The Girl Behind the Red Rope Read online

  His death had crushed me. Jamie said it was why I was so obsessed with children. I was refusing to grow up, he said, clinging to fantasies of innocence. Maybe he was right, but I didn’t care.

  “I’m stuck,” I whispered. “I think I made a terrible mistake. I think I betrayed Rose and now Jamie’s in trouble.” I swallowed. “What if he’s dead?”

  “Grace,” someone whispered to my right.

  I spun around and stared at Jamie, who stood at the tree line, grinning. He wasn’t much taller than me, but his shoulders were wider. Both of us were thin, with long limbs and sharp features, as my mother would say. Our appearances favored our father, she’d told us, something we would have to take her word for since neither of us had seen him since we’d left for Haven Valley. We had no pictures of him and he wasn’t to be mentioned in the house, which was fine by me because I hardly thought of him as my father any longer.

  “Jamie.” I exhaled, awash with relief as he hurried up to me. I forgot the rules for a moment and rushed forward to give him a hug, then caught myself. He noticed, and for a beat we stood staring at each other. The rules of purity forbade any physical contact between males and females over the age of ten unless they were married.

  As quickly as my relief had come, it melted to anger. “You’re late.”

  “Only by a few minutes,” he said.

  “Late,” I snapped, tapping my watch. “I was terrified!”

  He hesitated, then nodded. “I’m sorry.”

  His shoulder-length hair was free from the usual tie that held men’s hair back at the nape of their necks. It was the same light blond color as mine, but much longer. Men were allowed to wear their hair as they pleased. Women over the age of fourteen were required to keep it very short—less than two inches in length—so as not to be unnecessarily attractive to men.

  Beauty led to lust. Lust was a sin.

  One thing was certain: if sin was allowed to enter Haven Valley, our purity would be lost and Sylous’s protection would fail us even here. We all would suffer the same fate as the rest of the world. Our objective now was to remain pure as we waited to inherit the kingdom of heaven on a new earth. Some called that coming day “the new millennium.”

  Jamie quickly tied his hair back with the rubber band around his wrist, glancing past me to be sure we still hadn’t been seen. “My hair came loose while I was running back,” he said.

  “You were being chased?”

  “No. Though I wish I had been.”

  “What do you mean? You wish for death?”

  “I wish for certainty and clarity.”

  “You’ve lost your mind, Jamie. This is all a horrible mistake!”

  “On the contrary, like I told you earlier, I’m reclaiming my mind.”

  “Then you’ve lost your faith. Either way, it’s terribly dangerous.”

  “Five times, Grace. Five times I’ve been beyond the border, each time venturing a little farther in search of my faith. Each time encountering not a single Fury.”

  “Jamie, please—”

  “This time I made it to the end of the forest, where it breaks out into a clearing. Beyond this mountain, there’s a large town. Who knows what’s down there. People perhaps, others who weren’t destroyed.”

  “If they haven’t been, they will be. Never again.”

  “But what if I’m right, Grace? What if the time has come to claim our inheritance? What if we aren’t alone in this heaven on earth? What if it’s now!” The light in Jamie’s blue eyes drew my own curiosity.

  “Rose would know if it was time,” I said.

  “Would she?” Jamie asked.

  I shook my head as outrage gathered in my chest. “How can you doubt her? Doubt Sylous? You’re going to get us all killed!”

  He fell silent for a moment, his eyes searching my face. There had been doubters in our community over the last ten years, but all had eventually come back to truth. Now my own brother was walking a similar path—so persuasive that I’d finally agreed to help him find out for himself. But I couldn’t do it any longer.

  “Why haven’t I encountered the Fury?” His voice was low, and I shifted my eyes because it was a question I had asked myself more than once.

  “You doubt the guidance of our shepherd and the existence of the Fury,” I leveled at him. “Do you also doubt the existence of God?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Just his laws?”

  “They’re the laws of Sylous!” he snapped.

  “Sent to us by God! Isn’t it the same, brother?”

  He jabbed a finger into the air. “Remember who you’re speaking to! Mind your voice!”

  I recoiled from his disciplinary scolding. “Now Sylous’s laws mean something?”

  “Silence!” he shouted.

  How dare he scold me after his actions? It was wrong for a woman to dishonor any man through tone or action, so he was in his rights. But who was he to leverage laws even as he was breaking them? I wanted to tell him as much, but I’d already broken too many laws to gather the courage.

  A flash of remorse crossed his face. “Sorry. Just out of sorts, that’s all.” He paused. “I’ve been thinking . . . What if there never were any monsters?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. We all saw them.”

  “Only that once, thirteen years ago.”

  “Once was enough for me,” I said. “And we heard them when God removed his hand of protection ten years ago. How can you doubt what’s so obvious?”

  “What if it’s all in our minds?” he pressed. “Like the make-believe stories you tell the kids all the time. Like Lukas and the imaginary world you disappear into all the time.”

  “Stop it—”

  “What if Sylous is the real monster? What if this place is our hell with all the rules and fear and there’s nothing out there but the real world? What if Sylous got us seeing something that wasn’t really there? For that matter, what if the Fury are actually good and he’s the devil?”

  I felt my face flush. He was talking the kind of heresy that would get him banished! But he still wasn’t finished.

  “Even if they do exist,” he continued, “we don’t have any evidence they’ve taken over the world like Rose insists.”

  “Because we’re in Haven Valley, protected by Sylous!”

  “Really? So where is he? No one’s seen him in ten years. At the very least we should wonder if the Fury are gone and all we have to do is go out and take what’s ours.”

  “The great testing hasn’t come, so we know it’s not the end. Please don’t talk like—”

  “Yes, the infamous great testing. A wolf will come in sheep’s clothing after all this time, because even now we still haven’t proven our purity. It’s nothing but a convenient teaching to keep us in fear, Grace! Can’t you see? If there are Fury out there, why am I safe?” He spread his arms. “Do I look like a ravaged soul to you? Why would I need Sylous’s protection from something that doesn’t exist? Meanwhile, we waste away in our own personal little hell. Why?”

  “Because there’s evil out there,” I snapped, thrusting a finger at the horizon. “Fear protects us. You know that as much as I do. If you didn’t fear, you would just throw yourself off a cliff, and that’s exactly what you’re doing now. Please, Jamie. I’m begging you.”

  “Maybe I don’t believe that anymore,” he said. “Maybe I just want to be free now. What if we have it all backward? And even if we don’t, there’s still the question of who the Fury are. What are they? How does something like that just pop out of nowhere and then disappear for a decade? Please tell me you’ve secretly wondered at least that much.”

  I hated the thoughts his questions brought to my mind. He was playing with fire, and I’d made the terrible mistake of playing along.

  I ground my teeth, no longer willing to argue. He was too clever for me anyway. I was always the naïve one, like he said, too childlike for my own good, but that didn’t matter to me now. What mattered was that we were still o
ut in the open. The longer we stood out here, the more danger we faced.

  Jamie opened his mouth to speak again, but I held up my hand to silence him, a gesture I wouldn’t dare with any other man.

  “We need to go,” I said. Without another word I turned and hurried for the eastern section, which I knew would be free of guardians at this time. Jamie followed quickly, silent for now.

  Though the perimeter wasn’t walled, Haven Valley’s guardians, seven men selected by Harrison and Rose to ensure our protection, conducted regular border sweeps. Different sections of the perimeter were checked at different times of the day. And those times changed regularly to discourage people from doing exactly what we were doing. Rose kept a copy of the schedule in her home office, an office I was privy to because I spent so much time in the Pierces’ home. Keeper of their three young children when Rose was tied up with administrative and church duties was one of my roles because of my love of children, they said. Rose was mentoring me.

  I couldn’t count the number of hours I’d spent sitting in her office, listening to her teachings on the law. Now I was using that relationship to read the guardians’ schedule to ensure my brother could break the law without consequence.

  I was wrong to have come. I should confess. The whole thing made my stomach turn.

  Pausing only twice to keep from being detected, we returned to the center of town within ten minutes, no one the wiser. But even Jamie knew his absences for several hours at a time would be noticed and called into question soon enough. This had to stop. I decided then that no matter how much pressure Jamie applied, I wouldn’t be helping him again.

  And maybe I really should confess to Rose. I would have to think about that.

  We slowed our pace as we stepped into the alleyway between the single schoolhouse, currently unoccupied as evening drew close, and the town’s general store, which closed at five p.m. each day. I took a deep breath when we reached the end of the alley and rounded the corner onto the town’s main street. It was quiet this time of day—children home from school, chores and tasks completed, people preparing for the night. Tucking into their homes, doors and windows locked, as the law required.

  Just because we were protected from the Fury didn’t mean temptations weren’t everywhere.

  I tried my best to squash the uneasy feeling in my stomach as we walked openly down the sidewalk toward home, located south of Haven Valley’s town center. A dozen buildings lined either side of the only main road. The tiny town had been built by a mining company in the early 1980s, complete with a stretch of train tracks north of town that were never completed. They’d abandoned the compound twenty years later, leaving most of the buildings, the tracks with several old cars, and some rusted equipment.

  Following Sylous’s visit, our community had purchased the land from the mining company, restored most of the buildings, and built new residences that suited our needs. The tracks and train cars were a good ways beyond the town perimeter and out of sight.

  No building stood taller than four stories. All the structures had simple matching asphalt-shingled roofs, white trim, white shutters and white doors. Simple colors: tans, browns, a few shades of blue. Calming and familiar.

  Everything besides the homes, the small farm, the fresh spring-water well, and the Chapel stood adjacent to the two-thousand-foot stretch of the double-lane paved road. A road that started and ended in unfinished edges. It looked as if the mining company had laid asphalt for one small chunk, then changed its mind. Not that it was of any consequence to Haven Valley. We had no use for roads. The sidewalks were nice though. They kept the dust off your shoes so they didn’t need to be scrubbed . . .

  Oh no! My shoes! They were filthy! If someone saw my shoes they might ask questions. If they asked questions I might have to lie. If I lied . . .

  I couldn’t heap sin upon sin by lying.

  I hadn’t even considered the possibility of being caught from the appearance of my shoes. How foolish of me. Hadn’t I been taught to see the potential for danger everywhere?

  I shifted my eyes to Jamie’s shoes. His were even worse. Much worse!

  “What?” Jamie asked softly.

  “What if someone sees our shoes?” I whispered.

  “Shoes?”

  “We have to get home!” I said, fixing my eyes on our destination. Four rows of matching homes, several dozen in total, capped the south side of Haven Valley and housed the residents—nearly one hundred now.

  Jamie said nothing as we picked up our pace. My thoughts tripped between running and the knowledge that running would be its own red flag. I was guilty. Terribly guilty. And in that moment, all of my guilt caught up with me.

  I bit the inside of my lip to keep tears from collecting in my eyes. I couldn’t be crying. I couldn’t be running. I couldn’t be covered in dust.

  I could think of nothing else as the last several hundred feet to the second row of homes passed under my dirty shoes. Then my front door was in sight. Then the knob in my hand. But then a thought dropped into my mind and I released the knob.

  I turned and headed back down the three simple wood steps. “We should go through the back and wash our shoes before Mother sees.”

  Jamie huffed. “Again with the shoes.”

  But he followed me, and seconds later we were at the back door, up three more wooden steps, and into the house. Relief washed over me the moment the door closed behind me.

  Though married five months now, I didn’t yet share a home with the man the council had picked for me. Newlyweds weren’t permitted to live together until they conceived, because the purpose of marriage was to make a family, not to experience romance or gratification. Until a child was conceived, a new bride was allowed only scheduled conjugal visits to her husband’s home. The rule reinforced Rose’s insistence that all women must give the highest priority to bearing children and repopulating the earth. Truly, romance was almost a sin.

  Alice, who was eighteen, had been married to David the same day I’d been married to Andrew, farmer and council member. She couldn’t wait to conceive and move in with David, who was twenty-four. They did their best to hide their affection for each other, but I knew it all too well.

  Me, I was grateful to live at home still, because I had no real attraction to my husband. The thought of having a baby thrilled me, but the idea of moving in with Andrew, more than twice my age, made my stomach turn.

  The house was dark and silent, although I knew my mother was there somewhere. I kept my hand on the door behind me to steady myself for a beat, then proceeded to pull my shoes off.

  “Grace! Relax, sister. You’re seeing ghosts now. Let that simple mind of yours tell you better stories—you’re good at that.”

  I shot him a glare, hoping he could see the fire in my eyes despite the dim light. He was probably right, but I didn’t care if I was overreacting. I only wanted to get back to the way I knew things should be. I wasn’t good at taking big risks. I was good at being innocent, like the children, and telling stories that made them laugh.

  He exhaled as I returned to my task of purity. Each house had a cleaning room inside the back door, complete with a bucket of soapy water. It was required by law to shed the outside world before entering the main house.

  My pulse eased as I washed away the evidence of my sins. Shoes clean, I grabbed a folded rag, removed my socks, and rinsed my bare feet, ankles and calves. Seeking a sense of absolution I couldn’t find from the water, I felt like I needed to cleanse my whole body.

  “Grace,” Jamie said as he reached down and took the rag from my hand. “Enough.”

  He caught my eyes and for a breath we stood still.

  “Children?” Stocking feet padded down the hall, and my mother, Julianna, popped her head around the corner toward us. “Oh goodness, you’re here. I’ve been waiting. You had me worried!”

  She flicked on the small overhead bulb, flooding us with light. Shorter than Jamie and me both, she stood just over five feet, with short gra
ying dirty-blonde hair, worry-filled brown eyes, and a wrinkled face laced with shame. Anxiety had aged her by a decade, a constant reminder of her personal tragedy. Falling in love with a nonbeliever. Being too weak to convert him. Losing a child for her sin. Now the only single mother in Haven Valley.

  Her failure had left her half the woman she’d once been.

  “Why were you sitting here in the dark?” my mother demanded. “Is everything alright?”

  When neither of us answered immediately her tone rose half an octave. “Did something happen? What’s happened? Please tell me nothing’s happened.”

  “Mother, please,” Jamie said. “Nothing’s happened. Everything’s fine.”

  “Then why are you late?”

  “It’s my fault,” Jamie said. “The evening was just so nice. I urged Grace to walk slowly with me. Please forgive me.” He was always so good with Mother. No one calmed her so quickly.

  He placed his hand on her shoulder, which was allowed since she was his mother, and gave her one of his famous charming smiles. “Forgive me?” he asked again.

  She smiled slightly and nodded.

  Jamie leaned down and placed a small kiss on her cheek. “Now,” he said, “how can I help with dinner to serve my penance?”

  “You may wash and peel the potatoes.” She moved her eyes past him to where I stood. “And you, dear, will you not offer penance as well?” She was teasing, but it hit me like a boulder.

  “I need to bathe,” I said.

  “Now?” she asked.

  “Yes, I seem to be dirtier than usual, and it wouldn’t be appropriate to eat without being clean.”

  “Very well,” she said, “but please hurry.”

  I quickly excused myself and hurried down the hallway to the staircase, pattered up the steps to the second floor, and slipped into the first door on the left that held the bathroom my mother and I shared. A second bathroom downstairs belonged to Jamie, which neither of us women would dare use.

  Inside the small washroom, I turned on the warm water and stripped. It took some time to remove the required layers of clothing, all of which were naturally white. The long-sleeved dress that hung only inches above my feet. The thinner undergarments and the compressor, which every woman over the age of twelve was required to wear. The corset ran six inches in length and pulled the breasts closer to the chest. Uncomfortable at first, it was something you got used to after a while.