Page 117 of Kiwi Sin
I caught the look on Valor’s face at that and thought,Yeh, mate, it’ll probably be you in the end. Good luck with that. I hope you’re looking forward to prison.This was my cue, though, so I said, “And Oriana. We’re going to be married, and where I go, she goes.”
“As it should be,” the Prophet said. “‘And Ruth said, Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.’”
I wanted to say, “I meant into the compound for this, not making her be bound by my choices all her life,” but I didn’t, of course.
Daisy said, “We’ll all come.”
“No,” the Prophet said. “This is still Mount Zion property, and I choose who steps onto it. The four of you, then.” He turned and stumped away.
My mum could come, because she’d always follow my dad’s lead, and the Prophet knew it. And Oriana could come, because he thought she was exactly the same.
He was wrong.
Crossing over the metal track of the gate was almost the hardest thing I’d ever done. Harder than walking out of Mount Zion, and harder even than the last time Oriana and I had been here, when we’d rescued Priya. That day, we’d been driven by nerves and adrenaline and the idea of Priya held back. Held prisoner.
“Screw your courage to the sticking-place,”Oriana whispered to me,“and we’ll not fail.”It was from Shakespeare, said by a woman to urge her husband to a heinous deed.
Regicide.
I stepped through the gate, and Oriana stepped through right beside me. I was wearing my usual clothes: brown work pants—actually, the ones I’d been wearing when I’d first walked out of here, because those things wore like iron—and a blue work shirt with braces. I looked hardly a bit different, and neither did Dad. As for Mum, she was in a long skirt and top, so not much difference there, either. Her hair was uncovered, but in its usual knot, and I could tell that she wished she weren’t showing it. Her face was the face of a martyr facing judgment.
Oriana? Her hair wasn’t in a knot. It was loose. She was wearing wide-legged, dark purple trousers, thicker ones than those she’d made for summer. Their wide fabric belt emphasized her curves in a way that Mount Zion had never allowed, and her pale-yellow top showed her collarbones and hinted at the unstructured bra beneath. It would have showed her arms, too, but she was wearing a cardigan she’d knitted. The body of it was lilac, like my duvet cover, and the sleeves were stripes of all the colors she loved so much, the colors of flowers: yellow and sky-blue and lemongrass-green, pink and red and deep purple. The cardigan had pockets and a striped hood in the same colors, and as she walked through the sea of brown, she looked like pure, bright life force.
Like defiance.
The Prophet led us to the administration building, someplace I’d been only when accompanying my father, and where Oriana and my mum would never have been at all. The only women allowed here were the Prophet’s wife and daughters, and only to clean, restock, and serve. We went through one door and down a passage, ending in a sort of reception area where I’d sat and waited for my dad on those occasions. The Prophet told Valor, “Wait here,” and Valor looked like he wanted to argue, but didn’t dare. “The women, too,” the Prophet added.
“No,” Dad said. “They need to hear as well.”
I was holding my breath. For all of it, but especially for that. How would the Prophet believe we were coming back if Dad was insisting on bringing Mum and Oriana into this sanctified place?
It was a standoff. The Prophet, with his hooded, penetrating eyes, and Dad, with his open gaze and set jaw. And Oriana’s father, Loyal, not looking at her. Notseeingher. I could feel the tremble in her as if I were touching her. How hard was this for her? Or how impossible?
Not impossible at all,I thought,because she’ll do it.
In the end, all six of us went through the door I’d only seen from the outside and into the Elders’ Room. It wasn’t what you may have supposed. No paintings or fine leather chairs or rosewood table, just a simple oval one made of fine-grained, pinkish-brown tawhai, the ubiquitous silver beech we’d used for almost all the furniture here, easy to obtain and easy to work, and seven straight chairs. One for the Prophet, and six for the Elders.
It wasn’t seven in order to break a tied vote, or whatever you may be thinking. There were no votes. The Elders advised. The Prophet decided.
The Prophet took his seat at the head of the table and said, “Sit down.” My mum hesitated, maybe knowing that a woman had never sat in these chairs, but Oriana sat down even before my dad and I did. Before herfatherdid. At the bottom of the table, but still. The Prophet glared at her, and I could tell she wanted to drop her gaze, but she looked back at him instead, and I sat beside her and took her hand under the table.
My dad, at the Prophet’s right hand, the same place he’d probably sat for years, with my mum beside him. Oriana’s father, Loyal, who shut the door silently and then took his seat at the Prophet’s left. And Oriana and me.
No windows. No witnesses. In the lion’s den.
Time to do this thing.
50
BEGIN AGAIN
Oriana
I felt as trapped as a rabbit in a snare, and as frightened. I forced myself to breathe and willed my hands not to tremble.
Just listen,I reminded myself.Uncle Aaron will start. Don’t look at Dad.
Actually, the Prophet started. “So,” he told Uncle Aaron, “you’ve decided to come back and help me.”
