IGMS Issue 9 Page 17

  Her grandmother slept soundly in the bed across the room, but not for long if the fool farm boy didn't keep his voice down. "Wait there," she said.

  She slipped into the calico she'd worn earlier at the small gathering of friends and family her grandmother had hosted. Barefoot, she tip-toed out of the room and let herself out into the night.

  She found him crouched beneath the apple tree. Now she could let the anger into her voice. "What are you doing here?"

  He blushed. "I . . . I wanted to tell you something."

  She crossed her hands over her chest and wondered what she'd ever seen in this awkward boy. Before the voices spoke, she'd been convinced that he was her future. They'd grown up together on the edge of Settler's Rest. She'd helped him with his ciphers and letters; he'd shown her how to trap a rabbit. One year, after the Pioneer Days picnic and barn dance, she'd told him that she would marry him someday and she'd kissed him quickly on the cheek. He'd blushed and run away. A few years later, his mother, a dour farm matron, negotiated the dowry with her grandmother. But they had sent the cedar chest back to the farm just last week, because Settler's Daughters did not marry.

  She looked at him, now, and realized he'd been crying. Her voice was softer. "What do you need to tell me, Enoch Bentley? You know I'm leaving tomorrow for the Temple."

  He stammered and his foot dug in the ground. "I don't want you to go, Abigail." His red eyes came up to meet hers. "I want you to stay. I want to be your husband and father your children."

  She shook her head. "I cannot marry you. I have to follow my calling," she started to say by way of explanation. "The voices --"

  "Gods damn the voices," he said, looking away. The anger in his voice stung like a slap. When their eyes met again, he looked ashamed and tragic. "I -- I'm sorry."

  When he turned and walked away, Abigail Holton stood and watched him go. Let him go, she told herself, and let some other girl harvest his corn and babies.

  He could never understand, she told herself standing there beneath the apple tree, the grass and scrub around her washed in moonlight.

  Enoch Bentley hadn't heard the god-voices; if he had, he would know that she was made for more than him.

  Mother Holton stretched out beneath the heated quilts and sighed at another day gone past.

  The god-voices had stayed angry until winter bled into spring and then suddenly they had stopped. Mother Holton met with the Sisters daily after that to hear what they'd learned listening for the scraps of truth amid the angry voices. It was long, slow work. Like the work of evolution or the work of the Book.

  Between meetings she napped. Sometimes she napped during the meetings until someone coughed politely and startled her awake.

  Mother Holton told her keepers that with the change in the weather, she no longer required the heated quilts. They didn't listen and she was glad for it -- though she kept that a secret. She felt cold all the time now.

  The door opened and she heard Sister McDougall's quiet voice. "Mother Holton, are you awake?"

  She sat up. "I am, Sister."

  "I thought I should come to you first," Sister McDougall said, "because you've asked after her."

  Daughter Hopewell. Mother Holton felt a stab of loss. She'd known there was something about the girl. "What has she done?"

  "She and three of the other younger girls were caught teaching in the city."

  It happened every time. Mother Holton sighed. "How long were they at it?"

  Sister McDougall stepped further into the room, her face unreadable in the dim light. "A week maybe. We've gathered up everyone we could and we're working with them now."

  Working with them. It sounded much nicer than the reality. "And the girls?"

  "They are restricted to quarters. I think we're catching them soon enough that we will be able to reclaim them." She paused, looking away for a moment. "But I don't know that of a certainty. I only have word of them that's gone before."

  Mother Holton nodded. "You must do your best," she said. "And I will want to speak with Daughter Hopewell in the morning.

  Sister McDougall inclined her head. "As you wish, Mother." Then she turned to the door. "I will bid you good sleeping."

  "Thank you, Sister." Mother Holton closed her eyes and listened to quiet footfalls and the sound of the hinges whispering. A question struck her and she called out. "Sister McDougall?"

  "Yes, Mother?"

  Mother Holton opened her eyes. "What were they teaching in the city?"

  Sister McDougall didn't say anything for a moment and Mother Holton wondered if something different happened, some new variation of insanity that would eventually take them into a time where knowledge and reason meant nothing. But when Sister McDougall answered, it was an old familiar tune. "They were teaching that the voices prove we are not alone in the universe."

  Yes. That was how it started. Mother Holton nodded. "Thank you. Good sleeping to you, Sister."

  "Good sleeping, Mother," she said as she closed the door.

  Mother Holton took a long time finding sleep that night.

  Daughter Abigail Holton put down her copy of the Book and stared out of the window at the moonless night. She sighed.

  She'd seen him again that day, and once again he'd not realized that it was her beneath the cowl. It had been two years since they'd spoken and the newness of her calling had long worn off. The glamour she had imagined was mostly housework and cooking, though there were small projects with the Sisters and lots of classroom time. When she'd seen Enoch Bentley and his wagon in the merchant's square she was surprised at the feelings it evoked. He'd been selling corn to one of the produce booths and she had been running a message to the mayor's office for Mother Cassel.

  She picked up the Book again, but once more she couldn't keep her mind upon the words. She tried meditating, but the only image she could conjure was straw-haired Enoch Bentley in his denim trousers and his loose-hanging, stained cotton shirt.

  Finally, she gave up and went down to Daughter Henshaw's room. "I need the dress," she said when the freckled girl opened the door, still rubbing sleep from her eyes.

  The dress was their best-kept secret. Mother Cassel and the others would have had it burned if they knew, Abigail was certain of that.

  Phoenicia Henshaw disappeared for a moment, then came back with a bundle of cloth. She pushed it through the barely open door. "Now it's your turn to hide it," she whispered.

  Abigail nodded.

  She smuggled the dress back to her room and put it on beneath her cassock and cowl. Then she slipped out her window and climbed into the nearby tree. She'd snuck in and out of the Temple dozens of times to visit her grandmother over the last two years. She easily slipped the gate guard and hid her cowl and cassock in the Pioneer graveyard before turning west and making for Bentley Farm.

  Damn fool girl, she told herself as she stood beneath an alder tree and watched his house. What are you at?

  The windows were all dark. She moved beneath the one that she remembered was his and stretched up to tap at it gently.

  Nothing.

  She tapped again and then jumped when it groaned open. Enoch Bentley looked down, alarm on his face turning to surprise. "Abigail Holton? What are you doing here?"

  What was she doing here? She looked away. "I . . . I came to see you."

  "In the middle of the night?" Maybe he saw the look on her face. Maybe he just didn't want to talk in whispers from the window. He frowned. "Meet me at the barn," he said.

  She met him at the large double doors. He wore the same trousers and shirt she'd seen him in earlier, his high leather boots scuffed and cracked. He pushed one of the doors open and went inside. Abigail followed.

  After they got inside, he lit the stub of a candle and put it on a tin plate. He opened his mouth, a questioning look on his face, and Abigail swallowed and pushed herself at him. Her mouth found his mouth and she kissed him like the pictures she'd seen in Mercurio's Notes on Human Behavior. At first, he tried to talk
, but eventually, he started kissing back.

  She felt warmth in her belly, a tingling that spread into the rest of her body, out to her toes and fingers and hair.

  Come harvest, she thought, I'll give him his firstborn daughter and she will be strong and will not let the voices change her. She would leave the Settler's Daughters proud of her shame and go to live a life of love in the midst of corn and babies and Enoch Bentley.

  Afterwards, she lay in his arms and pretended it was their wedded bed.

  "Have you left the Daughters then?" Enoch finally asked.

  She turned so she could face him. "No," she said. "I'm going back after you're asleep and you'll not see me again."

  He smiled. "Then I will never sleep again."

  She said nothing. Instead, she pulled him closer and stroked his face and shoulders and side, pretending she would be there in the morning to cook breakfast while he tended to the farm.

  But after he was asleep, she stood and wiped herself clean with an old towel she found near the goat stall. Silently, she pulled her dress back on and fought back tears.

  She could imagine all she wanted. She could dream a house full of children and a legacy of love. But in the end, she would go back to the voices.

  And if somehow Enoch Bentley's seed did take hold, Abigail would go to Mother Cassel, confess her transgressions and drink the Tander oil to end the pregnancy.

  Tonight was a necessary detour, she told herself. A sacrifice was a sacrifice only when its worth was fully understood.

  Mother Holton insisted that they take her to the girl's room. They sat her in a chair in the corner and waited outside. Esther Hopewell sat on the edge of her bed, her red-rimmed eyes dark from lack of sleep. "What will happen to me?" she asked.

  Mother Holton smiled. "You'll be reclaimed from the voices."

  The girl's eyes went wide and her voice trembled. "I don't want to be reclaimed."

  They never did. But with time, the voices outside -- incessant and reasonable and calm -- would offset the internal ones and the girl would find the discipline to hold those ghosts at bay. The old woman nodded. "Nonetheless," she said. She leaned forward. "You've read the Book, child. You understand why."

  The young girl's eyes filled with water. "And after that?"

  "You'll be watched for a spell. And then you'll be sent home."

  A tear spilled over. "This is the only home I've ever known."

  Mother Holton reached over and patted her knee. "And so it shall continue to be. But it will be different for you now." She paused. "And your friends will be back at the farms." Watched for a spell, she thought, and kept far apart to keep a resurgence from occurring. The Seventeenth Age of Unknowing would come soon enough -- no point helping it come faster.

  When the girl spoke next, Mother Holton heard the loneliness in her voice. "I don't know if I even want to be alive anymore," Esther Hopewell said.

  "Of course you don't," Mother Holton said. "But you don't have to know anything right now except for this: Sister McDougall and the others will help you -- if you let them."

  I could tell her, Mother Holton thought. I could tell her that it is the easiest truth of all. That we are not alone in this universe as long as we have each other, as long as we have the Settlement. But some truths could not be freely given -- they had to be slowly revealed because the process of revelation was the true engine of change. They would spend months with her, reclaiming her from the god-voices, and in the end she'd live out her days in quiet service to the Settler's Daughters or marry into the Farming Combine and live among someone's corn and babies.

  She realized that Daughter Hopewell had spoken quietly and she started. "What did you say, child?"

  "For a moment," she repeated, "I was certain I was not alone."

  Mother Holton remembered that feeling. She'd felt it three times. Twice, it was the voices. Promises of home and love followed by threats and wrath and the ranting echoes of a people driven mad long ago. But she'd also felt it one other time, that night so long ago, when she'd pretended to be Enoch Bentley's bride.

  "You are not alone," Mother Holton said.

  The sacrifice gnawed at her for a month. Abigail Holton sobbed at night when no one could see or hear. She found herself oversleeping and unable to focus on her studies. When Enoch Bentley's letter found her, snuck in through an elaborate network of Daughters' errands, it reached her at her lowest point. She'd been scolded twice already that week and had just realized she was late with her bleeding. She opened his letter, read it, and discovered there were even darker basements beneath the lowest places of her heart. Like the voices, Enoch Bentley's letter started with promises of love and home, then became angry and cajoling.

  The full weight of the sacrifice didn't strike her until later in the day. When she suddenly burst into tears in the middle of dinner, she found herself in front of Mother Cassel's desk as snowflakes fell outside the window behind, shining silver in the moonlight.

  "I do not think you need the Tander oil just yet," Mother Cassel said after Abigail told her story. "You are under tremendous strain. Wait a few more days and then see me if you've not started."

  Abigail Holton sniffed, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her cassock. "Will I need to be reclaimed, Mother?"

  Mother Cassel laughed. "Good lords, no, child." She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. "If they made such a way as to reclaim the heart from love, we'd all be better off dead."

  "I do not love Enoch Bentley," she said.

  Mother Cassel chuckled again. "You do not know that you do today. But someday you will, and it will help you know that you've chosen well." She leaned forward in her chair. "You were making a sacrifice, weren't you?"

  Stunned, she nodded slowly. "How did you know?"

  "The Addenda speaks of it. It is a common theme among certain of the Settler's Daughters."

  Abigail swallowed. "What does that mean?"

  Mother Cassel smiled. "Nothing to worry on tonight, child." She sat back in her chair. "But it speaks highly of you, that you can be sure."

  That night, Abigail carefully folded Enoch's letter and hid it away beneath her mattress. From then forward, she read it every night until it faded so badly that she could not read it, holding it in her hands until it finally fell apart.

  But even long after that, she lay awake nights and recited it from memory until it simply became some small part of the other voices she remembered.

  Mother Holton sipped her tea and looked out on autumn. She sat wrapped in the quilt, but near the window so she could see the ducks on the pond. There was a knock at the door and she turned toward it. "Yes?"

  Esther Hopewell stepped into the room. "Hello, Mother," she said.

  "Hello, Esther Hopewell." She hated that she could no longer call her daughter. "Sister McDougall tells me that you are leaving us."

  Esther Hopewell nodded. "I am, Mother."

  "What will you do, child?"

  The girl shook her head. "I do not know. I will find work in the city. Maybe I will meet a nice boy and bear him a daughter."

  Mother Holton nodded. "Maybe you will." Her reclamation had gone well, but Mother Holton had assumed it would. She'd finally understood what she'd known about this girl, but she was certain that the girl did not know it yet. She would know it later, when the irony of this sacrifice would make her laugh for years to come. But for now, Esther Hopewell was simply a strong young woman who had once been a Settler's Daughter before the voices changed her life.

  I came by the voices and she leaves by them, Mother Holton thought. She raised her hand for the Matriarchal Blessing. "Go ye in grace and peace, Esther Hopewell. Be fruitful and Settle the land."

  "Thank you, Mother," she said. She curtsied and then left.

  Sister Abernathy came in shortly after, carrying a tray with a steaming bowl and a piece of bread. She helped Mother Holton into bed and then placed the tray on her lap. "I've done that looking into you asked of me, Mother," she said.
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br />   Mother Holton lifted the spoon to her mouth, tasting the sweet corn chowder. She couldn't remember any 'looking into' that she'd needed recently. But she'd learned not to show it, to simply nod and wait.

  "He died six years ago," Sister Abernathy continued. "I talked with his daughter when I was in South Hold last week. He left many children and grandchildren behind." She laughed. "There were Bentley's all over the place."

  Mother Holton nodded. She vaguely remembered hearing that he'd gone south with the earlier expeditions, more years ago than she could count. "He lived a full life then," she said in a quiet voice.

  Sister Abernathy leaned forward. "Who was he, Mother?"

  "Someone I wanted to have a happy life," she said. "And it sounds like he did."

  She finished her corn chowder, soaking the bread in what little remained to soften it for the teeth she still had. When she was done, Sister Abernathy took the tray away just as the linen girl entered with her stack of heated quilts.

  They tucked her in and left her to nap, but instead of sleeping, she laid awake and remembered that night long ago; the night she'd given herself to Enoch Bentley in order to understand what she was giving up to serve the Settler's Daughters, to give her life to the mystery of the voices in the quiet halls of the First Home Temple. Words came back to her, a voice that spoke promises of love and home, and for the first time in years, she found herself reciting Enoch Bentley's letter. She was surprised that she still remembered most of the words, and she spoke them now quietly as if they were a prayer of great power. She moved slowly through the first half, telling herself that it was to savor the beauty of them. Lie to yourself, old woman, see what it will get you. She recited the first half slowly so that she would be asleep before the voice changed. She did not want to hear the angry voices tonight -- not the voices that had driven her to Temple so long ago. And certainly not the voice of Enoch Bentley that had given her calling a value beyond a young girl's fervor. She closed her eyes and smelled the fresh-plowed earth.