50
Silver flashed
between blunt and stiffened fingers. A high squeak sounded from the chair’s
wheels as they turned. Ahead of her, the buzz of the town rose and fell,
punctuated often by the patter of rain drops and the squelch of mud beneath her
family’s patched boots.
They were late.
They were always late, and Hazel didn’t want to miss the choosing.
47
The number seemed written on the inside of her eyelids,
visible before the sunlight even found its way between her lashes. Hazel had
stopped crying sometime in the night, long enough to fall asleep, and as she
fought to wake, she cursed herself. 50 days. Every sacrifice was chosen
50 days before the ceremony. 50 days to achieve whatever their great purpose
was before they shared their blood forever with Apis, the God on High.
She had wasted three of those days with snivelling and
denial.
Denial, denial, denial.
The refuge of fools.
Hazel heard the High Priest say her name, as had the whole
town, including her mother, her brother… well, everyone. She was chosen.
She is here, inside Apis’s temple. And in 47 days, they would sacrifice
her along with the four others she had ignored so far.
Well, not today.
Hazel rolled out of bed, her feet slapping the marble-tiled
floor. The room was dimly lit by the winter sun trickling through the skylight,
but Hazel still shielded her eyes with one hand, unused to the clinical
whiteness of the chamber. Did everything have to be so bright? She could
only imagine her mother grumbling about the nightmare it was to keep clean. The
thought made her thankful she wasn’t the one who had to keep it so. Hazel
discovered her tattered boots beneath the elevated feather bed and quickly put
them on. She sat for a full minute, straining to detect any noise from outside
the room. The blonde haired girl’s breathy voice filtered in as she held court
over the other sacrifices.
Hazel groaned. Of all the people in the town of Mellifera,
why did it have to be the perfect Rosie she spent the last days of her life
with? If Apis was real, surely, He would not be so cruel. If He really
was the God of love and forgiveness, he would have chosen someone
else. Hazel would have almost gone to her death happily with just about anyone
else. Even the annoying boy who lived down her street who used to pull her
piggy tails in first year would have been better than the spoiled snob Rosie.
She had been in the year above her at school, always
surrounded by a giggling throng of sycophants, all as immaculately clean and
scrubbed as Rosie, whose bouncy curls never seemed to be out of place. Next to
her, Hazel was almost invisible. A slouching, shapeless girl in a grubby old
tunic with short muddy hair her mother cut at the kitchen table, the severed
strands falling in between the cracked floorboards. The two girls were night
and day. Daffodils and weeds. And now they had to live and die together. It was
almost enough for Hazel to want to speed up her death countdown.
Almost.
Hazel shook her head to dispel her black thoughts. Things
could be worse.
Or not.
Actually, things couldn’t get much worse. But there was
nothing she could do about it.
Get it together, Hazel. The voice in her head sounded
like her brother Rowan’s, steady and sure, confident as always, her guiding
light. Hazel took his advice. She stood up straight, took a deep steadying
breath and reached out to place her hand on the doorknob, turning it before she
could change her mind.
Hazel flung the door open and stepped into the room beyond,
surprised anew by the richness of it, its size and the sheer sparkling cleanliness
of everything in the hexagonal space. Like every other part of the temple she
had seen, it was subtly, yet perfectly decorated with the lightest of touches.
A large oak table took up the centre of the room, flanked by five finely worked
wooden stools, each shiny with lacquer. The rectangular table was almost an
alien in the overwhelming sea of hexagons that made up their communal area. The
only other rectangles were the doors set on each of the room’s hexagonal sides,
five for the sacrifices’ chambers and one to lead them out.
Hazel marched from her white-on-white room, flinging the
door shut with a bang. She flinched and then, with a gargantuan effort, forced
up the corners of her mouth into a mockery of a smile. Her mother always said a
smile was the first step to making a new friend, not that Hazel had ever taken
her mother’s advice before. The four other sacrifices started at the noise,
jumping on their stools as they broke their fast, all swinging in unison toward
her, eyes widening as they took in the too-wide parody of a smile glued to
Hazel’s face.
“Good morning, friends!” Her voice was loud enough to set
her own teeth on edge.
The four other sacrifices’ expressions were a patchwork of
confusion and alarm which quickly faded to dismay as Hazel stomped over to sit
at the empty place which had been set for her. Her hair was indented from the
pillow and she still wore her rumpled and clumsily mended clothes from home.
Her outfit was a sharp contrast to the other sacrifices’ pristine white cotton
robes with an embroidered black hexagon on the back, twin to the one Hazel had
left hanging on her door. She cursed herself silently.
Why hadn’t she bothered to change her clothes?
So many missteps already and she hadn’t been out of bed for
more than a few moments.
Hazel could feel their eyes on her and her cheeks flamed
under the weight of their regard. The room was far too hot; sweat beaded under
her collar. She cleared her throat but found it difficult to swallow, as though
the passage had shrunk to half its size. Spit pooled in her mouth and panic
gnawed at her as she imagined drowning in her own saliva.
Be normal, Hazel. You remember how to be normal, right?
Rowan again, his steady voice calming, her only friend in a room full of
strangers. Taking another deep, fortifying breath, she willed her heart to stop
pounding and discretely wiped her sweaty hands on a linen napkin on the table. The
sacrifices returned their attention to their own breakfasts, the sound of
contented chewing and swallowing filling the large room. Hazel reached out an
unsteady hand to grasp the small glass of water which had been left next to her
plate and gulped down a few swallows, the blockage in her throat clearing, the
cold water blazing a trail down into her belly. As the cool radiated through
her, some of the heat left her skin. When one of the other sacrifices, a
younger boy named Reed, flicked a quick look at her from across the table, she
gave him a tight smile. He nodded back before returning his attention to his
breakfast plate, piled high with all manner of delicious morsels.
See, Rowan? I can be normal, even friendly when I want to
be. You have nothing to worry about.
Hazel reached out to snag a fruit pastry and didn’t notice
the wobble in her fingers until it was too late. The whole pile came crashing
down on the sacrifices, covering them with flaky crumbs, earning Hazel more
than one dismayed glance.
Maybe normal isn’t something I will ever be again, she
thought dismally.
The sacrifices were still scraping crumbs off their robes
when a severe-looking, yet perfectly coiffed priestess entered, her eyes raking
the assembled teenagers with a haughty stare, a bland expression on her face.
As her gaze came to rest on Hazel, a single eyebrow climbed her forehead. The
priestess’s nostrils flared minutely, and she looked as if a stinging insult
was barely being contained by her thin lips. With an obvious effort, she
swallowed, looking away from Hazel toward the other sacrifices.
“Come with me.” Her words were a whipcrack of command, her
face a careful mask once more.
Hazel filled her pockets with pastries before following the
other sacrifices out the door of their chambers, taking her place as the last
in the line of five obedient little ducklings.
The priestess’s stern presence didn’t encourage chit-chat,
so as they walked, Hazel took the opportunity to look around. From the
sacrifices’ quarters, the group entered a long hallway which looked much like
everywhere else Hazel had seen so far inside the suffocating structure.
Opulent, beautiful, and oppressive. The floors were marble, the walls stone,
and here and there in the roof far above, there were skylights, which allowed
the weak winter light to shine on them all. One foot in front of the other,
Hazel continued along, careful not to step on the back of the white robe
trailing in front of her.
Periodically, the group passed niches carved into the stone
walls filled with votives of tallow candles and silk flowers. Even more
sporadically, they passed doorways into other rooms. Hazel’s head was on a
swivel as they walked, right to left and then back again, her eyes squinting to
spy through the cracks in the doorjambs to make out details of the rooms they
passed by. She may have imagined the flash of gilt and sparkle of polished
silver in the chambers beyond, or maybe the work of Apis’s loyal servants paid
very well indeed. Ahead of her, seemingly oblivious to Hazel’s investigations,
the other sacrifices docilely followed the priestess, their eyes forward,
unmoved by their surroundings. Either they were used to such opulence or they
spent the last few days exploring rather than wallowing in their rooms and
refusing to come out, as Hazel had.
The sheer size of the place got under Hazel’s skin. Though
it was at least ten times larger than her family’s cottage, she hadn’t seen
more than a handful of people in the temple — aside from the sacrifices, that
was — since her arrival. She knew they were there, though, sneaking behind
closed doors, always watching, waiting for Hazel to put a foot wrong. They were
probably watching her right now, drinking expensive liquors from crystal
goblets, laughing about the grubby sacrifice in hand-me-down shoes who only had
47 days left to live. Hazel couldn’t help but sneer at their imagined regard,
her eyes constantly scanning as if to catch them out. But she saw no one on
their short journey, not a single priest with their back bent over a mop or a
priestess at her mending. This early in the morning at Hazel’s house, there
would be chaos as the younger children worked at their chores and the kitchen
rang with preparations for the day’s cooking. It was quiet here. Too quiet.
Hazel didn’t trust it for a second.
Eventually, the priestess who led them stopped by an open
door, ushering them in with a sweep of her hand. Another hexagonal room, larger
than their chambers and less crowded. It was set up like a classroom, with five
identical desks and chairs facing a chalkboard that took up an entire wall.
Unlike the rest of the shadowy temple, this room was well-lit. Several thick
white candles blazed in wall sconces to augment what little illumination
came from the skylights in the ceiling. The first four sacrifices entered
and found a desk. Hazel copied the others, walking over to stand behind the
last spot, her hands resting on the chairback, attention to the front. She had
stood in the same position in her classroom at school every morning for the
last thirteen years, and the familiar stance quietened her nerves. In all the
alienness of the temple, this at least was something Hazel recognised. School
was a good place. A calm place. It was somewhere she knew what was expected of
her.
The priestess didn’t accompany them in. Instead, she stood
in the doorway, her head slightly bowed, as if waiting for something. The other
sacrifices seemed content to stand and wait. But not Hazel. Several minutes
passed slowly, agonisingly, with no sign of reprieve. It didn’t take long for
Hazel to start fidgeting. At first, she tapped her fingers on the back of the
chair, pretending it was a drum and she needed to keep a rhythm. That drew
raised brows from the boy beside her and from the boy further down the line.
Hazel tried to stop, but more time passed and she scuffed her boots against the
floor, heel to toe, then heel again. The noise was an intrusion in the grave-silent
room, so she tried to crack her knuckles instead. She got a satisfying crack
from her left hand only to have the priestess in the doorway fix her with a steel-melting
glare. But Hazel couldn’t stop herself. In the quiet, her brain wouldn’t switch
off and her thoughts travelled along other roads to places it was dangerous to
go. She started thinking about home and what her family was doing without her.
She wondered if they were sad and weeping, or even worse, if they were
completely fine and didn’t notice she was missing at all.
Tears pricked her eyes as she imagined Rowan going off to
work with his lunch pail in hand, laughing and joking with his friends. Her
niece Holly, and her nephew Birch, running circles around their siblings,
playing games, going on as if Hazel had never existed. Overwhelming sorrow
tinged with fear threatened to overtake Hazel. To fight it, she sought
distraction, aggressively combing out her hair with her fingers, pulling apart
the knots with a crackle of the strands. But it didn’t work. Hazel was running
out of hair and ideas after just a few seconds and the thoughts were
threatening to engulf her again. Her breathing seemed too fast and loud in the
cavernously quiet room, her heart pounding hollowly in her chest, and her
cheeks coloured at the certainty that, at any moment, the others would notice
her panic. That they would stare at her. Still, they waited. Her belly growled,
a long sound of grumbling despair as she contemplated the little breakfast she
had managed to consume before being led away. The pastries were heavy in her
pocket, and she wondered if she dared risk the priestess’s wrath to eat one.
Her stomach growled even louder, as if in protest, knowing food was so close
yet so far away.
She was on the verge of hazarding a bite of pastry when the
High Priest breezed in, trailed by two more priestesses much younger and
somewhat more expressive than the first one, both burdened with several tomes
of Apis’s sacred scriptures in hand. At the sight of the books, Hazel groaned loud
enough for one of the new priestesses to give her a sharp look. She was saved from
their wrath only when the priest flicked a hand to indicate they sit. Hazel
plonked down onto the hard seat with a wince, wondering why a temple built of
such fine and expensive marble would have the same cheap, barely finished
torture-devices for chairs she had endured as a student. The priestesses
bustled about the room, handing out books and Hazel swallowed down any further
sighs as she accepted her copies. Apism was her least favourite subject at
school. But at least it was a distraction.
Once all the sacrifices were seated, the High Priest took up
a post at the centre of the room, hands spread widely, his face a study in
rapture. Hazel had only ever seen him from a distance before at the ceremonies.
Up close, he was a great deal more striking. He was tall and fine limbed, his
perfectly tailored black ceremonial robe doing very little to hide the ridges
of muscle beneath it. His hair was cut almost razor-short, a fashion which had
never caught on among the townspeople because the wearer’s head needed to be
well-shaped, clean, and free of scabs for it to look good. On the High Priest,
it looked perfect. Every inch of him was clean and well-scrubbed. Even his
fingernails retained a high shine and polish Hazel could never even attempt to
emulate. In short, the High Priest was an aspirational example of well-faceted
beauty, and Hazel found it difficult to look away.
“Children of Apis!” His sonorous voice boomed and flowed over
them. Hazel sat up straighter in her chair.
“You are so fortunate to have been chosen by Him. In
a few short weeks, you will go willingly into the arms of our Lord God on High,
where you will feel the love and light of His regard and help Him
build the kingdom of the hereafter!” The High Priest paused to catch each of
the sacrifices’ gazes, favouring them with a blinding smile.
“Do you feel His hand on you?” he asked, leaning over
the desk of sacrifice number 3. The thin, dark-haired boy — Leif, Hazel thought
his name was — nodded enthusiastically, a gleam in his eye. Satisfied, the
priest moved onto Hazel’s desk, leaning over until his face was less than a
finger’s width from hers. Hazel was caught, hypnotised by the zeal in his wide
blue eyes.
“Do you, Chosen? Do you feel Apis’s love shining on you?” Like
a wet bullet, a gob of spittle erupted from his thick lips, to land with a
resounding splat! on Hazel’s cheek. She blanched but nodded hesitantly,
the priest instantly whirling away to question each of the other sacrifices in
turn. As soon as she was freed from his gaze, she used the shoulder of her
tunic to wipe away the spit, shuddering as she beheld the wet spot it left on
her shirt. The High Priest, though he seemed almost God-like in his presence, had
accidentally spat on her in a very human-like way.
When he had finished grilling the teenagers, the High Priest
returned to the front of the room, his open palms held out in front of his
torso, reminding Hazel of the marble statue of Apis that sat in Mellifera’s
town square. She didn’t think the resemblance was coincidental.
When he was certain all the sacrifices’ attentions were
solely on him, the High Priest spoke again. “We will begin today by exploring
the world of the hereafter, Apis’s kingdom, so you can all prepare for the life
of beauty and service which awaits you.”
At his signal, the priestesses bustled about, helping the
sacrifices turn to the correct pages in their books so they could all read the
sacred passages together. Hazel looked up at the priestess who leaned across
her desk to adjust her book. She was young, a few years younger than Hazel.
They had probably gone to the same school. The young priestess gave a hesitant
smile as she noticed Hazel’s gaze, her lips peeling back to reveal a giant gap
in her front teeth, large enough to roll a coin through. Her cheeks turned a
light pink, the priestess snapping her mouth shut the moment she noticed Hazel
looking. The girl’s light brown hair was pulled back tightly in some sort of
plaited bun, a hairstyle the priestesses seemed to favour. Hazel guessed it was
supposed to make them look older, but it had the opposite effect on this one.
If anything, Hazel revised her age downward. She might have been only a little
older than Hazel’s niece Holly. The girl finished her task and ducked away
quickly to stand at the other end of the chalkboard, head down submissively as
if awaiting further direction. The other priestess mirrored her actions, and
the sacrifices turned their attention back to the High Priest, who was poised
to begin reading at the front of the room. Once all eyes were upon him, the
priest began to speak, his pacing perfect, his voice an exaltation in her ear.
“The Chosen are beloved by Apis. They are the ones He
wishes most to return to His side, to revel in His love and love Him
in return. And it is said by the faithful that upon exiting this world full of
fear and hardship, The Chosen will achieve a transcendence…”
The High Priest was reciting from memory, his voice
attempting to weave a hypnotic spell. The other sacrifices bent over their
tomes, fingers pressed to the pages as they read along. His voice itched at
Hazel, surrounding her, suffocating her. She pulled on her collar, breathing
deep of the stuffy air in the room. Why is it so hot? She fanned her
face with an open hand and took a few deep breaths, each time blowing the air
out in a long stream in a futile effort to cool her face.
The priest’s voice kept droning. Hazel lost track of the
text, the others flying too far ahead for her to catch up.
“…to a place far beyond our ken. To capture it in words is
to seek to trap an intangible thing, for the love and light of Apis…”
The others seemed enthralled, heads nodding. The only sound
was the occasional gasp of manufactured rapture from the priestesses and the
rolling incandescence of the priest’s voice, as seductive as first love.
But for Hazel, the priest’s magic wouldn’t stick. His voice
rolled over and around her, the words merely noise as her eyes roamed the room,
alighting on a minute crack in the plaster there, then caught on the bony
ankles of the second priestess, her robe hem too short and crooked. Hazel
realised then that whatever spell the followers of Apis had attempted to weave
on her had come apart at the seams, leaving her reeling in the aftermath of
their endeavour. The breakfast pastries had been too sweet, her bed too soft,
the stench of flowery incense cloying, far too strong. Her eyes couldn’t focus
and the words of the scripture slipped and slid all over the page, as if
written in a foreign language she had never learned.
“…The Chosen will find their place there, among those most
favoured by Apis, where they are accepted, free to find the love of ourselves,
and for others, a place where the sun ever shines…”
In a single jarring moment, Hazel looked around the room and
truly saw where she was and who she was with. On her left were four other young
people who, in a few short weeks, would be dead. In front of her were the
people who would make it so. A great and heavy load seemed to fall on Hazel
then, something so weighty it crushed the air from her lungs and brought the
blood to beat in her ears, drowning out the High Priest’s rhetoric. The room was
too loud, echoing the breathing and sighing of the people around her, the faint
noise of others in the temple, the harsh tearing sound the thin paper pages
made beneath her fingertips. The world crowded in. Her belly rumbled again,
full of ire at being ignored. She was too close to the boy who sat beside her;
the chair was too firm and too small, her legs trapped beneath the desk.
Until she felt all the room’s eyes on her, Hazel hadn’t even
realised she was out of her chair. She cleared her throat, attempting to cough
forth some explanation, some comment, but nothing emerged. She was blank,
empty. Her heartbeat quickened under their stares.
“Sit down, number 5. We are not yet finished with our
studies for the day.” The High Priest’s voice was firm, and Hazel stared
helplessly in his direction. She tried to speak, to sit, to obey. But nothing
was cooperating. She couldn’t catch her breath, couldn’t speak. The priest took
a step toward her, his face turning quickly from magnanimous to thunderous, and
a deep arc of fear found its way up Hazel’s spine, locking her feet in place.
“I… I…” she stammered but got no further.
“Sit down, number 5,” insisted the High Priest, his voice
dangerous. He took another step towards her.
“My name isn’t number 5!” She spat the words out much more
vehemently than she had intended. Something was happening to Hazel’s legs. A
queer tingle radiated from her toes, spreading into her feet. Hazel
experimented by lifting one foot. It moved.
“I said sit down, number 5!” The volume of the High Priest’s
voice rose and Hazel quaked at the sudden venom she heard there.
“I said my name isn’t number 5! It’s Hazel Stonecrop!”
Though she had always done what she was told, always tried to be helpful and
listen to her elders, something prevented her from following his order. The old
Hazel would have obeyed without argument if a priest told her to do something,
but not this Hazel. Instead, she turned her back on him and scurried from the
room without another glance.
“Number 5? Where are you going?”
Out in the hallway, another priest, older than the others,
probably as old as her father, appeared right before her. Hazel dodged around
him easily and broke into a run. She had no idea where to go, she just knew she
had to get away. If she had been more familiar with the layout of the temple,
she would have made for the doors to the outside, but instead she just ran
wildly, trying every door in the long hallway to find a way out. Most of the
doors were locked, but occasionally one would fling open, surprising the
occupants inside.
After several minutes, Hazel looked behind her to see she
had accumulated a trail of pursuers, the older priest having been joined by two
younger holy men, probably the same age as her older brothers. Hazel poured on
the speed, ducking inside the next door that opened to her frantic pulling. She
slammed the door and put her back to it, hoping her strength alone would
prevent her pursuers’ entry. Closing her eyes, she leaned on the door, her
heart pounding as she willed them to leave. She just breathed in and out while
she waited for the push at her back. After several moments when nothing
happened, Hazel dared open her eyes to glance about the room. She realised her
mistake.
Somehow in the corridor, she had lost track of where she was
and had ended up back in the sacrifices’ quarters, caught neatly back in the
priests’ trap. She cursed, long and loud, words she had only ever heard her
brother Rowan say; well, out of their mother’s hearing of course. When she ran
out of curse words, Hazel snuck the door open a crack to spy out into the
hallway, slamming it shut again when she caught sight of one of the priests on
the other side.
Trapped like a rat and with no other options available,
Hazel scuttled through the kitchenette area back to her room, kicking the door
shut behind her. In the relative safety of her own chamber, she searched for
something she could put in front of the door to keep her pursuers out. The room
was almost empty, but for a robe hanging on the back of the door and the bed
she slept in.
With a shrug, Hazel shuffle-pushed the heavy-framed bed to
block the doorway. Then, tense with nerves, she buried herself in her blankets,
her ears straining for the sounds of her pursuers.
It felt like hours passed while she lay in a heightened
state of awareness, but nothing happened. The only noise she heard was the soft
clatter of the other sacrifices returning from their studies for the noonday
meal, their voices muted as they chatted and ate, Hazel forgotten in her own
chamber.
Eventually, Hazel’s heart slowed along with her thoughts and
her situation came back to her in harsh relief. She was being a coward. No
matter what, for the rest of her very short life, she was a captive in the
temple surrounded by strangers. She would have to be brave and endure many more
meals with the other captives, many more days in the classroom studying Apism,
always watched by the temple staff. She might never see her family again. Her
old life was gone, and she was never going to get it back.
For the millionth time since she had been chosen, tears
overwhelmed Hazel. Great racking sobs erupted from deep within her body, the
product of unfathomable grief, like nothing she had ever felt before. It came
from some hidden place within her, a well running through her entire core that
stored all the sadness and fear she had buried down deep since she was a small
child, so she could survive.
The tears swelled the skin of her cheeks and her belly ached
with the strain. Yet the sobs kept coming. She cried for her family, her few
friends, the little house she had grown up in, the books and toys she left
behind in the room she shared with her nieces.
Hazel cried and cried and didn’t care that the other
sacrifices could hear her through the walls of their chambers, or that the
temple staff would pity her. She cried until thirst overcame her and,
eventually, no matter how hard she tried, no more tears would come.
It had been a furious maelstrom of grief, and
like all storms, it blew itself out. Tired and frayed, Hazel slipped
