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