The sun was just beginning to sink low enough that the car’s sun visor wasn’t any help any more. Sere tried to sit up a little straighter behind the wheel to get the orange bloody blob out of her eyes, and it worked for a few minutes, but fatigue and the continued sinking of the glaring heavenly body won out against her efforts in the end.
With her free hand she dug around in the bag next to her on the passenger seat, found some old scratched sunglasses, and put them on. It helped block out the glare a little. She sighed. Her daughter had put that big scratch on the lens. “I told her not to put them on the dog, “ she thought, and smiled wryly at the way the memory brought stinging behind her eyes and tightness to her throat. She thought, “It won’t be the last time for that sensation.” The look on the kids’ faces was still a very fresh and exquisitely painful memory, it was only yesterday that she had said goodbye.
“But why do you have to leave, mommy? Why can’t we come with you?”, they had cried, their confusion and fear showing plainly in their little round faces.
She had tried to be brave, but to no avail. Her voice had cracked before the words could be formed. Her husband had answered for her, “Because it’s just not safe for mommy to stay here any more, and it will be safer for us if she goes.” Her husband never shed a tear. In fact, in the 15 years she’d know him she’d never seen him cry once. He just couldn’t allow himself to be that vulnerable. She choked back her own overwhelming emotions, hugged each of the three little ones as long as she could stand it, and whispered to each one in turn, “I love you more than anything, but that’s why I have to go, so you’ll be safer. I promise I’ll see you as soon as I can. Don’t ever forget about me, ok?”
Sere realized that the thoughts brought tears streaming down her cheeks as the sun finally dipped its gaudy redness behind a low range of hills. Sobs wracked her body unchecked in a spasm of sorrow that would have its way. While her body poured out grief, she felt outside herself, as if she were watching a maudlin sentimental movie from some grim sterile living room. Emotionless. Like her husband when he said goodbye. Well, maybe not entirely emotionless, as he seemed somewhat annoyed at something in the situation. They’d fought all that week before she left.
“What’s wrong with you anyway? Why do you have to be so damned stubborn?” He’d belted out the same questions at her so many times that she felt the words like a punch in the head each time he spoke them. But she had no answer for him. Years ago she’d stopped giving him the only true answer, “I can’t help who I am”, because then he’d usually resort to some kind of guilt-inducing attack, “Think what this will do to the kids!” Or worse, “You’re being so selfish for putting them in danger because of your stupid ideas and your stupid university job!” It was that line of his logic that made her realize she had to leave. He was at least right about that, staying with the kids would have been ultimately selfish on her part; she so enjoyed the touch of their chubby hands on her face, the sound of her little boys’ giggles, and watching her daughter dance. She also couldn’t imagine staying at her university job and teaching a false version of biology. Her husband was indeed right. Staying would have been selfish. And he had been right about something else, too. She could have just lied to save herself. But it wasn’t in her nature to lie about something like that. Little lies were one thing, like lying about whether you like your friend’s new haircut. But this was lying about your principles, lying about the nature of reality to generations of students, and well, it was simply wrong. Her husband would ask, “What’s the big deal? Lots of people do it! But you’re just too high and mighty aren’t you? That’s just like you, putting your own stupid beliefs ahead of everything and everybody else, even your own kids!” So in the end, she really had no choice. Sooner or later, he’d have probably turned her in anyway, and that would have been even harder for the kids to live with. Leaving was the only way.
Sere needed a tissue; her nose was running out of control as the sobs finally spent themselves. But all she had in the car was a notebook, and she wasn’t going to use that paper to blow her nose. She would have to conserve it so she could write letters to the kids, even if she couldn’t send them right away, she could save them until things got a little better and the government stopped watching the mail so intently. If that ever happened. Writing letters made her think of Anya, her dearest friend who had always been such an optimist. A crazy, free-thinking, old-fashioned, flower child who was always in denial that things would ever get this bad. Anya had always tried to be cheerful, always tried to see the other point of view. And she had always said this insanity wouldn’t last long, surely people would come to their senses and realize we’re all citizens of the same country, that everyone has a right to a personal philosophy. Sere knew it was just bad luck that her friend had been downtown that day last spring when the riots first broke out, but it didn’t erase the rage that swelled up every time she remembered the sight of Anya’s badly bruised and battered face when she had been called to identify the body. The fucking insane bastards. It was that event more than even her husband’s nagging that finally made her realize that she might need to leave her home. Not fear for herself, but uncompromising terror of what these vigilantes could do to her children, was the final deciding factor.
At least rage took the edge off her grief. Mad was better than misery, and as long as she had the energy to go there, it was an easier place to be. She took a deep breath, that rattled in her chest after the wracking sobs, and then noticed a highway rest stop up ahead. Sere decided to pull over to pee and wash her face and maybe get a few wads of tissue from the restroom in case she needed to cry again.
As rest areas go it was nothing unusual, a cinderblock building in a wide spot by the highway. There were the requisite bucket loads of cigarette butts dumped throughout the parking lot, the overflowing garbage cans, and the occasional person not picking up after his or her dog.
Sere went into the ladies room and found an open stall. As she urinated, she read the graffiti on the walls. The usual stuff was in abundance: “Jesus luvs U”, and “RU ready? Repent!”. Someone had scratched out the “Here I sit…” poem, and beneath it had scrawled, “The wages of sin is death”. However, there was another scrawl on the stall door, just at eye level. As she stood up and noticed it, the word suddenly and unexpectedly sent a chill down her spine. Printed in crimson red letters, three inches high, and apparently designed to look like blood with globs of congealed goo that still clung to the door, was the word, “SINNER”. It struck her as more than a little creepy, as if it was meant to be a personal pronouncement directed at her specifically rather than some mindless drivel scratched by an overzealous teenager. She finished, pulled out an extra wad of toilet paper, and with a small shudder she exited through the accusing door and went to the sinks.
As she washed her hands and face, Sere noticed a waif of a young woman standing next to the wall beside the last sink. She seemed very nervous, delicately biting her nails and rocking to and fro slightly against the wall. Sere was acutely aware of how the woman’s attention seemed fixed on her as she dried her face, disposed of the paper towel and started out the door of the restroom. She glanced sideways at the waif as she walked out, but didn’t want to risk making eye contact. It would be far too dangerous, especially in this area. She’d heard news reports that there were a lot of vigilante activists in the area, being so close to the border, and she didn’t want to get confronted by any of them when she was so close to relative safety. She quickly left the restroom and hurried into the deepening evening.
As Sere approached her car, she looked up and a sudden jolt of dread shot through her body and set her heart racing. In the early gloom of evening she could see 4 young men standing around a pickup truck in the parking space next to her car. They appeared to be drunk or crazy, hooting and yelling and raising their arms to give each other periodic high fives and slaps on the back for no apparent reason. A flash of streetlight on a black uniform in the group transformed her dread to a state of full-blown panic. What should she do? Should she risk gaining their attention by turning around and heading back into the women’s room? But that would mean she would be trapped if they decided to confront her, and there would be no way to evade them. But if she just kept going, and kept her head down, maybe she’d be able to escape their notice and get into the car quickly and unobtrusively. Yes, that was the only option. Just keep your head down, just keep walking as if …Her flash of indecisiveness had caused her to only barely falter in her steps, but it was, unfortunately for her, just enough. One of the boys called out to her,
“Good evening, sister! Where might you be going so late without your husband?” They all began to walk toward her, slowly, but with tangible menace. She groped wildly for a proper response, but none came to her lips. She tried to speed her steps, wrapping her arms closely about her body, her head down and turned away as if expecting a blow. But in a coordinated motion they fanned out and surrounded her, and as the one who had spoken stepped directly in front of her, blocking the path to her car, the other 3 boys formed a human wall behind her.
“This is it”, thought Sere, and briefly wondered if her death would be quick. The leader said, “Woman, you didn’t answer me, perhaps you didn’t notice that I’m an officer.” She stopped and kept her head bowed, like a rabbit cornered by wolves, she was in a state of near frozen fear. It was all too much, really, just yesterday her heart had been ripped to shreds when she was forced to leave her children behind, and now this. And at the thought of the gross unfairness of it all, she began to boil with rage again. She resolved in that moment that she was not going to go quietly.
Sere’s right hand was mostly concealed beneath her arm, and she slowly clenched it in a fist around her car keys. Deliberately pointing the key tips outward from between her fingers, she flashed back for that instant to the undergraduate self-defense class where she’d learned that trick so many years ago. At the moment, it seemed an odd recollection to have, but she didn’t have time to ponder. She tensed her muscles to make a gouge at the leader’s eyes, but in the split second before she moved, other things happened. There was a loud shriek as a tiny female frame launched into the three boys who were standing behind her. The leader, distracted by the chaos, jerked his head up and began to shout something. Whatever it was he was going to say, he didn’t finish, as Sere swung her arm with the key claw straight across his face. Taken completely off guard, he lost balance, and fell to the ground with his hands grasping at his eyes. Sere didn’t turn to look at what was happening behind her, she jumped over the boy on the ground and leapt to her car as she hit the autolock release button, yanked the door open, and jumped in. She had the key in the ignition and was throwing it into gear, as the passenger door swung open and she saw the wide-eyed face of the waif from the bathroom.
There was no time to think; the little idiot was going to get run over if she didn’t move. “Get in!” Sere shouted as she stomped on the gas and the tires squealed into motion. The boys were apparently so taken by surprise that they hadn’t even all gotten back to their feet by the time Sere had put the car into drive and was speeding out of the parking lot.
Sere floored the gas pedal up the ramp and onto the highway, her heart thundering in her chest. She looked with terror in the rear view mirror, certain that the pickup truck would be right behind her, but it didn’t appear. For a few minutes, the only sound was the racing of the car engine and her own heavy breathing. Then, slowly, she gained control of herself, and realized that her entire body was shaking like a leaf. She slowed the car to almost legal speed and took several deep breaths to calm her shattered nerves before she turned to look at the young woman sitting next to her in the car.
“Thanks, that was…kind…of you to do that, back there”, Sere said haltingly. She felt a little guilty and entirely suspicious all at the same time. She wasn’t so sure she’d have done the same thing for the stranger, had their roles been reversed. Besides, it all seemed so surreal. Just having another person in the car was a bizarre shift in circumstances; she had pictured herself being alone for probably the rest of her life, and yet, here was another human being physically intruding into this private compartment of her grief.
“I was afraid for you”, came the answer, in a wispy little girl’s voice, that could hardly have seemed threatening to anyone. “I’m Judith”.
“I’m Sere”, she answered, although she felt an odd reluctance to give her name. “What were you doing all alone at that rest stop, anyway?”
“I was hitchhiking. I’m trying to get out of the country.” Judith’s wispy voice took on a note of tension and she lowered her head slightly and looked out the window. “You know what I mean.”
Sere looked at her passenger with narrowed eyes, “I’m sure I don’t. It’s illegal to leave the country, without permission, and you ought to know that. Everybody knows that.”
“Well, yes that’s true, but…” Judith began to bite her nails. “I just have to try, or else something really terrible might happen to me.” Her voice raised in pitch even more, and she suddenly whipped her head around to look at Sere and simultaneously shrunk back against the car door. “Please, you won’t turn me in, will you?”
Sere’s own pain reverberated in her chest. “No, I won’t. Don’t be scared.” This brought something like a weak smile to the girl’s lips. Sere felt intensely uncomfortable at the girl’s weirdness. She glanced again at the rear view mirror. She was simultaneously thrilled at the insane good fortune that the pick up truck hadn’t followed them, and yet completely puzzled at the illogic of it. Her mind seemed to have gone a little blank as she habituated to the emotional shock of what had just happened.
After about 10 minutes of driving in silence, Judith said, “So if you aren’t going to the border, then where are you going, if I may ask?” Sere had been trying to break her mind out of the dull hum that matched the engine sound. She knew she had to figure out how to get rid of this weird little baggage without letting her know that she herself was planning to defect. “I wonder why I don’t trust her?” she thought, but decided it was just too big a risk to trust anyone these days. She couldn’t even trust the man for whom she had borne 3 beautiful children. That’s what these times had brought about. Broken families. Human distrust. Riots. Violence. Hatred. Murder.
“I’m visiting a sick aunt who lives near the border.” she lied, and wondered why she didn’t feel bad for doing so.
“Oh, really? I have relatives near the border too. I was going to stop by to see them before I leave, they are really free thinkers, and I know they won’t report me to the officers. Maybe you can visit with me?” Maybe they know your aunt.” Judith spoke lightly, carelessly tossing out words that had become epithets on the lips of so many good citizens these days, and it made Sere more than a little nervous. She wondered for a flash of a moment, in fact, she almost hoped, that she had perhaps found one of the few young people who had not been totally indoctrinated into the new thinking. Then again, perhaps the girl was merely toying with her. But then how was it that Judith would have been at the rest stop that Sere had just randomly chosen? It wasn’t like anyone had known of her plans to get out of the country, and she didn’t think her husband would deliberately set the officers on her now that she was leaving him to raise the children in the way he wanted. So how would anyone have known to set her up like that? Surely those boys with the pickup truck had just happened to be there. Could it be possible she had found someone to be a friend? Sere felt a pang at the thought of a friend. Loneliness is not a longing for company, they always say, but a longing for kind. She hadn’t known anyone in so long that was of like kind to her, at least not since Anya had been murdered. Maybe her real problem was her own suspicious, skeptical nature. That was something her husband had always told her. Maybe she shouldn’t be so suspicious. Being suspicious just played into the hands of the government, suspicion would always serve to further isolate the non-conformists, thereby making it easier to prevent organized resistance. Hadn’t she written a lecture on that very tactic when she was still teaching at the university? Well, it wasn’t a huge risk, anyway. Sere wasn’t afraid the skinny girl could overpower her, and she could always ditch the kid in some town near the border if things got weird, and she’d be over before anyone could stop her.
“Well, we’ll see. It’s another couple of hours until we get to the border town, and then I’ll leave you with your family. I do owe you that much for helping me get away back there.” Sere felt a measure of relief as she settled on her decision. The engine droned on as they drove into the deepening darkness.
Sere’s head suddenly snapped up as the car tires shrieked a high pitched rumble. “That’s it, she thought, if I drive any further tonight, I might just as well aim the car for a tree and be done with it.” As it had 3 times already, the terrifying thought of the officer and his gang in the pickup truck returned and the fright of it set off her stress response to the point of high alert. But she had been up for many hours, and the emotional trauma of the previous few days had taken its toll. She had to stop.
Judith was apparently dozing with her head against the car door and her feet pulled up beneath her on the seat. As Sere slowed the car on the exit ramp, Judith stirred like a bad actor doing a wake up scene and expressed a yawn. Through half closed eyes, she asked Sere where she was going.
“I’m going to pull over here and take a short nap. I’m falling asleep at the wheel.” She had chosen an exit ramp to a country back road; there wasn’t even a closed gas station anywhere to be seen. If the truck was still behind her, she didn’t want to be easy to spot under any street lamps. Checking into a hotel at this time of night was completely out of the question; it would raise too many red flags and could end up getting her arrested. Besides, she had no idea what she would have done with her waif baggage; she didn’t trust her in the slightest, and that would make it difficult to relax enough to sleep. At least if she just parked the car on the side of the road and slept in the driver’s seat, she was more likely to wake up if the door lock clicked. Besides, if Judith had any plans to contact the authorities, there wouldn’t be many places to do that out in the middle of nowhere.
“I’m going to sleep for a while, if you want to stretch out in the back seat, go ahead. I’ll just sleep here.” Sere put the seat back a little and tried to stretch her legs out as much as possible. Judith didn’t take the back seat that was offered, but settled back down into her dozing position.
Dreams can be strange reflections of our daily lives. Sere knew about the neurological underpinnings of the dream state, but knowing how something works at a neural level doesn’t necessarily allow one to understand the personal source of the dream images. As Sere fell immediately into stupor, her retreating visual mind flew through a series of heartbroken pictures. Her children’s tear-soaked bewildered expressions; her husband’s disgusted turn of his back as she pulled away in her car. The bloody red of the sun sinking onto the highway; and the dark twisted sneer of a young waiflike face hovering over her and…chanting?
Sere’s eyes flitted open, her head felt like it was splitting into two. The sky was lightening gray over her head, and she wondered why she could see it through the car roof. The thunderous pounding inside her temples thrummed a staccato, and she realized through a fog of pain that she couldn’t move her arms. Her legs were also immobile. Through dry cracked lips she croaked what was meant to be a shriek of rage and alarm, but only a whimper made it through. She was lying on the damp cold ground, her arms and legs tied tightly together. She couldn’t see anything but some tall grasses nearby, in the dim pre-dawn light, but she slowly became aware of low voices behind her at a distance.
They were praying. A unison of low rumbling voices issued vapid strings of meaningless verbal emissions, a sound to which Sere had acquired a conditioned anger and fear response. Idiotic practice, blabbering together to a make believe friend, she had always thought. But the sound in this moment had an added touch of emotion to it. Sere knew without hearing the words that they were praying for her non-existent soul. So this is it, she thought again, but this time there would be no miraculous escape.
The mumbling finally ceased. She felt the ground beneath her vibrate ever so slightly as booted feet approached. She was pulled up to a standing position, and faced a sixty-ish man with a crazy shock of white hair and a huge wooden cross hanging on a chain about his neck. He fixed his eyes on hers, and seemed to want to appear as though he were searching deep within her for something important. His eyes were icy blue, and his face could have been that of a kindly uncle or of Charles Manson on a good day, Sere thought, and unexpectedly amused herself with the strangeness of her own mental ramblings.
“So you find this situation amusing?” asked the white-haired Uncle Manson.
“I find nothing… about this… amusing… whatsoever. Let me go. I’ve done… nothing wrong.” replied Sere, although the pain in her head took her breath away and allowed her to only gasp out the words.
“Oh, I think that you have done wrong. Have you never told a lie, have you never taken that which was not yours, or coveted your neighbor’s goods or perhaps lain with a man outside of the sanctity of the marriage bed?” His eyes glinted sharply and his lips curled back as if he’d just delivered the final salvo of a volley of accurate and stinging barbs.
“No… as a matter of fact… I haven’t.” answered Sere quite truthfully, although a fleeting thought ran through her mind that maybe that last item was something she should have considered, given the quality of her marriage.
Uncle Manson had started to continue his pre-determined speech, but shut his mouth suddenly at Sere’s calm reply. He recovered after only a second. “Oh but you have been doing some very illegal activities in the eyes of your holy government. It is a fact that you planned to defect to the northern realms of Satan, is it not? And that you were not at all ashamed to take an innocent child along with you to stain her soul and make her a criminal in the eyes of our reverend president and the lord god above?” As he spoke, Sere saw Judith move out from a dark clot of figures. She was no longer trying to look frightened; she had a rapt expression on her face, and was smiling vacantly at Sere, her hands raised in the obnoxiously obvious supplicating gestures that had become so popular with the young officers of the lord. She was now wearing the black uniform that had struck terror into Sere when she had seen it on the young men by her car at the rest stop.
“You back-stabbing bitch!” Sere hissed out the words at the religion-crazed waif despite the extreme pain it brought to her head. She might as well have saved herself the misery, because Judith was beyond contact, completely immersed in a moment of supreme ecstasy brought on by her first successful heathen capture and the long chanting session through the pre-dawn hours.
“Oh come now, young lady, there is no need to blaspheme the pure soul of Judith. She has done you the ultimate courtesy of bringing you before the lord’s people today. You should be thanking her and kissing her feet for the love she has shown you in choosing you to be her first.” Uncle Manson glanced with fond approval at Judith, who was now swaying and humming to herself. He gestured to some of the dark figures in the clearing and two young men came forward. One had a black uniform and a scratched face. Sere started with fear as she recognized him, and he glowered with menace, but at a quick word from Uncle Manson, the officer immediately dropped his gaze to the ground. Then he and the other officer took hold of Sere’s arms and half helped, half dragged her toward a stake in the middle of the clearing. There they wrapped her around and around with cords, lashing her body from chest to ankles to the post. She could barely breathe, and her head hurt even more with the constriction of the blood flow. She realized she was crying, tears streaming down her face in torrents, but not a sound escaped her lips. As they brought the kindling, and the firewood, she tried to draw as deep a breath as she could, and thought of her babies. She looked to the sky, which had become a nasty gray overcast morning that was never going to allow the sun to shine through. They piled the firewood around her, and she wondered how long it would take for her to asphyxiate. She knew that her best hope was for shock to set in, as it would possibly blunt the pain of being burnt alive, and the heat of the flames should quickly destroy her lung tissue and she would suffocate. That is, if they knew what they were doing enough to get the fire to catch quickly and to burn hot enough. Otherwise, it was going to be a very long and painful morning.
The young men poured lighter fluid on the wood, and the rest of the crowd, some 12 or 15 of them, gathered around and began their infernal chanting. Stress can be a useful thing, Sere thought, as the stinging scent of the kerosene brought her to empty retching. When an animal is caught and about to be devoured by a larger creature, it’s the stress response that brings on shock and loss of pain perception. And here she was, about to be devoured by the religious fanaticism of a group of semi-deranged god vigilantes. There were too many of these groups doing too much harm to innocent people. They roamed freely across the land, taking their own brand of religious conversion to the extreme, and the government either ignored it, or maybe even secretly supported it. After all, the least religious types were usually the ones in the universities, the ones who said inconvenient things, or taught the people to think and to ask questions. Those were the ones most often caught and “purified” by these holy officers. And the terror that these vigilantes for the lord aroused among the intelligentsia was so much the better for a corrupt fascist government; it’s far easier to maintain total control, when everyone lives in fear.
The praying grew louder, and the crowd began to sway. Judith looked as though she would have a seizure in all her excitement. The officers stood ready with their torches lit, and Uncle Manson stepped forward to face Sere.
“We have brought you to this place of purification out of the love we have for your god-given soul. Are you ready to face the lord your god, and to prostrate yourself before him as the sinner you are?”
Sere looked straight into his cold crazy eyes. She could only answer truthfully now, nothing else mattered anyway.
“You know, the funny thing about god? He’s not even real.”
*****
Beth stared at the clock on the wall of the classroom. The political science teacher’s droning seemed to have no end.
“Profound social change can be elicited by a few critical events that occur when the time is right. Our own political history provides a number of examples of such a paradigm change in the social consciousness. With meticulous hindsight, we have learned to identify the likely social circumstances under which such change is most likely to occur. Based on these models, our modern form of government has created rational laws by which such paradigm shifts can be carefully directed to the most optimal outcomes for all of society.”
The buzzer for the end of the period finally sounded, and as the teacher quickly reminded them of their next reading assignment, Beth gathered her things and headed for the door. She was eager to meet with her friends, especially tonight. It can be so much fun to do something even slightly forbidden, but what they had planned was going to be outrageous, and so it would be even better than the usual misbehavior. Beth hurried to her locker and stashed her books. A tiny sliver glint reflected from her hand as she shoved her fist in her pocket and closed the locker door. If anyone saw that trinket, she would be in serious trouble and likely get a suspension, if not outright kicked out of school. It was so hard to know whom to trust these days, what with all the strict anti-religion laws.
Beth hurried with her contraband out of the school.
“Hey Beth!” called a girl from across the street. Beth saw her friend Mary and ran to meet her.
“Did you get everything set up for tonight?” Beth asked.
“You bet. I can’t wait; this is going to be so excellent! I invited everyone from the group. I really hope no one follows them to the meeting place!” Mary said as they started down the street together.
The girls stopped at Beth’s house, and told her mother they were having a sleepover at Mary’s. Then they did the same thing at Mary’s house. They were such good girls that it was unlikely anyone would check up on them. Their lies accomplished, the girls went off down the street to the wooded area south of town.
They hiked along a narrow deer path, saying very little along the way. Beth occasionally took out her shiny silver necklace to admire it and briefly press it to her lips. Mary smiled. “I can’t believe you have one of those! What if your mom ever found it? Or worse yet, the school principal? You’d be in serious trouble, you know. Didn’t you hear what happened to that bunch of kids they found doing the prayer circles over at Darwin High?”
Beth rolled her eyes. “Yes, I know, they got suspended and they all had to spend a night in juvenile hall over it. But I’m not that dumb! I’m really careful about getting caught!”
The girls emerged into a roughly circular, grassy clearing in the forest. At the center of the clearing was a post, standing with its base buried in the ground. A few other teenagers had gathered around it, and were in the process of wrapping it about with a delicately braided chain of wild flowers.
“Hey, it’s about time you got here, sisters!” yelled one boy as they approached. “We were going to start without you any minute!”
Beth and Mary giggled delightedly at the boy’s unauthorized use of the term “sisters” and hurried to join hands with the others, who formed a circle around the flowery stake. Then, the teenagers, with rapturous joy shining in their upturned faces, began to chant together. The musical sound of their voices carried gently on a pine-scented breeze, only to be safely concealed in the surrounding forest. As they chanted themselves over time into an altered state of consciousness, a gaudy orange glob of sun sank in the early evening sky, and from it, a narrow shaft of flame-red light streamed through the distant hilltops to illuminate the scene. As it did, a splinter of brightness reflected back at the heavens from the small charm that Beth now wore openly and proudly hanging around her neck, the tiny silver figure of a woman bound to a stake.
