IGMS Issue 9 (24 page)

The voices abated and Mother Holton opened her eyes. She could feel the girl beside her shaking, and she looked over at her. Head in hands, she sobbed into the edge of the bed. Mother Holton reached out put her hand on the girl's shoulder.

"What is your name, child?"

The girl sniffed. "Esther Hopewell," she said. "I am Sister Elizabeth Hopewell's daughter."

Mother Holton nodded. "I remember you." Sister Elizabeth was one of the seven Settler's Daughters who had disappeared exploring the ruins in the southern deserts fifteen years ago. At Mother Holton's insistence, the Temple had been the young orphan's caretaker. "Do not be alarmed at the voices, Daughter Hopewell. Their power is in perception alone. They will pass in time. Go, talk with Sister McDougall about it. She can teach you prayers and meditations that will help you."

The girl helped her back into bed and tucked the blankets around her. "I will speak to her, Mother Holton. Thank you."

She could see the shame on the girl's face. Shame for having wept, or for having prayed? It mattered little. Mother Holton reached a gnarled hand up and patted the girl's cheek.

"Remember what I told you," she said. "The voices will pass."

But she fell asleep hoping that they wouldn't, that somehow this time it would be different.

Maybe they will not change this time
, she thought,
and the good voices will stay with us
. But she knew from the Book -- from a thousand of years of recorded Settlement history -- that they would follow the same pattern they always had. And the Settler's Daughters would write the words down, study them, and try as they had for centuries to understand the god-voices. They had given up on silencing them long ago.

Maybe they will not change this time
.

But she knew they would.

The day after the voices changed, Abigail Holton snuck into the Temple and sought out Mother Cassel in her meditation vault.

Her grandmother was a childhood friend of the priestess and she'd grown up in the shadows of the Temple's massive laser-etched cornerstones. At one time, the First Home Temple had been the center of Settler's Rest. But at some point, trade and education had become equally important. Still, her grandmother's friend recognized the need for both and gave her friend regular mending business, paying the high end of fair wages for her skill.

The Book told them that the change would come, but she'd hoped it would be different. When they changed, she spent the day crying, lost and hopeless.

When the voices finally quieted enough for her grandmother to sleep, Abigail slipped into the night to find Mother Cassel.

"Abigail Holton," Mother Cassel said. "Does your grandmother know you're out in the middle of the night?"

Abigail swallowed. "She's asleep."

The old woman smiled. "The change was difficult this time, wasn't it?" she said. "Of course it was, this was your first."

She hung her head. "I was faithless, Mother. I didn't believe the Book. I didn't believe they would change." Her eyes came up slowly to meet the old woman's. "I
prayed
."

Mother Cassel clicked her tongue. "Of course you did. How could you not? The voices are beguiling at first, promising you something better. They gain your trust. But they always turn, Abigail, they
always
turn. They cajole, and then they loathe."

"But why?" she asked.

Mother Cassel shrugged. "We do not know. It's always been this way." She smiled. "But with each visitation, we learn more about the voices . . . and more about the world. We will write it down in the Book, and we will take what clues we can from the words between their promises, pleas, and threats. We will do what we can
while
we can. And someday," she continued, "the voices will win out for a spell and we will hide our work in the ground until reason comes back into focus again."

Abigail thought about the voices, both earlier and today. When they changed and became angry, she had not known what to do. She had felt betrayal, yet she had felt love, too. She'd known in that instant that she was made for more than Enoch Bentley's corn and babies.

"I want to help," Abigail Holton told her grandmother's friend. "I want to join the Settler's Daughters."

"I know, child," Mother Cassel said, and the next morning she came to Abigail's grandmother and extended her invitation.

Mother Holton took her tea into the Looking Glass room when the voices changed. Her cup rattled as she put it down and she was certain it was from being startled by the angry words that whispered at her.

She knew from the Book and from experience that when the voices changed, they said more in their anger. She had ordered her sisters to listen for this and to double the Scrivener's Watch. It was the only comfort she could take from the change.

The last visitation, during her girlhood, had pointed them to the ruins in the southern deserts. It had taken nearly seventy years to find them and they'd lost many Daughters to the searching. But for the last fourteen years, their excavation there taught them much about the home their foremothers had forged for them so long ago.

She listened to the voices until they passed. She had forgotten how bitter they were.
Time will do that
, she thought.

She looked up. "Sister Abernathy?"

Her plump, middle-aged day nurse bustled over. "Yes, Mother Holton?"

"Fetch Sister McDougall for me. I would speak with her in my sitting room."

Sister Abernathy nodded and waddled off to find the woman. Mother Holton finished her tea and tried not to feel sad at the loss. She knew it was an expected response. The voices affected most that way. The change usually disrupted commerce and sometimes even led to violence.

As they occur more and more frequently
, she thought,
they will become more adept at handling them. Until the new Age of Unknowing comes to pass.
She said 'they' because she knew she would not live to see it. The frequency between visitations increased, but not in a way that could be measured and predicted. Hundreds of years of silence; then a smattering that became more regular until finally, the voices did not leave. Teachers would rise up, imparting divinity and destiny to any who would listen. And slowly, mysticism would consume reason. It was easier than resisting. And, according to the Book, it would eventually undo the work of the Settler's Daughters over decades -- even centuries -- until the voices finally faded again and the cycle began anew.

Of course, all of that would be years and years beyond her lifetime. By then, Esther Hopewell's granddaughter, if she were to have one, would be an old woman. And that granddaughter's great grandchildren would be old by time the world was put right again.

Sister McDougall was perhaps a dozen years younger than Mother Holton. Like the other Daughters, she'd given her life to studying the Book, learning the nuances of the god-voices. Now that they had changed, this would be her busiest time. But she sat across from Mother Holton now and didn't look distracted or annoyed by the interruption.

"Hello, Mother," she said, folding her hands in her lap.

"Hello, Sister. Is your Scrivener's Watch ready?"

Sister McDougall nodded. "It is. We'll get what we can. The change came faster than we expected."

"Yes," she said. Then she changed the subject. "I sent Sister Hopewell's daughter to you."

"I spoke with her," Sister McDougall said. "I've had talking-to's with several of the Daughters. The voices are harder on the younger girls."

Mother Holton remembered. "They were hard on me when I was young. But they brought me to the Daughters." She chuckled. "Before I heard the voices, my highest aim was to be a farm boy's nervous bride." For the first time in years she wondered what had become of Enoch Bentley. Dead by now most likely, but it wouldn't be hard to find out of a certainty . . . if she remembered to ask someone to look into it.

Enough lolligagging in yester-year, woman
, she scolded herself.

Fixing her eye on Sister McDougall, she asked the question she dreaded. "How many of them do you think we will lose?"

Sister McDougall shrugged. "None if I can help it. Our coping techniques get better each time."

Mother Holton felt a chill and shivered. "Thank you, Sister McDougall. Please tell Sister Abernathy that I will sit here a spell and then ring for her when I'm ready."

The woman inclined her head slightly. "Yes, Mother."

Mother Holton pulled at the quilt that covered her lap and Sister McDougall stooped to lift the heavy cotton patchwork up over her chest and then tuck it in behind her. She smiled her appreciation and the Sister returned it.

After the woman left her, Mother Holton sat alone in the sitting room and tried to remember what Enoch Bentley had looked like.

He had whispered beneath her window the night she was to leave her grandmother's home to take up studies in the Temple. The voices had quieted some time ago, but Enoch Bentley couldn't understand. He was a man -- or at least very nearly so -- and the god-voices passed over most of them. Less than understanding the voices, he couldn't understand her choice to join the Settler's Daughters.

She heard his voice and went to the window. "Enoch Bentley," she said in the angriest whisper she could manage, "you mustn't be here at this hour."

She was fifteen now; he was seventeen. The silver moon lit his blond hair and his eyes were red. "I don't want you to go," he said.

Her grandmother slept soundly in the bed across the room, but not for long if the fool farm boy didn't keep his voice down. "Wait there," she said.

She slipped into the calico she'd worn earlier at the small gathering of friends and family her grandmother had hosted. Barefoot, she tip-toed out of the room and let herself out into the night.

She found him crouched beneath the apple tree. Now she could let the anger into her voice. "What are you doing here?"

He blushed. "I . . . I wanted to tell you something."

She crossed her hands over her chest and wondered what she'd ever seen in this awkward boy. Before the voices spoke, she'd been convinced that he was her future. They'd grown up together on the edge of Settler's Rest. She'd helped him with his ciphers and letters; he'd shown her how to trap a rabbit. One year, after the Pioneer Days picnic and barn dance, she'd told him that she would marry him someday and she'd kissed him quickly on the cheek. He'd blushed and run away. A few years later, his mother, a dour farm matron, negotiated the dowry with her grandmother. But they had sent the cedar chest back to the farm just last week, because Settler's Daughters did not marry.