Colombo, Sri Lanka

January 2, 2014

Things have been moving fast here.

What he’d told us is all proving to be right. I’d told Bohrs the bare details. I’ve always been able to trust him implicitly, but something still made me hold back. Perhaps it was the man’s words. I hadn’t shown him the vial, just described the signs, the general threat. I hadn’t mentioned M though. Bohrs trusts me implicitly too, I guess, and he knows my sources are good without having to ask.

And so he’d been on board. We had started house to house, hovel to hovel, collecting then analyzing the trace chemicals first on the structures, then on the people.

I had sensed it everywhere, or had that been another figment of my imagination?

The girl who had come up to me, so brazenly: had her brashness come from that, the disease that seemed to be spreading across her face, worming its way into her brain?

“That’s it. Look at her temples.” Bohrs had said, when she had finally turned to go, after spitting in the sand a few paces from me.

I hadn’t given her any money.

Bohrs had nodded and shaken his head.

“We’re in deep.”

I’d come here at his request. This was his cause after all.

Which had become mine.

“It’s the launching place,” the unidentifiable man had said, back in the Purple Mountains, back when he had handed us a thumb drive and vial of liquid. “Colombo.”

And so I had come.

“It makes sense.”

Bohrs and I are standing in an alley just big enough for the two of us, snaking backward from the beach into the more odious, labrynthine parts of the slum.

It seemed this ramshackle community, like the virus, was reaching its tentacles across the city, swelling until it might strangle the very heart of Colombo.

“Let’s go,” I say. “We’ve seen enough.”

He looks further down the alley, where the hovels seem to almost cave in on one another.

The whole world, caving in on itself.

Although that’s not the way it was supposed to work.

The terrible secret. The knowledge of it.

Weighty and unbearable.

“Will you come with me?”

A voice had just spoken from only a few feet away.

A dark-skinned man has just stepped out of a doorway, his face now illuminated in the white, cloud-bent light.

I take a step backward.

We aren’t supposed to be here.

“I think you want to come with me.”

The man flashes us something. Even worse: a badge.

My toes curl inward involuntarily. I want to run.

But I can’t.

Bohrs looks at the would-be-assassin, promptly lifts his gun to his forehead, and shoots, a deadened ping as the bullet escapes the silencer and the body crumples.

Nearby pigs start to squeal. A woman we hadn’t seen peering out a window begins to scream.

“Let’s go,” says Bohrs.

We turn back toward the widening part of the alley and run.

...

Delhi, India

January 2, 2014

Amit has known for a long time what he’s up against.

He flicks the last of his omelette on his fork, like mucus. Nana has undercooked it again.

He sighs and shakes his head, then wipes his hands with his linen napkin, and in one habitual motion, lets it fall to the table as he rises and turns. It is refuse, a deed done.

Back in the observation room hangs Neha.

He hadn’t meant to let it get this far. But in the end, she was just one body, just one soul. Compared to what they were about to gain, it was a small loss.

Amit’s phone rings as he is putting on his suit jacket.

“Master, she’s…gone.”

Amit pauses for a moment, listening to the sound of eggs being scraped off a plate into the trash.

He looks from his phone to his watch, silver and with a huge circular face. Analog. There was no other option, really.

“Alright.”

He is late. He purses his lips. “Take care of it.”

Then he snaps the phone closed, steps out to the door and into the waiting taxi.

Neha, he thinks.

First, she had denied it.

He had pushed her, just a little bit further, a little bit harder, the blows falling with a little more force.

Of course, it hadn’t been his practice to hit a woman, no, but this was important. And he was angry.

She had, in fact, gone to him. She had betrayed the cause., full well knowing what it would cost her, what it would cost them.

Now, blood again surges through his veins thinking of it.

Their betrayal, no, betrothal.

The day they had met, when he had sensed, almost immediately, the strange energy between them.

Perhaps they had known each other in another life.

And just hours ago, total betrayal.

She had been glossy-eyed and whimpering, shaking her head as the tears fell.

“I know nothing.”

A plea. A lie. Of course. For Neha knew everything.

She had been in contact with him.

And she had told him everything. And he must have told her something.

“She’s gone.”

Belal’s words popped again in his head like bullets, clipped and satisfying. They covered over the pain. Gone.

For the time being, Amit will have to continue eating his grandmother’s liquid omelets. There were worse fates.

Still, as the taxi turns out of his manicured neighborhood, his heart feels that terrible panic it had just moments after he had first met Neha, the awful desire to clutch onto a breathtaking mirage before it disappeared.

Gone.

And the ache is suddenly momentous.

...

Davos, Switzerland

January 2, 2014

Bente has made it to the summit without a hitch, despite the hitch that was two days prior, back home.

But the baby is fine and she’s not showing yet, and so she is here, the proposal on the screen in front of her, a small remote in her hand and her mouth a thin serious line across her face.

“We are infesting our planet,” she is saying.

Her stomach tightens involuntarily.

“All over the world, it is the same demographic that is perpetuating our population and climate crises. These are the very same people who are in turn suffering the most under adverse climate conditions. We must help.”

She clicks a button on the remote and a map of Sri Lanka lights up the screen. It is filled with darker and lighter green sections. She clicks again and the greens on the screen begin to move and morph, the darker patches getting smaller and lighter, and the lighter patches expanding.

“We imagine, once this program is put into place, that the populations in extreme poverty, marked by the darkest green, will shrink exponentially. Thousands if not millions of people will jump from one social class to the one above it, and as science has well-proven, they will finally begin to impact the climate positively: a tidal wave of change.”

She clicks the button and the screen goes dark. Bente looks around the room. She is accompanied by people who resemble the UN - stately and thoughtful, their skin colors a palate of all human possibilities.

“And how will we implement this?” asks a man with graying hair and leathery brown skin that looks as if it has lain for copious amounts of time out in the sun.

“Mr. Shakra,” says Bente. “That is where you come in.”

A few people shift in their chairs.

Mr. Shakra regards Bente for a long moment before opening his mouth. “And how exactly is that?”

Bente smiles. “Priming the pump, of course.”

I:

The whole thing had been a grave error. To this day, I believe it was the biggest mistake of my life. Call it what you will, it was willful enough, and it only took once (with a fertile womb, I have been blessed).

At the time, Stefan and I were engaged. Still, my heart was only half in it. Although I remember the early days of dinners and white water rafting with a sort of nostalgia, I also remember the telltale absences, particularly in my gut.

I had been drawn to him with a firm heavy hand and the threat of desperation in his eyes. Whenever I broke up with him (for it happened often enough), he told me he had nothing to live for anymore, and he would turn to the bottle.

And so, naturally, three years later I married him.

II:

If I could go back I would do it differently: I would have absolutely run away.

But the funny thing about life is, you can’t go back. You can only go forward.

I found that out three years and five months ago when my pregnancy test came out positive. I couldn’t believe it. I had gotten my period in the airport of Niamey Niger scarcely a month prior. I had been about to fly back to Stefan after seven months of living on different continents. We were both confident we would be married right away. And yet there I was, sitting in the cool autumn sun on our ratty hostel balcony, scarcely having touched down in Croatia. I was unwed and pregnant and wanting nothing more than for this whole nightmare to disintegrate before my eyes.

III:

I had gone to see Stefan with the test in my hand and tears in my eyes. Secretly, I was still planning to break up with him. I never felt completely confident in our relationship, nor in our engagement, and coming back to see him after seven months resurrected all of my uncertainties. It’s easy to cling to a man 5,000 miles away, especially when you’re living in a war-torn country hot as hell with the threat of Islamic terrorism so real that you sleep with a knife under your pillow and jolt awake at the sound of a cricket.

But with the test in hand, and sitting only half a meter apart, I wanted nothing more to do with this man.

“Do not hate this child, and do not hate me,” he had said, his voice faltering as he reached to touch me. My tears were coming fast, and I wanted someone to blame. I did hate the child, and I did hate him. Quietly, I began to make my plans.

IV:

I remember those first few days of decision. Here in Croatia it was too late to go to the pharmacy and get their version of the RU-486 pill. I silently berated myself for not having done so right after having sex, just to be sure. My world felt like it was spinning out of control, like I was about to be flung to the far reaches of the universe, like everything was about to disintegrate and grow like a terrible cancer, all at the same time. I had wanted to cover my tracks, I had missed the opportunity and now I would have hell to pay.

Years later, I see this failure as providence. RU-486 takes whatever is growing and sucks the life right out of it. Even if it had just been four cells, those four cells had still been my son. And me taking that pill would have sucked all the life from him.

V:

With RU-486 out of the question, I realized I had one and only one option: to take the two-step abortion pill. I was apparently five or six weeks along, and I could take it legally in Croatia until 14 weeks, only I had to get an OBGYN to sign off on it. So, with a single-minded purpose and only a few words of Croatian under my belt, I googled, called, and set up an appointment. I would not tell Stefan. I would go and do what I needed to do, and later I would tell him it was a miscarriage. Then, I would slip out of his life forever. I took a breath: I was doing what I had to do, and that was that. Soon, this whole nightmare would be over and I would be doing what I did best: starting over somewhere new.

Still, I felt something nagging at the recesses of my conscience. I had been raised a red-blooded conservative in a staunch pro-life household. My parents voted down the line on every anti-abortion candidate, and as the middle of nine children, I’d lingered long hours over the Life magazines with double-spread in-utero pictures of developing babies, swimming unawares in their translucent sacks, sucking their thumbs as they orbited in perfect peace.

I knew what was inside me wasn’t just a clump of cells. I knew he had hands and feet and a beating heart. I knew his fingers were beginning to form. I knew, somewhere in the back of my mind, the abortion pill would rip him from the protection of the uterine wall, starve him to death, and then flush him piece by piece out of me.

And yet, I pushed him away. Or rather, I pushed the thought of all of that away. I needed an out. I could not marry Stefan and I could not have his child alone. There was only one solution.

VI:

A few days before my appointment, my friend in America left me a long voicemail. I awoke to it. “I had to tell you something,” she said. “I had a dream about you last night.”

I lay there on my bed, listening, feeling my hope for a quick fix wrinkling up inside me like a prune.

When I met Maria two years earlier, she had told me of a miscarriage, after her ex-fiancee had raped her. Now, she told me about her dream the previous night. “There was a pregnant woman, and a devil was dancing between her and me, and I couldn’t get to her,” she said. Then she told me the other part. “And I had to tell you that…I lied to you. I didn’t have a miscarriage. I had an abortion. And my Mother begged me not to, but I was determined. I was seven weeks like you are now. It came out in pieces. Right afterwards, I felt ten years older. For a long time after, I felt dead.”

After the message was over, I felt my fate was sealed. I could not pretend away what I was about to do: the Devil had been dancing between Maria and I, but God had seen fit to reach out and save me and whatever was inside me. Only I didn’t feel saved, not one bit. I felt condemned.

That afternoon, I told Stefan about my appointment. I didn’t tell him that I had planned to get permission to have an abortion, just that I had scheduled our first OBGYN visit. His eyes shone and he reached for my hand. He knew this was a sign I was letting him in again, that I was accepting the fact I was pregnant. Perhaps I was, but I could not match the delight in Stefan’s eyes. I felt dead. Since Maria’s message, I had had no change of heart towards this life growing inside me - I only knew with a cold sobriety, that I could not kill it. God had been very clear on that.

So the next day I experienced my first ever vaginal ultrasound at the hands of a jovial 60-year-old Croatian OBGYN whose language I spoke about fifteen words of. Stefan stood by me, looking at our baby’s beating heart, holding my hand, clear excitement in his eyes.

I, on the other hand, felt nothing. My fate had already been sealed. I was not so much angry at God, as at myself and at Stefan. I would accept to have this baby, I would accept to give him life, but I was not going to be happy about it. The baby felt, still, even after seeing the ultrasound, like a pit in my stomach, a life sentence, rooting me to a man and a country I wanted desperately to leave.

“Amazing, that is our baby,” said Stefan afterward, holding up the black and white printout of the ultrasound. I remember there, right next to the famed Zadar sea organs where Stefan and I had watched so many sunsets, the way he looked at me, his eyes beseeching and his mouth almost wobbling. He was begging me to express warmth for our child. He was begging me to express warmth for him. And yet my heart felt so cold: Stefan, after all, had been the one to push me towards sex. In my mind, he had brought us to this point - the edge of a cliff, and now he was begging me to jump off with a smile. What more would he ask of me?

VII:

Week seven turned into eight, then into nine. I could not kill this child inside me, but perhaps I could encourage a miscarriage? I was still skirting with the idea of getting rid of it, without actually getting rid of it. I knew up until twelve weeks things were quite dicey, and many women lost babies for no reason whatsoever. I began to pray for a miscarriage - if it happened, it wouldn’t be my fault. I even one day went so far as to eat a whole sprig of ginger, which I had heard had abortive effects.

But God protected the child in my womb, and it grew and grew and grew. At our next appointment, we found out he was a boy. Again, I felt nothing.

When I was 11 weeks pregnant, I went home to America for Thanksgiving. I had yet to tell my parents I was pregnant, and I knew it would be news they would need to take sitting down. But maybe I would have a miscarriage before then, and I would just stay in the US, escaping from Stefan and his two older adopted kids forever: that was my fantasy. Even if I did stay pregnant, a large part of me decided I would not return to Croatia. I would give the child up for adoption here in the US, and then restart my life again. Days ticked by. Thanksgiving came and went. I remember my brother-in-law grilling me about Stefan, and finally saying “I don’t think you love him. Why are you still with him?” Tears immediately sprang to my eyes, but I couldn’t tell him the reason was right there between us, tucked inside my womb.

A few days later, Stefan wrote my mother and told her himself. She came into my room, more upset than I have seen her in my entire life. Later, when we told my dad, he really did have to sit down to take the news. I remember the first thing he asked me was “You wouldn’t have an abortion, would you?”

And I had shaken my head. Ginger roots notwithstanding, that was something I could not do. If God chose to cause a miscarriage, I would be grateful, but I knew I could not kill this baby myself.

VIII:

The next few days were fuzzy, in that quiet corner of my parent’s small Virginian college town. I felt dead inside, and yet livid. Stefan had gone behind my back to tell my mom, even though we had agreed I would tell her myself. I was taking too long, and he again had usurped control. Something told me he was a dangerous man. Something told me I would do far better without him.

And yet I was terrified and attached and ridden with guilt. His child was inside me. Could I really deny him the right to his son? Could I legally give our baby to another family without his father’s permission? No.

And if I asked for his permission and he refused it, what would I do? Raise the boy alone or give it to Stefan? Every single option seemed impossible, riddled with unseen mines and a world of heartache. Those early days, I cried myself to sleep most nights, asking God to either kill the baby or kill me.

IX:

Finally, in early December I went back to Croatia. I was not happy, but I felt I had to return. What other option was there, really? Raise the child alone? Start over in my parents’ hometown where I knew no one and had no job, no relevant skills and only a spare room in my parents’ home? I couldn’t fathom that. I could not fathom the aching loneliness of becoming a single parent, nor of relegating my child to knowing only his mother, even while his father desperately loved him and wanted to raise him.

I don’t remember much from that time: Christmas was a small blip on my grey calendar, stretching before me without cheer. Stefan’s hostel usually ran from April to October, when Covid wasn’t ruining everything. In the winter, he had nothing to do, or at least this winter he had nothing to do. He also owned a big vacation house split into seven apartments, but it had been out of commission for three years by then, and he kept insisting the water damage and necessary repairs were too much to handle, plus he had no money to repay three years of electric and gas bills. What a mess.

It was in late December, right after the non-glow of Christmas, that Stefan came to me with more bad news.

“Anna, I lied to you,” he said. He was visibly shaking, and he knelt before me on the floor in front of our bed (yes, by that time I was mostly sleeping in the same bed with him, although it felt terrible).

I lifted my head and looked at him. I was prepared to hear anything. In fact, listening to his pre-confession was like ice finally breaking out of a dam. Maybe this was what I needed to finally get some clarity on things. At that point, I still felt the terrible nagging feeling he was not right for me, that this was not right.

And then it all came out. His divorce, which had been in the courts for years by then, was still in process. We could not get married until it was finalized, and given the glacial speed of the Croatian legal system, it could be years more before we could wed.

And yet, I was not devastated. I remember him telling me “I thought I would lose you.” I remember the sorrow in his eyes. And I forgave him on the spot.

And yet, the reality of what he had done took longer to sink in. That meant that from the moment that we met, more than a year prior, he had been lying to me. I had even pressed him on it more than a month earlier, after hearing a rumor that he was still married. But he had insisted that the divorce was finalized. He had insisted ardently. It also meant that he had lured me back from Niger (and forced me to break my contract), on a false promise that we would wed immediately. It meant that he got me pregnant full well knowing I might not enjoy legal status for years to come.

But he had not premeditated any of that. Stefan is a man who operates chiefly on hope and optimism, and he does not often entertain the dark possibilities of his actions.

Still, it hurt. And it was a warning. A man who could lie to me so convincingly for so long about something so big, so monumental, what else could he do? I felt more than ever that I was in between a rock and a hard place - if I stayed with him, would I be setting me and my child up for unspeakable pain later down the road? Was I trusting my fate to a rickety stool with rotting feet? But if I fled, what would he do? What kind of battle would ensue for the child? Already, he had a fierce attachment to our son, and I knew he would not give him up without a fight.

Gingerly, I let my weight down on that rickety stool. Stefan had lied, yes, but he had also come clean. I decided to stay with him, for the time being, but even so, my trust was gone.

X:

By then I was almost five months pregnant. Many things happened in the next few months, but one thing remained the same: I wanted the baby to die inside me. I wanted to be free of this weight.

I felt that way until the end, up until the very day my water broke alone in Stefan’s big apartment house, where I was still scaling palm trees and scraping walls clean of water-damaged paint.

Soon after my water broke, I found myself at the Yugoslavian-era hospital, again alone (due to COVID), relegated to a bed with a strap around me and my contractions barely registering. Even then, my apathy remained.

It is a terribly dark thing to say now, to admit to, but it is the truth. Some would say they understand me. Others would judge. Jesus made it clear: whoever hates a brother, it is as if he had murdered him. So indeed, my dark thoughts toward my child were tantamount to murder.

XI:

Even during labor I felt nothing particular for the life inside me. When finally the doctors called for an emergency c-section after hours of painfully induced labor (anyone who’s been induced can attest to how those artificial contractions rip through you like a hurricane), I breathed a sigh of relief as the mask went over my face. Finally, it would be over. I did not think immediately of my son, only of the pain and finally being rid of it.

But hours later, when I was being heaved onto a bed in the middle of the night, my eyes fluttered open and the first words out of my mouth were, “My son. Where is my son?” It was instinct, and it set in hard. It wouldn’t be until the next morning at nine that they would finally bring him to me, like a Christmas present delivered by the stork, swaddled and clean and fast asleep.

With my stomach having just been sliced open, I was not strong enough to sit up, but they tucked him in next to me on the bed and I just looked at him. Even now, years later, tears come to my eyes as I think about that moment: my son, there, in front of me. I saw his tiny fingers curled up tight, his peaceful face, unperturbed by everything that had taken place those first tumultuous nine months of existence. He was so small, so absolutely defenseless, and he was mine.

Immediately, I thought of what an abortion would have entailed: I imagined scissors going after the back of Joshua’s neck - him wailing and fighting but having not even a chance in a thousand of fighting them off. How could it be? How could I have even contemplated such a monstrous act against a human so defenseless, so dependent, so trusting? I wouldn't wish that on the child of my worst enemy.

It hit me like a truck, the utter evil of what I had considered, and I held Joshua all the more close. Nothing would happen to him now - nothing. And if ever he were in danger I would without a thought fling myself in front of an oncoming train in order to protect him. Again and again, I thanked God he had not let me go through with my plan to 'get rid' of Joshua. During pregnancy, it had seemed like torture, but finally, I knew just what an evil he had saved us both from.

In the months that followed, I looked at Joshua this way many times: my fierce love for him was made all the more powerful by the destruction I had contemplated for him. No matter what had happened in my life, no matter what anyone else had done to me, he was an innocent, helpless child, and the only role I could ever assume would be to protect him and if necessary, give my life for his. Stefan felt the same.

My heart broke for all the babies who, unlike Joshua, did not survive. My heart breaks thinking of the final, helpless moments of their lives, of their desperate struggle against a torturous and deadly force so much larger than themselves. My heart breaks for all of those lives so cruelly and senselessly ended, even as dozens wait in line to adopt newborns (a hard choice as well, but a worthy one).

If you are a woman with an unwanted pregnancy, choose life. Choose it. I promise you, there is absolutely nothing in your entire life that you will do that will be of a higher good than this: nothing.

Like me, perhaps you want to pretend that whatever is inside you, is not really human. Perhaps you want to pretend that torturing it to death while it is still in the womb will not hurt it, nor you. But just because you cannot hear your baby’s screams, does not mean it is not suffering unspeakable torment. This is a hard truth, but it is important to grasp: if you get an abortion, you are murdering the most innocent of humans, and their blood will be upon your hands.

If you have had an abortion, I mourn for you. I mourn for the emptiness you have when you could have had fullness. I mourn for the blood red stain that is on your conscience, and the terrible stabbing that is in your soul. You might not feel this. You might be numb or you might feel wonderfully free. You might be happy and light, relieved the problem is 'taken care of.'

But remember, this is a lie, and one day it will be exposed. After that, you will feel pain and regret ten thousand times more than those who admitted their fault in the first place.

Still, there is healing and forgiveness for you too. Jesus did not come to die for the “pretty good,” the “alright,” and the “working on it.” He came to die for murderers, thieves, and adulterers. That is you, and that was me. Not one of us is too far gone. And he has a way of turning our worst mistakes into our greatest blessings if we'll trust him with them.

Tonight again, right after I tuck him in, I'll kiss Joshua on the cheek and say "I love you."

He'll say it back.

PART I:

Delhi, India

2012, August 13, in the thick of the hot season

Amit hurried through the streets, running a hand through his hair. It was dry and cut too short. He’d refused the coconut oil his grandmother had insisted he apply for his first job interview.

His first real job interview, she had reminded him, tsking as he had hurried out the door.

Amit had glanced up at the painting of Krishna above the door frame and offered up a silent prayer.

Now, he dodged a tuk-tuk on the street. The driver honked and swerved, but Amit stayed the course.

It wasn’t his first job interview.

It wasn’t, in fact, a job interview at all.

He ducked in a side alley and ran, dodging lines of hanging wash and piles of fly-infested garbage.

The whole place stank, mixing with the scent of his own sweat through his stiff velour coat.

Another good reason not to add coconut oil to the mix.

Deep in the ally, he stopped, tucking his tie into his collar.

The cover had been necessary. Painstaking. His work required that.

The sounds coming from the other side of the door: a chair spun across the floor, then slammed into the wall, followed by a gagged scream.

It must be going well.

PART II:

Colombo, Sri Lanka

December 12, 2013

It isn’t so much the morning air, as the dogs, barking at our heels.

It isn’t so much the dogs, their matted manes and yellowed teeth, nipping at our shoes, as it is the stench from the pig pens which barely hold in the odor nor the piglets nor the overflowing piles of dung.

But it isn’t even so much the stench, filling our nostrils and making us wheeze, as it is the feeling in the air, like the fallout from an atomic bomb or the devastating aftermath of a Tsunami.

We stop to stretch.

He, slower and built; me, with more years ahead of me to catch up on those pounds.

The humans all around us: they actually live here.

I reach my hands down to my feet, feel the twinge of my hamstrings. This is good.

For him, it’s normal.

He lives here too.

Not here, in the filthy sweating lean-tos on the trash-littered beach, but here, just a few blocks inland, away from the storm surges and the worst of the winds.

He’d survived a Tsunami three years prior.

But Bohrs has never talked about it.

“It’s here, too,” I comment.

The people. The mothers. I see them. I see myself in their reflections. The children are already coming out of the lean-tos, though the sun is barely a glow on the southern horizon.

Their eyes are hungry. Their hands are out.

“Here too,” says Bors.

He nods his head toward the furthest hut, the one closest to the swanky hotel jutting out like a pearl on the south side of the beach.

A little girl comes toward me, with eyes like that of a wolf, hungry.

“White lady. Give me money.”

She is ugly, her mouth turned down and dirt caked on her face. She despises me.

I shake my head.

She jolts her hand further outward as if to force the question.

If she had a knife, she’d probably pull it.

I squint and spot the telltale sign on her scalp, just covered by her hairline.

She has it too.

I purse my lips together and look at Bors, the question in my eyes.

Where is this coming from?

That’s what we’ve come to find out.

PART III:

Delhi, India

2012, August 13, still hot as ever.

Still in the Thick of the Heat.

“Just in time.”

Amit stands in the doorway and observes.

His hands aren’t crossed.

If he hadn’t seen this many times before, if he hadn’t had that part of him carefully numbed, he would feel a shiver run down the length of his spine.

And then back up again, coloring his face, making his heart pound.

Instead, he takes a step forward, then another.

The woman is in front of the four men, eyes covered by a black cloth, face turned upward, head leaning against the back of the chair, mouth open, panting hard.

He leans in to the closest man and lowers his voice.

“What did she say?”

There is blood trickling down the corner of her mouth.

He had told them not to ruin her face.

A malleable character, full of potential.

“Nothing.”

It was the shorter man, the one with a clean shave. The one who looked like he could be selling Saris out of his uncle’s bridal shop.

Which he did in the evenings.

Amit shakes his head and puts on the voice synthesizer. If she survives, it will be useful for them if she doesn’t know it was him.

Neha was not meant to come to this. But if she must, she must.

He takes a bat from the hand of the less-clean-shaven man, the one who looks like he might do this sort of thing for a living, and he lifts it behind his shoulders like he’s a cricketer about to swing.

“Neha,” says Amit.

She can hear the frustration in his voice, even through the strange tone of the voice masking. It’s probably the way he’s talking, through slitted teeth.

Her shoulders tense and her head shakes the tiniest bit, like a baby refusing food.

“I don’t want to have to do this. I even wore my best suit, added a silk tie. But…”

The prayers and his grandmother were long forgotten. Or were they?

Amit tightens his grip on the bat and looks toward Neha as if she were a ball about to be bowled toward him.

“I…please…”

Neha whimpers and then chokes. A bit of blood comes out of the corner of her mouth. It’s unbecoming for a lady.

Amit shakes his head.

“Neha,” he says. “I’m asking you one last time.”

She is sobbing now, fighting, trying to get her hands out from behind the chair. It’s like she knows the end is coming.

“No, please…I don’t know…I can’t…I can’t…”

The blow comes hard and fast and Amit feels the satisfying crunch of bone on bone, as something small and white and bloody flies out of her mouth and across the room.

She’s blubbering and spitting up blood and leaning her head forward as she tries not to choke.

Her hair is a mess now.

Amit watches, the end of the bat balanced on the floor, the hilt of it between his hands.

He spreads his legs.

“Plea.…ple.. please…” she pleads, saliva choking her words.

“Oh ple- ase,” she chokes, “Please God.”

She looks up, and for a moment Amit wants to laugh, picturing her five months ago, done up in reds and whites and yellows the day of their engagement.

END OF NOVEL EXCERPT

"Get out," he barks.

I put my hands up, making a show of trembling as I slip out of the car. The man has two pistols in his belt, a wide mouth, and laugh lines around his eyes. Of course that doesn't mean he won't kill me: he'll just grin from ear to ear as he does it.

It does strange things to the brain, this heady atmosphere of rebellion. It has been only two days since the military has killed hundreds and sapped the government of all pretensions of democracy, yet one would think the circus had just come to town.

"Get on your knees," the soldier spits.

This is the way I had imagined this would go, but I would be lying if I said my heartbeat wasn't up a few notches anyway. Extra calories burned I guess.

He yells in a language I can hardly understand (Hausa) and then suddenly a blindfold is placed over my eyes. Now I am really trembling. But I breathe methodically: they won't kill me, not yet. Or will they? For a moment, Hugo's plan seems almost laughable.

I hear the sound of an engine and then a car speeding away, and finally, it comes; a hard kick to the ribs which sends me flying.

Yet, for some reason, it doesn't hurt. Nothing does, although I can feel blood trickling from my temple.

Perhaps it is the shock, but more likely it is the pills Hugo had made me swallow five minutes beforehand; even more likely it's the fact he had told me this exact thing would happen, and that it would be a sign I was getting through the gates. In any case, I am no longer afraid. Instead, I am filled with a heady drunken elation that this crazy plan is actually working.

...

Let me explain. We are in Niger: Niamey, Niger, to be exact. If you don't know much about Niger, then you're halfway to knowing all there is to know, for its resources and development are about as deep as a puddle, apart from the considerable stores of gold just north of us, that is.

You see, Niger is the second poorest country in the world, and its only real city, Niamey, is a boiling hot eyesore just on the southern tip of the Sahara. The country is comprised of a mixture of peoples, all of whom jockey for control and cessation, defying the Western pressure to become a melting pot, opting for varying bloody slices of the pie instead.

Niger became Muslim long ago, but just now it is becoming Islamic, with ISIL - the African brand of ISIS - on the loose, rampaging where it will, and how it will. This entails leaving plenty of bodiless skulls littering the desert's edge, poorly worded Shahadas still lingering in the air behind them.

I've learned the Shahada well, by the way. I won't be caught with my pants down, especially since I'm blonde-haired and blue-eyed and probably look good in front of a jihadi camera. There are worse things than pretending to be Muslim for a day, given I am agnostic at best.

But that is neither here nor there: because the military junta, despite having deep Islamic pretensions, has not a speck of common cause with the ragtag terrorists who've again and again managed to lop off their personnel's heads ( incidentally, sending the rest of the soldiers running back to daddy, tails between their legs).

And of course, the Islamists would like nothing more than to step in and overthrow the overthrowers (I don't think that's even a word), but as Hugo instructed me last night, let's tame one lion at a time, so excuse me before my brain explodes trying to decipher exactly what on God's good earth is going on here. Hugo is much better at that. He has the master plan. And so naturally, he has sent me here like a lab rat, seeing if I can't sniff out the solution he's already prearranged.

Pity if I don't: I'll likely have my head blown off.

Title: The Time I Pretended To Be a Loin Tamer To Save The President of Niger

Genre: Action/Adventure/Intl

Age Range: 18-60

Word Count: 60,000

Author Name: Anna Kratki

Why Project Is a Good Fit: snappy, irreverent humor, upmarket plot construction, 'learning without learning' about current events in an obscure yet important region (Sahel)

The Hook: Manon thinks she's just being sent on another hum-drum mission to the land of her roots (The Sahara), to save another deposed president - but little does she know that she's unwittingly stepped into the middle of something much much bigger, and now she's gone from hook to bait.

Synopsis: Manon comes hot off of a job in Syria, down to Niger, where there's just been a military coup. She's supposed to infiltrate the deposed president's palace (where he's being held under house arrest), pretending to be a lion specialist in order to help the military sell of the large game the president had acquired. Everything is going according to plan, but when Manon finally gains access to the president, he refuses to go with her, and she is caught. After another failed escape attempt, she, another African captive girl, and the president's wife are given to ISIL (ISIS in Sahel region) in some sort of goodwill deal between the two warring factions. To make matters worse, Manon's recent bloody history in Syria is about to catch up with her, and to make matters more complicated, she's grown attached to the captive girl and begins to see her mission change - will she be able to outsmart ISIL, save the girl and the president's wife, and help restore Niger to order? Probably not, but she'll die trying.

Target Audience: Generation X, Y, and Z interested in foreign affairs.

Bio: I am a small business owner in Croatia who used to work at CURE Children's Hospital in Niamey, Niger, as a writer and photographer.

Platform: None

Education: Cornell University, BA Near Eastern Studies, 2012

Experience: A few years in West Africa, A Few Years teaching in the Middle East, living and writing all over the world.

Personality/Writing Style: I try to keep it fast-paced, and three parts salty one part soulful.

Likes/Hobbies: Ultra trail running - up more than down. Cooking. Photography (a lot).

Hometown: Ithaca, NY

When I picture Deborah, there is no hearth or home involved. Instead, I see her on top of the domelike Mount Tabor with the general Barak, watching as the oppressive Sisera gathers a terrifying army of 900 chariots below.

I imagine her turning to Barak, and with command in her voice saying "Up! For this is the day in which the Lord has given Sisera into your hand. Does not the Lord go out before you?”

Then I imagine Barak stirring, calling his troops to attention, and storming down the mountain, all under Deborah's watchful eye.

Later, after the battle, I picture her and Barak again on top of Mount Tabor, looking out on the scattered bodies of Sisera's troops. I picture the joy on her face, as she receives the news that her prophecy has come true: it was to Jael, a mere tent-dweller, that the Lord had delivered the fleeing Sisera: the oppressor of her people is finally vanquished.

And then, I picture Deborah breaking out into song, braids possibly flying:

“In the days of Shamgar, son of Anath,

in the days of Jael, the highways were abandoned,

and travelers kept to the byways.

7 The villagers ceased in Israel;

they ceased to be until I arose;

I, Deborah, arose as a mother in Israel."

Deborah was a prophetess, a military leader, a mother figure, and a judge during a time when her nation was oppressed by cruel rulers, such as Sisera. Yet not once do we see her flinch, and not once do we see her acquiesce, even while the men around her are quaking in their boots (sadly, many of the tribes, refuse even to rise up against their oppressors).

How does Deborah, a mere woman in a nation of male dominance, have such confidence and clout?

“Lord, when you went out from Seir,

when you marched from the region of Edom,

the earth trembled

and the heavens dropped,

yes, the clouds dropped water.

The mountains quaked before the Lord,

even Sinai before the Lord,[a] the God of Israel."

Her confidence is in her God, and in no one else. And from God comes her clout. That is how she could tell Barak clearly that it was time to attack: that is how she could command with decisiveness and purpose. And not once in the Bible can you find a caveat for Deborah's leadership, such as you hear in many pulpits today (i.e. 'Deborah was only in charge because there were no suitable men around'). The Bible does not offer any excuse or apology for her leadership - it simply paints her as a stellar example of a leader who listened to God and did what he said. Period. No gender roles involved.

This is to me, a wonderful example of a godly, unapologetically strong woman. We women who now trust Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior; we women who have the very same God as Deborah guiding us (in the form of the Holy Spirit); we women who are instructed by Paul to take every scripture as God-breathed and useful for teaching and instruction in righteousness; we women (and men too), can learn that when we listen to God and point our noses unyieldingly in the direction of his will, he will use us in mighty ways, regardless of our gender.

Deborah was not obedient to man - she was obedient to God. Deborah was not submissive to the commander Barak - she was submissive to God. Deborah was not quiet and home-centered - yet her spirit was quiet and centered in the will of God. Does God find delight in a woman like that? It sure seems so.

Neha had always been told to stay until the last moment of every exam, to scrutinize every line until it bled in her vision. She had been taught to triple-check, then quadruple-check, then check again. She had been taught to squeeze her mind like a lemon, to drench the paper with the last powers of its acidic truth-serum logic. Above all, she had been taught to waste not even one second on false confidence. Although, with her former strategies, confidence was inevitable.

Not so now.

The ink is swimming on the page in front of her, and she has a terrible wrenching knot in her stomach. She lifts her head.

The proctor is far below her, rifling through papers in front of him as if he has lost an exam.

Suddenly Neha has an idea. Keeping her eyes on the proctor, she turns slightly in her chair, takes her exam, and drops down on all fours.

Heart racing, she looks around.

Fortunately, she is in the back, high up and nearly invisible, if it weren’t for the proctor and his dark eyes already having identified her. No matter.

On all fours, she creeps along the row. There is no way the proctor can see her: the man whom she has never seen before, the man who looks stunningly like her.

She reaches the end of her row. She takes a breath. The door is just to her left and up two steps.

The lectern is far below her, but the sounds of paper shuffling have suddenly stopped.

She freezes. It's too late: she can’t risk it, not now.

Suddenly, a buzzer goes off and she hears someone clear his throat.

“Time is up. Turn in your papers.”

His accent is like hers.

She abhors him; abhors him for succeeding in this world that she is clearly failing in, abhors him for his smug superiority, abhors him even for his very presence.

Chairs scrape against tile, bodies rise, and sighs emanate from various places around the big room, an orchestra of surrender.

Neha scrunches further toward the front of her row, where the wood paneling is hiding her from view.

He can’t have seen.

Yet still, there is a pause.

“Are there any tests still out there?”

His voice has an edge to it now.

Neha clutches at her backpack, a last-ditch attempt to make things right. She could just get up now, say she dropped her pencil and ‘sorry here’s my test’.

But she doesn’t. Instead, she stays absolutely still.

She can almost feel the proctor’s frown.

“And there were no other students in here?”

Neha hears the sound of fabric rustling, students looking around as if to find who the culprit is, glad that for the moment it is not them.

Neha takes another breath. She could still get up. She could.

But her heart is pounding and her hands are rooted to the carpeted floor.

She can’t. She just can’t.

----Novel Excerpt---

Sandy looks into my eyes like the practiced real-estate agent she is. Her savage blonde cut slices against her cheekbone and her whole appearance reminds me of a sleek, minimalist goddess.

She’s pumped me full of energy — confidence even — having given me the proprietary pep talk three times by now. “It’s your body, your future: don’t let anyone else dictate what you do with it.”

I pull in my breath.

And my stomach.

Nothing is showing yet, and for good reason: the balloon gets air around fifteen weeks, or so I am told.

“You can do it,” she says again as if we are at the bottom of a jagged mountain and we’re both looking up, wondering just how one is supposed to summit that peak.

“You’re doing the right thing.”

She’s reminded me, again and again. “It’s not human, not really.”It has no business taking up space inside you — it’s a mindless pariah, sucking out your blood supply. She hadn’t said the last part, just thought it, and so had I. I’d prayed even, prayed to something I was starting to hope had some power, that it would make this little ball of nothingness just up and disappear from inside me.

But it hasn’t, not yet. So I am here. I need an appointment for this. I’m far enough along they have to approve. They have to make sure it’s not ectopic, and so I have to put actual voice to my demand. It would be so much easier just to go to a pharmacy.

I clear my throat.

Sandy has done this twice. First after her divorce, second with bruise marks still wrapped around her arms like tattoos. Collin, two months in, had proved less than the porcelain fixture he appeared to be on the internet, and she “couldn’t fathom bringing his child into this world.”

And me? What had gotten me into this predicament?

I can’t say it was rape, although I could. I could claim all sorts of things about that night. The truth is I was too far gone and lonely and barely awake, moaning my vowels and pressing onward.

And that is a shameful way to bring a child into this world, isn’t it?

“Maron Kraff.”

My spine straightens. It’s my turn.

“Go on,” says Sandy. She pats me on the rear like I’m a prized heifer and I jolt as she winks, “Do it.”

She’s been my best friend since the eighties, or at least it feels that way, although we were both technically about six months old when that decade ended. 'Men come and go,' we famously say, 'but a tight ass can see you through a world of hurt.' There were of course, other things that bonded us too, besides our addiction to HIIT workouts. But at the moment, I can't think of any.

PART II:

When I enter the examination room, all goes silent. It’s as if the blue-suited man and the pink-suited woman have been having a private little gossip about me, and I’ve caught them in the act. She nods to him, looks me up and down, and hurries out like a bird on a mission.

“Sit down,” says the man.

I feel I’m a wayward student being given a talking-to in the principal’s chair. Am I? Where’s Sandy? Then I chide myself. That’s childish. That’s pathetic. I’m here doing the adult thing, and I can handle it alone.

“How are you feeling?”

He reaches out his hand and smiles. “Dr. Bernard.”

There’s white stubble suggesting a shave yesterday. It surrounds a kindly smile on his angular face. I scan his eyes: there are no signs of weariness around the temples, no signs of deep-ridden crow’s feet, like I’ve been developing all of a sudden.

He looks like a grandfather, one who goes out for a 20k trot on Saturdays before picking the tinies up for soccer practice to give their mom a break.

“I’m OK.” I reach out my hand to shake his, then wipe it on my bare leg, without hardly knowing why. It’s hot out there, but in here the AC is on full blast. Still, there’s something oily about the touch we’ve just shared, something I don’t quite like.

“I’ll just do a quick ultrasound,” says Dr. Bernard. “You can change over there.” He points to a small cubicle built into the wall with a high window above it. Like a jail cell, I think, but then I shake the thought, my hands shaking the tiniest bit too. I should be grateful. They’re helping me out of a world of hurt.

I’d seen pregnant women up close before — not for long periods of time of course — but I’d passed them in grocery stores, sometimes with gaggles of their other offspring circling around them like planets in a precarious solar system about to explode.

I had always smiled politely and then taken some brisk steps to break away from their gravity, eyeing the broccoli and cage-free organic eggs in my own basket. I didn’t want to go there. I worked hard on my body, on my health, on me. To throw it all away for that? No way.

That’s how I had viewed pregnancy up until now, and frankly, nothing had changed. Not really.

The idea that something, albeit as minuscule as the top of a pinhead, is growing inside of me is…well it doesn’t sit well. It doesn’t sit at all. I can feel nothing other than an early morning nausea which frankly, is doing me a favor on the scale.

I slip off my short loose summer dress, one that’s far too free and airy for such an event, and ease the blue gown over my head, open at the back. No underwear, of course. Sandy had warned me.

“Ready?”

Dr. Bernard’s eyes are so blue. I hadn’t noticed that before, and suddenly an image of his tiny presumed grandchildren, with those same fierce blue eyes, comes scrawling across the screen of my brain. I shake my head to get the image out.

“Ready.”

I smile and ease my way onto the dental-like chair he’s pointed to.

“It will just be a little cool sensation,” he says, and almost without looking, he sticks in the lathered device. I shiver a tiny bit. I can’t remember my last PAP smear.

He frowns when he looks at the screen. I crane my neck, but it’s tilted away from me, far away.

Sandy had told me about that part too. "Don’t worry, you won’t have to see a thing," she'd said, as if there were something to see. As if there were something to look away from. When she had said that to me, a tiny shiver had gone down my spine, but I had shaken the feeling away. "Better not to think too much," she’d added. "Just do it."

And so here I am, just "doing it," like I'm Michael Jordan or something.

Suddenly, I feel a sting in my eyes and I blink it away.

“Everything looks good,” says Dr. Bernard. “No signs of an ectopic.”

He roots around for a few moments longer, his frown deepening as if he’s in heavy concentration.

“All good,” he finally says. “I’ll write you the prescription and you can pick it up today.”

He’s already taken the device out and has swiveled his chair around to his desk and is scribbling a note. I lie there another moment, legs splayed apart, a strange sensation in my chest, a contraction I didn’t feel before.

“I’d like to see it,” I ask then. My voice is strangely dry. I don’t know what has possessed me. Maybe I am just making sure, maybe just doubly making sure. I want to see that it’s really nothing yet.

He stops and looks me square in the eye, and all the grandfatherly charm has leeched out of him, all in the space of my one single utterance.

He seems to be hesitating a moment, caught in between, but then he shakes his head. “No, sorry. It’s against protocol.”

I feel I’ve been slapped in the face. It’s mine. It’s mine. And I want to see it.

For a moment, a fierce rabidity surges through me. I could stand up right there and take a bite out of his chest.

But instead, I nod, clear my throat, put my legs back together and slide off the examination chair. Without another word, I slip back into the high-windowed cubicle.

I had wanted to be there, not here. I had wanted to be there, somewhere where perhaps, the sun is glancing down at a breathtaking angle, and a lake is lapping gently behind us, and it’s me and some smiling man and we have a home and a rock-solid togetherness to build it on.

I shake my head. You don’t. So don’t. Don't even wonder.

Dr. Bernard hands me the white sheet of paper and smiles. “Good luck,” he says.

And I almost want to scream. The words hit heavy in my gut like a punch. Good luck?

I don’t smile. “Those your grandkids?” I ask, the words out of my mouth before I can pull them in again. I’m pointing to the pictures I’ve just seen on his desk.

He looks wary, as if I’m leading up to something he doesn’t want any part in.

“Yes.”

“They’re beautiful,” I say then. “Got your eyes.”

His smile widens and I can see his pride emanating out like an aura.

“Sure,” he says. “And their mom’s.”

He holds my gaze for a second. “You’re doing the right thing, you know that?”

Yet something is oozing out of me. Could it be the ultrasound jelly he’d slathered on the device?

No. He’d wiped it well.

“Thanks,” I say, and my chest feels again tight and my throat suddenly feels dry so before I can crock out another word, I turn and head out of the room.

PART III:

“You survived.”

Sandy is sitting with her legs crossed, reading Teen Vogue. I needn’t remind her we’re a fair bit closer to fifty than fifteen. I slap the magazine out of her hands and look at the article she’s thumbing through.

Her gaze hits mine. “Light reading?” I say. “A little on the nose perhaps?”

But there’s a tiny shiver running down my spine. The title is in big glossy block: My Body, My Choice, Period.

It’s a sign, I tell myself, although my stomach has revolted at the words. It’s a near-perfect bullseye target sign. Go and get this done.

“Just further educating myself,” says Sandy, pushing her glasses up on her nose. I need not remind her she has no prescription. She wears them, she tells me, when she needs bookish confidence. For some reason or other, she’s chosen to donn them today.

“Let’s go," she says.

And before I know it she’s up from her chair and heading toward the door, and although she’s not yanking my arm, her gravitational pull is so strong, that I find myself following after her trim savage bob cutting toward the exit like a ship in a fierce storm.

She drove today, and as we reach her car I have a split second to wait before the door unlocks. I look up. Big mistake.

On the other side of the high wall, whose metal partitions barely have enough space to see through, are picketers. I see their hands wrapped around the wrought iron bars, and again I think of prison —although why oh why would they seem to be in prison on the outside?

“Your baby has a beating heart. It wants to live.”

My shoulders tense. The automatic lock clicks up and I pull open the door.

“It will love you with all its heart. Don’t destroy him.”

We’re in the car and Sandy is screeching backward. Has she heard too? Her expression is hard and her mouth firm. I see then, that she has.

“Bigots,” she says, her teeth suddenly gritted, her fingers clenching the wheel so her knuckles are white. “Pathetic, mysognistic bigots,” she repeats.

And she puts the car in drive and speeds up toward the open gate, a NASCAR driver gunning for the start line.

But just then, a tiny blonde girl darts out into the sidewalk in front of us.

Sandy cranks the brakes hard but it’s too late. The girl screams and at the same instant I feel the sickening hit as her soft small body bounces against our car, and she goes sailing in a tiny innocent arc, up, and then down, hard, on the pavement.

“Oh my God.”

Sandy has already put it in the park and is up out of the car in an instant. An equally blonde woman is running to the screaming girl. I realize the girl can’t be more than two, maybe three.

“Oh, God. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so so sorry,” repeats Sandy.

I’ve been frozen in the passenger side until now. Maybe I don’t want to be privy to this crime. Maybe I want to not be counted as an accomplice to murder.

Or a murderer, in fact.

The woman is crouching above the screaming girl, and now a man and two others are crowding around her, hedging her in, leaving Sandy, standing on the periphery of the orbit, hands wringing together, face full of guilt.

But then I am up, out of the car and by her side. I have to be, don’t I? And I’m putting my hand on her locked palms and squeezing and saying “It was a mistake. Just a mistake. She’s going to be OK.”

And then the blonde woman looks up at me, the one I presume is the mom, and the girl is still crying but her shouts have turned now to whimpers as if a faucet on full blast has been attenuated, and there’s a look of sadness in the woman’s eyes as she nods toward the clinic.

“And right in there, you would run over your own child without a second thought?

"This is what you’re doing to your own baby. Don't you see?”

I just stare. There’s no bite in her words, just a terrible sadness, a yearning almost a calling, drawing us in, begging us to see. And that’s why I don’t yell back and that’s why Sandy just grunts and opens and closes her mouth instead of throttling back with a response I am sure she has at the ready.

And then the man next to her nods, after checking all of the little girl’s major bones, and the mom strokes the hair of the whimpering girl and her small piercing blue eyes for a moment, look straight into mine, and there I see it.

Fear. She is afraid I will kill her.

And a bolt of lightning strikes through my heart, and I look at Sandy, but her mouth is set in a hard line as if the woman’s words have bounced right off of her, and for some strange reason, her mantra pops into my head, “Location, location, location,” and I know, deep inside, it’s me who’s trespassing, and not the other way around.

Part I:

There was no suspicious upbringing here, none whatsoever. The clanging of pots at three a.m., signaling both her bedtime and our waking, was of the utmost normalcy. The fine-toothed comb, with which I was entrusted in order to go through our horse’s hair rug on a twice-daily basis to remove new lice eggs, symbolized nothing out of the ordinary either.

Granted, we had little to compare our life to: the friends we had were tasked with keeping silent and remaining motionless, all positions they were well-adjusted for, given their serenity of character and their limp, noddle-like arms, plus their sewed-on button eyes which never seemed to stop staring at us, either in wide-eyed ecstasy or supreme boredom, depending on their mood and ours.

It was all so normal that if someone were to come and call it otherwise, Miranda, Jerome, and I would have all tilted our heads back and howled in unison.

Part II:

But unbeknownst to us, our normal household was about to be upended. It would come when he appeared. But that had yet to occur, and so we lived in blissful serenity, apart from the destruction that had begun to eat away at everything around us.

You see, the crops had been bad that year, all sickly and covered in blight. Even the forsythias, which were usually so ready to please as soon as they’d licked up a good flash of water, were sagging, their unopened buds teeming with orange mites.

And that was just the start of it: the tiny rotting oranges, the shriveled olives, the sagging tomato vines, covered in mold, and even the wilted blanched dandelions — everything seemed to be hovering on the brink of death.

Mother said it was a curse.

She said it was because we were disloyal to her and because we often ran away screaming when she tried to force-feed us dark fibrous mixtures that almost certainly contained frogs’ eyes and samples of our own hair, which, when we had all examined each other for lice (as Mother had bid us do nightly), we had found missing from our already-scraggly locks (as a side note, Mother was never a great barber, and I suspect even worse when she cut our hair in the dead of night after drinking, especially given the fact we were all horizontal and tangled together, sleeping in one sweaty mass, as we had done since before we could remember).

In either case, Mother had declared the blight our fault. We needed to wake earlier, work harder, and most of all, flagellate the dark spirits out of our minds through the drinking of her concoction daily. The first two we could do gladly, if not with a bit of prodding to Miranda, who was, by constitution, a bit of a sow in the wee hours of the morning (although who can blame her, for three a.m. is a hefty order even for near-adults like us).

But that was not the crux of our problems, for it was the last demand that we altogether could not meet: no matter how hard we had tried, two of us plugging the others’ noise and ears (for the stench seemed to get in that way too) while the third one drank, none of us managed to get a gulp of mother’s noxious poison down without retching.

After five failed attempts each, with Mother scowling at us all the while, we finally all figured out it was best just to pretend to (or actually) wretch and faint and then wait for Mother to go for the smelling salts. Then, when she was gone, we would snap up from the ground and hurl the wicked concoction across the rocks next to Mother’s cauldron, then as the liquid hissed and steamed on the hot stones, we would run like fury before she could grab us and brand us with her hot iron.

Part III:

Yes, it was indeed our fault, and as the months wore on, it became apparent the curse was not lifting, and therefore there would be nothing to eat that winter, and that if there were nothing to eat that winter, Mother would either send us away or eat us herself.

And so, sadly, we had continued in our daily tasks and compulsory avoidance of Mother at opportune times (meaning, in the afternoon after she had woken up and nearly finished preparing that day’s potion, and also when she was apt to be hungry, during the twilight hours).

All the while, we had grown more and more somber and thin, our faces seeming to have elongated in a magical garish manner so they could almost be found dragging on the very lice-infested carpets we had been charged eternally with cleaning. And alas, not even that bode well for us, for no matter how many eggs we would each grab from the dark recesses of the weave, aha-ing with glee as we lifted them up, each a precious pearl plucked up from the depths of the ocean, there seemed to be always more, and we wondered if that were not another curse that Mother would pronounce our fault.

Part IV:

The day that he had come, though, there had been a strange wind in the air, carrying smells we did not associate with our little patch of land, smells that pleased our nostrils and lifted our elongated faces toward the South and the Sun, smells that led us involuntarily, away from our task at the rug, out the broken front door which was still littered with glass from the long window that had been shattered one day about a month prior and never repaired, and then down beyond the barbed-wire front gate and to the woods beyond.

When we were finally far out in front of the house, that’s when we had heard the noise. It had been the sound of the bottom gate creaking open. That’s what I remember best. Our house sat on a slight hill, the runway leading up to it pebbled and weed-filled, but nonetheless rising. At the bottom was a gate, only Mother had warned us it was magical, and only we and our blood relations could get through it, plus anyone else that Mother in her inner consciousness allowed.

I startled and jumped when I saw him, but would not for the life of me run for Mother. It was still early afternoon and she was deep in slumber. The last time I had woken her at this time she had thrown a hot iron at my forehead, and it had taken all sorts of healing balms and incantations to shrink my forehead from the size of a large black-and-blue pumpkin, back to its original form. And even now it sometimes hurts me.

No, I would indeed not call Mother.

But of course, Miranda had reminded me of the orders: “Wake Mother,” she had said, eyes big and bulging and mouth curved into a resolute frown.

Miranda still four, believed rules were to be followed, no ifs, ands, or buts, bulging foreheads nor flying irons notwithstanding.

And because of that, I had simply looked at her a moment, pursed my lips, and then grabbed her by the hair with one hand and covered her mouth with the other, pulling her writhing mass with me as I ducked behind the adjacent stone wall, right as the man was stepping past the gate.

Normally, we would have all three pelted him with stones and made up the sincerest of insults. Jerome got to work in doing those very things, and with great pizzazz and creativity I might add, but Miranda and I did not. Strange, indeed.

The way the man walked kept me from it. It was not his stooped-over manner, for normally that would have encouraged me all the more to berate him, but it was instead something else, some sort of dignity and forced uprightness in his crooked frame. It nearly spewed regality, and so (and also on account of holding a writhing, biting Miranda) I was unable to join my brother in his vigorous assault.

And of course, Jerome was putting up a valiant front: he can hardly keep himself from any misdeed even if his hands had happened to be tied behind his back, as they had been that day on account of his earlier refusal to drink Mother’s concoction.

So there I was, holding a writhing Miranda and watching as the man stopped, lifted his hands in defense, and winced as each stone from Jerome’s well-practiced arm hit its target (for Jerome had used a sharp stone to free his hands from behind his back and that was why he was now able to aim so well).

Part V:

I was quite beginning to enjoy myself, actually, save for Miranda’s kicking and screaming and ferocious biting (as her incisors were coming in nicely), but then the man let out a long cry, reaching up to his forehead, and wiped away blood. Perhaps it made my own headache from where mother had thrown the iron long ago, for I cannot think of another reason I might have gotten that terrible twitching feeling in my stomach.

The man was getting close, and I could see the confused look in his eyes, as if he thought he were coming to see a friend and he had no idea why such a travesty would befall him up the path.

Then, as my forehead burned, it occurred to me that he might know Mother, that he almost certainly did.

“Stop!” I yelled to Jerome. The man looked straight at the spot in the wall I was hiding behind, although I was doing a poor job of it indeed because Miranda’s arms and legs were flailing and protruding up above the stones like blades of a windmill.

“Hello!” shouted the man. He lifted his arms and waved. “Ivy, stop!”

As soon as I heard my name I froze. No one knew my name. No one.

Without quite thinking it through, but with an entire wealth of electricity surging through my veins, probably enough to light the entire little town visible through Mother’s looking glass, I jumped up fast, still holding Miranda’s flailing body as I did.

“Stop Jerome!” I shouted, without thinking. “Stop!”

I knew Jerome was turning beady hate-filled eyes toward me because I could feel the burning on the back of my neck, hot with my betrayal. We were never supposed to use our names in another’s presence, for that could be used against us in incantations and spells. Mother had drilled that sacred rule into us since the moment we were old enough to understand, and now I had just broken it.

“Ivy!” The man was now so close to me that I could see the little burn marks around his eyes and across his right cheek in a splattering pattern as if he had had acid thrown on him before. A shiver automatically ran through me and immediately I released Miranda’s kicking, screaming mass and let her run up the hill towards the house and Mother’s bed-chamber where I knew she would knock thrice and sing the magic incantation to let Mother know that upon our peaceful home, some strange madness has been unleashed, and I only prayed to high heavens (which Mother says are far and away against us), that Miranda could dodge well Mother’s iron and bring her running back here to save us.

But it was entirely too long, I knew that. I could tell that by the way that the stones kept on being launched from Jerome’s hiding place, a constant barrage with an aim that has been developed over years of fox hunting with stones (due to the fact that Mother said Jerome could not be trusted with a proper weapon, and perhaps she was right).

Just then Jerome launched a hard precise shot at the man, and the stone went whizzing by my head so close and so fast my reflexes took over and I ducked.

The stone went barreling into the man’s left eyeball, sending his arms flailing as he faltered backward and then, without warning, fell on the ground with a thud that was louder than I would have expected, given his size and relative bent-over-ness.

“Jerome stop!” I shouted, rushing over to him and grabbing him by both shoulders and then shaking him hard. He may be able to throw, but I am still a head taller than him, and the muscles I’ve developed building Mother’s wooden funeral pyres can still dwarf his in comparison.

He shuddered and then stopped. We both looked toward the man. Perhaps I had disarmed the wrong person, and as I turned, I sensed a strange and powerful presence behind me, and I saw Jerome’s eyes getting big in a way they had not even when Mother had earlier that year held the scalpel out and threatened to skin him alive, and I knew, because of this, that the man was about to curse Jerome dead, and I, I Ivy Valeria Quixet, would have my brother’s blood on my hands, and that Mother had drilled into us, is a sin unforgivable and deserving of fire unquenchable.

Part VI:

“Noooo!” I screamed, turning and launching myself at the man.

We slammed to the ground together, but then the man rolled me over with surprising strength so before I knew it I was on my back, and quicker than perhaps I had anticipated, given his age and his bent-over frame and the blood on his face, he was up, facing Jerome, holding his arm out to him

“Father?” said Jerome.

I stopped, having just been able to get to my knees.

I turned my head. “We don’t have a father,” I spit. For some reason, the words were acrid on my tongue. “We have only Mother.”

But the man was nodding and holding out his hand, and I was just then recalling a far-off distant memory in which a man runs screaming from the house clutching at his face, while Mother stands in the doorway with an empty bucket howling like a wolf.

But that had most likely just been a dream.

“Ivy,” said the man then. He held out his hand to me. “I have missed you.”

But I just pulled away and shook my head because this stooped-over, acid-marked man could not be my father, and certainly did not look like what I might have imagined my regal father to be, if I had ever imagined such a thing (which I had never done), and what’s more, Mother had told us clearly that our father had died years ago in a boiling cauldron that he had leaned over just a hair too much, and that now she was all we had and would ever have until eternity rolled back on itself and the whole world was engulfed in flames.

“Eliiiii!”

The shout was bloody as if Mother’s veins had been ripped open and her very life force was rushing forth from them, screaming as it did.

We all turned our heads as she ran hard down the hill. She was a sight to behold, screaming, as she barreled towards us, her large chest heaving up and down in a quite unbecoming manner, and her long black mottled hair bouncing up and down behind her, providing almost enough air turbulence for lift-off. For a long moment, we all stood silent, our eyes riveted in equal parts admiration and repulsion.

Part VII:

But then she shouted real comprehensible words.

“Elijaaaah! Get away from here!”

As she ran, my eyes were suddenly drawn to her face, which was contorted into the most charismatic show of hatred I had ever seen from her, which for Mother, is really something.

Then I noticed it, swinging back and forth from her right hand as she ran: a bucket, a bucket which I realized at that moment must be exactly what was all over this man’s — could it be Father’s? — face, and all the sudden I looked at Jerome, and he looked at me, and a terrible decision which we had never ever thought to be faced with was upon us, and I looked fast to the man who was holding out his hand to Mother, his palm facing hers as if he had some magic power beyond what she did since he was not moving even one inch in the face of her oncoming stampede, but instead, standing, his eyes fixed straight on her.

“Elise,” he said, and for an instant, Mother halted, as if a strong wind had just blasted into her from his direction.

“Elise. Do not do this,” he said then. He remained motionless.

But a look of strange resolution, which made Mother look more like a real live charging boar than anything else, crossed her face then, and the wind seemed to have stopped for she was again barreling toward him and shouting and swinging the bucket as if to throw it hard against him and then right before she did I shouted, and for a brief moment, I considered throwing my body in between them in a heroic act of selfless love, for a man who was likely not even my real father, in what would likely be the end of me or at least a permanent disfigurement, which likely would not matter as Mother had made it abundantly clear that there was no other place for me in this world for all eternity, other than here by her side.

But just then, I caught a glimpse of something up by the house. It was red. It was small. It was moving in our direction and weeping quietly.

“Mother,” I said. My voice was icy and cold and full of grating sandpaper, and because of that (I presume), Mother came to a sudden halt and turned her gaze directly on me, eyes boring a hole straight in my chest, my disrespect to be repaid later, or perhaps in the very next instant.

“What?” she hissed, gripping the bucket tighter.

“Mother. Did you hurt Miranda?”

The shape was coming closer to us down the hill, and I could see that it was a child running and stumbling with blood oozing from its head. My heart leaped into my throat because all of a sudden I could see who it was clearly: Miranda, but a Miranda I did not know, a Miranda with her head covered in blood.

“What if I did!” shouted Mother, and then she spat, as if no words would express what she felt for me, for this man in front of her, for Miranda, the bleeding monster behind her, and quite possibly, for Jerome, who was holding his stones tentatively in his untied hands, as if not sure who to cast them at.

“Enough from you!" she shouted, and then she took a step and swung back her bucket, her eyes drilling not into the man, but instead, directly into mine. Before I could react, she had swung it forward and a whole stream of liquid, hot and bubbling, sailed through the air arching beautifully upward so that in a second it would rain down acid fire upon my head, and I screamed and ducked, but even as I did so, I felt wiry strong arms around me and a body covering mine and pushing me hard to the rocky weed-filled ground.

Then, came the splatter of rain falling, only briefly, accompanied by a sharp cry from directly above me and the hiss of something burning into flesh, and then for a moment, everything fell silent.

A moment passed.

Then, stiffly, the man lifted himself off of me, pulling off his garments quickly and throwing them on the ground, even as the sizzling acid burned into his shoulder.

I looked up, trembling now for the first time since I can remember. Mother had really done it. She had. And she was all I would ever have.

Part VIII:

My gaze fixed on Miranda, the small bleeding child advancing behind Mother’s back.

Any moment now Mother would turn.

“Stop,” said the man then, standing up again to his full height, wincing as the acid burned deeper into his shoulder.

Mother took one look at him and swung the bucket back again, but this time she took a step forward and launched herself toward the man to be sure she didn’t miss any surface area with the limited supply of acid left in the bucket. But this was her one mistake (or one of many throughout her life, but that was neither here nor there at this moment), and as she took her one step, her foot wedged between a rock and a large root, and she suddenly began to fall forward, the bucket spiraled out and up, flying into the air above her, the contents swirling out and then falling, like a soft rain, all over her head.

“Nooooooo!” she screamed.

Her skin sizzled like frogs in hot oil.

I just watched, covering my ears as I screamed. “Noooo!”

Or perhaps it was Mother who screamed. I do not to this day know.

Then all fell silent again and I felt a tug on my hand.

Miranda had reached us and was standing there next to me, strangely quiet, watching, even as blood poured from her own head.

Before us, Mother seemed to disintegrate, melt even, her body sinking lower and lower into the ground.

“Elise, leave us,” said the man, a strange authority in his voice.

Mother, as if she had now become nothing more than the real live snake she had always threatened us she could morph into, turned and struggled to her knees, even as she clawed wildly at her burning face. She ran off in the direction of the woods, howling like a wolf, and although a part of me said to run after her, and I am sure the same voice spoke in Jerome's head, neither of us did.

Instead, we all stood there and listened for what seemed like an eternity until her screams sounded like nothing more than the distant howls of a wolf having lost its pack.

I turned then and screamed myself, truly assessing Miranda for the first time since she'd come out here. Blood was still pouring from her head, and her face was growing paler by the second.

“Miranda!” I screamed. And then I realized I have done it to all of us: we are all under his power now for he had heard all of our names.

And the man nodded, and as if he saw this type of thing every hour of every day, turned his burned face toward Miranda, took two steps towards her, put his hands on her head for a long moment, and then pulled his hands away.

I gasped.

It was magic.

True magic.

Jerome and I are sure of it, even to this day.

For right before us, Miranda’s head became whole and clean, the very blood that had been a moment earlier oozing out, now sucked back in as if she were traveling backward in time to the moment before Mother had thrown the iron at her.

I looked at the man.

He looked at me, then at Jerome, then down at Miranda, whose head was again cupped between his hands, as if in blessing.

“Father,” I said, my voice croaking like that of a toad’s. Jerome looked at me as if to laugh, but then a sobering strange knowingness settled over his face too, and he nodded, and Miranda looked at us as if she had not just been lampooned by a hot iron in the first place (and not by her Mother either), and the man nodded, and because of his pockmarked face and his stooped way and the acid somehow having spared everything except his shoulder and the fact that he knew us by our real names, I realized that everything was about to fundamentally change, and probably forever.

To my left, I saw a sagging bleached dandelion begin to straighten and regain its vibrance, and I wondered if perhaps the lice in the rug were gone too.

Later, when I got to the house, I discovered they were, and I threw the fine-toothed comb into Mother’s cauldron, then lugged the whole thing out back and poured the contents into a hole in the earth.

“Well done Ivy,” Father had said when he saw, and I had turned and smiled. He did not look so stooped over anymore, although the acid marks were still there, and I suspected they always would be.