Beauty saw me stand back near Flame. She waved her hand for me to move closer. I hesitated, then Beauty insisted, “Come on, darlin’, she’s been asking for y’all personally.”
I stepped forward and walked in front of Beauty to stand next to Mae. I abruptly stopped. Immediately, my heart tore itself into shreds. A young girl. Maybe fourteen or fifteen, dirtied, cut and bleeding, dressed in a ripped and soiled long gray dress. The staple gray dress from The Order. Her white headdress was half hanging off her head, her dark blond hair underneath pitted with mud. And her eyes, her deep blue eyes were glassy with fear. She had backed into the corner of the gate, her hands out, trying to keep people at bay.
I saw her eyes flare when Lilah, Mae and I stood before her. On a pained sob, she fell to the ground, her hand covering her mouth. Lilah looked to me and I could see the panic on her face.
Mae, however, just inched forward, her hands held out too. “Be calm,” Mae soothed. The girl froze. “My name is Mae,” Mae explained. She pointed behind at us. “This is Lilah and Maddie.”
The young girl’s bloodied lip quivered and she asked, “Are you the Cursed Sisters of Eve?” My body jolted as she called us by that title, but Mae just nodded her head. “We used to be. I am Salome. This is Delilah. This is Magdalene,” Mae explained, pointing to Lilah and I once more.
The girl released another sob, her frail shoulders hunched over. “I found you,” she whispered brokenly, through her tears. “I really found you.”
Mae looked back, questions evident in her eyes. Lilah joined Mae, and crouched down to meet the young girl’s eyes. “Do you have a name?”
The girl seemed to steady her breathing, and said quietly, “Sarai. My name is Sarai.”
Lilah smiled gently. “Sarai, can you tell us what has happened. Where you have come from?”
Sarai straightened, wincing as she moved her legs. Without her speaking a word, I knew she had been violated. I felt like screaming out loud. She was a child. That awful place had hurt another child.
“I… I have come from New Zion. I managed to escape.” Sarai closed her eyes for the briefest of moments, then met Lilah’s eyes, and said, “They kept hurting us. They kept doing things to us. Bad things.” I fought back nausea as she spoke, knowing the feeling all too well. “Some of the girls had spoken about the Cursed Sisters that had escaped. Many of the girls talk of how you got away… and when… when… when they hurt me… hurt us tonight, we ran too.”
Lilah swallowed and asked, “Who is we, Sarai?”
Sarai’s face scrunched in pain and another sob escaped her throat. “My friends. But… but they got caught at the gate. They did not tell the guards I was there, in hiding. They helped me to get free. I have been travelling for hours. Someone helped bring me here. A stranger, someone that saw me lost on a road somewhere…” Sarai broke down again.
Lilah got to her feet, and looked at Mae. “Mae?”
But before Mae could speak, Ky said, “Are y’all believing this shit?”
Lilah’s wide eyes went to her husband. “Ky! Please.” Sarai, at Ky’s harsh tone, curled into herself further, her scratched and swollen ankles appearing under her dress.
“What? A bitch from the cult turns up in the middle of the fucking night and no one is thinking this could be a fucking set up? The cult that definitely wants us all fucking dead.” He turned to Styx. “Tell me I’m not alone in this, brother?”
Styx signed something and Mae shook her head. “She is terrified, baby. I get what you are saying. I understand that you are wary, but look at her. Anyone can see she is petrified.”