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  I’ll protect him, Ethan. I swear.

  **

  The dirt-covered streets—normally filled with men’s pushcarts—were now empty. The vegetable and merchant stands had been packed up and secured, the doors to the buildings had been locked, the children collected. She pulled William along, casting nervous glances at back alleys and doorways, as if the townsfolk had already deciphered their plan and were ready to ambush them.

  She knew how vicious people could be, especially around the time of The Cleansing.

  Over the years, she’d seen brothers turn against sisters, men turn against wives, and mothers turn against sons. That was the code, and that was what was expected of them.

  Loyalty was cast aside for the greater good.

  At least, that’s what the townsfolk always said, after the fires had died down and the scent of burnt flesh had dissipated.

  “There was nothing we could’ve done. We did what we had to do,” they always reasoned.

  Bullshit, Ella thought.

  If she could rewind time back to Ethan’s death, she’d have done it all differently. She’d have forced her husband to flee. She’d have started over. The infection wouldn’t have turned him right away—in fact, if the whispers of the old women were to be believed, it might never have turned him at all. Surely they could’ve had more time together.

  In some ways, she would’ve preferred that Ethan had become one of the demons than be burned on the pyre. As bloodthirsty as the beasts were, at least they weren’t hypocrites. They didn’t preach one thing and do another. They didn’t force people to betray their spouses, or force mothers to Cleanse in front of their sons.

  Even if she were caught, at least Ella would be spared the humiliation of standing on the dais one last time, spinning and turning, wishing she could disappear, while William watched.

  She’d rather be condemned than do it again.

  Beside her, William faltered, and she caught his arm in time to prevent a fall. In her haste, she’d been pulling him faster than his legs could run. She slowed.

  “Sorry, honey,” she whispered. “But you have to keep up with Mommy.”

  They dashed through the empty streets, their footsteps reverberating off of buildings and doorways. Normally, the townsfolk would fill them up, laughing, drinking, fighting and cajoling. But not today.

  Ella took a circuitous route to the town’s edge, hoping to stay as far away from the town center as possible.

  The guards would be watching. Especially today.

  It would make sense that the infected would flee beforehand, but that wasn’t always the case. Many of the unclean stayed until the last minute, unable to pry themselves from relatives and friends. It was a mistake that always cost them their lives.

  If only Ella had discovered William’s lump sooner.

  Keep moving.

  There was no way to change the past. There was only time to react to it. She pulled William along, her feet already sore. She’d been meaning to procure new boots from the cobbler, but she hadn’t gotten the chance.

  Now she’d be forced to deal with the pain.

  As they ran, the gleam of washed stone gave way to the growth of untended weeds. The sight gave her a tinge of relief. The overgrowth meant she was leaving the town center. She’d need to keep an eye out for the guards.

  She cut across several alleyways, leaving behind the northern section and entering the town’s outer limits. She glanced at the buildings as she ran by them, soaking them in for the last time, absorbing the memories of years gone by.

  A shout shook her back to the present. William’s hand had tightened in hers, and she pulled him into a nearby alley for cover. She flattened her back against the building, beckoning him to do the same.

  She maintained the position for several seconds, her chest heaving. Tall weeds poked through the cracks in the masonry and tickled her neck. Beside her, she could hear the thin rasps of her son, and when she looked at him, she saw his eyes darting left and right down the narrow alley.

  How long did he have? Would it be days? Months? Weeks?

  When would the hallucinations take over?

  Stop it.

  She swallowed and focused on the footsteps, trying to pinpoint their location. Shouts rang out again. This time they were closer, and she fought the urge to peek around the corner.

  She held fast to her hiding place, praying they hadn’t been seen. The guards were fast and well trained—once they were spotted, there’d be no outrunning them. They’d be dragged to the town center and thrown to the head of the line.

  There was a special place for people who betrayed The Word.

  She glanced down the alley. The wall stretched fifty more feet. No doors or windows in sight.

  The voices were almost upon them…

  Please don’t let this be the end…

  “Marigold!” someone shouted. “Hurry!”

  Ella glanced to the left in time to see a young boy and girl flying past them, heading in the direction of the town center. Their faces were red and winded; their feet pummeled the pavement.

  “We’re going to be late! I told you we didn’t have time!”

  “I’m sorry, David! It’s my fault!”

  The girl spoke in a nervous, high-pitched tone, as if she were on the verge of tears. Within seconds the pair was gone, and all at once, it was just Ella and William again, alone in their mission.

  “Come on!” she urged William, without pausing to think.

  They darted back to the main road, sticking close to doorways and alleys, avoiding the center of the thoroughfare. Before long, the buildings grew sparse, and she saw a line of trees in the distance nearly a mile across a wide field. Out there, she knew, was a part of the circle wall covered in overgrowth, a spot where they could get up it and over.

  All the kids knew about it. Did the guards?

  There was no time to speculate.

  They dashed into the sunlight, feet plowing through knee-high grass, and fixed their eyes on the wall. The stones were mossed and worn, as if the wall had long ago ceased being a barrier and become a part of nature.

  She fixed her eyes on a large oak. It’d been years since she’d been there, but the knots and gnarls had barely changed. There’d be an arrangement of loose stones in the side of the wall just beneath its branches, not enough to draw the naked eye, but enough to provide support for hands and feet.

  She had no idea if the stones would hold. She’d never seen anyone climb them all the way up to the top.

  She reached the wall and slid her hands over it, her fingernails catching on ratty weeds. Where was the first handhold? It used to be four feet from the ground.

  Now it was gone.

  This can’t be.

  Was she looking in the right place? Was it possible the stone had been removed? She hadn’t been here in years. Anything could’ve happened in that time.

  She continued groping the wall, moving left and right, glancing up at the oak every so often to keep her bearings. Nothing. No handholds. No footholds. No stone.

  She looked at the top of the wall, which was about twenty-five feet high. She tried jumping and snagging hold of it, but slid uselessly back down. Even if she could find purchase and make it over, William would be stuck on this side.

  The guards would find them soon.

  Her whole plan had been useless. Insane.

  Even if they tried to get back in time for the ceremony, there was no way they’d make it. Things were already underway, and a late entrance would draw even more suspicion. The townsfolk would find out William’s secret—her secret—and then they’d both burn.

  She choked back a sob and sank to her knees, the reality of the situation threatening to bowl her over. She’d done her best. She’d tried
what she could.

  I’m sorry, Ethan.

  When the ceremony was over, they’d send search parties to look for her. There’d be no avoiding what was coming next. Ella cried softly into her hands, feeling defeated, guilty, and hopeless all at the same time. Through her tears, she heard the thin scrape of William’s boots next to her, and she did her best to compose herself. He was probably scuffing the ground with his shoes, as he did when he got nervous. She needed to be a mother to him. No matter what came next, William was here now.

  She opened her eyes and blotted her face, ready to provide comfort to the anxious boy. Only William wasn’t anxious at all. The sound she’d heard wasn’t the scratch of boots on turf, but the scrape of his body against the stone.

  William was climbing the wall.

  “Look, Mom!” he called. “I found a way up!”

  She glanced up in shock, watching him place one unsteady foot above the other. The bag still hung from his shoulder.

  “Be careful, honey!” she warned, her desperation turning to hope. “I’m coming up behind you!”

  She adjusted her own bag and followed the path of his feet, locating the first handhold, then a place to wedge her boot. He’d found it! She tried to contain her excitement, focusing on pulling herself up the wall’s slippery face.

  Little by little, they gained distance from the ground, leaving the grass and the ruins behind. The next time they planted their feet, they’d be outside the town limits.

  They’d be one step closer to escape, one step closer to a new life.

  William was several feet ahead of her, approaching the top. She hissed at him to be careful. His bag swung back and forth on his shoulder, as if the contents themselves were aching for freedom.

  She was so focused on the climb that she almost didn’t hear the footsteps on the dirt below them. When she processed the sound, her blood froze. She looked up at William, but he kept climbing, oblivious to the disturbance.

  A voice rang out.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Get off of there, now!”

  In mere moments, her hope had been destroyed.

  The guards had found them.

  Chapter 4: Minister Beck

  Minister Beck watched a young blonde girl step up onto the Cleansing platform.

  After seeing so many women that day, he thought he was past the initial physical stimulation of nudity. But her beauty sparkled beyond the usual standards by which such things were measured.

  Crossing his legs to hide his embarrassment—after all, men were supposed to be above temptation—he admired the curve of her back and the way it widened so perfectly down to her buttocks. Her long corn silk hair hadn’t even darkened in her private place. Beck smiled. Even in his thoughts, he was unwittingly bound by Father Winthrop’s admonition against using the vulgar word to describe it. Realizing he was smiling, he faked a cough to cover that. A smile wasn’t an appropriate facial expression while sitting in front of so many whose lives might be called to an end.

  The utter perfection of the girl caused Beck to wonder if beauty weren’t intangible, as many a song had insisted, but merely a natural proportion—a figure pleasing to the eye, like the petals of a flower. And of course, proportion itself was just a physical expression of mathematics. Beck wondered if he could task Scholar Evan, his mathematician, to initiate that study. He discarded that thought with a sigh. The Council of Elders would never approve. It never did.

  Every suggestion Beck made for the sake of learning something new or rediscovering an ancient secret was derided. Practicality. That was the wish and the order of the Elders. A hotter fire to smelt old metals into their constituents. An arrow to fly more true. A means to seal the bucket on a water wheel to make it leak less. Those were things a simple mind could understand.

  But exploring a way to save a crop from the grasshopper plague? That was simply against the will of God, according to Father Winthrop. Never to be explored.

  Even worse was to suggest the possibility that The Cleansing could be avoided by protecting the townsfolk from the spore. The spore came twice a year. Everybody knew that. But covering one’s face with a cloth for those days when the tiny red specks floated in the sunshine was never enough. People had tried that for centuries, only to see their hopes dashed. In the end, they accepted that it was the will of God, and did nothing except listen to Father Winthrop beg for mercies from above.

  Beck watched the Cleansing Inspectors on the platform pet their hands across the blonde beauty’s skin, conducting the final test for smudges and warts. He wondered what lusty fantasies engorged their thoughts when their fingers were on the naked skin of pretty young virgins. He envied them their task. Sure, they had hard hearts, but they had other parts as well.

  Behind the young beauty, at the center of the platform, a wrinkled crone displayed rolls and dimples earned through years of gluttony. As she slowly spun for all to see, Beck’s envy evaporated. He especially didn’t envy the two children climbing the platform stairs, waiting their turn to be inspected.

  “Beg your pardon, Ministers, General.”

  Beck startled and sat up in his chair.

  A man, one of the rabbit hunters, came up onto the dais and approached the chairs where the three Elders sat, presiding. The rabbit hunter came to a stop and looked from the general to the ministers as though seeking some direction. Two armed guards, one on either side of the Elders, watched the rabbit hunter, but neither appeared to be concerned. The rabbit hunter’s purpose was known to all. Men came to the dais on Cleansing day for only one reason. They had good hearts of stone. Or at least, that’s what Winthrop would have them think.

  Beck didn’t believe any of Winthrop’s mindless hokum. Superstitions were for peasants, not educated men. The rabbit hunter was on the dais because he didn’t want the fire to lick his skin while he burned in the pyre. He didn’t want his friends and children to think him a coward. He didn’t want them to hear his screams. He wanted the easy way out.

  General Blackthorn was always terse. “Speak.”

  “General—” The man’s voice caught in his throat. He looked down at his feet and fidgeted with his belt buckle.

  “My son.” Father Winthrop leaned forward in his chair. “The fact that you are here proves your bravery. You need not be nervous.”

  The man’s name was Muldoon. Beck recognized him, though grief seemed to have aged him by a decade in the past half year. His wife had been taken at the last Cleansing with a line of warts on her spine. The old men who sat in the square and played their board games said it was the fastest they’d seen the warts grow in years. Beck speculated that, in truth, she’d found a way to hide her uncleanliness from the town, from the inspectors, on previous days of Cleansing. But the warts had become too ugly and bulbous. They always did. Always. On the day of the last Cleansing, when she dropped her dress, the warts were clear, red, ugly, and hard on her back, some the size of a toddler’s fist. Even an old woman with clouded eyes could see them.

  And now, here was her widower husband, ready to pay the price for his collusion. Surely he had known about his wife’s warts. But that only underscored the need for The Cleansing. People rarely came forth on their own to admit their disease. They needed to be compelled.

  “I’m smudged,” Muldoon said, without looking up.

  “Where?” Father Winthrop asked.

  The man pointed a thumb over his shoulder. “My back.”

  General Blackthorn leaned forward. “Smudged? How do you know that, if it’s on your back? Did your son tell you?”

  The man was stuck between words. He looked like he was hiding something.

  “Out with it, man!” demanded General Blackthorn.

  Muldoon looked left and right, then over his shoulder. “I was working.”

  In a sof
ter tone, Father Winthrop said, “Go on.”

  “I had my shirt off. I was helping my cousin put hay in his barn. It was hot.”

  “And?”

  “My cousin’s neighbor, Earl Friend saw it.”

  “Earl Friend, the poultry man?”

  “Yes.”

  Nodding knowingly, Father Winthrop said, “A man with a heart of stone. A good man to tell another such a sad thing. We’re lucky to have such men.”

  Muldoon looked around again and checked over his shoulder.

  “Is there more?” General Blackthorn asked, suspicion in his tone.

  Muldoon nodded.

  “Speak.” Father Winthrop curled his fingers, trying to lure the words from the man’s mouth.

  “Earl Friend offered me comfort.”

  “How so?” Blackthorn asked.

  Beck was getting curious. On a day of drudgery and tears, this minor mystery was a welcome distraction.

  Muldoon looked at his feet when he spoke. He was ashamed. “He said he was smudged, too.”

  Blackthorn sat up straight, looking around, ready to put a spike in someone’s head.

  Had a snail been crawling on Father Winthrop’s tongue his face could not have shown more disgust.

  Beck asked, “And he was hiding it?”

  Muldoon nodded.

  “How long has he been hiding it?”

  “Three Cleansings. Earl told me that if I said nothing, nothing would come of it. He said silence was a more powerful Cleanser than the pain of the pyre. He said a true man of The Word keeps his secret and disappears into the forest when the warts come. He said that’s why so few men burn.”

  Beck shook his head. It was not going to go well for Earl Friend.

  Father Winthrop turned to Blackthorn. “This Earl Friend is a heretic. He’s a danger to the whole town.”

  “A danger, he is.” Blackthorn gave Father Winthrop a condescending nod and looked at one of the armed men. “Find this Earl Friend. We’ll see how soft he is.”