Rise

by Rachel Starr Thomson

  They looked at each other, shifting feet, obviously ill at ease. The same man who had contradicted her before said, “Grand fine words. And you are our general, then? And where shall we expect to find you—soaking your pretty feet in your fine quarters while the lord pays you visits?”

  Teresa flushed as snickers and outright laughs followed the man’s challenge.

  But then the redheaded girl stepped forward. “Shut your mouth, Tom,” she said. “You’ve got her wrong. I’ll tell you where you’ll find her—leading the charge. As she’s been doing this past hour.”

  Another of the women who had remained in the hall while others went after water and rags nodded her assent. “Aye, it’s true. The filth on her skirts will attest to that.”

  Again there was laughter, but Teresa put her embarrassment aside and willfully replaced it with determination. She strode forward, took up an armful of rags, and got to her knees by the closest pallet and patient.

  Without a word, she got to work. In moments her brow was hot with sweat and her back aching, and the stench was overwhelming as always, but she set her jaw and kept working.

  She was aware that the servants were still standing and watching, but she refused to look up at them.

  Someone—likely the redheaded girl—made a bewildered, exasperated sound, and moments later hit her knees across the pallet from Teresa.

  Teresa looked up and smiled at her, and this time the girl smiled back.

  “Thank you,” Teresa mouthed as the others began to disperse, and she heard the sounds of buckets and footsteps and mops hitting the floor, with the slosh of water and a smattering of voices.

  “No,” the girl said. “It is I should thank you.”

  “What is your name?” Teresa asked, relaxing into the conversation as she realized that all the others had dispersed to the corners of the room and were starting at work and conversations of their own.

  “I’m called Tildy,” the girl said.

  “Why did you say you should thank me?”

  The girl snorted. “Because I’ve worked down here three weeks and was like to forget I was a human being, treating these all like cattle as we were.”

  “It works that way,” Teresa said. “We lose our own humanity when we don’t see it in others.”

  “But Miss, surely this is not why the master brought you here? He told us you was coming—but to do grand things. To paint, he said. And work miracles.”

  Teresa laughed. “Miracles? His memory has grown faulty.”

  The girl hid a smile at that; Teresa suspected she was not beyond making fun of the lord herself, but she wasn’t likely used to doing so in the presence of her betters. If Teresa should be considered a better. Judging from the behaviour of the other servants earlier, she didn’t think any of them knew how to classify her.

  She wondered how the lord classified her.

  He was not happy with the way she had chosen to begin her sojourn with him, that was clear. But he could hardly forbid her from doing what he had asked her here to do. Besides, though he was her host, he was not her liege, and she had no compunction about flaunting his wishes if duty called for it. Duty—to the Spirit, and to the needy before her.

  Tildy worked beside her as the hours drew long, never straying far from her side. Though the work was hard and the others groaned and complained in the process of cleansing the hall, Tildy did not—instead, she seemed to soften as the hours slipped by. Her manner toward the ill grew more and more genial and kind, and Teresa watched her with keen interest. She knew what she was seeing—a soul drawn into the Spirit, acting out its response to the Oneness even before it had recognized the call.

  As the day drew to a close, Teresa hoped to take the girl aside and speak to her about the influences at work on her heart. Spirit willing, there would soon be a Oneness cell again in this place.

  * * *

  The inferno ceased nearly as suddenly as it had sprung up—before Andrew could think or react, whatever was happening in the living room was over. He rushed back inside to find both April and Miranda on their knees, neither apparently harmed, both in a state something like shock. This was not the cemetery again; nothing was burning, no smell of smoke hung in the air, no ashes marked the remnants of trees or grass or human beings.

  But Miranda—

  Miranda was different.

  She looked up at him and blinked away tears, but she was quiet—no hysteria. No panic or theatrics. And the surly resentment was gone.

  “What . . . what just happened here?” he asked.

  Miranda shook her head wordlessly and rose, unsteadily, to her feet. Andrew took her arm and helped her up, then let her lean on him—and wrapped his arms around her as she leaned in close. He held her tightly and looked at April, all his questions in his eyes.

  “The Spirit,” was all April could say. “It was the Spirit.”

  And her eyes went to a painting hanging over the fire. Andrew turned to look at it too. It showed the bay that stretched away from the cliffs and the fishing village, blue under a summer sky. But in the sky above the water was something else—a light.

  A living light.

  And suddenly Mary was in the living room, holding a pot of tea and a tray with two cups, and she was asking them something banal and hospitable—“Milk or sugar?”

  She looked from one to the others and quickly set the tray down. “What is it? Did something happen here?”

  “Didn’t you see it?” Julie asked. “Or hear it?”

  “See . . . I’m sorry,” Mary said. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.” Her eyes rested on Andrew and Miranda. “But it seems that whatever happened, it was for the better?”

  “Yes,” Andrew said, as he felt Miranda nod her head against his chest. “Yes, I think so.”

  April was still on her knees.

  She looked up, and her eyes settled on a boy sitting in the stairwell that led the bedrooms upstairs. Nick. Wordlessly, he held up a page from a sketchbook, and on it, a hastily drawn sketch of a fire. Filling the living room.

  His expression, solemn and almost fearful, turned to a sudden grin.

  “So that’s what it looked like,” he said.

  * * *

  Hours later, April’s hands still felt singed. There was no pain—just a remnant tingle, a lingering heat, and a feeling that was half-exhaustion and half-exhilaration.

  She’d needed that as badly as Miranda had.

  They had both needed to remember exactly what happened in the cemetery.

  The deaths, and the police reports and the adjustments, all of that had overshadowed the truth. That the flames had not been primarily destroying, but primarily cleansing, healing, rescuing. They had been personal.

  And for them both, the Person in the fire had been a comforter and friend.

  Nick finished his sketch, signed it with his initials in big block caps, and stuck it on the refrigerator with a note asking Richard to buy a frame for it. The sight of it made April smile as she sat at the kitchen table across from Miranda. The rest of the house was empty, except for Melissa, who was asleep upstairs. Everyone had decided to give them space.

  “I’m not afraid anymore,” Miranda said. “It’s so strange. I’ve been scared forever, it seems like. Since way before the fire happened. But now I’m not. Like the fear just got burned right out of me.”

  April understood. At this moment, it felt as though her emotions were held within a safe enclosure, mind and heart hidden beneath a covering of peace. It had settled over them both, a heavy calm, one that kept every other feeling in check. She could remember the other feelings—uncertainty, fear, the very edge of panic as she let the fire break loose—but could not feel them now. Almost couldn’t imagine feeling them ever again.

  “But what is it?” Miranda asked. “Can you tell me that? What is the fire?”

  “It’s an expression,” April said. “A . . . manifestation. Of the Spirit.”

  Miranda frowned. “Like the Oneness?”
r />   “The Spirit and the Oneness aren’t the same thing.”

  “But the Oneness is a manifestation of the Spirit. Like the fire is.”

  It was true.

  Miranda’s words, incongruous coming out of a mouth that only hours before had been so sullen, and before that had seemed chronically immature and unable to deal with any kind of reality at all, clicked something into place that April had never, ever understood before.

  And suddenly that thing seemed like the most important reality in the world.

  “Ye-es,” she said. “We are.”

  And then she asked, “How do you know that?”

  Miranda shrugged and looked down. “Jacob used to say it. He said that’s why the world was so wicked and bad. Because they were meant to be a manifestation of the Spirit, and they twisted it and perverted it.”

  “Jacob said that?”

  “He wasn’t an idiot. Or all bad.”

  April toned her reaction down. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” Miranda was quiet for a long minute. “Everybody acts like I should be happy that he died. But I’m not. He wasn’t perfect, but he was like a dad to me. The closest thing I had. I hate that everybody just talks about the bad stuff now. Some things he wanted were good.”

  April didn’t interrupt. Miranda needed to talk. Under the calm that had settled over them, she did not grow emotional or choked up, but April could tell the words came from deep within—things Miranda had been dwelling on and hadn’t been free to say.

  “It’s not that easy to just give up your whole life and live a new one. The community was home. I don’t really understand why they did some of the things they did. I don’t know why Jacob thought it was okay to bring Clint in. Even though I liked him too, at first. And all the stuff he did . . . there was bad stuff. That was when I started getting afraid. He was teaching the men things.”

  “Some form of witchcraft?” April asked.

  “I guess. Stuff like what was happening in the cemetery.”

  April reached out to lay her hand on Miranda’s arm, but the girl maneuvered away from her, and April withdrew.

  “I just don’t know. I don’t know what’s true anymore. Or who I am.”

  “The Spirit can help you find that,” April said.

  “I thought so, when the fire was burning.”

  “Maybe that’s why it broke out—to show you the truth. To invite you in.”

  Miranda shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I can trust it.”

  “It burned yours fears away.”

  “But not my questions.” She cast her eyes down. “And the fears will be back, maybe.”

  April wished she could say that wasn’t true.

  “Miranda,” she said slowly, “what you experienced—what you’ve experienced twice now—it’s not usual. Most of the Oneness never encounter the Spirit like that. He’s giving you a gift.”

  Miranda lifted her eyes suddenly. “He?”

  “Yes. He.”

  “My mother calls the Spirit that. She’s gotten freaky about it.”

  “She’s encountered him too. Like not many do.”

  Miranda turned her body so she faced away from April—drawing a door shut. April tried to hide her own frustration and disappointment at the action. How could she still be shutting them out, after what had just happened? While this peace still reigned over them—this Presence that was the embodiment of safety and help?

  “So yeah,” Miranda said. “What I felt in the fire—it was a person. You felt that too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why doesn’t the Oneness talk about the Spirit like that? Like a real person?”

  April wanted to say, We do, but she knew better—they didn’t. Not really. They sometimes spoke of “God” or phrased the Spirit rhetorically as a personality, but they thought of him and spoke of him as a force, an unknowable entity, even a kind of unifying principle.

  Not as a person.

  Not really.

  Miranda was growing colder, and her body language showed it. April could feel a distance opening up between them, and wanted to fight it—and felt helpless to do so. She had thought everything was finished when the flame broke out. She thought the Spirit would simply burn away everything in Miranda that was resistant to him, to the Oneness, and that the fire would heal all there was to heal.

  I have brought healing, a voice unexpectedly said in the depths of April’s heart. But that is not all she needs.

  April cocked her head, torn between trying to listen to the voice—to press deeper into the conversation—and trying to hang on to the ever-more tenuous thread of communication with Miranda.

  She repeated what she had said before: “The Spirit has given you a gift, Miranda. He’s shown himself to you more than to almost anyone else I know. You—”

  Miranda interrupted, overriding April’s last sentence.

  “Maybe I don’t want him.”

  “But . . .” April grasped for words. “But you felt him. Who he is. You . . .”

  “Look, I’m having enough relationship trouble, okay? I don’t even know who I am. Or who my parents are. Don’t ask me to welcome all this. I’m glad the fear’s gone. He helped with that. I’m glad.” She stood. “I’m grateful. To you too—thanks for listening to me. I appreciate it.”

  It was the most words April had ever heard Miranda say all together, and she was left dumbfounded as Miranda left the kitchen, pulled on boots and coat, and headed out the front door. In search of her parents, April assumed.

  How?

  How could she not want relationship with the Spirit after all that she had seen and heard and felt?

  Even after the healing?

  But the questions kicked the door open to a flood of others—questions that had been dogging all of them in the months of battle and breakthrough they had walked through. How could David turn against the Oneness, even after knowing the love and community and power they offered? How could Jacob be so right and so wrong at the same time? How could everyone have mistaken Reese’s heart as badly as they did, and how could Reese herself have gone so far in the direction of bitterness and revenge as to welcome demons into her company? How could Diane have denied her place in the Oneness for so many years and even hidden their existence from her only son? How?

  How could April be so afraid of the fire burning within her?

  Even after the encounter beneath the water, in the womb; and even after the cemetery?

  She groaned and leaned her head on her hands. Maybe human beings were just a lot more complicated than she thought.

  “What does it take?” she asked out loud. “You’ve done so much for us. You make us One. You hear our prayers. You give to us—heal us. Resurrect us. How can we still turn away from you? And misunderstand you?”

  She asked, knowing even as she spoke that she was still guilty of all these things herself. That she had succeeded in making peace with the fire so far as to let it break out in Miranda’s presence and do the work it needed to do, but that her fears were far from truly gone—as Miranda had said, they would be back.

  “Those are good questions,” a voice said.

  For a confused second April thought the Spirit was answering out loud—but then opened her eyes and lowered her hands, and saw Melissa standing in the doorway.

  Melissa’s long blonde hair hung in a braid behind her, and she wore a bathrobe and slippers. Her face was pale and haggard, dark circles beneath her eyes.

  She padded across the floor and eased herself into the chair across from April.

  April tried not to stare. She had been avoiding Melissa ever since the doctor’s office. Afraid of what the woman’s prognosis might trigger in her.

  “Good questions,” Melissa said again. “I’ve asked them myself. I turned traitor to the Oneness when the demons offered me healing. Even used children to help myself. That’s ugly.” She grimaced. “I’m an artist—a musician. I’m supposed to be sensitive to what is beautiful and to see p
ast appearances to the real meaning of things. I’m supposed to draw all of that out. And yet I went along with a gross lie for all of that time, and the hive nearly had me.”

  April lowered her eyes and looked at her own hands. It wasn’t lost on her that the demonic powers that had tried to woo Melissa to their own side had tried just as hard to kill April—several times over.

  Without consciously thinking about it, she had felt superior because of that.

  Maybe she still did. After all, the Spirit had taken up residence within her in some frightening, powerful way.

  And all that had taken up residence in Melissa was death. Cancer.

  “But do you know what I think the answer is?” Melissa asked, oblivious to April’s thoughts. “I think the answer is love.”

  “The Spirit loves us,” April said.

  “But more than that. We’ve got to love him too. That’s what will hold us, bind us to him. Otherwise we’re liable to wander away. All of us.”

  Even you, a voice within April told her.

  And it shut down, and put to shame, all of her thoughts of a moment ago.

  No, she wasn’t any better than Melissa. Yes, Melissa had tried to save her own life through wrong means. And April had gone running into the cold numerous times in a pathetic attempt to control the power that held the universe together.

  She laughed. Melissa regarded her curiously. “What’s funny?”

  “Not sure I can explain.”

  Melissa nodded. She rubbed one arm with a long-fingered hand. “You know, I don’t think our battle is over. I think we may just be entering the real war. And maybe that’s why all of these things are happening now. To you. To Julie.”

  April frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “We need love,” Melissa said again. Then she leaned forward, and said intently, “We can’t love someone we don’t know.”