The Bone Wall (9 page)

“What oath?” I hold my breath, suspicious of anything she’ll demand.

“You must swear to let me bear all the burdens of our life in the broken world. You must swear to let me endure every suffering and evil that befalls us, allow me to be as vile and vicious and heartless as I need to be to keep you safe.”

“No, Rimma, I can’t swear that,” I cry, reaching for her hand, her words terrifying.

Her fingers close on my hand, a vise squeezing my bones as she rolls on her side toward me. “Promise me,” she hisses, her breath hot on my cheek. “Papa said life brims with choices, Angel. Every minute of every hour of every day, we face choices that define us. This is
my
choice and I want your oath.”

“Let me go, Rimma.” I yank on my hand, trying to shove her away. She snarls, throws off her blanket and climbs on top of me, pinning me with her body. Her knees hold down my arms as she leans over me, a fall of pale hair casting her features in shadow, eyes black as midnight. “You’re hurting me,” I yell. She slaps a hand over my mouth, pressing my lips to my teeth, her knees digging into my arms.

Beneath her weight, my pleas rupture into muffled sobs, strangled breath snorting through my nose as terror and pain flare inside me. Rimma’s breath touches my ear. “Papa chose to protect the innocent, the future of the world, even though that choice required his life. That’s how I choose to define myself. This is who I am now, the hawk.”

Our father’s words haunt me, twisted by anger and fear, her body bruising my arm bones as I writhe, her hand crushing my screams against my lips. Without a word, she sits up, relieving the pressure on my arms, slowly withdrawing her palm from my mouth. My hands fly to my face, hiding from this stranger, my sister, my mirror. I feel as if I’ve never known her, don’t remember this woman at all.

“You are the future of the world,” Rimma says, her voice softer, more familiar. She touches my arm gently and I twist away, sobs racking my body.

“Please, Rimma,” I beg, “get off me.”

The shield glitters, tiny cracks rapidly lacing the entire surface, the spectacle dazzling my eyes. My sister’s a black spirit silhouetted against a brilliant blue fire. “Give me your oath,” she insists, “that you will guard your innocence and hope, Angel. Nothing more. Then I’ll make the hard choices to keep you true.”

“I promise. I swear it,” I cry out of desperation. The shield wall flares and winks out. I hold my breath. Rimma raises her face to the sky, the cold wind blowing through Heaven. Then the shield begins its tireless drone and the waves of light rise in the south and ripple over us once again.

**

Rimma’s smile looks the same. Physically we still mirror each other, impossible for the descendants of Heaven to tell apart, even our mother. But my sister feels different to me, hard and cold as iron, resolute, fierce and frightening. I can’t describe what happened the night she cut my lips on my teeth and bruised my arms, only that she’s ready to face the Biters.

The shield wall shimmers and snaps constantly now, day and night, hissing and sparking, splinters of light crackling like broken glass underfoot. Blind and deaf, the descendants of Heaven go about their daily routines in a delusional dream of salvation as if the shield will suddenly awaken, grow up, and assume some responsibility. As if God intends to reach down from the pearly clouds and perform a trick of magic, as if we bear no accountability for our own survival, as if Biters abide only in ghoulish bedtime tales, as if we never locked out the descendants of Paradise.

No less illusory, Rimma believes she can embrace evil. She cleaves us in two, breaks us into pieces and sort the shards into distinct piles, no air between. Yet I recognize the seed of hope inside her, if only in her desire to protect me. How can she not see the same contradiction in me?

“Are you coming?” she calls from the ladder’s bottom rung.

My foot reaches down, finding a toehold and I clamber down the wobbly thing as quickly as I can, afraid it will shake loose on me.

The East Spoke still beckons us and we stroll it almost daily. Rimma trains with her weapons with the same intensity, but I sense she’s more realistic about her capabilities. I don’t think she expects to live long when the Biters storm Heaven, and I doubt I can live without her. I still climb the metal platform but rarely observe her mad dance. Instead, I lean over the rail and watch our flowers wither. Bare stalks with sprays of silvery seed quiver forlornly from the blue jar. It hardly matters, the wild flowers have vanished with every remnant of green, and we lack the courage to open the gate.

Always gently now, Rimma takes my hand, and we stroll down the stone spoke, knives and sickles clanking in deep pockets, hoping we’ll avoid being pricked in our thighs. Rimma’s spear serves as a walking stick, the paring knife at top covered with a brown sock, hardly noticeable as long as no one pries.

The fields wallow in greenness, fruit trees laden with peaches, the pine forest fragrant and deceptively peaceful. As soon as we empty our bristling pockets near her training ground, we’re frantically stuffing the weapons back in. Arguing voices, smattered with urgency, reach us from just beyond the forest, nearer the gate. Rimma holds a finger to her lips for silence when she sees my bulging eyes.

My head shakes furiously at anything she’s about to suggest. I want to sneak back the way we came, but she has other ideas. Beckoning with her hand, she leads me deeper into our quaint little forest, where we once again empty our pockets and she buries her blades in pine needles.

“Let’s go back,” I whisper.

“We are.” She points in the direction of the voices.

“Not back there,” I insist in a hiss. “Back up the spoke; back to the roof.”

“Go ahead,” she whispers the dare. “I’m sneaking closer and climbing.”

Unwilling to leave her, I follow, dragging my feet, exhaling a breathy groan. Branches loom over me at our tree’s wide base. This is the tree where we perched when our father died, when Paradise burned on our shield wall. Rimma leaps and grabs the low branch, swings her legs up, hooking them and pulling herself upright.

“Much easier with trousers,” she whispers, her eyes shining. I bite my lip and jump, following her up. Seeking our perch, we creep up through the branches like the bushy-tailed climbers we observed outside the wall.

Deacon Abrum’s rumbling voice carries through the boughs. “We are God’s chosen, His Saved. We shall not be abandoned.” Through the pine needles, I recognize his bulk on the viewing platform with twenty or so other men, deacons and elders, arguing about the wall.

“You may believe so,” another man asserts, “but no one’s told
them
that.”

Abrum’s reply is lost as Rimma and I shoot glances at each other and continue our scramble up for a view beyond the earthen ring outside our shield. The men’s voices squabble below us, desperate and testy, thick with fear and clotting in the forest like fog on the distant mountains. I cling to the branch, mouth open, breath juddering in my chest.

Across our river, hundreds of Biters construct a sprawling camp, lighting fires and erecting shelters from stripped branches, blankets, and hides. I see not only men but women and children. Large cook-pots dangle from tripods over smoky flames. Animal furs, coils of rope, weapons, and sacks of goods hang from crude frames. Dogs, real dogs of myriad colors and sizes wander the camp, and four squat horses, far from the majestic beasts of our picture books, chomp idly on patches of dry grass. Children run and screech at play while women, many of them pregnant, organize the camp; the men prepare their weapons.

Rimma’s fingernails dig into the tree and she barely blinks. I think she might scream. “Rimma?”

“Biters,” she chokes. “Hundreds of them.”

“They have families, babies.” I don’t know why this surprises me, that they’re human, that we might have this in common.

“So did Paradise.”

Beside me, my sister plans, her lips moving as she silently takes stock, counting, evaluating. I see her mind working, the muscles in face tense, her body rigid as she clings to the branch. She’s so sublimely beautiful and so utterly steeped with thoughts of death, she breaks my heart. I want her to recognize possibility here, that death may not be the only outcome. But the tumbled bones of Paradise gleam starkly outside our shield, thousands of bones tangled as white as driftwood, skulls trapped in rib cages, spines curving like dead snakes, the long bones of limbs jutting from the wreckage. Some are so small, little bones, white piles of rubble, tiny skulls with grinning jaws.

“Our bone wall,” I breathe, the realization jarring me as my eyes sweep the long low wall of bones nestled at the top of the embankment surrounding Heaven. “That’s why Mag calls it our bone wall.”

With a quick glance, Rimma nods and returns her gaze to the Biters, a trace of pain clear as dew in her eyes.

Not far from us, the deacons and elders debate, only Deacon Abrum’s assurances of God’s protection discernible above other more rancorous voices. I can’t help but wonder if he believes his own sermons, truly trusts in God’s mercy and our righteousness. How can he preach faith in the sanctity of God’s Laws while he sins with my mother? His defense of inaction certainly attests to his lack of fear, either that or he hides it well…or doesn’t realize the depth of his terror. I wonder which he fears most, the Biters or the possibility Rimma is right—God is a fairytale.

From our vantage point in the tree, we watch the Biters’ camp expand through the cold afternoon, new shelters pitched, water hauled from our river, food steaming over red coals, clusters of men crossing the riverbed to point at our shield, to confer, to laugh. Several groups hike on, tracking the perimeter of our wall, and we can only assume they intend to guard the other gates, to sever any pitiful effort at escape.

Twilight purples the broken sky in a fresh bruise. The viewing platform stands empty when Rimma and I descend the pine and collect her weapons. We return to Heaven’s heart for food, blankets, rope, and rumors, and with nothing decided among the men, we return to the forest to begin our nightly vigil.

9

~Rimma~

Over the next two days, our bower acquires some of the comforts of home. I twist and weave a length of rope into a web between the branch we sit on and the one over our heads, covering it with a blanket. Now we can lean back and doze without fear of plunging to a gruesome death. Angel hangs a sack over a higher branch, the rope knotted to one handle so it sags open beside her, stocked with fruit, bread, cheese, and a leaky jar of water.

Our mother knows where we hide since Angel told her, but she’s the only one to notice our absence. All over Heaven, chores lie undone; God’s Saved praying in turmoil, God’s House of Law packed with supplicants on aching knees. If Deacon Abrum is correct and we foil the Biters, we’ll have more chores to muddle through than I care to count.

Angel sleeps beside me, cradled by my rough sling, her feet dangling. The failing shield sparkles beautifully at night, casting an ethereal light as it dies, flickering blue filaments against the deep velvet void of night. Heaven glows beneath the shield’s canopy, blue-bathed, all other colors leached from the air with the day’s end.

Across the river lies my vision of Hell; a stinking, squalid, violent world squirming in the vermillion hues of a dozen blazing fires. The fiercest flames leap and writhe near the river’s edge, dwarfing the men, women, and children gathered in the light. Drums pound a thunderous heartbeat, driving my blood and hurting my chest. Biters chant and howl at the night sky while women dance, throbbing and swaying before the men, exposing legs and breasts, wild hair whipping as they spin.

Biters hoot as a man joins the women, his fists raised, head thrown back as he howls and jumps among them, as the women gyrate against him, enticing him. He paws at them, grinds against their hips, and the Biters watching the dance urge them on with shouts and laughter. The drum beat hammers, increasing in speed, the dance a frenzy of wild abandon, of soaring lust and greed. I’m disgusted, yet enthralled, unable to look away as the man grabs one of the women and leaps from the circle of flame, dragging her laughing behind him, another man jumping into the dance to capture his place.

The two Biters run into the near shadows and fuck in the dirt, grunting and groaning. My stomach lurches, and I close my eyes to the sight as the drumbeats pound on, the speed once again swelling to a feverish rut. A hand touches my arm and my eyes open to Angel’s silver irises searching my face.

**

Dawn rises in the broken world only hours after night’s revelries end. A fitful sleep leaves me muddle-headed and irritable. Angel passes me the jar of water and cants her chin toward the Biters’ camp. “It’s Mag. She knows we’re here.”

On our side of the river, standing with more than a dozen men, Mag leans on her staff, body twisted like a screw, eye squinting, peering directly at us. She taps the ground with the butt of her stick and nods, mouthing a word I can’t decipher, “kneel” or “mine” or “soon.”

Her face drawn, Angel sighs. She hands me broken bread and a wedge of cheese, accepting the water in return. “We have to tell the others to kneel when the Biters come. We have to tell them soon.”

“Kneel to that? To what we witnessed?” My hand shakes, fingers squeezing the bread. “I can’t, Angel. It’s…barbaric. It’s not…”