23 Then
Then
Once we joined the Apostles, it didn’t take me long to make enemies.
It never does.
I can still feel the sticky heat of that first summer and how it made the canopy of trees seem even more oppressive. Every memory is dreamlike, each event playing out just a little too slowly, as if the warmth irrevocably addled my perception.
Ilse and I had taken to visiting a nearby stream during the hottest afternoons.
Really, it was little more than a creek, but the water was cool.
We would take off our sandals and hike up the hems of our dresses, leaping over rocks and playing make-believe.
The worlds of our imaginations weren’t always fantastical—not anymore.
Now, too often, they looked uncannily like the lives we’d left behind.
We spoke of acquaintances we’d never see again.
Pretended we were at the river across the street from the old schoolhouse.
Besides, it was dangerous to imagine. That was one of the first things Vicar Johannes taught us.
Magic, he always said, was of the devil’s realm.
Even stories about the supernatural couldn’t be permitted—that was a surefire way to invite the devil in, and such tales fell within the realm of impiety.
Other than violence, that was the sin that seemed to cause Vicar Johannes the most concern.
One of his many sons was always quick to rat out me and Ilse whenever our games invoked magical impossibilities.
That was another reason we’d taken to playing by the creek. It was a place few other children frequented, and it allowed my sister and I to be alone. To pretend we were still playing in the garden outside our house and that nothing had changed.
Despite it all, I was forever dreaming up new scenarios for me and Ilse to make-believe.
She’d always been timid, but I hated seeing the terrified creature she’d become.
Her smiles were rare, her laughs even rarer.
She bowed her head in deference when instructed to.
I tried to do the same, but only because it upset her when I was reprimanded—and I was reprimanded frequently.
I didn’t seem to be able to help it. The one thing I could do was distract her.
On the day in question, I had suggested we pretend to be fairies.
To thirteen-year-old me, that meant winged creatures who lived among the trees and ate boys who crossed us.
Ilse had loved it; it was the happiest I had seen her in weeks.
She raced along the edge of the creek, her feet bare, her arms stretched out wide as she prepared to take flight.
And then she’d stopped dead.
The Vicar’s eldest son stood in her path, hands on his hips, wearing a grin too vicious for youth.
You’re—going—to—be—in—trouble, he’d sung triumphantly, and Ilse had begun to cry, that hard-won joy slipping from her face in seconds. The cheerful flush in her cheeks shifted to an anxious pale. That, I think, was the first time I knew I had it within me to kill someone.
I didn’t kill the boy though. I leaped across that slow trickle of water to where he stood on the opposite bank, still smiling at my sister’s tears, and punched him right in the teeth.
It wasn’t the first time I’d gotten in a fight. I was forever involved in minor scuffles at school, each of which ended with a call to my parents and a meeting with the school chaplain. It was, however, the first time I’d gotten in a fight that counted.
The Vicar’s son was larger than me, but he wasn’t angrier. As it turned out, he was also more mindful of consequences. He was afraid of the Bloodrot—I wasn’t. And so I drove my fist into his sorry face again and again, never taking a hit in return, until eventually he up and ran.
That was the first time Ilse had looked at me in horror. It was also the first time I’d sinned in any way that mattered.
It wouldn’t be the last time for either one.