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The original Communion ground. The place we’ve spent two centuries pretending doesn’t exist.
“No.” I say and the ground pulses—once.
My chest tightens.
Then it does it again and something moves through the dirt.
Three times… silence.
Then a woman screams. But it isn’t Sage… it’s her.
My blood turns to ice.
I haven’t heard that scream for centuries but I know it—I know it better than my own voice.
“Mercy.”
The name. The one we’ve avoided, the one I stopped saying because names keep people alive and there are some kinds of survival crueler than death.
“Mercy?” The field goes still then a laugh moves through the corn. Young, warm—human.
My knees nearly give out.
No. I know better. I know what this place does.
But then I hear…”Ezra?”
Fuck!
I follow the voice to the south field. It shouldn’t look like this. We destroyed everything. The altar, the tables, the posts—the stones. We burned what would burn and buried what wouldn’t. Yet all of it is here.
A long wooden table stretches beneath the moon with candles flickering and plates overflowing with apples, bread, roasted meat, corn, grapes and goblets filled with wine—no… blood.
People surround it. I know them—every fucking face.
My father stands at the head of the table. He’s been dead since 1812. My mother is beside him along with my sisters and neighbors. Men I watched grow old. Women whose graves sit beneath the church hill. All young. All exactly as they were that night. 1791.
My father lifts his goblet. “Welcome, Sower.”
I can’t breathe.
“No.”
Slowly drums pound. One. Two. Three. Silence.
A woman steps from behind him. She’s barefoot in a white dress with a red ribbon tied around her wrist.
Mercy.
Alive.
Twenty-four.
Her dark hair is braided down her back with mud at the hem of her dress. She looks at me with angry eyes. Always with angry eyes.
“About fucking time.” She says and my heart breaks.
That was her. Not soft or obedient.
