Chapter 3 Daylan
three
Daylan
I’m starting to dread waking up.
I used to love mornings and the way the sun would peek through the trees, bathing the world in a soft, golden glow.
Before this devilry started, I would sneak down the hallway and out to the porch at the front of the longhouse to sit and watch the glory of the Lord unfold in the silence.
I would offer quiet prayers I don’t dare speak aloud in front of others in those gentle moments.
I would pray for my parents, who died long before I even knew what God was. I would ask Him for mercy on their behalf and pray that they had found salvation in the kingdom of Heaven.
I would pray on behalf of the ones we lost in the cleansing.
The damned souls still tied to the inner fences of Bright Haven, stumbling on rotting feet and murmuring without words to offer prayers of their own.
Though God did not grant them mercy and they fell into their sin, I ask Him to keep them safe and keep us safe from them.
I would pray for Lazarus, the fallen. The sinner, who once lived here as one of the members of this community, before the devil whispered into his ear. I prayed for him to have found whatever peace in death he was lacking in life.
Now I wonder if my prayers for his sake have been answered by the devil himself.
It is not something I would ever seek guidance with, for the only guidance to be had for me is from Father, and he would not understand.
After the wicked acts Lazarus did in his last days on earth, Father’s hatred of his name is justified, and he would punish me for certain if he knew I offered prayers to God for Lazarus’ sake.
I do it anyway, albeit silently in the early morning hours.
God calls me to speak the words, and I cannot deny my Lord.
I am not praying this morning.
After a night spent tossing and turning, with visions of blood and memories of Angelo’s screams haunting my dreams, I am exhausted and wary of the waking world.
As I lay on my mattress with my blanket wrapped tight around me, all I can wonder is what fresh horror I will find when I leave the comfort and safety of this space behind.
And leave I must.
Already I can hear the scraping of chairs across wooden floors, and the smell of cooking meat filters through the door to my room at the back of the longhouse.
My stomach growls in hunger, and I am reminded that after the cleansing yesterday, I did not feel well enough to eat any of the food offered in fellowship to those who returned from the fences.
Instead, after giving a statement to Father about what I had witnessed, I went to my bedroom, wiped my skin clean of rain and filth, then crawled into my bed.
I wept for the loss of Angelo and the horror of his passing until God granted me no more sorrow and sleep was allowed to take me.
I did not even stay long enough to find out what Father did with Arn and Timothy.
With a yawn, I push back the blanket on my bed and sit up on the edge of the mattress.
The cool air of the room hits my bare skin, drawing goosebumps to my flesh, and I shiver a little where I sit.
I am only given white robes to wear, and they are not comfortable to sleep in, so I opt to sleep in the nude, even in the winters when the cold seeps into the longhouse and all is covered in frost. Head spinning at the sudden movement, I allow myself a few moments of peace before rising and heading to the wardrobe to pluck a new white robe from within, but the sight of yesterday’s robe lying on the floor makes me cringe.
I failed to bring it to the Elders last night as I am required to, and seeing it rumpled in a heap on the floor feels like a slight against God’s gift.
I quickly pick it up off the floor and turn, placing it onto my bed before turning back to my wardrobe and realizing that I have forgotten one more task I am meant to complete after the cleansing of sinners has taken place.
I groan loudly into the silence, turning away from the wardrobe again to grab a small piece of clean cloth from my bedside table.
I am meant to prick my finger and capture the blood that bubbles out of my body on one of these handkerchief sized pieces of fabric.
He may not have noticed my forgetfulness with delivering my robe to the Elders, but Father will definitely have paid attention to this error.
I am supposed to leave it outside my door for him to collect and keep as a sign of my purity and holiness.
If I am lucky, he will still be sleeping and will not catch me while I undo the failures I have done.
I settle back down on the bed, slumping into the mattress as I open the small drawer on the bedside table and pull out the sharp needle from within.
With a deep breath, I press the tip of it into the thickened pad of skin beneath my thumb, pulling it out quickly to let my untainted red blood bubble to the surface.
The first time Father pricked my skin to draw my blood, the pain of it made me squeak, but I was merely a child then.
Now, though it stings the tiniest bit, I am unrattled by this process.
Once the cloth is soaked through with crimson, I place it on the mattress beside me and stand up, finally heading to gather a new robe from the wardrobe.
I’m certain I’ve remembered everything now.
With a yawn that cracks my mouth open wide and draws tears to my eyes, I pluck a fresh robe from within the wooden wardrobe that sits in the corner of my room.
It and my wooden bed are the only furniture in here, aside from my small bedside table, and they are all remnants of the world long before my time.
I am surprised they even exist anymore, but Father said that the workmen have taken good care of things over the years, and I don’t doubt him, for he has lived here his entire life.
Bright Haven was once called a ‘Summer Camp’, which is a wild concept to me.
Back before the world turned to ruin and rot, parents would send their children away to a place like this for whole months at a time, trusting strangers to take care of their needs.
I don’t know exactly what these abandoned children were made to do at summer camp, but Father says that it was meant to be fun and educational for them.
The cabins with the built-in bunkbeds that are now occupied by Bright Haven families were where the children would sleep, and the greenhouses were where they’d grow plants and flowers, much as we do now.
There is a lake nearby that is now cut off from our access due to the fences, but Father says they used to go in groups down to throw children off the dock in hopes they would learn how to survive in the waters.
He speaks of this summer camp with a wistful smile, as if it is something he wishes he could experience, but he could be wrong about the nature of such a place.
His grandparents ran the camp long before he was born, and he has no memory of it himself, so perhaps summer camp isn’t something that was fun or educational for the children sent here.
Being made to raise crops and risking drowning in the lake water doesn’t sound like a good time to me.
Today also will not be a good time, I am certain.
The same sense of dread that kept me lingering in my bed this morning creeps up inside me as I gather the stained robe and the blood-soaked cloth from my bed and make my way to the door of my room.
With a deep breath, I push it open and walk out into the hallway that separates my private space from the communal space the rest of the congregation gathers in for meal gatherings and prayer services.
I am pleased that the longhouse is fairly empty this morning.
Only a few families linger at the long wooden tables we eat our meals at, and none are kneeling in front of the giant wooden cross hung over the fireplace at the front of the space.
Father is nowhere to be found, and I send a silent prayer of thanks up to God for granting me time to deliver my robes and the cloth without having to hear of my failure to do so last evening.
I offer a nod and a gentle smile to the children seated at one of the tables, their faces covered in sticky sweet syrup and the plates in front of them bearing remnants of buckwheat pancakes.
“Good morning, my Lamb,” their father murmurs as I pass.
“Blessings to you,” I offer back.
“Blessins!” one of the young children squawks, and I stop walking to turn my face towards him, delighted at his bright, happy face on a morning such as this.
“We don’t say blessings to the Lamb, Henry,” his mother explains. “We say good morning, for he is always blessed.”
“G’mornin?” Henry says, scrunching his nose as he tries to figure out the difference between the two greetings.
“Blessings to you, dear Henry,” I respond. “I accept your blessings, despite not needing them. I appreciate your thinking of me.”
“Thank you, my Lamb,” his father says. “He is just learning the ways.”
Father would have dragged me into his room and whipped me for misspeaking, but I am pleased to see that Henry’s dad looks upon his children kindly with understanding.
I smile down at the family by the table, heart filling with joy that pushes the dread to the back of my mind.
“All children will learn in time. Where would I be if I turned down a friendly greeting from one of our flock’s most precious?
All I must know is whether Henry and his little sister have left me any pancakes this morning. ”
“I ate them all,” Henry says, with a grin and a laugh.
“All of them?”
“No, I did,” his sister shouts, syrup sticking to her shirt and a cheeky grin on her face. They go back and forth for a bit about who ate the pancakes before their mother raises her hand, causing them to stop squabbling and look at her.
“Neither of you ate all the pancakes,” she says, offering a gentle smile. “The truth is, I did.”
Peals of joyous laughter and excited shouting echo through the longhouse, and I find myself chuckling along with the children at the table.
All of my happiness seeps out of me though as I look towards the front of the room to find Father staring at me from below the wooden cross.
His arms are crossed across his chest, and he frowns at me so deeply that I can see the lines in his cheeks from here.
He gestures for me to go to him, and the dread inside me breaks free from its confines, pooling in my body once more.
“Be well,” I say to the table, clutching my robe tight in my hands as I scurry across the wooden floor like a mouse towards him.
He reaches for my robe when I am near, and I open my arms, allowing him to take it from me.
I also hand him the cloth bearing my blood, face heating in my shame at having forgotten such important things.
“I am sorry. In everything else that happened, I made errors.”
Father hesitates for a moment, staring at the two articles of red-stained fabric in his hands.
He carefully loops the robe over his arm and tucks the cloth into his pocket before reaching for my shoulder.
I flinch as his meaty palm claps down on my robe, but he offers a smile.
“This is not all you have forgotten, my Lamb.”
“Oh?” Try as I might, I cannot remember what he believes I have forgotten to do. The cloth to prove my blood remains untainted. The red robe for the Elders. What else is there?
Father smiles, but there is a sense of worry about the way he clutches tightly to the fabric in his hands. “You forgot your tokens, Lamb. Sadly, it is trading day, and the caravans have come.”