Page 1 of Kiwi Sin
1
RED DAWN
Gabriel
I knew that leaving Mount Zion meant walking into the world of the damned, and, if the Prophet was right, roasting in the burning fires of Hell. I just wasn’t expecting it to happen so soon.
I didn’t quite leave by choice, or not by any choice I could recall making. I was slow to speak and slow to act, because I thought things out before I made a move. Except on that day.
It was barely six o’clock, the gray dawn streaked with red, but I was up and dressed, working on some calculations for the new processing shed, which would hold the many different machines necessary to turn alpaca fleece into knitting wool. We were expanding our herd of Suri alpacas, and expanding the operation, too, because the Prophet always looked ahead. Mount Zion was prospering when most ventures failed, he told us often enough, because God smiles on the worthy and blesses their ventures. And if I wondered whether it was really because nobody here earned a wage, and forty years of families of twelve or fourteen or sixteen had expanded that free labor force in exponential fashion, I’d learnt not to ask that kind of question. Or any question. I kept myself to myself.
That was the problem with being chosen to help my father on the community’s necessary business Outside, though. I saw things. And on that day, when I heard the noise from outside the gate, put down my pencil, and went out to investigate along with everybody else, I saw more.
Nobody visited Mount Zion. It was a closed community. “Sufficient unto itself,” the Prophet liked to say. Not today.
The air was chilly and damp at dawn, and the kids were shivering as everyone stood silently to watch Fruitful Warrior, one of my almost-cousins, who’d run away from her husband but had been caught again, walk away from Mount Zion once more. Not in secret this time, and not without help. I held back Fruitful’s husband, Gilead, as my dad entered a combination into the gate’s locking mechanism that only he and the Prophet knew, and the steel frame slid slowly open with a grinding of metal. Fruitful, her face bruised from Gilead’s blows, untied her cap and apron, dropped them on the ground, took off her heavy white shoes, pulled the pins out of her hair, and walked through that gate barefoot with her head held high, and Gilead’s muscles tensed with violent effort under my hands.
I wanted him to break free. I wanted an excuse. Instead, I held him tighter, even though he was nearly fifteen years my senior and due my deference by every rule I’d ever learnt. I wished, with the hot rage of sin filling my chest, that I could hit him the same way he’d hit his seventeen-year-old wife. That I could hurt him. That I could use the strength I’d honed all my life and smash his face.
Violence is forbidden at Mount Zion. Violence between adult men, that is.
Anyway, Fruitful walked out, and the second she crossed the line, her sisters grabbed her and held on. That was Chastity, the eldest, who’d left long ago, plus the sister just younger than Fruitful, who’d run along with her weeks before. Obedience, that was, sixteen years old, with her hair cut to just below her shoulders now and falling loose. She was wearing trousers and a shirt, the way women dressed Outside. Like a man, but Obedience would never look like a man.
The fella beside my cousin Chastity on the other side of that gate, who’d told us his name was Gray Tamatoa as if that would mean something, lifted a loud-hailer and announced, into the frozen shock of sudden change, “The rest of you have a choice, too. You’re hard workers. Skilled laborers. There’s a world of work out there, and it’s waiting for people like you. I’m a builder in Dunedin, just down the road, but I was born in Wanaka, just like all of you. I’ve got good jobs going begging. Too much work, and not enough labor, so if any man here wants to give it a go, I’m willing to give him a try. All you have to do is step across the line. I’ve got people to help get you started, ready to hook you up with agencies and with churches that are waiting for you. They believe in God, too, just like you. They believe in goodness and compassion and service given from a willing heart, and they’re there for you.”
“Deceiver,” the Prophet shouted. “Serpent.” The voice we all had to listen to. The voice we all had to obey.
“Daisy has done it,” Gray answered, talking back to the Prophet as nobody dared to do. “So has her brother.” Oh. “Daisy” was Chastity, then. She’d changed her given name? You weren’t allowed to do that. Names were given by the Prophet, except for my family, because my father had refused to allow our given names to be changed when the Prophet had decided on that. We’d taken the surname of the rest of my father’s family, Worthy, but that was all. My brothers and I had been named for archangels, but those names had been my parents’ choice, not the Prophet’s.
Sometimes, rebellion sprouts from the smallest seed. Eventually, an acorn grows into an oak.
Gray went on, “There’s money in your pocket, a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work. There’s a house of your own, eventually, and a good life for your daughters and your sons. All you have to do is step across the line.”
I’d have done it right then, because even as my mind struggled to take it all in, my booted feet wanted to move. My brother Raphael, his wife Radiance, and their baby went first, though, because I was still holding Gilead. I handed him off to Regnum Standfast, who was young, but the only man I trusted to hold Gilead back, and followed my younger brother. Walking with my boots, not my mind. My mind was still thinking,How can this be happening?Nobody left Mount Zion, or almost nobody. Chastity and Dutiful had, because Chastity’s twin was out there this morning, too, even though we’d been told they were both dead. That they’d left the community for Outside, all those years ago, and their sin had caught up with them, as the Lord would always smite the unworthy. Except that He hadn’t, because here they both were, and Fruitful and Obedience, too. All outside the gate.
My parents followed me, bringing my youngest sister, Harmony, the only one not old enough to choose for herself, and that was the biggest surprise of all. My father was the Prophet’s right hand. If he was leaving, could it be so wrong?
It felt wrong, and it didn’t, as the Prophet’s voice boomed out, sending us off to perdition to be devoured by snakes, tormented by demons with pitchforks, to spend eternity writhing in the fire the way he’d described at least once a week for as long as I could remember, the imagery so vivid I could feel my flesh blistering.
I walked out without a cent in my pockets, with nothing to offer except my willing hands. Not prepared a bit.
Did I walk away for myself? Probably. For my family? Possibly. For Obedience? No. That would be stupid, nothing but a dream.
When Gilead escaped Regnum Standfast’s hold and charged through the gate, though, I was ready to hit him. That’s how fast I descended into sin.
I was ready, but I didn’t get the chance. Gray hit him first.
Pity.
* * *
I rodewith a few blokes for the short journey down the hill into Wanaka. All of us who’d left today had made this trip before, to the doctor or the dentist. The world beyond Wanaka, though? My dad and I were the only ones who’d seen that, because I’d been helping him with his occasional trips to buy and sell and make arrangements, with me doing the driving and the loading and unloading, since I’d turned sixteen. I was clinging to that thought—that this wasn’t quite as new to me—because unlike the others, I wasn’t married, even though I was past the age for it, which meant I’d walked out alone.
Never mind. It’s what Gray said. You know how to work, he’s offering work, and he’s a builder. Outside is full of people, and they don’t get married for ages, so there has to be a way to live alone.
Driving up the hill, then, away from the center of the town, and stopping on a street of large buildings that had to be houses. “Single-family homes,” they were called, and only a few people lived in each, enormous as they were and odd as that seemed.
The three other men in the car got out, so I did, too. Two of them were as tall and broad as me, and the third was taller. Highlanders players, they’d told me. I didn’t have a clue what that was, but I didn’t ask. I’d learnt that if I kept my mouth shut and my eyes and ears open, I’d eventually understand.
