The Prophets(87)

He was breathing heavily now but didn’t let that prevent him from reaching Timothy’s door, which he kicked open. The room was dark, there wasn’t even a bit of moonlight coming in through the window for him to see the outline of things. He walked quickly into the room and bumped into the bed. He ran his hands across the bed but felt nothing. He climbed on the bed and crept across it quickly; too quickly, and his foot got caught in the blanket and he twisted and turned and fell off the side. He landed on something, something soft and wet. He felt around; it was a body and it was sticky. He got on his knees and looked close.

It was Timothy.

He tried to pick him up, but he was heavy, so he only got the top half of the body onto his lap. He touched Timothy’s face and felt a deep, soggy gash in it. It took his breath away. He jumped up, dropping the body to the floor.

He looked up, his lips quivered like a cowardly man’s, and he shook his head slowly, disbelief grabbing him soundly. He screamed.

For the first time, he cursed God, over and over again. Then he stopped midcurse, because that was when he saw it.

From the corner of his eye. Some sparkling thing. A twinkle. A spark. A sudden flash. An elusive memory. A silver fish in a stream. Sunlight at the edge of a wave. A thunderbolt in a passing cloud. The last note in a song.

He raised his gun just as he caught, briefly, the night. Yes, unbelievable, but true: the night was coming at him and it had teeth, gleaming teeth that had apparently kept their brightness from a steady diet of white flesh.





Adam

There was a line that ran down the middle of Adam.

It was so thin that no one could see it, not even Adam. But since he could feel it, like a wire that had been held over the fire until orange and then laid upon his most sensitive spaces in the center of him, from his forehead to his crotch, he knew it was there.

It ached. Sometimes, it throbbed. Even though he appeared whole in everything he did, whether he was cleaning the coach or driving it, the line split him in two. Inside him, it erected a border, a wall, that separated his lungs, which had longed for each other but were trapped on either side of it, making breath short always. It cut off his heart from the right side of thinking, so the left side often made decisions without it. Acts without compassion to balance them were the genesis of cruelty.

Right eye knew not what left could see, left being so prone to releasing a tear when it saw the Sunday people and left ear heard the Sunday songs. Right didn’t understand. Saw only a blank space, heard only blue, and found, in fact, that these things provided no clarity, which meant in no uncertain terms that it was primarily a waste of time.

The left hand was reckless. Adam had fought for it not to be the dominant force when he practiced, in lamplight, the forbidden arts. It was bad enough that he could spell his name and write it in the most elegant script—every loop, hump, and slanted line a masterpiece, which meant that no matter who owned him, whether it was his father or not, there would always be a piece of him unchained, and a piece was enough. But to allow it all to flow through the left hand, which was the portal through which the devil himself made his way from flames to dry land: this magnified the danger, but also the thrill.

Nevertheless, it took Adam great effort to hold himself together because there was no place where he wasn’t pulled apart. He could only ever hear the Sunday songs from a distance because the Sunday people—well, they never told him that he couldn’t sit with them among the spotted shadows and creeping moss, but the circle seemed to close in front of him whenever he came near, and their skittering eyes seemed to suggest that he hadn’t gained their trust. He could sing too, if only they would let him sing.

He was one of the few people allowed in the Big House, but he wished he hadn’t been. Ruth laid elegant traps. Once, she hid silverware and claimed he had stolen it. Had Maggie not interrupted, holding the spoon high, talking about, “Missy Ruth, it right here. Funniest thing, too: it, plain out in the garden. Beats me how something this fine get out there,” it would have certainly cost him in lashes.

He chose the coach. The coach, too, was in the middle. Between the house and the field, but also, frequently, on the road.

He couldn’t be sure that he was the first. It was possible that there was a girl before him whom Ruth got to before the little thing even had the chance to play and prosper. Before she even had been given a name. So he thought of her as Lilith, his older sister who died so that next time, his mother would be wiser. His mother, whom he didn’t remember. Where she was now, he couldn’t say. Maybe she bore the brunt of it so that he would be spared. That could have been the trade: her life for his. And then perhaps she was taken to auction, breasts still filled with baby’s milk made specifically for him, which leaked when she heard the crowd jeer because it sounded so much like an infant crying. No dress to stain, the milk dripped down her ribs, then her thighs before hitting the wood planks of the block to be absorbed by heat and dead trees.

And perhaps she felt dead herself, cleaved from her baby—if he was her only one. Or she could have felt very alive once she saw his coloring and realized that he would never be as dark as she, and would always only ever remind her of her torment and tormentor.

Could she have escaped? Gone north through some kind of brilliant subterfuge that covered her trail and disguised her scent from dogs? Mint leaves and onion root used to stunning effect to confuse and repel. Nights inside the deepest caves with God knows what or high up in trees where biting ants were only the beginning.