Remnants of the Past
Chapter Two
The Chosen
I am not dressed appropriately. My thin nightgown is see-through. Everyone else is dressed in their Sunday frock, black floor-length dresses, hair tied into a severe bun or braid. Each of us wears the same dark metal necklace—a small cross with a garnet.
I sit surrounded by my sisters while we listen to Minister Alterre speak to us of womanhood and our place in the order of all things. I stand out among them because I did not wake on time and had to speed walk through the hallways just to make it here before the sermon began.
I very much want to cover up, but I will be punished for doing so.
I already received several severe looks from our leaders upon arrival.
Tardiness is not a forgivable offense. Their expressions upon seeing me promise that my day would not end without experiencing the whip across my back for this slight against God and Minister Alterre.
So my hands remain folded in my lap, my own rosary around my wrists. The wooden beads are smooth under my fingers, the cross the only thing of color, black as is the small figure of Christ carved upon it.
My head is bowed as is custom. We are here to listen only. The words of primary importance, not the voice or the man speaking them. They are God’s words, and we are being given a gift by being present to hear them.
I catalog every word he speaks and file them away to repeat, process, and make notes on later.
I am lucky this way. My memory works like a photograph, and if I mentally picture writing the words down, I can reflect and remember much of what I take in.
I credit this as one of the reasons I have excelled beyond my peers in my studies.
That and my agility in training. I am lean, though of average height, and I am faster than most of my sisters.
I learned early that those who don’t prove their value daily lose it.
Those who don’t excel die of a mysterious sickness.
A promise that we, my sisters and I, secretly call The Culling.
I have no excuse for my behavior today. I am never late. Why I was this morning and had no time to dress has escaped my mind in my haste to get here. And I welcome any punishments Sister Agnes delivers, because I must not repeat this folly and slip from my place at the top of the Order.
“Eridessa.”
My head snaps up. Minister Alterre glares down at me. Other heads turn, and soon the good minister’s is not the only scowl penetrating under my skin.
Something is wrong. We do not speak our names. That is something we lose when we experience our first cycle. I am no longer Eridessa. I am no one. A vessel. A maiden only, not an individual.
Rayla nudges my elbow. I look over at her and jerk back when I see blood pooling out of the corner of her eyes. “You should have told me.”
No. No. This isn’t right.
She’s dead. I saw her.
My gaze filters around the room to see more bleeding eyes. Their dresses change from black to white, and horrific wounds appear on their necks and chests. Then their skin becomes ashen, and dark blood spills across fabric, spreading outward like the day their death bell tolled.
A cold substance sloshes against my ankles.
When I look down, thick blackish-red blood rises over my bare toes and the tops of my feet, a river of it.
I stand abruptly, and the hem of my nightgown falls into the river.
The blood rises rapidly up my gown and legs.
It creeps by the second, rising up my body, crawling as though alive and trying to claim me as well.
Rayla grabs my arm harshly, turning me to her. Her dark hair is suddenly down, lying dirty and wet, framing her heart-shaped face. Her blue eyes are paler than normal as they glare into mine. “Why didn’t you warn me?”
I yank my arms away. “I could not.” But then hands are grabbing at me, more than one pair.
They forcibly pull me this way and that.
Nails sink deeply into my skin and claw as they try to retain their hold.
I push most of them away, but more replace them before I can flee. My hair is yanked, and my gown tears.
Minister Alterre shouts my name again, in a demanding tone that has my head snapping up and my gaze finding his in the melee.
“The Devil lives in you, child. You do not belong here. You are not the Chosen.”
I gasp, and Grand Minister Judiah is there.
I lift my head from the table and sit up straighter, from where I must have fallen asleep while studying.
We’re in his study, and he sits beside me.
His handsome face is a welcome sight and calms me from the nightmare.
He doesn’t reprimand me for falling asleep.
He simply points at the book in front of me, says, “Please proceed,” and nods.
I pick up the pen and dip it into the ink bottle at the top of the desk, then begin to jot down notes from the prophets of old.
Few in our Order are given the privilege to study from this text.
It is not the Good Book, but an extension of it.
Something that’s been kept secret and safe for our leaders’ eyes only.
I begin to scribble in haste because I’ve wasted valuable time in sleep, and I do not wish to return to the nightmare that had its hold on me.
The Grand Minister pets my back and smiles at me as I work quickly to record as much as possible.
He’s a striking man, and his smile is a thing of beauty.
Brown waves surround his tan face, and his blue eyes are both filled with youth and admiration.
Sometimes when he smiles like that at me, my heart flutters in my chest. But I must not think of such things.
He is, as I am, a tool for God to wield, and our looks do not determine the use we are to our redeemer.
When I finish my work, he rewards me by passing me a bottle of water.
A few seconds later, he sets a small plate before me that holds a corner of a fresh loaf of bread.
As I eat, he stands over me and grants me a special blessing, ending the prayer by anointing my forehead with holy water from the small bottle of it he keeps in his robes.
Then he helps me to my feet and places a kiss on my forehead.
It’s a brush of his lips, really. Merely skin on skin.
Yet my entire body responds unnaturally, even though I try my best to control it.
As soon as I’ve finished with the bread, he places his palm at the center of my back, leading me to the door.
Instead of walking into the hallway and continuing toward my own quarters, I am suddenly horizontal and lying on my mattress.
A small lit candle on the nightstand is nearly burned down to the dregs.
The room carries a faint scent of incense.
There’s a chill in the air, and my skin pebbles instantly.
Grand Minister Judiah is now above me in the bed. His robes are gone. An off-white nightshirt hangs off-center on his large, muscular frame. The black tattoos barely visible under his robes are present now, and even under his thin shirt, there’s a shadow of more dark markings on his skin.
“You did well today, and I’m sad to say that our lessons are nearing their end.”
His fingers are curled around the bottom of my nightdress. He rolls it and moves the hem higher and higher, revealing the swell of my thighs. My stomach somersaults as his fingers brush over my bare belly.
“To whom do we do this for?”
“God.”
“And why?”
“So that we may preserve humanity.”
“Yes, child.”
He smiles, gentle and certain, and his fingers slip to my center.
My breath catches. My body answers him before my mind can retreat.
Heat coils low inside me, and shame rises with it.
I should not crave the sensation his touch stirs when we are this close.
It is not something I should feel. It is something I should confess, so he can teach me how to control it.
But I don’t. I never do. I’m too afraid he will stop visiting me altogether if I voice such things.
I bolster my courage and try to get the words out this time. “I need…there is something I wish to tell you.”
“What is it?” He stops momentarily, but his hands stay on my body, which doesn’t help the tsunami of sensations I’ve been battling.
I raise my eyes to his, then jolt back. I push up and scramble toward my headboard. The Grand Minister’s eyes are bleeding.
It’s then that I realize what’s happening, but like the times before, I can’t seem to stop it. I leave this nightmare only to fall into another.
In this new dream, I’m kneeling. As I take in my surroundings, chills spread over my neck and arms. The icy dampness of the cave is oppressive. As is the darkness, the sea of black rock.
Two dead maidens float in the pool of white and blue light.
Their red robes billow around them like torn banners.
One faces upward. Her mesh veil is gone.
Her skin is chalk white and sunken, and where her eyes should be are only hollow black pits.
As I watch, a white snake with light-green eyes slithers out one of her eyeholes and begins to make its way across the water toward me.
Suddenly, a white hand breaks through the surface of the water and grabs my thigh.
I clasp my head and scream. These night terrors. Some nights I can’t escape them. They fold into each other, twisting into haunting memories I cannot outrun. It always takes time for my mind to understand what is happening and to remember that none of it is real.
That I am not really here, and this is all just a messed-up figment of my imagination.
This one is the worst of all, and I do not want to face it or hear what I know comes next. Yet it arrives before I can brace myself.
This time, my stomach is swollen, tight with a contraction.
I am holding my legs and bent forward—the pain is nearly unbearable.
I take deep breaths for calm and try to wake, but another labor pain seizes me.
My stomach clenches hard around my womb.
I bear down and shout, the agony splitting me apart.
I scream not only from the pain but from the sickening frustration of reliving this over and over.
My heart gallops as if it alone is fighting to signal I must wake.
A thin, pitiful wail rises through the cavern. A baby's cry. It echoes off the stone and into me, and the sound jerks me awake.
My new bedroom chamber is silent, although the memory of that cry clings to the edges of the silence and the shadows. As it has for many years, it will follow me for the rest of the days.
Tears rise fast and spill over. My chest lifts and falls in uneven, desperate breaths. I cover my face with shaking hands. “Just a dream. Just a dream. They are dead. You are alone. It was just a dream.”
If only the dead did not live so vividly in my mind.
In all these years alone, I have never learned how to escape them. Perhaps that is my punishment for everything I have done to earn this so-called honor.