I don’t need to listen to what comes next.
CALLA
Ropes are tied around the men’s necks. A careful, precise act, to avoid contact with their skin.
I saw my sister standing in the trees as the men were pulled from the ground, listening, even though I told her not to come. But now she has vanished from the dark edge of the forest.
She doesn’t want to hear the snap of the men’s necks, bones separating in places they shouldn’t. Many others have left too, retreated into their homes, curtains drawn, pillows pulled over ears to muffle any sound. There will be no work done today, no crops tended to, no loaves of bread baked in the community ovens. The children have been led away as well—but not into the meadow to practice cartwheels and summersaults and braiding dandelion crowns under the morning sun. They have been led to their rooms, to consider the punishment they too could face if they ever tiptoed past our borders. Today’s execution is a reminder to us all: Stay within our walls and you will be safe. Leave and you will know death, one way or another.
I expect Levi to say something else, some final decree: precise, faultless words to assure his followers that this is the right thing. That we have no other choice. But when his mouth dips open, it only hangs there, the silence of air leaving his lungs is all that escapes. For the first time, Levi can’t find the right words.
He must sense the burden of so many eyes on him, expectant, so he quickly snaps his jaw shut and nods to Henry, standing on the other side of the noosed men. And in one swift blow, Henry and Parker knock the wood logs out from under the two men with a kick of their boots. The logs roll away toward the Mabon tree and my eyes flutter, taking a moment to rise, to focus on the feet hanging suspended in the air, shaking violently—legs convulsing where they attach to trembling torsos. Both Ash’s and Turk’s chests seem oddly expanded, like their lungs have swollen, seeking air. But there is no air to breath, because in the last twitch of their fingertips, it’s obvious their necks have been broken. The shaking is only residual, a spasm of muscles. Turk stops trembling first, but it’s another moment more before Ash falls still—before they both hang slack against their ropes.
Death has settled firmly into their joints, blood ceasing to pump down veins, but instead pooling in valleys and the hollow places of the body, a black, awful kind of blood—the same inky darkness that spilled from their arms when Levi cut into them—an undeniable symptom of the pox. The ground did not heal them as it was meant to. They would die one way or another, and perhaps this way, with ropes tightened around their necks, was a kindness. To die swiftly. Without the agony of a slow, writhing death.
In the echo of my mind, I hear several women crying.
In the periphery of my vision, I see the remaining witnesses rising to their feet and hurrying away from the stage.
I can even hear my husband, speaking to me, touching my hand. But my eyes are fixed on the two men swaying in the morning breeze. I know how this should feel, I know the wretched pain that should twist my gut, but I suspect that will come later. Right now, I feel only the strangeness of what’s been done: how swiftly life can be squeezed and snapped from a person. How easily Levi could demand these two men’s death, and minutes later, it’s done.
But Levi did not kill these men.
We all did.
THEO
The mirror above the bathroom sink is cracked in two places—I don’t recall it ever not being broken—and I lean against the porcelain edge only a few inches from the glass, staring at my own reflection. A candle flickers from the counter, making it hard to see anything clearly, but I widen my eyelids, dark pupils staring back.
If the pox is inside me, I should be able to see it—a blackness spreading around my retinas, the rot working its way through my veins. I should be able to feel it too, the decaying of my bones, turning to muck.
Another reflection catches my gaze and I jerk back from the mirror.
“You’re looking for the pox, aren’t you?” Calla is standing in the bathroom doorway, arms crossed.
Only an hour earlier, we sat at the gathering and watched as Levi pushed a knife into Ash’s and Turk’s flesh, and what spilled out was not blood, it was something else: dark and ruddy, almost like oil.
I blinked and blinked, wanting the blood to not be what it was. But it was indisputable: Both men were infected. The pox was inside our borders.
Now I wonder, Is it inside me?
I turn to face my wife, and she crosses the bathroom, bringing her hands to my cheeks, sliding her fingers up my jawline. She peers close, examining my eyes like she is looking for a stray eyelash or a bit of dirt. Her gaze is soft, innocent, and it makes me think of other times when she has tended to my wounds—a crushed hand when a tree trunk rolled onto my knuckles while chopping firewood, a gash in my shoulder when a length of barbed wire tore through my shirt down to my flesh—careful and precise as she cleaned blood away and bandaged me up.