The scene below us would be almost pastoral if I didn’t know there was a moldering corpse in that tub.
The blond guy glances at his watch again, then taps the woman’s shoulder. She stands and raises her arms high above her head. She’s nearly as tall as the man, and her dark hair is streaked with gray. The music stops abruptly, and the other six women rise to join her. They all begin to sway, their eyes closed and faces raised to the rafters.
They move back and forth for about thirty seconds, and then the first woman pulls her arms down abruptly. There’s a domino effect as each woman down the line stops swaying, and I choke back a laugh, because they look a lot like fans doing the wave at the Washington Nationals game Dad took me to last summer.
The tall woman’s eyes snap open, and she cries out, “Koresh! Our beloved Koresh! We do not mourn your passing.”
The crowd murmurs in agreement, and Kiernan moves close to my ear, whispering, “Annie Ordway, but they call her Victoria Gratia. It means ‘victory by grace’ or something. Koresh’s second in command, at least for now.”
“For,” the woman says, “as the sixth messiah, Jesus, rose on the third day, so shall the seventh messiah rise this Christmas Day. We await your second coming, our prophet, to build our New Jerusalem, our heaven here inside the Earth.”
Kiernan gives a silent, little chuckle. “Annie is one of the remaining Hollow Earthers.”
“What?”
“Later. Shh . . .” He holds up his hand and leans forward. “Just watch the tub. In three, two, one . . .”
There’s a flash of bright blue behind the tub, and a small young woman appears. She’s also dressed in white, but it’s more like a toga, cinched at the waist and shoulder, with a gold chain reflecting the blue beams from her CHRONOS key. Her arms are stretched out to her sides, her head thrown back, with all-too-familiar dark curls cascading over her shoulders.
Prudence. And she’s glowing. It’s not just the medallion. Her skin and clothes are literally glowing, like polished metal.
A girl near the horse stalls quietly faints, but no one notices. They’re all facing forward, most of them smiling, all of them mesmerized by the vision behind the corpse-laden tub.
Annie Ordway doesn’t seem happy, however. She looks stunned and a bit confused, as do two of the other Sisters. The confusion only lasts for a few seconds, and then Ordway goes to her knees. As if on cue, the remaining Sisters drop as well, followed by everyone else in the stable.
“It’s paint,” Kiernan whispers with a hint of disdain, and I flash back to 1893 and his eight-year-old self looking down at my crimson toenails and telling me his mum said only whores wear paint. “Phosphorescent paint. See the beam over her head and how it looks kind of purple?”
I nod.
“Portable black light, set with a timer for midnight.”
The crowd below was silent at first, but a few cries of “Praise God!” and “Praise Koresh!” begin to circulate. Gradually, the exclamations build to a crescendo.
Prudence holds her hands out to the people kneeling before her. I can’t see her face at first, until she tips her head back again. She’s younger than when I saw her at the Expo. And she’s either a killer actress or she’s convinced herself, because her face, which is eerily like my own, is illuminated not only by the phosphorescent paint but also by a smile of ethereal joy.
“Rise, children of Cyrus! Rise, rejoice, and follow me in The Way!”
The crowd stumbles to its feet, and Ordway steps forward. Her arms are open. “Welcome, Sister in Koresh! I am Victoria Gratia, and I welcome you into our Unity.”
The smile fades from Prudence’s face, replaced by an air of stern compassion. “I know you well, Sister Annie. You shall have my grace and my patience as you work to overcome your sins.”
Ordway’s smile collapses. “My . . . sins?”
“Yes. You and . . . these others,” Prudence says, picking out two of the other Sisters with her eyes and a nod of her head, “are guilty of the sin of lust. You placed temptation in the path of Brother Cyrus, but I stand here as proof that his soul remained pure. He has escaped the bonds of mortality and sin.”
It’s hard for me to view any of the three women as temptresses. The youngest is at least fifty, and all three are covered from neck to ankle. There are gasps, and then a muffled hum fills the stable as one neighbor whispers to another.
Two Sisters at the end farthest from the coffin-tub take a step back from the others. They wear wreaths in their hair, the shorter woman’s made of red rosebuds and the other’s made of pink. At first, they seem to be arguing, then Pink Rosebuds steps forward and embraces the shorter woman. They just stand there with their heads together for a moment, forehead to forehead, grasping each other’s shoulders.
My eyes are drawn back to the center of the barn when one of the women Prudence just outed as a sinner falls to her knees, head bent, and begins to sob. The second woman looks around at the others in the barn, pulls in a deep breath, and joins her on the straw-covered ground.
Ordway stares at the two as she feels behind her for the chair. She sinks into it, looking as though she might vomit.
Prudence smiles at the prostrate women, her face both falsely and genuinely radiant. “Do not grovel, Sisters. There is always hope for those who show remorse.”
Her eyes flit briefly to Annie Ordway, still seated, with her chin tilted defiantly. Then Prudence looks back to the two on their knees. “You still have time for your souls to reach perfection. Death cannot claim the pure of heart.”
“If Koresh is risen, then why is his body still here?” Ordway challenges.
Prudence tilts her head, giving Ordway a patronizing smirk before smiling back toward the crowd. “What lies before you here is a useless shell, an empty husk. I stand before you as Brother Cyrus, Sister Prudence, Koresh—call me what you will. We are all one in Cyrus. And those who follow me in The Way will find the same reward.”
I feel Kiernan’s body tense up next to mine. I glance at him, but he shakes his head, directing my attention back to the scene below. He grabs my hand, however, and holds it tightly as the two women who were huddled together in the shadows break apart. Pink Rosebuds walks quickly toward the back wall and grabs something off a shelf near the bridles, while the other one moves into the center of the light, directly facing Ordway and Prudence.
Red Rosebuds points a pale finger at Annie Ordway, but her eyes are on Prudence. “Eloise and I—we never stopped believing, Koresh. After we saw you last week, down at Bamboo Landing, we told the others, including Annie—”
There’s a soft gasp from the others, and Red Rosebuds turns to them and says, “I will no longer call her Victoria Gratia, for she is impure. She is not of the Unity.” She turns back to Prudence and says, “I told Annie and the others that you would soon die but that you told us not to despair, because your purity would be rewarded with a new, immortal form, just as you’ve always said. Annie laughed and said we were naive.”
Pink Rosebuds, who I assume is actually named Eloise, steps forward at this point. “Not so naive, Annie. We saw how you watched Koresh, how you touched him not as a Sister but as a temptress. But we never wavered, and we, the truly pure, will follow him now.”
She turns to Red Rosebuds. “Are you ready, Sister Mary?”
Red Rosebuds nods and Eloise leans across and kisses her on both cheeks. “Go with Koresh, Sister.”
There’s a flash of something metallic as she steps back. Kiernan’s grip on my hand tightens, and then I stare, shocked, at the red line on Mary’s throat, just above the collar of her dress. Blood seeps through the lace, but she still smiles at Prudence as she slumps to the ground.
Someone screams, but before anyone can move forward, Eloise turns and says, “I go with Koresh! If you are pure of flesh and spirit, then follow!” She pulls the knife swiftly from left to right across her own throat and slumps down, her blood spattering the coffin-tub in front of her as she falls next to Mary.