Besides, whatever Reese was, Mary was quite sure she wasn’t inexperienced. She had twice dispatched demons that struck at her without warning, and though Mary hadn’t seen the fights, she knew that Reese had been fighting from a place of weakness and that the attacks had been fierce. And yet both times, there had been no question of who would win.
As Mary made her slow way down the cliff road to the village, the stars out overhead and glistening over the bay, she made a mental list of cells to call. They weren’t directly connected to many anymore, but she should be able to find contacts for some of the larger ones. She planned to try the nearest cities first. Reese’s level of expertise pointed to her being part of an active cell in a battleground, and that almost certainly meant an urban cell, not a rural one. Surely the right cell couldn’t be that hard to find—the act of exiling would have rocked them to the core. Mary was surprised she hadn’t heard rumours of it or received letters sounding the alarm. For that matter, she was surprised she hadn’t felt the exile in her own soul. The Oneness was many, and some connections were much farther afield than others. Yet, something this drastic ought to affect everyone in a way that could be felt. The analogy she’d given Chris was not an exaggeration: an exile would be an amputation. Not like a death—deaths were not felt except by those who were closely connected to one another, because death did not break the Oneness. The body was one in heaven and on earth—and the distance between the two was not nearly so great as most people supposed.
She slowed around a bend in the road and prayed quietly, letting the Spirit in her speak. She felt the prayers humming in the air like vibrations on a string, creating music, creating a language not human and not bound by human limitations. She knew she was not alone in the prayers. The cloud—the family in heaven—prayed with her. Perhaps the angels did too.
Mary parked in the driveway and paused after stepping out of the car, letting her prayers swell higher and deeper. The moon was bright overhead.
When she stepped into the house, the vibration nearly knocked her off her feet.
Richard was home, and he had been praying.
To Mary’s eyes the very walls of the house seemed washed in gold, and they quivered as with life. Richard was kneeling in the centre of the living room. Mary knelt beside him, and she felt her spirit expanding, stretching beyond her to the others, One in heaven and One on earth, One in Spirit and in truth. She closed her eyes, and time passed; how much she did not know. She felt eyes on her, the many eyes of the angels.
Finally Richard sighed.
He stood. Mary opened her eyes slowly and saw his hand outstretched. She took it and he pulled her to her feet, her knees and ankles protesting that she was getting too old for this.
“No sign of April,” he said. “I looked everywhere. Knocked on nearly every door in town by one pretence or another. She’s gone, Mary.”
Gone, but not dead. As close as these three were—close like fingers on a hand—they would have felt her death. Yet Mary did feel something: a growing dread in the pit of her stomach. April was alive, and yet things were not well with her.
“April is not the only one we need to find,” Mary said, sitting on the couch. Richard raised an eyebrow and sat down across from her. A clock in the kitchen ticked—it was nearing midnight. They’d been praying for hours. No wonder she felt so stiff.
“What is it?” he asked.
Mary explained about Reese. He did not interrupt, but when she finished, he said, “Is it possible? An exile? It can’t be!”
“Even if it could,” Mary said, “she doesn’t act like an exile. The boys say she’s torn apart with grief—dying of it. And yet the sword comes to hand when she’s attacked, and she found the courage to go off alone tonight. They don’t understand why, but I think she may be doing it for them. To draw the demons off. That’s love, Richard. Whatever’s happening to this girl, it isn’t what it seems. I think if we find her, we might find the key to what’s happened to April.”
“One thing,” Richard said. “About April. I spent time—a lot of time—in prayer today. If I wasn’t knocking on doors, I was on my knees. And I think I saw some things in the spirit I haven’t seen before. April’s a lot . . .” he paused, trying to form the right words. “She’s more than we thought. We thought the Spirit sent her here because she needed to heal and live at peace after that hell of a childhood. She thought she was assigned here just to help some lonely folks out.”
“She’s good at it.”
“No doubt. But she’s more than that. Her paintings, for one thing. I kept seeing them in the Spirit. They were opening windows and building bridges, and really changing things. She’s been doing more, here, than we ever thought.”
Mary spent a moment thinking about this. “Is that why . . .” she stopped. “It doesn’t make sense for us to be targets. We aren’t important enough. I assumed that whatever the Oneness has been feeling coming on, we were at the fringes of it. But you’re saying April has been doing things, without anyone recognizing them, that make us important enough to draw fire. Serious fire.”
“Exactly,” Richard told her.
A pause. “Is that why she isn’t dead?” Mary finally asked. “Because she’s one of the great saints?”
“It’s possible.”
“Then she might be somewhere waiting to die.”
The enemy did try to escape the justice of God that way, yes. Sometimes. Some individual part of the Oneness would become so powerful, so effective, that the enemy would come screeching out of the shadows to destroy that individual any way possible. Sometimes the results were bloody and quick. But the enemy had learned, over the years, that in the laws of the universe, of righteousness that was the character of God holding all things together, that such attacks would backfire. So in their ignorance and cruelty, they had long ago enacted a tradition of separating the great saint from the others and starving him, or her, or causing a death by the elements. Something that didn’t actually leave blood on their hands.
But . . . April?
“We need to find her,” Mary said.
* * *
When April woke again to see the woman sitting beside her, glowing with warm light as before, she concentrated not on the mural—which had grown and spread, all of the space on the left side of the vine filled with scenes and faces—but on the woman herself. She was not young but not old; perhaps in her late thirties or early forties. Her hair was dark and long, not styled like a modern woman’s hair, and she wore a dress the colour of cream that was likewise simple and nondescript. Her skin had an olive glow, though perhaps that was just the effect of the light, and her eyes were dark. She smiled at April’s examination.
“Who are you?” April asked.
“My name is Teresa,” she said. April heard the faint trace of an accent in her voice, but she wasn’t sure how to place it.
“You are Oneness,” April said.
“Of course.”
“From the cloud.”
Teresa smiled again. “I am.”
She stood and took a few steps closer to the mural, pouring her light over it. The light seemed to bring life to the painting, bringing out colours and textures April had not seen in the darkness. She marvelled at how her fingers had led her even in the murk of the day in the cave, using the contours and colours of the rock wall itself to add to the pictures she was painting.
Teresa reached out and touched one part of the new work, an unfinished sketch of the boy’s face. April had finished the eyes, and they shone in the light as things alive.
“It’s fine work,” Teresa said. “It reminds me of my own, in some ways, but your attention to detail is better.” She wrinkled her nose. “And your medium rougher.”
April chuckled. “That is not exactly my fault.”
In Teresa’s presence, April realized, she was at peace in a way that seemed impossible given the circumstances. She had never met one of the cloud before, but the peace made sense; to own the perspective of heaven was
to be perfectly at peace. Apparently the perspective was contagious.
Teresa turned and looked at her, and the expression in her eyes was unexpectedly solemn. “It can help you. Not only as paint, though you are doing well to use it that way—and I think you should continue. But in other ways.”
April nodded weakly. It had been several days and nights—though she really didn’t know what time it was—since she’d been taken. Or at least, that’s what she thought.
Truthfully, she didn’t know how long she’d been unconscious or how long she was sleeping between waking up. For all she really knew it had been just a day, or a week.
She’d had nothing to eat or drink, and she was beginning to feel the effects of dehydration. “Already thought of that,” she said. “I sucked a handful earlier. Awful.”
Teresa’s smile was compassionate. “But important that you not give up. You know what they’re trying to do to you—why they put you here. You should fight back.”
“But why?” April asked. Suddenly she had tears in her eyes. She was tired. “If this is my time, why not just let it come? I’m not afraid to cross over.”
“No, though the crossing over is not easy,” Teresa said. “It was my time, when they did it to me. But I am not convinced it is yours.”
April pushed herself up, sitting up against the wall and regarding her visitor more keenly than she had before. “They did this to you? Starved you to death?”
“Six hundred years ago,” Teresa said. “But I still remember it.”
“Why? What were you doing to them?”
Teresa waved her hand at the mural. “Painting. And rescuing children. In my day, in the countryside many children were dying of plague or abandonment. I and others of the Oneness, sisters who came to my side, brought as many as we could into the abbey we shared. We mothered more than two hundred of them. And many became Oneness, and threats to the enemy. There was one we rescued—”
Teresa’s eyes grew distant as though she could see the child’s face. She came back to the present and lightly brushed her fingers across the sketch of the boy. “A boy like this one. He would grow to be a mighty warrior against the darkness, and I was his trainer, his friend and strength. The paintings were teaching him things and giving him strength. So the enemy chose to take me out of the way.”
“And you were never rescued,” April said.
“No. It was my time.”
“Starving can’t be easy.”
“It is not. But when I had crossed over, I lived to see the designs of the enemy turned back upon themselves a thousandfold. They think to escape vengeance through their machinations, but they are fools and blinded by their own deceptions.”
“Are you one of the great saints?” April asked.
Teresa smiled as she thought over the question. “They call me that,” she said. “But on this side, greatness looks different.”
“That’s the one thing I don’t understand,” April said. She found that words were hard to get out—her hunger and thirst were taking a greater toll on her than she realized. “I’m not anything they should be afraid to kill.”
“We don’t know who we are,” Teresa said. “None of us know who we are until we cross over, and even then, much is mystery. I didn’t. You don’t.”
April considered this. “Why are you here?” she asked.
“For companionship,” Teresa said. “I do not think you are going to die. But you will—you are already—experiencing a little of dying. At such times, it is good not to be alone.”
* * *
Reese followed the cliff paths for hours that night, not sleeping. The lack of sun made her still-damp clothes grow colder and clammier, and by the time the sun rose, she was sore, shivering, and bruised from stumbling and tripping through the dark. Somehow her feet remembered the way. She caught sight of the blacktop highway in the early morning light and gladly dragged herself out to the side of the road, raising a thumb and finding that she was too tired to care about how stupid it was to hitchhike alone.
So alone.
There was little traffic on the road. Those cars that did pass ignored her. Too tired to hold memories or thoughts at bay, she swam in the misery of the last week and all it had meant—drowned in the pain of alienation. The scenes played themselves out over and over again. The words spoken, the growing gulf between her heart and those of her companions, her actions that she couldn’t take back, their actions that she couldn’t forget. Stab after stab after boot after weight dragging her, pulling her down.
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Oneness was never, ever supposed to turn on itself.
A battered Ford station wagon passed, slower than some of the other vehicles, and Reese leaned forward, making herself more visible, hoping to inspire compassion. The car kept going.
When it had first started happening, she had told herself they were all just tired, weary from a mission that was frustratingly hard. She just had to forgive it, and she needed them to forgive her.
She dashed tears away with the back of her eyes. No one was going to pick her up if she stood there crying like a fool.
They’d said it was her fault. If she hadn’t held so doggedly to her course, if she’d listened to them, if she had been willing to be wrong. They were right. They had to be right—otherwise the Spirit would not have allowed this. And yet, looking back, she did not know what other course she could have taken. She’d followed the voice she believed was the voice of Oneness, the voice of the Spirit, believing she was the one with ears to hear and the others should follow, as they had always followed, as they had always acted as one even when some could not see, or hear, or understand. She’d believed they would act in trust. In faith. As Oneness always did.
There had been twelve of them, all from the city cell in Lincoln where Reese had been trained and spent most of her life. They had been sent out together on a mission to break up a hive, a grouping wherein the demonic had become centralized and taken control of human beings in a mocking facsimile of unity. But the hive was bigger and more dangerous than they’d realized going in, and they were fighting in the dark on so many levels. Then finally Reese had heard. She was a thousand times sure she had heard: she knew what to do, how to attack to break the hive’s power. Where to find the demonic core that powered it. She had told the others, but many hesitated. They thought she was wrong. She asked them for trust. They started going out together, making small forays, attacking according to Reese’s lead. It didn’t seem to have any effect, but she was sure this was the right way to go. The results would come if they were just faithful.
One night she took two of the others, and they went out and made an attack that became a bloody, vicious battle. An ambush. One of the three crossed over. Reese knelt by his side, clutching his hand, saying the words of crossing as his soul left his body. She swore fealty and revenge while their third companion still fought. Then Reese took up her sword and together, the two vanquished their foe. They believed they had broken the power of the hive in doing so.
And when they came home, flushed with victory and aching from the fight, it was only to be denounced. The Oneness declared she had been wrong. She had wasted the life of one of their own for no reason but selfish ambition. They condemned her together, as One.
The ties had cut. Exile. The Spirit gone, with everyone who was part of it, like she’d experienced a hundred million deaths of all she held dear, consciously and unconsciously, all in a single moment.
She wasn’t sure when her legs had given way, when she had ended up kneeling on the side of the highway with gravel digging into her knees and sobs wracking her body and soul. The thought came. You are never going to be picked up like this.
And just as it did, she heard tires on the blacktop and saw lights and then a car pulled over. An old man was driving, white-haired and concerned.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “Come, get in.”
I’m not all right, her heart answered back. I will never be all right
again. But all she said was, “Thank you.”
She pulled her broken self off the shoulder and into the car and closed the door behind her.
* * *
At the top of the cliffs looking down over the bay and the village, a man stood.
His face was bloodied and swollen. His leather jacket and jeans were torn and likewise streaked with blood—his own, mostly. He held a sword in his hand.
Here? he asked.
No, a voice answered. She’s gone. She left.
Then why am I here?
Because she needs to know the truth.
I still don’t understand . . .
There is a mouth here that will give it to her. You need to find that one and give him the words to say.
The man nodded. He was a big man, broad-shouldered, powerful. Blond hair was tied back in a ponytail. His eyes scanned the village, looking for the others. They were there—a man, on his knees, rending the heavens with his prayers.
That one?
No.
But that one would be a worthy ally nonetheless. He kept looking. He saw the small woman who had headed the cell here for many years. She looked grieved and weary. And he saw more. Two others. Neither where he expected them to be, or doing what he expected them to be doing.
As he looked down the path, a form took shape. A dark-haired woman with olive skin and a beautiful face.
“Greetings, brother,” she said.
He bowed in respect. This woman was no small saint.
“My lady,” he said.
She smiled. “You have grown courtly in your passage. Does anyone in your time use a greeting like that?”
“We pick things up here and there,” he said. “Books, television.”
“Do you understand what you have to do?”
“I think I do. But it doesn’t make sense to me.”
“Why should today be any different? The plans never make sense to us. That is why they require faith. Surely you should know that.”