Vanessa sneaks a look at Mary, who looks incomplete without the tall figure of Janey next to her. Her face is white, her eyes closed, her lips still. One of her hands lies limply in the grip of her mother, who chafes it like she’s trying to bring Mary back from the dead.
“With rebirth comes the chance to start again. We will have outsiders coming to fill our pews again, families who survived the scourge and have longed for this. We can start them off anew. We can teach them correctly. We can guide them the way we should have, all along. We will cleanse them of the filth they carry with them. The discarded relics of a sinful society, a society that set itself on fire and burned, burned until bodies littered the ground.
“We will cleanse ourselves. Our wanderers will show us the way. Discipline will be sharp, harsh, and yet what are we doing but cutting away the mangled, rotting fruit of a harvest and letting the healthy fruit live and flourish? What are we doing but following the will of the ancestors?”
The wanderers have been coming to Vanessa’s house late at night. She wakes to hear them arguing through the walls. The first night, she crept downstairs to hear them and was shocked to recognize, strewn in a nest of vehement words, her own name. Unsure if they were aware of her presence or simply talking of her, she fled back upstairs and pretended to be soundly asleep, in case a troop of wanderers was about to storm into her room to question her. Now she is too scared to try to listen, and simply lies in her bed, while the tones of furious male argument drift up from downstairs.
Pastor Saul bows his head. “We must pray for our renewal.”
There is a rustling of assent, or discontent, or grief. Vanessa starts to sob, and the people around her sit facing forward dully like they are deaf, or asleep.
Chapter Sixty
Vanessa
Vanessa feels Father come to shake her in the night. She wasn’t really asleep—she was lying half awake, thinking about Janey Solomon. They say she was so light that her mother carried her to the fields in her arms, that when she was dropped into the hole in the ground she floated like a feather.
It’s late, but Vanessa turns down the blanket, lies back, and opens her arms like she’s supposed to, before she remembers that she’s no longer even allowed to.
“No, Vanessa,” says Father. “Get up.”
“What? What’s going on?”
He has already moved back. “I need you to get some of your clothes and get ready to leave.”
“Leave?” Vanessa sits up. “Leave for…”
“I don’t have time,” he says, and is gone. The moon is so full and glaring that she doesn’t need a candle. She gathers some clothes in the dark. Then, gasping, she drops them in a heap and runs to the library.
“Vanessa,” says Father when he finds her with an armful of books. His voice is stern, but she catches a glint of affection in his eyes.
“I’ll wear Mother’s clothes,” she tells him. She’s grown tall lately, her body disarranging and rearranging itself in new, messy, hideous patterns. Mother’s clothes should fit her now.
Ben and Mother are standing by the door, Mother with a big bundle in her arms. “What’s happening?” Vanessa asks her, although she knows what’s happening.
Mother shakes her head, her mouth pursing and stretching. Vanessa sees she’s been crying.
“I need you to be quiet,” Father says. “As quiet as you can be. If anybody wakes and finds us…Irene, I’ll take the clothes, you carry Ben.”
Wordlessly, Mother hands over the clothes and stoops to take a fretful Ben in her arms. She leans her head on his.
Father opens the door and slips out, and the rest of the family follow in a straggling line. The books drag heavily at Vanessa’s arms, but she refuses to drop one and her arms grow sore, then numb. Her scarred hand aches. They’re past the Abrahams’ when she realizes she didn’t put on any shoes, and her feet are needling with cold. There’s nothing to do but walk on.
When they reach the ferry, Vanessa’s sleepy mind suddenly jolts with the full recognition of what is about to happen. Her heart leaps up into her throat, and she bites her lip hard. Father goes up to the ferryman and whispers something. The ferryman doesn’t move. Turning, Father beckons them on board.
Vanessa’s numb feet step onto the flat planes of wood. The floor is dusty, splintery, and cool. Vanessa bends to release the books in a pile, and when she straightens the ferryman is staring at her. His eyes are like pools of darkness under the brim of his hat, and she looks away.
“Did you tell anyone?” Father demands of the ferryman, who merely gazes at him, swaying slightly. “Did they ask you anything?” Shrugging and looking away, the ferryman reaches for his long pole and sweeps it into the water.
As they pull away from shore Ben cries, and Mother sings a little song to him. Father is staring out at the water.
Once they’re out of sight of the island, the ferryman pulls a cord and a terrible growling comes from under the raft. Vanessa grabs Mother’s hand, trembling, and the ferryman laughs silently to himself. “It’s all right,” says Father. “It’s always like this.” A waterfall pours from the back of the raft, and they begin to move quickly. With eyes on the horizon, Vanessa sees the gray sky turn pink. She sits cross-legged and watches the water go by.
Father squats next to her. “I’m doing this for you, Vanessa,” he says.
“You’re doing this because you didn’t get to say what happens next,” she replies, not looking at him. “You pretend it’s about me, but it’s really because they wouldn’t listen to you.”
There’s a silence, and he says, “You don’t understand.”
“What, then?”
“They were going to burn my books. They still are. But I just couldn’t stand there and watch it happen. It would be like watching my family go up in flames. You don’t know how proud I was when I saw what you were bringing with us.”
Vanessa is still for a moment, thinking of her father’s library of beautiful words and pictures catching fire, crumbling to ash. “You left because of your books?”
“No.” He is silent, then sighs. “I left because I was worried they might try to kill you someday.” Vanessa hears Mother inhale sharply and looks up to see her wrapping her arms tightly around Ben, as if only he can save her from drowning.
Reaching out, Vanessa squeezes Father’s palm, just for a moment. When his fingers try to wrap around hers, she draws her hand away. Squinting into the gray morning, she thinks of last summer, and how beautiful the island looked from the tallest tree.
Finally she sees the horizon’s end: land turning bright with the sun. As they approach, she can see figures moving. Everything is in flames, blazing brightly, dark silhouettes outlined by flicker and glow. She can’t tell if it’s the wastelands burning their forever fire, or the sun catching light on human bodies as it rises behind them.
Acknowledgments