The Power(38)

The men shout out, ‘Police! Leave the building now, with your hands in the air!’

Allie looks at Roxy. Roxy grins at her.

They’re waiting behind the curtains in the dining room, the one that looks out over the back gardens. Waiting until the police are all on the stone stairs leading to the terrace outside the back doors. Waiting, waiting … and there they all are.

Roxy pulls the corks out from the half-dozen barrels of seawater they’ve stored behind them. The carpet is sodden now, and the water’s gushing out under the door towards the steps. They’re all in one mass of water, Roxy and Allie and the police.

Allie puts her hand into the water around her ankles and concentrates.

Outside, on the terrace and on the stairs, the water is touching the skin of all the police officers, one way or another. It needs more control than Allie’s ever managed before; their fingers are on the triggers, they want to squeeze. But one by one she sends her message through the water, as fast as thought. And one by one, the officers jerk like puppets, the angles of their elbows fly out, their hands unclench and go numb. One by one, they drop their guns.

‘Fucking hell,’ says Roxy.

‘Now,’ says Allie, and climbs up on to a chair.

Roxy, the woman with more power than she knows what to do with, sends a bolt through the water, and each of the police officers starts and bucks and topples to the ground. Neat as you like.

It had to be only one woman doing it; a dozen convent girls couldn’t have acted together so quickly without hurting each other. A soldier had to come.

Roxy smiles.

Upstairs, Gordy’s been filming it on her cellphone. It’ll be online in an hour. You don’t need too many miracles before people start believing in you. And then sending you money and offers of legal help to get yourself properly set up. Everyone’s looking for some kind of answer, today more than ever.

Mother Eve records a message to go out over the footage. She says, ‘I have not come to tell you to give up a single strand of your belief. I am not here to convert you. Christian, Jew, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, Buddhist, if you are of any faith or none at all, God does not want you to change your practice.’

She pauses. She knows this is not what they’re expecting to hear.

‘God loves all of us,’ she says, ‘and She wants us to know that She has changed Her garment merely. She is beyond female and male, She is beyond human understanding. But She calls your attention to that which you have forgotten. Jews: look to Miriam, not Moses, for what you can learn from her. Muslims: look to Fatimah, not Muhammad. Buddhists: remember Tara, the mother of liberation. Christians: pray to Mary for your salvation.

‘You have been taught that you are unclean, that you are not holy, that your body is impure and could never harbour the divine. You have been taught to despise everything you are and to long only to be a man. But you have been taught lies. God lies within you, God has returned to earth to teach you, in the form of this new power. Do not come to me looking for answers, for you must find the answers within yourself.’

What can ever be more seductive than to be asked to stay away? What draws people nearer than being told they are unwelcome?

Already that evening there are emails: Where can I go to join with your followers? What can I do here at home? How do I set up a prayer circle for this new thing? Teach us how to pray.

And there are the appeals for help. My daughter is sick, pray for her. My mother’s new husband has handcuffed her to the bed, please send someone to rescue her. Allie and Roxy read the emails together.

Allie says, ‘We have to try to help.’

Roxy says, ‘You can’t help them all, babe.’

Allie says, ‘I can. With God’s help, I can.’

Roxy says, ‘Maybe you don’t need to go and get all of them, to help all of them.’

The police force all across the state gets worse after the video of what Allie and Roxy did goes up online. They felt humiliated, of course they did. They had something to prove. There are states and countries where the police are already actively recruiting women, but that hasn’t happened here yet. The force is still mostly male. And they’re angry, and they’re afraid, and then things happen.

Twenty-three days after the police tried to take the convent, a girl arrives at the door with a message for Mother Eve. Only Mother Eve; please, they have to help her. She’s weak with crying, and shaking and frightened.

Roxy makes her a hot, sweet tea and Allie finds her some cookies, and the girl – her name’s Mez – tells them what’s happened.

It was seven armed police officers, patrolling their neighbourhood. Mez and her mom were walking home from the grocery store, just talking. Mez is twelve and has had the power for a few months; her mom’s had it for longer; her little cousin woke it up in her. They were just talking, says Mez, just holding their grocery bags and chatting and laughing, and then suddenly there were six or seven cops saying, ‘What’s in the bags? Where are you going? We’ve had reports of a couple of women causing trouble round here. What have you got in the damn bags?’

Mez’s mom didn’t take it too seriously; she just laughed and said, ‘What are we gonna have in here? Groceries, from the grocery store.’

And one of the cops said she was acting pretty cool for a woman walking in a dangerous area; what had she been doing?

And Mez’s mom just said, ‘Leave us alone.’