The Year of the Witching(9)
There were many stories about how the Outskirters first came to Bethel, but the general understanding was that they were the descendants of refugees who fled there in the ancient days. There were many rumors about what they were fleeing. Some said it was a drought that turned the earth to ash. Others told stories of a sky that wept fire and brimstone. Still more claimed that a hungry sea had flooded their homeland, the tide swelling so high it drowned mountains and forced them to flee to the wilds.
A saint called Abdiah ruled the Church at that time. He said that the Father had punished these refugees for their allegiance to the Mother. Claimed that the plagues that drove them from their home were a form of divine retribution. He determined that it was the Father’s will to lead those in the Outskirts to Bethel, that they might continue the process of their sanctification through service to the Church. And so, at Abdiah’s bidding, for the first time in its centuries-long history, Bethel opened its gate to outsiders.
To prevent what Abdiah called the spread of fallacies, Outskirters were contained to a settlement on the southern cusp of Bethel. There, servants of the Church ministered to them—spreading the word of the Father, turning heathen to believer one soul at a time in what was later called the Great Evangelism. Over the passing decades, those in the Outskirts assimilated to the ways of Bethel. They adopted its faith and common tongue, continued their process of contrition through service to the Church. Gradually, as the generations passed, those in the Outskirts turned their back on their history, until they became more Bethelan than not. But it was clear to Immanuelle that they weren’t treated as such. She wasn’t treated as such.
Never mind the fact that most modern Outskirters bore the blood of Bethelan settlers or that they fought against Lilith’s armies in the Holy War. Shared or spilled, it seemed that blood did not matter as much as appearance did. And so, no matter how many centuries passed, no matter what they rendered in service of Bethel’s betterment, it seemed the Outskirters would always be consigned to the fringes.
On that day, there were around a dozen beggars on the main road. As Immanuelle neared them, they turned to her as they always did, though none extended their bowls or cups, or even greeted her with more than a cold stare. Instead, they seemed to study her, their expressions she would describe as a mix of curiosity and contempt.
She didn’t blame them.
While on the outside she shared their features—the dark skin, the firm nose, the wide black eyes—she was not of them, not really. She had never known the poverty of a life beyond the Glades or walked the roads through the Outskirts, nor had she met the kin she likely had there. For all Immanuelle knew, those who lurked on the roads may well have been her blood—relatives of her father, uncles or cousins perhaps—but she didn’t claim them as such, and they in turn didn’t claim her either.
Immanuelle walked a little faster, staring down at her shoes, trying to shrug off the lingering gazes of the Outskirters as she made her way to the livestock sector. She was nearly there when she spotted the best shop of all: the peddler’s bookstall.
In comparison to the other shops, with their painted signs and elaborate displays, it wasn’t much. Its tent was small, just a sheet of burlap stretched across three wooden stakes. Beneath it were five rows of shelves, all of them taller than Immanuelle and crowded with books—real books—not like the decorative tomes and hymnals that sat above the mantel at the Moore house, untouched and unread. These were books on botany and medicine, books of poetry and lore, atlases and histories of Bethel and the settlements beyond it, even little pamphlets that taught things like grammar and arithmetic. It was a wonder they had been approved by the Prophet’s Guard at all.
After tethering Judas to a nearby lamppost, Immanuelle drifted toward the stall. Despite knowing she was supposed to be well on her way to the livestock district, she lingered between the shelves, opening the books to smell the musk of their bindings and run her fingers along the pages. Although she had stopped her formal schooling at age twelve, as all girls in Bethel did to observe the Prophet’s Holy Protocol, Immanuelle was a strong reader. As a matter of fact, reading was one of the few things she felt she was truly good at, one of the few things she prided herself on. She sometimes thought that if she had any Gift at all, it was that. Books were to her what faith was to Martha; she never felt closer to the Father than she did in those moments under the shadow of the book tent, reading the stories of a stranger she’d never met.
The first book she selected was thick and bound in pale gray cloth. There was no title, only the word Elegy stamped along its spine in golden ink. Immanuelle opened it and read the first few lines of a poem about a storm sweeping over the ocean. She had never seen the ocean before, or known anyone who had seen it, but as she read the verses aloud, she could hear the bellow of the waves, taste the brine of the waters, and feel the wind snatching at her curls.
“Back again, I see.” Immanuelle looked up to find the shopkeeper, Tobis, watching her. Beside him, to her surprise, stood Ezra, the Prophet’s son, who’d sat with her and Leah by the riverside the day before.
He was dressed in plain clothes, same as the farmers who’d come fresh from the fields, except for the apostle’s sacred dagger, which still hung from the chain around his neck. He was holding two books in one hand. The first was a thick copy of the Holy Scriptures bound in brown leather; the second was slim, clothbound, and titleless. He smiled at her in greeting, and she dipped her head in response, slipping the book back into its place on the shelf. She couldn’t afford it anyway. The Moores barely had enough to put food on the table and pay tithes to the Prophet and his Church; there were no coppers to waste on frivolous things like stories and paper and poetry. Such privileges were reserved for apostles and men who had money to spare. Men like Ezra.