Among the Lilies

by Daniel Mills

  But he welcomed me in all the same and bade me to sit and I sang for him the boy’s song as I remembered it. With head lowered, eyes downcast, he listened to the boy’s song and asked me to repeat the words, which I did, and afterward, I told him what I thought they meant. His hands were in his lap. His eyes glittered and he told me of the Gift.

  “You carry within yourself a memory of language: the old tongue which was Adam’s and which the angels speak. You are like those who waited on the Sibyl. The Gift is accorded you that you might listen to the brethren in their singing and transcribe the words to revisit them later, and pray over them, and with the eyes of your heart thus unravel their meaning.”

  All this I did, and for a time, it was enough. I was pleased to be of use, to be counted among the blessed, and if the eyes of my heart were open or closed, there was none to know it but myself and God—and He was only the silence which surrounded me such nights as I wrote by candlelight, pretending to faith, inventing meaning for words which had none. Always that silence was there, and even afterward, when I tried to sleep, it was a weight on my chest pressing down like that of the cross I carried but in secret: the taste of Jerusha’s mouth, her lips on mine.

  I fell with the weight of it. Christ did too. At the house of Ahasuerus He lay with His head against the wall, craving rest, but even this was denied Him. The man appeared from inside to send Him on his way and Christ up-rose in fury and splendor and cursed the poor man as He had cursed no other, not even Judas who betrayed Him.

  The scene comes to me unbidden. The road to Calvary. The procession is halted before the rich man’s house, the hot sun beating down. Light flashes from the assembled soldiers: steel armor in plates, spears they carry. Ahasuerus is there too with Christ before him, dressed in rags and kneeling for the burden on his back. He is a madman, a criminal. Ahasuerus kicks at the dust, blinding him, and wrestles Him bodily from the wall, casting Him down so the cross falls across Him, a crushing weight. The crowd applauds, jeering the prisoner until at last He stands with the cross upon his shoulders and turns His gaze upon me.

  I think on it often. His fury in that moment when even falling was denied Him. His face is black with rage, eyes sharpened to points. His hand raised to curse me, to strike me, though I am as far beyond His reach as He is beyond mine and this my exile. I yielded to the cross and became dead to the spirit, a living beast with the murdered man inside me. The soul is gone but the flesh abides, its days made endless in this valley like those of Ahasuerus—or Cain—and I think sometimes I must bear the mark upon me, invisible to all eyes but my own, though I have killed no one: only the soul inside me.

  God, but the flesh is heavy. This place is all one shadow, yes, but it is not the cross’s shadow as Job once said but that of another tree, an older one. The planks and clapboards of this house are fashioned from its very heartwood while the circling mountains close off this vale as sure as the boulder which sealed His tomb.

  He ascended into heaven, it is said, and in dreams, I return to the stone house. I walk the halls for hours with Job beside me. Sometimes Jerusha is there as well. She takes me by the hand and leads me outside, and the garden is the Eden of her dreaming in the days before our banishment. All gone. I wake to this house, the ghosts which haunt it. The dream fades so quickly, no more substantial than the stain light leaves in its departure.

  Rain again and lasting all day. I went out alone and returned with the stinging in my cheeks, numbness in my hands and feet, nothing more. We are all hungry, sickening with spring’s advent. I can delay no longer. In the morning I will descend the pass and walk to town but for tonight there is only the last of the fish between us and the rain blowing hard outside, footsteps sounding from above: restless, pacing.

  I build up the wood-fire and linger over the stove as it warms. My breath whirls before me, making webs of itself which spin, softly, into nothingness. The stove is hot. I scale and behead the fish and halve it lengthwise to draw out the bones. I call to Judah. He eats half the fish out of my hand and resumes his place at the window.

  Trees loom out of the gray. The light gutters out of the sun.

  The world retreats from us, but Judah will not forsake his vigil, lonely as my own and kept for no one. The glass dims to hold within it our reflections: his and mine and behind us the stove with flames banked high to brand our faces on the night.

  The fish bloodies my hands, its butchered body. I scrub my fingers raw over the bucket then return to the stove. I melt lard into a pan and place the fish within to

  [The entry breaks off mid-sentence.—ed]

  Judah went mad. He was at the window, keeping watch while I prepared our supper. I stood with my back to him but turned when I heard him growl, a sound like thunder breaking in a place far distant. His claws were out, hooked in the sill. He balanced on his hind-legs with his snout at the window, breath misting the glass and his wet nose rubbing gaps in it. His teeth were bared. I leant down beside him to look east toward the orchard, the maples. All was stillness: no motion, nothing to see, not even moon.

  I patted the fur about his ears.

  “Easy,” I said. “Easy.”

  He snarled through his teeth. He barked and would not stop and clawed at the window til the sill was nearly shredded and I feared the glass would give. I shouted but to no effect then grasped him about the middle to pull him from the sill.

  He howled. His claws, flailing out, tore scratches in my chin and throat and we struck the floor together with my arms locked fast about his belly. He kicked against me, spitting, and I tried to hold him down, but failed, and leapt up myself at the smell of smoke.

  The fish was scorched, starting to flame. I dashed to the stove and took up the pan and plunged it into the bucket while Judah bayed and would not quieten.

  Supper was ruined, inedible. I was weary, worn thin. In my anger I grasped hold of Judah about the neck then threw him down, hard. His head struck the boards and I stood over him with the smoking pan still to hand, upraised as though to bring it down upon him.

  He scrabbled at the ground. He was terrified, eyes wide as he tried desperately to escape from me—and I thought of his limp, caused by a beating, and of the master from whom he had run away. I froze. The hot pan struck the ground and Judah, righted, darted between my legs to the backroom, wherein he concealed himself and whimpered for fear and would not come at my call.

  A voice from upstairs: Holy Mother’s Protecting Chain.

  The song had been there all the while but came now loud as strokes upon the forge in this new quiet with Judah whining for fright and night pressed to the windows, concealing all.

  I shot upstairs, taking the steps two at a time. I reached the upper floor then sprinted down the corridor to the nursery, where the singing was loudest. The melody circled back upon itself, the air like black wings beating.

  Vo o, vo nee

  o har ka e

  on a se

  The song continued, louder as I crossed the threshold. The room was dark, the window covered, and the boards moaned underfoot: rotted through, warped by winter’s frost.

  The crib was before me, empty. I upended it. I dashed it against the ground then fell upon the cherry-wood frame with the fury of an animal. I broke the railing then the legs and kicked the remnants out to the room’s center, scattering nails and sawdust.

  It was done. Silence surrounded me, cold as frostbite. The song had ceased, but I sensed her, her nearness. Sweat froze to my spine and forehead, the backs of my hands.

  “Forgive me,” I said, speaking to shadows. “I am so tired.”

  I stepped forward, hands held out for pardon.

  The floorboards gave way. Splinters pierced my ankle, wedging my boot into place so I fell forward. The breath went from me and I sprawled upon my belly with head upraised to watch the darkness detach from the window. The black became her shadow with its long dress and hair which trailed behind her, whispering, as she passed into the hallway and was gone.

  I s
tood, staggered to the window. Clouds were thinning, shearing, opening holes in the sky through which a few stars glimmered. The moon was out, near to full. It scribed the weeds and sedges round the orchard, revealing the black shapes of wolves among the apple trees. Two beasts together, male and female. They were digging in the ground, eating autumn’s drops in their hunger with the maple trees in unleafed lines behind them, stripped to shadows of themselves like rows of teeth.

  A figure appeared among the maples, a silhouette. The height of a young child. It moved like a child as well, walking on all fours from out the forest’s mouth and making for the orchard.

  The wolves caught the scent. They stopped, listening, then turned to pounce, but already, I was in motion. I flew outside. The rifle was in my hand, kept loaded by the door. I fired into the stars and set the wolves to running then bolted down the stone steps.

  The grass was sodden, shimmering. The beasts floated over it and made no sound, while the child, heedless, passed beneath the apple trees, and these were no longer bare, I saw, but silver with moonlight, laden with blossom.

  The chill settled into my lungs, colder at each breath. I approached the orchard, a dozen trees with their branches joined to rain down flowers. Shed petals rose and fell upon the wind, batting like lacewings about my face. I smelled roses, musk, memory. The breeze in Jerusha’s hair that morning when we met beyond the fields and she told to me the last of her dreams.

  But there was no one in the orchard. No child there, no second fall awaiting me. The scent of apple-blossoms faded and I tasted the days of rain like wet stone in my throat. The soil boiled over with it, churning to mirror the shape of a storm so the worms struggled after air, stranded by rain to wait for dawn, birds. They writhed with one body save for places where the earth was trampled flat, patches of black stillness where the wolves had burrowed and feasted.

  A light flashed from the ground. An apple, autumn-ripe. It was the size of a fist and so deep and red with juice as to absorb the moon’s silver and cast it back black. I knelt amidst the twitching worms and steadied myself with the rifle-butt to reach with one hand, to gather the apple from the ground. I wiped away mud, grass, rubbing the red skin smooth till it gleamed in my palm, a perfect jewel. Then I returned to the house.

  With the apple I coaxed Judah from his hiding-place in the workshop. He shied from me, still afraid, but sniffed at the fruit that was offered him and opened his jaws to take it between them. His teeth worked at it, mashing the fruit between them while the juices spilled out and puddled on the ground. Afterward, he licked the floorboards dry.

  All is forgiven: Judah curls at my feet with his head on my knee. He sleeps despite the noise from upstairs, a din of breaking. A child’s ball rolls slowly down the stair. It strikes one step then another, bouncing, before coming to rest in the shadows by the stove.

  Judah whimpers, dreaming. Mist rises from the grass, promising fair weather for the journey ahead, and I am back in the Village, the stone house.

  My earliest memory.

  I am a babe again and crawling. Like a snake I drag myself forward on my belly, crossing the boards of the meeting hall with the sun’s gleam forming pools between them. The sisters’ stair: I scramble up on hands-and-knees. I smell varnish, new that morning, the woodgrain rubbed smooth and slipping underfoot as I reach the upper floor, begin to walk.

  The corridor stretches before me, endless with the shadows which fill its end, opening to nowhere. A woman is singing. Mother Ann’s Song. The melody rises then swoops behind me, gathering me into it. I am compelled, captured, called to the hallway’s end.

  My child’s shoes are wooden. They fit poorly so my steps clatter and scrape, but there is none to see me. The dwelling rooms are empty, scented with tallow soap or wildflowers picked from the garden, and the shadows retreat, forming two doorways placed opposite one another.

  These rooms are smaller than the others, without windows and with room enough for a single bed. The first is empty. In the second a single chair is pulled out from the wall then turned toward it, faced away from the doorway. A girl sits in the chair, hands all knuckles where they knit within her apron and head uplifted with the strings of her bonnet falling down her back. She is perfectly still, motionless save for the rise-and-fall of her breath, moving with the song she sings as I watch, and listen, and she does not turn round.

  Judah stirs. The sun is up: light in the trees and a long day’s journey before us—

  PART TWO

  [The following passages are written in a different hand.—ed]

  The first dream was in June. I was a girl in the stone house but everything was different. The walls were veined with mold. The roof sagged. Flies circled me where I stood and there was a stench of rot from the floor.

  This wasn’t the stone dwelling but a dolls’ house, the one I’d made from a pumpkin when I was ten. In the dream my parents were beside me though I was an orphan and had no knowing of them in life. My mother’s face was that of Mother Ann while my father kept his hidden though I felt his hand at my shoulder, its weight.

  The room had no door as I hadn’t carved one but two windows opened into a fog which was thicker than any I’d known. It seeped into the room and whirled upon the floor neither white nor black but without color and with a taste like iron. It recalled me to myself, the flesh I wore in the dream, a girl’s small hands and feet.

  My father removed his hand, a burden lifted. I could walk. I stepped to the nearest window which was only a squared hole cut into the pumpkin’s flesh. Through it I looked out upon a world of fog where there was no time or distance, no one and nothing to see.

  Mother said, You have not the right of it, Child.

  What must I do?

  Have you not hands?

  The fog swirled before me. I raised my arm and touched a hand to it. The fog yielded to my touch then curled about my fingers, bending to the shapes I made between them, though I knew naught of what I did.

  Sights I saw, or made. A Billy goat, his eyes shaped from fog. Then a second goat beside him, a female. The beasts stood dumbly facing one another and didn’t move or couldn't. A raven next and a dove. A milk-cow with fattened udders and a bull with horns. All these I made but all stood colorless, unmoving.

  Mother said, Look.

  I said, There is nothing to see.

  Have my children taught you so little? All this Man has made, as is written, and named, as is his right. But a name is a dead thing as is the Word without the Spirit’s fire to illumine. This world too is as nothing without color and to Woman is given the colors and their names.

  Her gaze was on me, eyes cold and the color of ocean.

  Blue, I said.

  And her bonnet was pale as was the hair she wore bunched beneath it and the bones which showed in her ancient hands.

  White, I said.

  Then green for grass and brown for trees and red for the apples which hung there, gleaming, so the whole of Creation took shape beyond the window—

  In the morning, I told of this dream to the Eldress. She listened carefully and wouldn’t speak til after I was finished. Then she crossed her hands in her lap and didn’t look at me.

  She said, The days of Mother’s Work are ended. The Gifts of late are few and granted only rarely. We must not be hasty or allow ourselves false hope. Tell none of what you have seen or of the words which Mother spoke to you. Rather you must work and pray as you have always done. If the Gift is real, it will come to you again and in time.

  I was dismissed. I saw to my labors. The days passed and I told no one of my dream though I thought on it often and wondered at its meaning. Mother’s face appeared to me out of the brook when I washed the sisters’ laundry and once I felt my father’s presence behind me as I labored over the cookery with the grease brush in my hand.

  In time, the Eldress said, but the time it passed too slowly. I was impatient. Nights I lay upon the pallet with my eyes open and arms upraised and fingers spread to brush the dark surround
ing. Come to me, I said, whispering the words that none might hear. I did not want to be seen in my hunger, possessed by a longing like lust after that sorry dolls’ house and all that it had meant or could mean for the life of toil which stretched before me.

  Years before, when the storm had passed, Sister Candice found my dolls’ house concealed among the gourds. She intended no harm but seeing the pumpkin was rotted through she shattered the walls with a rake and plowed the dolls into the soil where one of the boys found them. They were half-buried in the mud but he brought them inside and showed them to the Elder Job. Eldress Rose learned of it and later she looked upon us sternly when none would claim them. These are not yours? she asked, and I denied it, as did the other girls.

  It was improper, Rose said, that we should harbor such notions, and she burned the dolls in the kitchen fire while we watched. I was afraid. I denied my family but afterward I repented of this betrayal with every year in passing through two decades or more til I thought I’d forgotten them and they returned to me in the night.

  June was cool and rainy. It gave onto July, the dreadful heat. The waiting was too difficult. I slept poorly and sometimes not at all. I waited for the others to sleep before rousing myself to kneel before the bed.

  Come to me, I begged. Father. Mother. Daughter. Come.

  This Gift was granted me.

  In August I dreamt myself back into the pumpkin’s belly. Years had passed in the months of my dreamlessness and my body had aged. Now I was a young woman of thirteen as I was when first the curse had come upon me. Mother was there, as before, but my father was gone and the fog had lifted. From the window I looked upon a world of overwhelming color.