Page 4 of Anathema

Which left only one option, and I’d have sooner raced straight into those woods than suffer the horrors I’d heard often befell the Red Veils. The least of which was having their tongues cut out for a vow of silence. As I understood, those deemed most impure suffered the worst indoctrination, often beaten into submission and made to endure long bouts of isolation.

Even then, pangs of anxiety clenched my chest at the thought of being sequestered from my sister, the only person who’d ever shown me love, unconditionally. She was the only person willing to see beyond the cursed baby left near The Eating Woods, in spite of what it meant for her reputation. As the blood heir of Grandfather Bronwick, she was more likely to be wed, though not to anyone of her choosing. Which meant, if I were forced into servitude, I’d only see her at the occasional Banishing, where all clergy were required to attend.

The many times Agatha had threatened to send me off to the convent to glean some piety had all but sealed my fate.

Neither option was appealing, but of the two evils I faced, at least marriage would’ve offered a life outside of the claustrophobic temple where the clergy women were forced to reside. Worse still, as a Red Veil, I’d be at the mercy of Sacton Crain, the most senior member of the church, who’d undoubtedly go out of his way to make my life an absolute hardship. A man not only known for his unyielding expectations and veiled misogyny, but also, his unorthodox punishments, which included bare bottom spankings over his knee.

The paper crumpled within my tight fist, as I allowed myself to imagine such a thing.

I refused to be subjected to him.

Or any man, for that matter.

While I’d hardly known my adoptive father, nor held much love for him as a result of his constant absence, his mere existence had not only served as a buffer between Agatha and me, but had also protected me from ever having to consider life as a Red Veil.

His death was a tragedy in every sense of the word and for the first time in my life, I feared what lay on the horizon.

A damn fine mess you’ve left. And for what?

The ire I harbored toward my father was wrong, I knew that, but, damn it all, had he even considered the consequences? The mere possibility that he might’ve died and his family left to suffer the wrath of his beloved faith? That my sister and I would be placed in the care of the one woman in the world who loathed us more than the bone spurs she incessantly groaned about.

I wanted to scream into the void. To throttle fate with both hands for having dipped its poison-tipped fingers into our lives.

As I pondered the potential outcomes, the somber kindling of grief that simmered in my chest curled and lashed, fueled by my growing anger. A quiet flame that rose with a burgeoning need to be set free. Emotions I was forced to keep hidden for fear of looking possessed by evil, as girls were often perceived when they felt too much.

My fury refused to be smothered as a bleak picture rooted itself into my reality.

Damn you! my head screamed.

Though some may have been inclined to fault the defectors for father’s murder, I didn’t. I blamed the god who demanded blood. The revered god who ripped families apart and banished the innocent. An invisible entity, feared more than the creature that dwelled in the woods. The one to whom my father had pledged his undying devotion.

I glanced down at the letter, on the back of which, out of resentment and spite, I’d written The Red God isn’t real. They were words that scratched at my skull every time I knelt to pray. The same words that nearly spilled from my lips with every lashing I’d suffered for some obscure offense I’d committed against Him. To utter such a phrase would label me a heretic.

A witch.

Oh what fodder that would’ve given the whole damned parish, because had anyone found the letter, and what I’d written, I’d have been banished to these very woods. Of course, I could’ve burned it, and all traces of my blasphemy would’ve disappeared. But I longed to cast those words into the wind and see them carried to a place from where no one would be brave enough to retrieve them.

Into the depths of those starving trees that would eat them whole.

I opened my mouth for the scream begging to cut loose. The fury and frustration bound so tightly around my heart and lungs, it hurt to breathe. Mouth agape, I glared back at the letter through a veil of tears, summoning nothing more than a shuddering breath. The emotions remained strangled in my throat, like the many times I’d been forced to swallow them back in the face of ridicule and scorn and rejection. I’d learned at too early an age that the sound of a girl’s scream drew nothing more than apathy.

Besides, what did it matter now, anyway? Father was gone. Our lives would never be the same from that day forward.

Mindless in my staring, the letter slipped loose and flitted just onto the other side of the archway, where it lay on the ground, oddly floundering like a fish in the dirt. The words I’d written trembled across the page, flickering in and out of view with each flutter of the breeze. Until the parchment settled, and a new phrase appeared where mine had been, in the same hasty strokes of my own handwriting. God is Death.

I frowned, my mind teasing the possibility that I’d inadvertently written that.

I hadn’t.

God is Death? What did that even mean?

An unsettling wisp of confusion crawled over my neck as I reached out for the letter, daring my hand past that forbidden archway. I needed to see those words up close, to confirm that I wasn’t imagining them.

I bent to retrieve it, and a hot streak of pain zipped across my forearm. “Dammit!”

Lifting my arm showed the sleeve of my dress torn up to my elbow, where blood trickled from a gouge down the underside of my forearm. A treacherous piece of bone, sticking out from the archway, held remnants of the torn fabric, confirming what had cut me, and a small piece of blood-stained lace slipped from its sharpened tip. As a sizzling sound rose over the rustling of the trees, I frowned harder, and as I watched, curls of white smoke drifted from the bone and once-red drops of blood seared to black.

Light shimmered across my eyes, the entire forest rippling with a translucent sheen. I gasped at the sight, my eyes fixated on the peculiarity, trying to discern whether what I was seeing was real. I’d heard stories of seafarers happening upon a glimmering wall, miles out from land, one that altered their navigation and sent them sailing right back from where they’d come. Those were the lucky ones, though. Others were said to have been swallowed by squalls that reached the sky, their ships never seen again.

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