They had a Bible in the camp and I walked over to pick it up. Barzee watched me. She was curious to see what I would do.
Thumbing through the Bible, I kept considering. I wanted my new middle name to start with an “E.” I wanted it to have some connection, even if just a tiny one, to my real name. I let the pages slide through my fingers. One of my heroes in the Old Testament was a queen named Esther. She was strong. She was courageous. I thought about it for a moment. It was a big decision, after all, choosing a new name for my new life. Laying the Bible down, I said, “I want my middle name to be Esther.”
Mitchell seemed to scowl as he thought, trying to find a reason to disagree. He glanced toward Barzee, seeing if she had some kind of objection that he hadn’t thought about. If she did, she didn’t show it. “Okay,” he said.
“I want you to call me Esther. Not Shearjashub. Esther is a girl’s name. It’s from the Bible. Will you call me that now?”
He reluctantly agreed. And for a while they did. But after a few months, they went back to Shearjashub. I don’t know why. They just did.
But for a short time, I had a tiny victory. Did it make me feel any better? Not really. Did it bring me any hope that I might be able to manipulate my situation? Again, not really. It was a victory, but such a hollow one; it didn’t change a lot of how I felt.
15.
The Voice
My captors and I were sitting in the tarped area outside the tent. It was the third day since I’d been taken. The sun was starting to drop toward the horizon. Soon it would be cool. Barzee was standing near the containers with the food. In a few minutes, it would be time to eat. Food was the last thing that I wanted. My stomach was always tied in knots. The trees provided shade, but it was June, and the sun was burning through the leaves. There was no breeze. We had little water and I was thirsty. Mitchell was reading from the Book of Immanuel, the fascinating tome that he had written. I was learning more about his church, the Church of the First Born in the Last Days, and how he was the prophet of the world. Then he started reading scripture. When he talked of God, it was the creepiest thing you can imagine; the words of God coming from the face of the devil. It was the scariest thing I had ever seen.
I shifted on the bucket. It was early afternoon and the day was very calm. I was dressed in my robe. It was already filthy and only getting worse. Though it’d only been three days, it already seemed like years. I looked up at the sky as the sound of an airplane filtered through the trees. It seemed there were a lot of them now. I could hear them almost constantly. I searched for the aircraft through a break in the leaves but it was too high to be seen. Way too high to see me. A couple of times that morning some helicopters had flown over the ridge, but none of them had been very close. At least, I didn’t think they were, although it was hard to tell for certain as the sound of their rotors reverberated up and down the canyon walls. Although it was terribly disappointing that none of them came close enough to see me, at least I knew that they were out there looking.
I pulled against the steel cable that held me. If I could just get free! If I could run into an opening! If I could signal them in some way!
The sun was high now, almost at its apex in the sky. Hot. Dry. I felt like I was going to die of thirst. We were getting very low on water. A few cups was all that remained in the plastic containers. I was sitting in my usual place, on the bucket by my tiny sapling, when I heard it. Far away. So far away. My heart instantly jumped into my throat.
Mitchell heard it too. He fell silent. His eyes grew wild in fear and anger, his face growing hard as stone. Barzee was sitting right beside him. She didn’t seem to hear. Mitchell reached out and grabbed her shoulder, commanding her to hold very still.
Elizabeth …
The sound drifted through the trees.
Elizabeth …
The voice was faint as a breeze, soft as a whisper in the night. I strained my ears to hear it, praying it would come again.
Nothing.
I held my breath.
Nothing.
Mitchell slowly stood.
I continued straining.
Elizabeth …
It was drifting through the trees from the bottom of the canyon. It was so faint. So far away. I wondered if I had imagined it. But I know that it was real. And Mitchell knew it too.
I thought I had recognized my uncle’s voice. I wanted to scream! I wanted to cry! I wanted to jump up and down and wave my arms. I wanted to yell and shriek.
Mitchell moved toward me like an animal on the attack. He knelt down right beside me, his face just a few inches from my own. “I have my knife.” His breath was hot and foul. “One tiny peep, and you know what I will do.”
I stared at him in terror. Yes, I knew.
“If you make a sound, I’ll tape your mouth shut.”
I glanced in fear toward the bottom of the canyon, tears of frustration burning my eyes.
Elizabeth …