Page 44 of The Women of Wild Hill
“Whenever you need me, know I’m already there,” Flora whispered in her ear.
Sacrifice
When men make the ultimate sacrifice, they’re commemorated with statues or celebrated in song. Only the bravest of heroes lay down their lives, we’re told. It takes an uncommon man to give everything he has for a cause. We women do it every day.
Queens and their scullery maids. Witches and wenches. We all strive to save humankind from extinction. It is a cause for which untold millions of us have been sacrificed. To bring new life into the world, a woman must stand on the threshold of death. I have accompanied countless of our sex to the edge. Every one of them went knowing full well that she might be pulled to the other side. Were that to happen, there would be no songs sung in her honor. No medals bestowed. Her sacrifice would seem commonplace. Dying to save the world is what women have always done.
Should a woman survive childbirth, it is her body and soul that will nourish the bairn. She will fatten it with milk she’s made. Educate it with the contents of her brain. Give it her heart and live in the knowledge that the things that matter most to her are no longer her own.
Of course, a woman need not give birth to know this love. The Duncan girls were no less my children for having come from their mothers’ wombs. The three worst days of my existence were the day I lost Gerald, the day of my trial, and the day I told Flora what she needed to do. She didn’t hesitate when I showed her what it would mean for her girls. She knew her death would be the fertile soil from which Brigid and Phoebe would rise.
We are sustenance for the generations that follow. What wouldn’t a woman do for her children to thrive? Some confuse this for weakness. We know it is the ultimate strength. Men build marble monuments to their triumphs. Women know the lives to come are our legacy.
Homecoming
Reunion
The sky all around was a brilliant blue. There wasn’t a cloud to be seen. With her forehead resting against the window, Brigid gazed down at a city neatly tucked into a space between mountains. A rusty patch of dirt stretched out beside it, a small slate-gray lake at its center.
“Would you mind if I borrow this seat for a moment? I can’t see anything from my side of the plane.” A man slid into the empty seat beside her. “It’s a shame, isn’t it?”
Brigid squirmed with discomfort. She’d been staring out the window to avoid chitchat with the other passengers in first class. It was moments like these that made her question her resolve to fly commercial. But every time she considered chartering a plane, she always heard Aunt Ivy’s voice in her head.We must be the solution, not the problem, she’d told the girls.
Brigid usually nipped in-flight conversations in the bud, but this time her curiosity was piqued. When she turned to the man, she found his handsome face felt familiar. Then again, she was sure hers rang a bell for him as well.
“What’s a shame?” she asked.
“That little gray smear down there used to be the Great Salt Lake.”
Brigid swiveled back toward the window. “No shit,” she marveled. “Not so great anymore, is it?” It looked like a puddle.
“And there’s the city beside it.” He was leaning over her for a better look. At such a somber moment, it seemed highly inappropriatefor Brigid to notice how good he smelled. Like soil and straw and freshly mown grass, with just a hint of animal beneath.
“How many people are still living there?” she asked, stealthily pulling in another deep breath. Flora always said scent was the Old One’s matchmaker. That might have explained Flora’s terrible taste in men.
“Around ten thousand.” He eased back into the seat. “That’s down from over a million. Only the crazies are left. Most probably won’t last very long. They say the dust from the lake bed has made the air toxic.”
It was only the first in a long line of losses that were predicted to follow. The Great Barrier Reef. The redwoods. Miami and other coastal cities. Polar bears, elephants, and so many other species that just a snippet of David Attenborough narration was enough to bring Brigid to tears.
“I was there five years ago for Sundance,” she remarked. “It was right before shit really started to hit the fan. I don’t remember a single person mentioning that the water was drying up or that there was arsenic and mercury in the lake bed underneath.”
“The city was too busy expanding,” the handsome stranger explained. “None of the big shots wanted to get in the way of progress, so they kept it a secret.”
“From what I’ve heard most people didn’t even realize it was happening until it was too late,” Brigid said. “My guess is the truth never reached them because they all watched AMN. America’s Media Network, my ass. If you ask me, the motherfucker who owned AMN did more damage to this country than anyone in history. Even when the news about Salt Lake started to come out, the AMN anchors kept insisting it was all a conspiracy. I hope Calum Geddes rots in hell for helping destroy our planet.”
“Whether or not Geddes rots in hell, I assure you the planet will be fine,” the man said.
Brigid couldn’t believe that there were still deniers. These daysthey usually fell into one of two camps: those who were certain their God would swoop in and save them—and those determined to plunder every resource that was left.
“The Great Salt Lake is literally a puddle of poison and you think our planet is okay?” she asked coldly.
“Oh, absolutely. It’s humanity that’s fucked. We keep doing things like draining the Colorado River to irrigate farms in the desert, and the earth’s gonna shake us off like a bunch of fleas.”
Brigid’s brow softened. She’d been too quick to judge. “My aunt Ivy used to say the same thing. She knew what was coming long before anyone else did. As a matter of fact, she predicted half the things that are happening now. Hurricanes destroying the coastal cities. Heat waves taking out the cattle ranching industry. She saw it all decades ago.”
“Ivy must have been a brilliant woman.”
“She was.” Brigid made a point to never speak publicly about her family or Wild Hill. Suddenly, she felt exposed. She’d said far too much.
