Phoenix Without Ashes

by Edward Bryant

  “And I?” said Devon.

  “It would seem only fair.” She laughed, and the sound was both nervous and soft.

  “Yes, it would.” Devon’s voice shook slightly.

  They helped each other undress. Simple buttons and eyes became formidable barriers. Fingers trembled, turned clumsy as broomsticks. A button popped loose from Rachel’s dress, and they both laughed longer than was necessary.

  At last she slipped her arms out of the garment and pushed it down below her hips. Devon helped, sliding the dress down her legs. At the last, she helped, drawing up her knees to free her feet. The undergarments went more quickly. Rachel placed the rough weave of Devon’s shirt between them. Finally they both lay naked, facing each other; close enough that each could feel the heat of the other’s body, but nothing more.

  Rachel felt his fingers tickle lightly along her flank. In turn she reached out to touch the place between his legs that still gave her so much wonder. She handled him gently, but heard him draw in a quick breath. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Did I hurt you?”

  Devon said, “No. Just the opposite.”

  She continued to touch his penis, less tentatively now. She heard his breath quickening. Rachel said, “What do you want me to do?”

  “That,” said Devon. “Anything. I don’t know.” He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her against him.

  “Don’t be rough. Please.”

  “I’m sorry.” His kiss was gentler, but she could feel his tension. “It won’t be like last time.”

  “I know—”

  Devon kissed her again; her lips, then her neck and down to her breasts. She plaited her fingers in his hair and pulled his head against her chest. After a time he freed himself and said, “I love you.”

  “And I, you....”

  The fumbling time came when Rachel rolled onto her back and Devon knelt between her knees. “I don’t know how to put my legs,” she said.

  Devon said, “Nor I, mine.” They both laughed nervously, and clumsily maneuvering, found a compromise. Supporting himself with one arm, he began to penetrate her.

  She cried out and twisted her body away from his.

  “What’s wrong?” he said. “Is it hurting you?”

  “Yes,” she said, eyes squeezed shut.

  “Don’t you want to do it?”

  “Yes,” she said. “No. I don’t know.” She rolled her head from side to side. Then she turned back toward him and said, “Do it slowly... it hurts very much.”

  He tried to obey, to gentle the act, but felt his body move against his will in tiny, impatient jerks. His fingers curled and dug into her flesh.

  “Devon!” Then Rachel cried out her parents’ names and recoiled, rolling away from him. She lay doubled up, hugging herself, sobbing uncontrollably.

  “I didn’t mean—” He stopped, not knowing what he didn’t mean. Devon touched her shoulder unsurely. At first she tried blindly to push him away from her; then she let him hold her tightly. She continued to cry. “Rachel...” He stroked her hair. “I love you.” Eventually she wept herself to exhaustion. Devon continued to hold her while she slept.

  Later:

  They curled against each other like a pair of young puppies. The night had crept through the quilt and they sought the silent, automatic, uncomplicated warmth of flesh against flesh. Devon started to drowse off to sleep, then twitched awake.

  Rachel raised her head. “What is the matter?”

  “I started to dream.”

  “Sleep, if you wish.”

  Devon said, “There was something unpleasant lurking below the hills.... I don’t think I want to sleep.”

  Rachel kept a long silence. “Tonight...” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Hush,” said Devon. “There have been too many apologies tonight.”

  “But I—”

  “No.” He lightly kissed her face. “It doesn’t matter, not as long as you’re not hurt.”

  Her features subtly changed. “Devon!” Her voice was angry. Surprised, he drew back. “Don’t treat me like a child,” she said, “or, or—” fumbling for the words, “like one of Old Elijah’s wooden figures you told me about. I won’t crack, I won’t break.”

  “All right,” Devon slowly said. “All right.”

  “I just want to tell you why—” She stopped to take a deeper breath. “I want to tell you what happened tonight.” Rachel pulled the quilt loose from their faces and the chill air poured around them. She turned her head to look at Devon in the starlight. “When we tried to do what we did,” said Rachel, “we were not alone.”

  “I don’t understand,” Devon said.

  “When we—we touched like that, and you started to come inside me, I saw my mother and Aram; they were standing above us. I saw the Elders beside them, Micah and Jubal and the rest. They were all there, and they watched us!” She looked at Devon defiantly. “Do you understand now?”

  “Yes,” he said, and he did.

  After a while she said, “They will not always be there.”

  “No.” He held her tightly. More silence, and then he changed the subject. “Have you thought about what I asked you before?”

  “About leaving? Going with you out beyond the world to see all the wonders you’ve described. I have thought much.”

  “Have you decided?”

  She hesitated. “It would be difficult to leave this life when my place in it has been set since long before I could remember.”

  “But it wouldn’t be impossible.”

  Rachel shook her head slowly. “No. I suspect not.”

  “If you stay, you must marry Garth.”

  “I do not want that.”

  “Then come with me. I’ll find others. We’ll leave tomorrow.”

  “I want to...”

  “But what?”

  “Weren’t you afraid?” she said angrily. “Did you suddenly know it was all a great adventure when you fell through that—that iris-thing?”

  Devon stroked her hair. She drew back her head, resisting any attempt at placation. After a time, he said, “Certainly I was afraid. I was terrified. But after a while, the things I encountered fascinated me.” He paused. “Remember Old Jedediah’s two-headed calf?”

  Suspiciously, she nodded.

  “After that calf was born, I wanted to study it. But the Elders decreed that it was an abomination in the sight of the Creator and ordered it put to death. The carcass was wrapped in sacking and immediately dropped down the disposal trap.”

  Rachel said, “I remember. My father whipped me with a harness strap because I said it was a shame the poor calf should be killed.”

  “You’re more like me than you are them, Rachel.”

  She looked at him seriously, silently.

  “Come with me.”

  “Will we ever return?”

  “When the Ark is saved. The biospheres will again begin to communicate with each other. Cypress Corners will no longer be able to hide beneath its metal sky and false stars.”

  She slowly said, “That’s good. I would not want to think that I’d never see Ruth again, or my mother.”

  “Not Aram?”

  “Most of all, I will miss my father.”

  He kissed her. “Then tomorrow.”

  Rachel nodded.

  “Come back here after nightfall. Bring as much food as you can. Meantime, I’ll slip into the town to find Young Silas, the teacher’s son, and as many others as I think I can trust and convince.”

  “I will be here,” she said.

  “Remember, your good-byes to your family must be silent.”

  “Have faith in my sense,” said Rachel. She gave him a quick, final kiss. “Dawn is too close. Help me with my clothes.”

  They shivered in the frosty air.

  “I wish I could remember what I began to dream,” said Devon absently.

  Rachel straightened and began fastening the buttons of her sleeves. “Do those dreams foretell the future?”

  “No. I
mean, I don’t think so. Sometimes they seem to give me clues.”

  “You have really talked with your parents in the dreams?”

  “Yes.”

  “Elder Micah preached about such things this past mid-week. He called them witchery.” Devon draped the shawl around her shoulders. “We will forget about Micah. His voice is loud in Cypress Corners, but the sound of it stops at the sky.” He walked with her to the path.

  Rachel looked over the valley and said, “It was a good world.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  They kicked him awake.

  Devon started upright, but the quilt wound around his body bound him as effectively as a loop of hemp.

  “Watch it—do not let him escape!”

  His eyes opened, half-focused, as something slammed the side of his head. Devon sprawled sideways and felt rough pine-bark abrade his face. “Wait—don’t—” He gained his hands and knees, but saw the stout sod-boot coming at him from the side. The boot tip missed his chin but caught him high on the collarbone, flipping him over. Devon looked up at the grim semicircle of adults.

  Something salty pooled in the back of his throat; Devon knew it must be blood and he swallowed with difficulty. The breath left him as someone kicked him, in the side.

  A voice said, “Enough!”

  Devon painfully opened his eyes again. Nearest him, he saw Young Goodman and Esau. Goodman wielded a light metal hoe-handle and tapped it meaningfully on the soil. Esau looked down at Devon and licked his lips. Beside Esau stood Old Martin the shopkeeper, Ahab the fisher, and several others Devon identified as men from the town. A few paces beyond the rest stood Elder Jubal.

  “I stay my blows with reluctance,” said a voice close to his head. Devon slowly turned to the side and saw Aram looming above him. In his hands Rachel’s father gripped a scythe so tightly his knuckles whitened. His face held the grimness of an early prophet from the Book.

  “Elder Micah will soon arrive,” said Jubal. “Already he and the others have reached the bottom of the slope.”

  Aram’s voice was tight with rage. “I defer to the authority of the Elders.” He turned heavily and stalked into the trees.

  Devon said, in more of a croak than a proper voice, “I have to tell you—”

  “Quiet, madman, witch, or whatever else lies beneath your guise!” Esau delivered a kick which glanced off Devon’s ribcage.

  “Esau!”

  “Aye, Elder.” Esau backed away reluctantly.

  Goodman said maliciously, “What does the Book say about a witch?”

  Near Devon’s feet, someone said, “That it shall not be suffered to live.”

  “Burning?” said Goodman.

  “Stoning?”

  “Drowning, I think,” said Old Martin, “in the lake Severity.”

  Someone offered, “Why not like the two-headed calf? Confine him without food. When he perishes of starvation, put him down the disposal trap.”

  “Put him down the disposal trap alive,” muttered Goodman.

  “Good idea.” Ahab echoed the man who had mentioned the fate of the two-headed calf. “His blood will then be on no one’s hands.”

  “The disposal trap,” said Goodman, grinning openly. Devon closed his eyes.

  “Never have we had to kill a witch,” someone said.

  “How do we know Devon is in truth such a demon?” He was met with angry mumbling. Thereafter Devon wondered at the identity of the single skeptic; he never discovered it.

  “Brothers!” Jubal’s scolding tone.

  Feet-tramping sounds, other voices, approached.

  “Where be the whelp?” The voice of Elder Micah.

  “Yonder, beneath the pine.”

  Closer, the sounds of the new arrivals.

  “Open thine eyes to me, Devon,” said Micah quietly.

  One eye opened more easily than the other, Devon discovered. The somber image of the Elder wavered for a moment. “Canst thou see?”

  “Yes,” said Devon.

  Aram returned from his sojourn alone among the trees. He cradled the scythe in one arm as he looked down at Devon. Aram spat on the ground, the spittle missing Devon’s ear by millimeters. “This one is fortunate I did not climb up here unaccompanied.”

  Micah regarded the welts and bruises, and the congealing blood which made a mask of half Devon’s face. “He appears not to have escaped some retribution.”

  Aram said bitterly, “He is fortunate to be still among the living.” He shifted the scythe to the other arm. In the morning light, the honed edge reflected fire. “Were I alone, I would have reaped his life.”

  “Thou hast done the proper thing,” said Micah. “The Creator would be displeased were there blood—even demon blood—solely on thy hands.”

  Aram slowly nodded, but his gaze never left Devon’s throat.

  “Be thy family well?” said Micah.

  “Aye.”

  “And thy daughter?”

  Color rose in to the farmer’s cheeks. “Aye, well enough. I beat her when I found her creeping in from the hills. For a while, then, she slunk around the house like a dog caught sneaking food from the kitchen table.”

  Micah looked significantly toward Devon. “Be that all the hurt?”

  “I do not know,” said Aram, looking at the ground. “She admitted nothing. I’ve left her in the custody of her mother.”

  “Be not downcast,” said Micah. “Thy daughter be untainted in the eyes of the Creator. Whatever filth dwelleth in her shall depart with the exorcism of mad Devon.” From the ground, Devon said, “Do not speak that way about Rachel.”

  Elder Micah glanced at Young Goodman. Goodman nodded slightly and kicked Devon in the stomach. Devon doubled over, retching.

  “It is my shame,” said Aram.

  “No.” Micah shook his head and raised his voice so all could hear. “It be a shame upon the land; and thus shalt the land itself expel that shame.”

  Devon forced out the words hoarsely, “I must tell...” Micah looked down; Devon saw no mercy in the impassive face. “Thou wilt say naught, child of evil. Thy fate awaits thee.”

  “Listen to me... I have to tell you about the Ark.” The Elder inexorably continued: “We do what must be done to any who blasphemes and brings evil and rancor to our people. Thou wilt be tried and punished as befits your crimes.”

  Devon said faintly, “No... the destruction will come if...”

  Micah spoke to Goodman. “Remove thy neckerchief and make of it a gag. There be deadly danger in even listening to this sacrilege.”

  Young Goodman took pleasure in jamming open Devon’s jaws with the metal hoe-handle so that he could insert the wadded-up cloth. Devon started to struggle but was easily secured by two of the other men. “He’ll speak no more words of heresy, Elder.”

  Micah faintly smiled his approval. “Then let us hasten back to the town. With the guidance of the Book, we shall excise this sty upon our vision.”

  The men gathered to depart the hill; there was a problem of logistics with the prisoner. “How should we carry him?” someone said.

  “Use the quilt,” said Aram. “It’s now too soiled for any other purpose.”

  They wrapped Devon in the comforter. One on either end, a third man with his arm wrapped around Devon’s middle, they carried him like a slack sack of grain down the hill. Dead weight being hard to haul, they traded off every half-kilometer.

  Young Goodman took his turn with Esau and Ahab. From one end of the burden, Goodman said too low for Micah to hear, “Too bad there’s not a disposal trap in the hills. It would save us much sweat.”

  Ahab looked at him curiously. “It is one thing to hate a witch or heretic... that is a rightful rage. But your hatred stalks beyond even righteousness. Why?”

  Goodman said nothing.

  Esau tittered. “I fear Brother Goodman has his own small sacrilege with which to contend.”

  “Shut up, Esau.”

  “What’s the matter?” said Esau. “Do you think no one k
nows?”

  Goodman scowled and said nothing.

  Esau said to Ahab, “There are stories men tell each other—you know... like after meetings, or on a stack in between loads of hay. But these stories aren’t parables out of the Book.”

  Ahab nodded.

  “Well,” said Esau, “there’s a story about two men who wished to lie with the same girl.”

  “For the Creator’s sake, keep your voice down.” Goodman looked nervously at Elder Micah, leading the procession.

  “Two men...” Ahab looked significantly down at the wrapped bundle that was Devon.

  Esau said, “Well, we don’t know for sure, but—”

  “And the other man?”

  Esau only tittered again; Goodman’s cheeks flushed red.

  “It is indeed a sacrilege,” said Ahab. “Rachel should open only to her husband, and that husband will be Young Garth.”

  “Brother Goodman holds little affection for Young Garth as well. Our new smith once interrupted a game we were playing with the Young Devon.”

  “Your story is most unpleasant,” said Ahab. He turned his head to see who followed close behind. “My leg hurts me. Brother Martin? Will you carry this burden for a while?” He handed one end of the prisoner over to the shopkeeper; then let the rest of the file of men pass him by.

  “It’s a more amusing story than most in the Book,” said Esau.

  “Still thy tongue!” said Goodman, assuming the cant of the Elders.

  Esau’s smile froze and died by millimeters. “Of course, Brother. I never meant to offend.”

  Old Martin looked curiously between the two of them. “What did you say?”

  Young Goodman answered for Esau. Lips twisted in a feral grimace, he said, “Nothing.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Young Silas the teacher read again the request that had been relayed to him from the Elders. He folded the paper in half, and then again, halving it until the paper was a small bundle too thick to fold. Then he slipped the message into the breast pocket of his overalls.

  He walked to the door of the school. It was recess; his fourteen students were busily tending the garden plots surrounding the building. Spading, weeding, thinning, watering, the children toiled industriously along their individually assigned rows. The vegetables here were often better than the produce from most of the outlying farms. Prideful thought, and so he crushed it, but Silas still reflected to himself that he was a good teacher.