by Bobby Adair
“Wait!” she hissed. “It’s almost impossible to shoot a moving target. When it stops moving, we’ll creep up on it again.”
They watched as the rabbit moved farther away. It stopped.
“Okay,” she said, speaking so quietly that she barely moved her lips. “Let’s go.”
She looked over to find William smiling. The thrill of the hunt coursed through her, reminding her of her earliest hunting days. It made her feel alive again. Soon they’d gotten close enough that she could see the rabbit’s puffy, furred tail.
She raised her bow. She aimed.
The rabbit turned sideways, exposing a round, inquisitive eye. She fired. The arrow cut through the air and struck its head, knocking it over and skewering it to the ground. Dead.
“A head shot. How’d you do that?” William asked, mouth stuck open in disbelief.
“Years of practice.”
“I want to learn.” The words tumbled out of his mouth, accompanying the eager look on his face. It was the same look she’d probably given Rowan and Cooley when she’d first started hunting. She smiled.
“Let’s go get that one first. Then I’ll teach you. I bet this field is full of them.”
William agreed excitedly, and they darted over to grab their kill. Melora removed the arrow and wiped it on the grass. Then she had William store the rabbit in his bag. They continued hunting. This time, she let William hold the bow. She explained how to aim and fire.
“What does ‘fire’ mean?” William asked.
Melora paused. “I’m not sure. It’s just the word we’ve always used, I guess.”
“All I know is the fire that keeps us warm and cooks our food.”
“In this case, it means to let go of the arrow.”
“Oh. Okay,” William said, digesting the information. His brow furrowed.
“Have you ever used a bow before?”
“A few times, at my friend’s house, but I was never any good,” William admitted.
“The rabbits out here probably haven’t seen humans often. So they won’t be as hard to hit. They’ll likely run for short distances and stop. That’ll give us a chance to get them.”
His first few shots missed, but William was persistent, crouching and sneaking up on the animals with a tenacity Melora had rarely seen. He didn’t get frustrated, and he didn’t give up. Soon he’d hit one. His face lit with glee as the animal bucked and kicked. They chased it to the edge of the field, the arrow protruding from its back, until it had tired and fallen. William’s smile persisted as they finished off and retrieved the animal.
“I have to tell Mom!” he yelled, holding the rabbit in the air.
Melora followed him as he raced across the field where Ella and Bray waited. It wasn’t until she’d crossed half the distance that she realized her smile was wide enough to match William’s.
Chapter 16: Fitzgerald
Fitzgerald followed Franklin toward Merchant Street—not the market where farmers sold their vegetables and hunters traded their skinny birds, but the street where the wealthy merchants sold their wares. Father Winthrop had instructed Franklin to take her there, and following General Blackthorn’s instructions, get her properly clothed—and no matter what, to have it done by sundown.
Neither Franklin nor Fitz had spoken a word since leaving the temple. Franklin walked ahead and Fitz behind. As much as Fitz wanted Franklin to suffer in the silence of her anger, she knew the opportunity that she perceived while in the temple was something that might be lost if she dallied over her emotions like a teenage girl.
She reached up and laid a hand on Franklin’s shoulder
His body went rigid at her touch. He stopped in the middle of his stride but didn’t turn back to look at her.
Unnecessarily, she said, “Wait a moment.”
He said nothing in response.
“Look at me,” she told him.
He shook his head. “I can’t.”
“Why?” she asked.
“I’m ashamed.”
“For what you did to Oliver?”
“Yes.”
She reached up again and pulled his shoulder to spin him around to face her.
Franklin complied, but when he turned, all he seemed to want to do was look at his feet.
“Listen to me,” she said, “we need to talk.”
He nodded.
“As much as it hurts me to say, something is happening, something more important than what happened with Oliver last night.”
Franklin looked up, red-eyed and distressed. “What?”
Fitz looked toward the east. “There’s a section of town over there, some ruins.”
Franklin turned in that direction. “I know the area you’re talking about. What of it?”
“We need to go there now,” said Fitz. “We need a private place to talk.”
Franklin’s face lit up, and he gave himself away when his eyes fell to Fitz’s breasts.
“Not that,” she snapped. “We need to talk.”
The place they went to was called the Crooked Box by the children. It had been called that when Fitz was a girl and had probably been called the same thing when her mother played there as a child. It was a strange structure of thick ancient stone, with six sides of varying length, and a thick roof. Each wall had a doorway, roughly a rectangle the size of a man but worn and crumbling on the edges. The Crooked Box stood in the center of a larger slab of mostly flat ancient stone. The children used the place as a make-believe fort, where the ones playing soldier climbed on top, and the ones playing the demons attempted to claw their way up.
When Fitz and Franklin arrived, Fitz shooed away two young boys doing something mischievous. She pulled Franklin inside, then spun around to look through the open doorways, ensuring no unwanted ears were close enough to hear.
Out of three of the doors, she saw other ruins and the backside of a row of houses, all at a distance too far to hear. Opposite that was a field full of brown crops that looked to have been trampled. She knew they hadn’t been. They had withered under the weight of the snow that had fallen and mostly melted away. Far across those fields, only the circle wall stood tall in the distance.
“I don’t see anyone,” Franklin said as he stepped up close to Fitz.
She flinched, turning her cheek to what she thought was a kiss coming her way. She stepped away from arms that were coming up to embrace her and gave Franklin a serious look.
Franklin deflated back into sullenness.
“I don’t know what to feel about what you did to Oliver,” she told him, her eyes stinging with tears as she remembered Oliver’s cries. “In time, I hope we can figure that out.”
“How much time?” Franklin asked. “No, it doesn’t matter. I feel awful about what happened last night. I’m sure Oliver hates me, and he has every right to. I just wish I could make him understand it was for his own good.”
Fitz laughed bitterly. “His own good?” She’d heard that said too many times when a man raised his hand to a child or a woman.
“No,” Franklin said, stealing a half step closer. “I didn’t mean it like that. Father Winthrop was going to send him to the orphanage, or maybe even the pyre, if I didn’t do it.” Franklin looked away, shame clear on his face. “He was going to send me to the field. He would have put us both out into the winter to starve.”
“You wouldn’t have starved,” said Fitz.
Nodding, Franklin’s voice grew suddenly anxious. “Yes, we would have. What if Minister Beck and Scholar Evan are right? What if famine is coming this winter?” Franklin walked over to the doorway facing the fields. Gray clouds floated across the sky. “The winter will be bad this year. That’s what the old people say.”
“I didn’t know.” Fitz shook her head.
“We’ve talked about the famine before,” Franklin said, meekly.
“No,” said Fitz. “I didn’t know the part about Father Winthrop putting you two out.” She started to feel bad. And the pyre? Would Winthrop really have sent Oliver to the pyre for the sin of sneaking out at night and playing in the streets just as all boys his age did? Was Winthrop that cruel? Was he truly that evil?
Fitz admitted to herself that yes, he was.
She’d seen him sit on the dais on every Cleansing day of her life. She’d heard his pious blathering as he condemned women and children to burn. Worst, she’d seen the look on his face as he closed his eyes and turned toward the sky, savoring each shriek as though it was the singing of an angel. Fitz, as a young girl, had always found Winthrop’s behavior odd, a bit creepy. It was when she had the misfortune to bring Father Winthrop to his sexual climax that she saw that same face again. It was his face of orgasmic ecstasy.
That horrified her.
Father Winthrop was no human man. He was no unclean demon. He was something else, worse than both. Something wicked, but without a name. He was the truest of evils. He was the monster that masked itself in the blackness of children’s dreams. He hid in the shadows of cold root cellars. He lurked in the forest. He was the icy hand that murdered babies in their beds, stealing their breath and leaving them blue-lipped and cold.
To the question of whether Winthrop would burn Oliver at the pyre, the answer was a resounding affirmative. There was no limit to the malevolence of those two yellowish-red eyes that looked out from behind those bulging fat cheeks.
She hated Winthrop as much as she hated The Word.
Involuntarily she snorted to get the memory of the smell of him out of her nose. She spat to get a sudden taste of him out of her mouth.
“Are you okay?” Franklin asked, concerned.
Nodding, Fitzgerald said, “I hate what you did to Oliver, but I understand.” Fitzgerald’s tears started to flow as she put a hand to her head. “Up here, it makes sense. I can see why you had to do what you did.” She put her hand over her heart. “Here, it hurts me too much. It hurts me to think of what you did to poor Oliver. That look on your face as you beat him frightens me. It’s as if you had turned into a younger, leaner version of Father Winthrop.” Fitzgerald sobbed. “But maybe what hurts the most,” she reached out and put a hand on Franklin’s cheek, “is that I thought I’d lost the Franklin I care about; that you’d turned into something else. Now I know what you must have been feeling to have to beat your friend like that. It breaks my heart.”
Franklin embraced Fitz, not caring if any passersby, playing children, or farmers in the field saw them in the Crooked Box.
Chapter 17: Fitzgerald
When enough tears had fallen, Fitz pushed the emotions aside and pulled away from Franklin so she could dry her wet cheeks on the sleeve of her dress. “What do you know of what’s happening with Father Winthrop and General Blackthorn?”
Franklin’s face showed his confusion. “I know a great many things, I suppose.”
“The army?” Fitz asked. “You do know that General Blackthorn is calling up the militia, right?”
“I—” Franklin started, “I knew the militia was drilling. I’ve heard bits and pieces. I suspected some things.”
“Do you know why?” She asked.
“To keep order if the food runs out?” Franklin said, his answer clearly a guess.
“General Blackthorn is taking the militia to exterminate a horde of demons in the Ancient City.”
Franklin’s eyes showed a childish wonder at the mention of the Ancient City. To all children in the three townships, the Ancient City was the place of fairy tales and nightmares. All manner of heroes in the stories went there to slay demons. All manner of horrors befell them. He said, “I didn’t know.”
Fitz said, “He’s taking—”
“Wait,” said Franklin, surprised, and a little bit irritated. “He talked about all of that while you were in the temple this morning?”
Fitz nodded. She took a moment to explain about Blackthorn’s fixation on her, how he’d leered at her through the whole meeting with Winthrop. Once he’d seated her in the pew, however, they’d treated her as if she were deaf. She told Franklin the highlights of the meeting, and finished with, “I always knew in my heart that Father Winthrop was a coward.”
Looking nervously out through the doorways again, Franklin said, “Take care when you say such things. The pyre awaits all who misspeak.”
“Do you disagree?” Fitz asked. “You’ve known him longer than anyone. You’ve been in his company more than anybody.”
Franklin pursed his lips, looked around, and whispered, “He’s a foul man. If there truly is a creator of men, then I think that creator took all the worst parts a person could be, rolled them into one man, and called it Winthrop.”
Fitz half smiled at Franklin’s agreement.
“Just be very careful when you utter such things,” said Franklin. Getting back on topic, he said, “Why is it important that General Blackthorn is leaving with the militia?” Franklin shrugged. “That is the way of things, is it not?”
Fitz shook her head. “This time it’s different. Mind you, I haven’t heard the previous conversation, so I’ve had to piece together some of the gaps. I believe General Blackthorn is taking the cavalry and an army of militiamen bigger than any previously seen. He’s taking an army so large that he wants both Minister Beck and Father Winthrop to accompany him.”
Franklin asked, “How can you be sure?”
“I can’t be sure of the count, I don’t have my numbers,” said Fitz, embarrassed. “I only know that when they talked of the men going, they talked as if it might be nearly all the men in the three townships.”
“That’s not possible,” said Franklin, dismissively. “Just not possible.”
“Most of them, then,” Fitz said, defending her point. “You must admit, though, that Blackthorn intends to create an army of enormous scale. That only makes sense if he’s decided to take the whole council with him to watch over the men. And the militiamen are already coming to Brighton from the townships. You can’t deny that.”
Nodding, Franklin didn’t say anything. He looked out through the doors and into the distance.
“What do you think?” Fitz asked. “Does that make sense?”
Franklin nodded again.
“Of one thing I have no doubt,” said Fitz.
Franklin turned back to Fitz, giving her his full attention.
“Father Winthrop is afraid to go out beyond the circle wall. He shivers when he talks of getting on a horse and riding beside General Blackthorn.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” said Franklin.
“Even when General Blackthorn assured him he’d not have to take part in the battles, that he’d remain in the camp to comfort men’s souls when they returned from the day’s fighting, still Father Winthrop balked. He begged and cried for General Blackthorn to leave him in Brighton.”
Franklin smirked. “Father Winthrop should take care with what he says. If a commoner had spoken in that way to General Blackthorn, he’d likely be in the pyre now.”
“The threat of the pyre was mentioned,” said Fitz. “In the end, I’m afraid Father Winthrop’s protests seemed to sway General Blackthorn.”
Letting surprise out in his voice, Franklin asked, “He’s going to allow Father Winthrop to stay?”
“General Blackthorn allowed that he was going to take time to decide the matter,” said Fitz. “Father Winthrop may ride out with the army, or he may remain the last of the three Ministers in Brighton.”
Franklin grimaced.
Nodding, Fitz said, “I thought the same.”
“Father Winthrop with absolute power,” said Franklin. “That would be bad for us all. Gen
eral Blackthorn is a tyrant, but he’s smart. He keeps order. He’s consistent. Father Winthrop cannot lead the townships. What would happen if things went badly and General Blackthorn and Minister Beck were killed?”
That was the question that Fitz was leading Franklin to. With what he was already saying, she hoped he’d see the next steps, or at least find within himself the courage to see them.
“If General Blackthorn and Minister Beck get killed out beyond the circle wall,” Fitz said, looking around, making sure no one was within sight, “Father Winthrop must be with them. He must suffer the same fate.”
Franklin stared at Fitz. His face showed nothing of what he was thinking.
Fitz grew fearful that maybe she’d gone too far, suggesting not only that Father Winthrop might die, but also that he should.
Finally, Franklin nodded and croaked, “I agree.”
Fitz wrapped Franklin in her arms and pressed her breasts against his chest while she turned her head to whisper in his ear. “Thank you, Franklin. I was so afraid you wouldn’t.”
“More than that,” said Franklin, whispering back. “Not only do I hope that Father Winthrop goes out with the army, I pray that he doesn’t return.”
Fitz rubbed her hands over Franklin’s shoulders. In her experience, men liked that, the subtle admiration of their strong muscles. It girded their confidence, especially among the young men visiting The House of Barren Women for the first time, full of nervousness to the point they couldn’t get aroused. Despite the bluster and dung about strong men with hearts of stone, Fitz knew that those who weren’t cruel, the men who’d one day make good husbands, needed their confidence inflated, and once done, that confidence held them up.
