Freda: Volume III in the New Eden series (4 page)

“I’d rather take my chances here than die out there in the Radiation,” says a young woman near the front. She holds a swaddled baby in her arms, bouncing him gently as her big eyes stare into mine. Her hair is wrapped in a tight bun, and she’s bundled in a thick, woolen sweater the color of rusted steel. She neither looks nor sounds fearful.

“But that’s just it,” I say, smiling at her and then at the bright wonder in the baby’s crisp blue eyes.

Her gaze holds mine as if she sees into me, as if she’s asking me silent questions that I don’t understand.

I continue, reaching out and touching the baby’s tiny nose, which makes it blink. “There is no Radiation anymore. The world has healed. That is what Prophecies really says.”

The young woman, only a few years older than I, continues to stare, her deep, brown eyes unblinking as she cradles the baby close.

My father speaks to support me. “That’s what Darius got wrong. He misinterpreted the—”

“You don’t know nothing, Tailor!” The old man spits at my father’s feet. “You ain’t no Semper. How can you know what the scripture says?”

I know the answer before he says it. “Because I’ve seen it.”

My father’s voice is as cold and still as the winter air outside. Those nearby gasp. Even my skin prickles at his statement, but I can’t unlock my gaze from the young mother’s.  She reminds me so much of Susannah, so young yet with such a deep courage behind her eyes.

“That’s right,” my father continues. His voice grows to echo around the barn, which is now silent except for a soft breeze through the rafters and the occasional soft sniffle from one of the children. “I have seen Prophecies.”

“But Semper Linkan destroyed that book,” someone calls out, giving voice to the common misunderstanding.

“No, he didn’t,” my father says as protests ricochet around the cold barn. The young mother blinks but keeps her focus on me. A little fear, or perhaps hope, sparks in those deep, brown eyes.

“He pretended to destroy it, but he actually gave it to me to keep secret.” My father’s voice is being drowned out by the cries of the crowd now, and they’re starting to move forward.

I have suspected this secret since I was eleven years old, when I heard my father talking with Semper Linkan late one night. They spoke of things that troubled Linkan in the book of Prophecies, things that were difficult to understand. Instructions for the thirteenth Semper. Instructions for Dane to follow, once he succeeded his father as leader of Southshaw.

Dane steps forward now, holding his arms out before him to push back the people who press forward. He could not know this secret unless his father told him, and I’m certain that never happened. Darius murdered Dane’s father before Dane had a chance to learn any of it.

“Darius, as a Semper’s son, read Prophecies as a child,” my father continues.

Dane shows no reaction, and I wonder how he can hide his shock. “Stand back!” he commands. “Listen!”

“But children misunderstand complicated things,” my father continues. “The book of Prophecies predicts many things during the time of the thirteenth Semper. Some of them are... confusing.”

“Where is the book,” demands a young man about Patrick’s age who steps through the front line. He’s a distant cousin of mine, Jeffrey. He’s smart and thoughtful, not reactive and fearful like many of the older Southshawans here. He disagreed with Darius’ war, but not enough to oppose him.

Patrick intercepts Jeffrey, but I can see there’s no need—he’s not interested in violence. He just wants to know more.

“The book is hidden at my own house,” my father answers, then quickly continues. “Linkan did not like his son, who was to be the thirteenth Semper, reading these things before he was old enough to understand. If you were to read the book, you would see how it could be troubling to a young mind. So Linkan pretended to destroy it. When the time was right, he would reveal it to Dane and discuss its intricacies with him.”

Dane turns now to my father, questions in his fierce expression. It must be driving him mad, to hear these secrets his father kept from him, while he must lead his people out of the valley that’s been our only home. I want to go to him and comfort him, but I don’t. Instead, I fake a reassuring smile for the young mother, who now rocks her baby with a distracted nervousness.

The last thing Dane and I can show right now is any kind of weakness. He can’t show his need for comfort, and I can’t show my need to comfort him. We must act as if we’ve known this for a long time.

“But Linkan never got that chance,” my father says, “because Darius murdered him.”

“You got no proof of that,” the old man with the wispy beard hisses through his cracked lips.

Dane spits back, “You mean besides Baddock’s confession to me on the eve of our exile?”

I can’t tell whether Dane’s words or his barely suppressed rage shuts the old man up, but the effect ripples around the barn in a sense of restrained anticipation.

We all watch as Dane stares down the old man for several seconds before turning slowly back to his people. In the dim barn, his young face looks rugged and dark, strong and determined.

“Enough talking,” he says. “You all have three choices. You can meet me at Semper’s house in one hour, then leave Southshaw to start new somewhere else. Or you can go down to the lake and die with Darius. Or you can stay here to die in this barn. Whatever you choose, I no longer care.” He grasps my hand and starts toward the gaping doorway into the gray beyond. “Let’s go. This barn stinks.”

As we charge into the frigid twilight where Tom waits, Dane calls without looking back, “Mister Tailor. A quick stop at your house, if you please, to retrieve the book.”

CHAPTER 4

As we approach my parents’ house, my heart flutters. My mother smiles gently, but her eyes blink to cover a deep sadness.

“Remember the last time you were here, Freda?”

With a curious realization, I notice that my mother and I are now the same height. Have I grown that much in just half a year?

“Yes,” I whisper into the frigid air.

I will never forget it. It was the morning of the Wifing, when I left my parents’ house for the last time as their little girl. Now I return as First Wife, but not to attend my wedding night feast as should have happened six months ago. That day, many traditions died.

We arrive at the white picket fence and wait while my father unlatches the gate, his body blocking my view of the slate path that meanders among rose bushes and flowerbeds.

Memories dance before me, light and vivid. Sunny days playing hop-scotch on the stones while my mother pulled up weeds or tended the snap peas, the roses alive with brilliant pink and red and yellow. Her bonnet loose over her unbrushed brown hair, her hands dark with the worked soil, her laugh warming the morning. My father joining us on the rough wood bench nearby when the weather was warm, teaching me to sew and tat and crochet. Returning to this spot after a long walk along the edge of the lake, my hand hanging in my mother’s as we sang little nothing songs.

I wonder if she has the same overwhelming urge to hold hands right now that fills me.

“Hurry, now,” Dane says. “Only the absolute essentials.”

My father pushes the gate open and glides through, his feet leaving fresh tracks in the thin snow as Dane hurries behind him. They leave the path and skirt the outside of the house between two raised beds which have been home to strawberries, carrots, pumpkins. But this summer they won’t grow anything. And no summer for another thirteen generations.

They’re heading around back to my father’s workshop. As the two men disappear around the corner with a swirl of white clouding their boots, my mother’s hand slips around my arm. She pulls close to me and breathes deep.

“I suppose we should go in,” she says quietly.

“Only the essentials,” I reply, and I draw her slowly toward the door, the weight of my mother’s arm in mine slowing me like a plow slows a horse.

Barren stalks of thorny rosebushes huddle along the pale, yellow wall of the house as ice-fringed ivy shivers beneath. Ghosts of my father’s golden curtains peek out from the edges of the dark windows, which are painted with spiderweb frost. Memories climb out of the frozen earth and slip off the snowy roof with each reluctant step we take, settling in beside us until I feel I’m dragging an entire lifetime along with me.

The door is just as I remember it. White, framed with a thick, dark brown moulding painted with a wispy, elegant vine of jasmine all the way around. As I reach for the latch to push it open, my mother lifts her fingers to the tiny, painted flowers.

“Do you remember, Freda? Why we painted the door this way?”

I want to say,
of course I do
, but I understand that she needs to recount the story aloud. She needs to give it voice. There’s no one here but me to listen, but still I understand.

“You were four years old, and you used to pick the jasmine flowers from the vines on Mrs. Blankman’s fence. Do you remember?” She doesn’t wait for my answer but squeezes tighter to my arm. Is the quiver in her voice just due to the cold of the falling dusk? “You came home one day with those flowers braided all through your hair. It was so pretty, Freda. And you insisted that your name from then on would be Jasmine.”

I try to be warmed by my mother’s sad smile, but there’s no comfort in watching someone else mourn. Her lips tremble between the words, and all I can give her is the courtesy of witnessing.

“Your father—remember?—he reminded you that you already had a perfectly good name, but the house needed one. So you named the house Jasmine.” She touches the thin, painted vine along the door frame, up and down. Her fingers are short and bony, knuckles wrinkled with age and labor. Hers are the fingers of a cook, a gardener, a mother. She put so much work, so much love into her gardens and her plants and her home. She created so much beauty here, put so much of her heart into the earth. When we leave, a good part of her soul will stay buried here.

She laughs in a sudden, short outburst, and a tear drips from each eye. “You wanted to plant jasmine along our fence, but I didn’t want to uproot my... oh, Freda.” Her sad grin breaks into a frantic smile bereft of happiness, and she grabs both my elbows, turning me to face her. “How did it all come to this?”

I’ve asked myself that question countless times, and a satisfactory answer eludes me. I’ve asked God countless times as well, but that’s not the kind of question He answers directly. I may never understand. I have only to trust.

She weeps in silence, her lips pursed to hide their trembling. I want to finish her story about the painted flowers for her, want to give voice to the memories, want to dry her tears. I want to be strong enough to do those things, want to show her the woman I became in the caves of Subterra and on the battlefields of Tawtrukk. But her silent sobs unravel my courage as I watch her see her whole life crumble before us.

All I can do is slip her hands into mine, squeeze them tight, and say, as soft as the snowy flowerbeds around us, “Only the essentials.”

She allows me to hold her hands for a few seconds as we look into each other’s eyes. She breathes deep. As she exhales, she settles and releases my hands, then surveys the emptiness surrounding the house. “Fortunately,” she says with cracks in her words, “memories take up little room.”

“But they weigh so much,” I reply, and we both laugh, dismissing our common ghosts.

“That they do, my daughter. You are indeed a wise First Wife.”

With a heavy sniffle, she grabs the latch and pushes the door in, and I follow her into the gloom.

I could make my way through the house in utter blackness if necessary. The sharp tang of cinnamon lies over all the other familiar scents of my home: A hint of aging wood smoke from the empty hearth off to the right. Vanilla and molasses beckoning from the kitchen straight ahead. Candle tallow and perfumed soap blending at the edges. And a bite of fresh pine and juniper sprinkled throughout, brought inside to remind us that spring is not far off.

I breathe all these scents deep, trying to tuck them away somewhere inside so I can take them with me. Memories are easy to carry but also easy to lose. I do not want to forget these things. Not ever.

My mother seems not to notice the delicious smells as she clicks her tongue and mumbles, “Pots. And knives. I suppose we need all that.” Suddenly she is focused on our tasks and I am the one overcome, as if crossing the threshold from her garden to my home has switched us. She gives my hand one good squeeze, then releases it. “I’ll go to the kitchen. Why don’t you check upstairs?” And she’s off into the dim depths of the back of the house before I can reply.

I don’t want to move from this spot, not yet. I gaze at the small room. When guests come over, my mother refers to it as the parlor, but to me it will always simply be the front room. It extends off to my right as I stand in the doorway. A long, brown couch lies along the closest wall, under the two windows that face the garden. Beyond that, a single rocking chair made of thin, twisted branches from oak saplings waits in the corner. I read my first words in that chair, cuddled in my mother’s lap and wrapped in the thick, knitted afghan that now lies draped over the chair’s curved back. That chair and that afghan are essential, aren’t they?

Above the fireplace, low and sturdy on the far wall, hang three embroideries I made when I was first learning my father’s craft. Simple and flawed but sincere and cheerful they are. The first is of a cat lying on a pillow. The cat’s legs are too short and its ears too long, and its eyes are askew. I was five years old. The second depicts a fishing boat on the lake, with the mountains in the background. The boat is uneven and the fish gigantic, but the colors bring the scene to life, and the mountains show my potential at nine years old.

The last is the front of our house with my mother’s garden in the glorious peak of its bloom, the name Jasmine vining across the bottom. I run to it and pull it from the wall, holding its frame. Even in the fading afternoon light filtered through aging windows, the elegance and colors of the rose blossoms, the bright starlight of the jasmine flowers, the sharp edges of the slate path—the beauty of the whole picture captures me and wraps around my heart. I made this last April, just seven months ago. I haven’t worked like this since I left home, and I marvel at the skill I had achieved. I wonder if I could accomplish something like this now or if my fingers have grown too clumsy and violent, my artistry dulled by the cruelty and death I’ve witnessed.

I flip the frame over and quickly remove the backing, detaching the embroidery. The thin fabric folds easily and fits without protest into the pocket of my rough Tawtrukk pants. The definition of essential is so subjective.

Other things are in this room, but a sudden crash of a breaking dish in the kitchen reminds me of how little time I have. I lay the empty frame on the floor before the fireplace, then run my fingers once along the oak of the rocking chair and through the soft yarn of the afghan. “Goodbye,” I whisper and turn away.

I sweep across the room and past the open door, then up the steep, narrow steps to the bedrooms upstairs. My room is toward the front, directly over the front room, and my parents’ is in the rear. Both doors hang unclosed. My parents’ room lies in chaos, strewn with clothes and linens. The tidy bed, however, is made up with the lace bedspread turned down to reveal a thick, hay-colored comforter. How much time did my parents have before they were taken from here to be herded into that barn with Darius’ other prisoners? Were they dragged fiercely? Did they resist?

I have no time to wonder. I spin to confront my own room, which waits undisturbed. It is exactly as it was that June morning that I left to become a wife, a leader, an exile.

Exactly as I left it. No extra dust has been allowed to settle. None of my childhood things have been removed.  The curtains, moss green speckled with tiny, embroidered jasmine blossoms, are tied back, unmoved since that morning I leapt out of bed to see the bright cheerfulness of a Wifing Day dawn. Even the bed is unchanged, the thin blanket its only warmth even as the first snows have fallen, my three dolls sitting attentive against the pretty pillows. They face the window as they always did, looking out at the birds and the sunbathed treetops and the blue sky. Looking out for my return through the little gate and up the slate path.

I feel silly at the joy they spark in me now. Not because I’m embarrassed that I played with them when I was little but because I feel like hugging them and telling them hello, telling them all about the last six months. They’re just toys, but they’re my closest friends also. They suffered as patient witnesses to my little girl fantasies and worries. They wore the first clothes I stitched under the tutelage of my father. They accompanied me on picnics and on the rare treat of a float on my cousin’s fishing boat.

But now I need to tell them good-bye, to explain that the world will soon be ending and that they will end along with it.

I sit on the edge of the bed, then lie back against the pillows beside my three friends. I sink into the cushion, a pale scent of rose wafting around me. The bed embraces me with a soft sigh, and I close my eyes.

For a few seconds, I try to imagine myself as a fifteen year old girl. Before the world changed.

But I can’t.

The memories are all colored differently now. The boundaries of life are less smooth, now sharp like the edges of a shattered mirror. The beautiful things hide dark secrets, like thorns beneath rose blossoms or the stinger on the end of a fuzzy bumblebee. The ugly things reveal an obscured divinity I could never understand before. All those ages ago, when I was almost sixteen, instead of sixteen and a half.

I can’t close my eyes and unsee the last six months.

“It’s no good, Honey,” I whisper to my favorite of the three dolls, the smallest with the golden-brown threads of hair.

Honey.
The name snaps me back to Tawtrukk and that gorgeous little girl of Susannah’s. I sit up straight. There is little time, and I must gather the essentials. My friends—my people—wait and wonder whether Dane and I can stop the world from ending. We can’t. But we can help create a new world for Honey. For Susannah. For us all.

I open my eyes to the sight of the trees outside my window fading in the dank gray of dusk. Night will fall soon. The last night of this house, this room, these dolls.

I slide off the bed and turn to my little friends. I address each by name with a quick pat on the head. “Honey. Ginger. Rosemary. Don’t be afraid, okay?”

It’s what Susannah was saying to her three little girls in the Subterra caves when it seemed all was lost.
Don’t be afraid.
They’re just dolls. Why do I talk to them? It’s a silly thing, but I can’t stop myself. Something compels me to comfort them, to make this ending as easy for them as I can.

The thin blanket feels rough in my fingers as I pull it back and slip each of the dolls underneath, as if I’m tucking in three tiny children for the night. I smooth the blanket over the three little lumps.