt pocket, I pull out the map, tattered from all my folding, creases thin-skinned and beginning to tear. Carefully I open it and we line up east to east. “I think it is,” I decide. “We should investigate.”

Angel’s eyes shine hammered silver in the sullen light of the storm-skies. What I propose is dangerous and foolish, all the more reason for me to open the gate. My heart drums in my ears; blood flushes my veins, the urge to spin that crank and crack the door unstoppable. “We need to know,” I argue, sensing her fear. “We don’t even know if it’s cold. How will we prepare?”

“What about God’s Laws?” Angel whispers, and then shakes the thought free. “Forget the laws. What if we’re caught? We’ll be punished, banished. We could jeopardize Heaven. What if the Biters come?”

“Just for a few minutes,” I press, already clanging down the steps from the platform. With little choice, she trots on my heels. “Just to the river and back,” I assure her.

The gate is a solid gray metal door with rivets around the edge like decorative buttons. I grip the crank and lean into it, gritting my teeth, but the thing doesn’t squeak. “Help me, Angel.” She stands on the other side and pushes as I pull, to no use. “We need a lever.” I run to the forest and grab a thick stick that I slip through the crank and brace on the metal bars. “If we put our weight into it, the crank should budge.” Angel and I lean on the stick and it snaps, the two of us tumbling and knocking our heads.

“Shits!” I shout, flinging the broken end away and rubbing my forehead.

“Shit,” Angel corrects me and bites her lip.

“Fine, shit.” I feel a lump beneath my fingers. “We need the scythe.”

The scythe, cart and wheat field are just where we left them, undisturbed, no one bothering to check on us, relieve us, or deliver a basket of food to our rumbling bellies. I grab the scythe by its long metal snath, the pole nearly as tall as I, with two grips and an intimidating curved blade stabbing out at its end like a giant fang. I hand our blue water jar to Angel, another idea flashing brightly in my head. Then feigning an air of innocent casualness, we walk hurriedly back to the shield.

The end of the snath with its steel blade I work through the crank and wedge under the bar, assuring Angel that this is the best way to avoid a beheading. We lean on the metal haft, both of us eyeing the fang as if at any moment it intends to leap up and bite us. The crank squeals and turns an inch, the snatch coming unwedged and clattering against the metal wheel as we throw ourselves stumbling back.

“We moved it,” I say, the comment hardly necessary other than to shake off our fright. “It should get easier, now.” The snath repositioned, we grunt and giggle while the crank squeals and bars draw slowly back. My excitement outshines any sound judgment; I leave that to Angel and she thus far remains mute.

Forever later, the bars slip free. I grab the handle to the door, press my foot against the frame, and pry it open enough for us to sneak out. “Bring the water jar,” I tell Angel as we depart Heaven.

On the other side of the gate, we pause in the broken world. The wind blows cool, flapping my skirt and plucking at my sleeves. Strands of white-blond hair stream across my face and eyes. Dust and bits of sand pepper my face and the backs of my hands. I turn my back to the wind and rub my eyes free of grit. The wind carries a smell, or a blend of smells I have no way to describe; dry, acrid, and herbal, alive and dead. It entices and stinks at the same time. I’ve heard the broken world through the wall, but muted as if buried in layers of wool. Out here it hisses, creaks, ripples, and caws, a thousand tiny sounds weaving together with no pulsing hum. Outside the wall, Heaven doesn’t exist.

My sister is a statue, a block of stone with a water jar chiseled into her grip, licking her lips and blinking at the airborne dust. I grab her hand and drag her toward the mound of dirt and the cairn of stacked stones marking our father’s grave. The long, deep tomb bears the charred bones of hundreds, bodies so putrid with decay that the deacons had them doused in oil and burned.

Kneeling by the stones, I dig a hole in the dirt with my fingers and lift the water jar from Angel’s rigid hand. Half of it sits in the hole, the other half, blue as the sky, rises above. She kneels beside me and we pat the dirt around it, holding it tight.

In silence, surrounded by a broken world of endless sound, we pick tall golden flowers, weeds perhaps, but bursting with tiny, lacy petals in feathery tufts. Our fear mislaid, we pack the jar with stems, and then Angel adds white-petaled stars. “I wish we knew the names of these,” she says, our bouquet complete. “There’s so much we don’t know in Heaven.”

“I suppose God didn’t think it important,” I offer.

“Maybe God did,” Angel counters, her brow furrowed as she looks back toward the gate. “Maybe God thought lots of things important. Maybe the descendants were the ones that didn’t listen or care or remember.”

“Maybe,” I concede, though with little enthusiasm since it changes nothing of our lives or our predicament.

“I think we should go back.” Angel gestures toward the gate.

“To the river first,” I insist. “Then we’re done.” I raise my eyebrows and smile. “For today.” Angel’s hand in mine, I creep toward the riverbed, towing her bodily behind me despite the shivers prickling my skin. I half expect a horde of Biters to leap over the bank and charge us. We inch toward the edge and peer over. An animal with a clay-colored coat, pointy ears, and bushy tail startles. We both shriek with fright, clutching each other as the creature darts up the other bank and scampers across the dry earth to the trees.

“A dog!” Angel squeals. “We saw a dog.”

“A dog? Are you sure?”

“From the pictures,” she declares breathlessly.

At the bottom of the riverbed a trickle of water gurgles over exposed stones. “It was drinking from the river, I suppose.” We smile at each other, delighted with our discovery. I jump down from the bank, collect my skirt in my fists, and squat at the river’s edge, brushing my fingers through the cold dribble.

“We can refill our water jar here,” Angel says as she scrambles down beside me. She cups water in her hands and splashes her face, wiping the wet off on her skirt.

“Let’s go back now.” I climb up the bank, knowing we’ll return, at least to tend our flowers. Angel struggles up after me. We run to the gate and slip through, pulling the door shut behind us. Together, we labor over the crank and brush flaking metal from our hands, satisfied when the bar slides into the brackets. Now from the height of the viewing platform, we can see our golden flowers and starry white petals, and our river, our world a little wider. I grab the scythe on the way down and we hurry back to the wheat.

6

~Angel~

A more thorough study of every picture book confirms that our dog creature may not be a dog. Other than one painting of a brown dog sitting on a pillow, most come in some variation of black and white or brown and white. Their ears droop and their tails aren’t bushy like the little…dog thing.

Now that we venture beyond the gates of Heaven, I peruse the picture books more thoroughly, memorizing the animal pictures and their respective names. The more common animals appear to be dogs, cats, horses, elephants, deer, and lions. None of them looks particularly dangerous, except for one alarming painting of a lion attacking a horse. Aside from that one, lions lounge with men and other animals rather peacefully.

The stiff crank turns more easily with an application of grease and repeated exercise. We slip out nearly every day to pluck dead flowers from our jar and add fresh ones, to wander along the river, splash through the cold water and venture to the gangly forest at the other side. The broken world is disorderly, full of randomness, its debris scattered among its life. From inside Heaven it appeared dead and dying, yet exploring beyond the shield wall I discover it brims with life; creeping insects and tiny songbirds, snakes displaying intricate mosaics on their smooth scales, furry little climber creatures, and our shy pup.

I’ve found more flowers: sky blue, magenta and violet, butter yellow and flame red. Trees where the bark peels as if they’re paper-wrapped, fronds of green bursting in plumes from uneven ground. We stumble into vines with fierce thorns and sweet purple berries that we cautiously licked the first day of discovery, tasted on the second, and still alive and well, stuffed into our mouths on the third. We laugh and sigh and remark on how little we know of the world.

“My hands are positively purple.” I display my fingertips. “We need to wash in the river and get back.” With a last berry popped in my mouth, I yank my ragwear skirt from clutching thorns.

“I think it might rain.” Rimma sits on a mossy log at the forest’s edge, her face raised to the brooding sky. “Let’s stay for the rain.”

“When does it rain?” I ask.

Her smile shines on me. “Out here the world doesn’t follow a precise schedule, Angel. It rains when it’s ready to rain.”

“But when will that be?” I don’t mean to argue, but we can’t wait on the rain for long.

“Now maybe.” She stands and holds her arms out to her side, fair face lifted, her eyes closed and lips parted, tongue sticking out in a little pink point.

A wet plop spits on my head, another on the tip of my nose. “It’s raining,” I squeal, my mouth gaping, spreading my arms. The leaves of the forest behind us patter softly as the rain sweeps toward us in a gray veil, cold drops pelting my head and arms, its voice rising to a steady hiss. Suddenly we’re besieged by water, the broken world pouring a river over our heads. I stare at my feet, at the dark spots of rain on clay as I blink and wipe water from my face.

Rimma twirls, arms raised, face up, her mouth open. She seems feral to me, reckless, on the edge of control. As if she belongs in this broken world of turbulent wind and drowning squalls, untamed growth and death. She spins farther and farther from Heaven and from me, and I wonder if she will be my savior or my death.