Redemption

Hannah laughed. "What are you talking about?" she said loudly, catching the attention of the other women, who looked over at them curiously.

"Seriously," Beth whispered. "Won't you just listen to me for once?" She sighed. "I'll be in the bedroom. I need to talk to you. Alone."

Hannah finally joined her after what seemed an eternity of dishes clattering together and cupboard doors being opened and closed. The other women had gone outside.

"What is so important?" she asked, sitting on her bed.

"They put down a spike strip, to make the car crash."

"A what?"

"You know, what the cops put down, full of nails, to bust tires. When criminals are coming down a road."

"And you know this...how?"

"I saw it today, in the woods near the crash site. It was obvious, Hannah. They wanted us to crash! We could've been killed!"

"I think you need to lie down, and take it easy. You probably have a concussion," Hannah said, not meeting her friend's eye. Instead she took another sip from the mug on the bedside table.

"Why are you always drinking that? What is it?"

"It's milk." She took a sip. "Mother's milk."

"Mother's milk? Not breast milk, I hope?"

Hannah shook her head. "Cow's."

"Okay. What else is in it?"

"Milk, honey and some spices. It's delicious. It helps to calm me. You should try some." She handed the mug to Beth, who looked at the murky, white liquid inside. She took a small sip. It was sweet, but tasted grainy. She finished the mug and put it back on the bedside table.

"You drink that stuff all day long," she said, eyeing Hannah. "Why?"

Before Hannah could reply, Margaret knocked lightly at the open bedroom door and walked in.

"We should tell, her shouldn't we?" she asked Hannah, and Hannah nodded, smiling.

"Come into the kitchen."

They sat around the large, wooden table, joined by Margaret and a younger woman named Martha. Beth was alarmed to see a look of disconnected bliss on Hannah's face, as if she'd just been told she'd won the lottery and the shock hadn't worn off. She still wouldn't meet Beth's eye, but gazed around the cabin and outside wistfully, as if she'd entered some kind of paradise.

"Redemption is a town with plenty to offer, and work for those who want it," Margaret began. "We grow our own food, and supply vegetables and milk to the neigbouring towns. Our milk is known county-wide for its exceptional quality. We are also known for having the second-largest granite quarry on the east coast. Hannah has decided to stay on with us and learn the farming business, and we are very happy to have her." She paused. "You are welcome to stay as well, of course."

Beth's expression soured, her forced friendliness transformed into a look of panicked disbelief. "I have a life outside of here, as does Hannah," she stared at her friend, who just looked at the table. "We have friends, family, jobs..." she felt lightheaded, and the room seemed to tilt slightly. She closed her eyes and opened them again. The room seemed back to normal.

"I have nothing to go back to now, Beth," Hannah said. "You know that. That life is over for me."

"Margaret, Martha, listen. Thank you very much, you are kind to offer us a home here. But my friend isn't thinking clearly, obviously. It's been two days since we've been in a car accident. Hannah hasn't even been outside of this cabin!"

"It is you who's not thinking clearly!" Hannah yelled, backing her chair up and standing up so quickly her chair almost fell over. "If I decide to stay here, that's my choice. And you should stay, too. I don't need you making trouble for me, snooping around and trying to find something wrong with this place, when there's nothing wrong!"

Margaret and Martha exchanged a look of silent understanding.

Beth shook her head and went to lie down. She had to think. How to get Hannah out of here. First things first: she had to get to a police station. Or a phone, to call one.

That evening a healing ceremony was to be held in the cabin. Beth felt an increasing sense of sleepiness, mixed with a peaceful calm. Her limbs felt heavy, and it was a struggle to focus on what was happening.

The Mother's Milk, she thought. It must be drugged. She'd finished the mug earlier on purpose, to see what effects it would have on her. And she'd been proven right.

They were drugging Hannah.

The front door flew open, almost hitting her where she stood near the kitchen sink, holding onto the counter to stop the room from spinning. A man and woman walked in, heads lowered, heading to the far end of the front room. Beth noticed a thick, black line had been drawn a few feet away from the back wall, and the man and woman stood behind it, facing the rest of the people in the room.

About twenty people were packed into room, candles the only light. A group of children held hands in a semicircle in front of the man and woman, who now had their arms outstretched, wrists upwards.

"Marjorie and Tom, you will now receive healing for your crimes, since you both have repented."

"What did they do?" Beth whispered to a tall girl beside her. The scene didn't seem real to her; it was like being in a strange dream she couldn't wake from. Maybe I am dreaming, she thought.

The girl glared sternly at her, as if it didn't matter what the man and woman had done. The point was, they had broken some sort of rule.

"Seriously?" Beth said, looking around her in disbelief.

"Shh!" one of the children hissed before turning back to the man and woman. The children in this town seemed to have an authority over things. Which was creepy, Beth thought.

Jonah stepped up with a long piece of iron, now hot from where he'd had it in the woodstove.

"No..." Beth breathed, instinctively stepping in front of the two "sinners."

"Get back to where you were!" A thin woman shrieked at her, the shadows streaking across her face making her expression demonic. Beth shrunk back into the crowd, avoiding the hot iron.

Jonah touched the hot iron once to the woman's right wrist, and then another time to the man's. Beth cringed as she heard the sizzling sound of burning flesh, but neither Marjorie nor Tom cried out in pain. They still held out their wrists, even though the pain must have been severe.

"These marks you bear will be the ligature marks of the righteous, who have owned up to their sins and undergone the healing ceremony," Jonah said in a monotone, as if he'd recited these lines many times before.

"Repentance is a salve for the troubled soul," the other people in the room said, even Hannah. How had she known to say this? Obviously they'd been teaching her things about their practices, and Hannah was eating it all up like the gullible woman she'd always been.

"Pain is only temporary, a fleeting bane of our existence," Jonah went on.

"All is as it should be," the crowd replied mechanically.

Marjorie and Tom bowed slightly to Jonah and he put a bandage around each of their wrists. It was as if they were thanking him for their ordeal.

Beth headed for the door. She stormed past Hannah, who was a lost cause at this point, and struggled to open the front door. It opened too quickly, almost knocking her down. A heavyset, middle-aged police officer stood in the doorway, looking at her with mild annoyance. His gun was holstered at his side.

"Thank God, officer, you're here." Beth hugged him, sobbing. "These people...they need to be arrested. They just burned two people - branded them. It's corporal punishment, officer, and it's illegal. The whole town's brainwashed, and..."

"Slow down, honey," the officer said, gently removing her arms from around his own. He smiled at Jonah, who'd just entered the kitchen.

"Officer Kent, good to see you again. I see you came for the homebaked goods." He winked and nodded towards the table, which was laden with pies, cookies and other desserts.

"Wouldn't miss a healing ceremony for all the world," the officer replied, and Beth backed up, feeling like someone had punched her in the gut.

"What? You know what goes on here?"

"Redemption has its own ways. It's been that way for centuries," Officer Kent said curtly, biting into a cookie. Crumbs fell down the front of his shirt, but he didn't notice, or care.

"Officer Kent, I made your favourite: lemon meringue pie!" Martha said joyously, as if this fact was the highlight of her entire year.

"I thank you kindly," he replied, and she served him a piece.

Beth sat down in a chair, feeling dazed and nauseous. When the officer had finished his pie, Jonah handed him a box with an entire pie in it to take home, his right hand under the box. Beth noticed the envelope in Jonah's palm, almost hidden under the bottom of the box. Officer Kent took the envelope and stuffed in his pocket, not making much effort to disguise this action. It was as if everyone knew he was taking bribes, so why bother hiding it?

Heart pounding furiously, Beth made her way to the door, pushing past Officer Kent in her haste. She had no more time for niceties with these people.

It was time to get out of this town. She would come back for Hannah later, once she found some sane people, and uncorrupt law officials to accompany her.

As she struggled with the door handle again and finally got it open, she didn't notice the alarmed look that passed between Jonah and Officer Kent. Jonah's eyes narrowed, his lips pressed together into a thin line of disapproval.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"The outhouse," Beth replied, and bolted outside.

Jonah sighed and looked at Officer Kent. They nodded to each other knowingly, all semblance of good humour drained from their grim faces.

Something would have to be done about the girl.

Beth was running through the woods as the shadows lengthened. If she could get to the granite quarry, she could bypass the town and reach the road from there. The boy had told her so. She couldn't risk the townspeople trying to stop her.

It was getting dark, and she could barely see anything in the woods. She should have waited until dawn to make her escape, but she couldn't stay one more minute in that cabin. Stumbling, she fell over a tree root and onto her knees, her hands hitting the ground hard. She heard soft cries coming from somewhere near the tree, barely audible. Crawling towards the sound, she saw a pair of eyes glinting at her from inside the hollowed tree. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw four other sets of smaller eyes, gazing out at her. An animal, with her young.

"It's okay," she said softly, backing away from the tree.

A furry creature emerged from the tree. A small dog? No, a fox. It stood its ground, staring at her fiercely.

Beth stood up, brushing the dirt from her knees with her palms, which were still stinging from the fall. She didn't take her eyes off the fox, afraid it might charge her. She walked slowly backwards, until she was about six feet away, then made a wide berth around the animal and kept walking towards the quarry.

It was almost pitch dark when she reached the edge of the woods, but there was light up ahead. A muted, yellow light. She made her way across a field of long grass, the night coming alive with fervent whispers as she moved through it. It was just the rustling of the grass that made the sound, she told herself, although she could almost make out particular words every now and then as the whispering continued. She stopped and listened. Nothing. When she started walking again, the whispering recommenced. A shiver crept up her arms and down her back, the hairs on her arms standing on end.

Almost there, she told herself. To the quarry, and then to the road...

The field crested upwards into a hill, and when she got to the top she stopped dead in her tracks. A circle of tall stones surrounded her. They looked like oversized tombstones, covered with inscriptions. When she peered more closely, she saw that strange sigils were carved into the stone facing. In the centre of the circle was a statue of a woman, holding a baby. Her mouth was open and her eyes wide in an expression of distress. An arrow pierced her heart. An uneasy feeling of grim suffering emanated from the entire place, and Beth hurried through the stones, hoping she hadn't upset some pagan god or goddess this town worshipped.

But she didn't believe in gods. They were a product of mythology, superstition. Something to give meaning to people's lives, something to strive for, to hope for. An afterlife, an answer to the eternal question of why we must suffer, and die.

The light was coming from tall torches surrounding the rock quarry, Beth realized as she approached it. The vastness of the quarry filled her with awe as she came to stand before it, looking down into the deep pit that lay behind a tall fence. When she gazed upwards, she noticed the fence was lined with barbed wire at the top. There was no scaling that.

She didn't intend to. She just had to go around the quarry, on the east side, the boy had told her, then she would see the road.

Murmuring now, from behind her. Was she imagining it? She whirled around to look at the circle of stones she'd come through, but it was too dark to see if anyone was coming towards it from the woods.

The ground was strewn with gravel around the fence, and her feet made a crunching sound as she walked. It was too loud, she thought, and she walked more quickly, before she attracted attention. The place looked deserted, but there could be security guards lurking around.

She was halfway to the eastern edge of the quarry when she heard it. Chanting. It was unmistakable: people were coming up through the woods behind her. She looked back and caught sight of wavering, fiery globes of light, high in the air, approaching steadily.

Torches.

The townspeople were coming for her.

Running now, her breathing becoming more ragged and fast as she told herself to keep moving, no matter what. She wasn't a runner, or a jogger, although she had a regular exercise routine that consisted of pilates, swimming and walking. Her knees ached and she felt like she was was going to suffocate from lack of air, but the adrenaline kept her pushing forward.

When she rounded the corner of the quarry, she gave a strangled laugh of joy, tears streaming down her face. Bent over, hands on her knees, she struggled to catch her breath. Just a minute or so of rest, until she could start again for the road.

Something was wrong. The air was too still, the chanting had stopped.

She closed her eyes and stood up, knowing what she was about to see even before she opened them again.

A group of townspeople with torches faced her from the road about twenty-five feet ahead, their faces still, eyes unblinking. She couldn't make out individual features in the gloom; they seemed like one unit. An army of men and women in wide-brimmed hats and bonnets. It would seem ludicrous if not for the expression of malice in their gaze, fixed on Beth.

"I just want to get out of here," she called out to them after a few moments of eerie silence. "I want to go home. Please let me pass." She paused, but there was no break in their silent stance. The flames of the torches flared wildly as a wind picked up from the east.

Beth looked behind her. Just as she thought. A similar group of townspeople stood behind her, torches held high.

She started walking, insanely, towards the group near the road. They would let her pass, she thought. She would just walk right through them. What were they going to do? Restrain her? Drag her, kicking and screaming, back to the cabin?

A woman in the front of the group reached out her hand towards Beth, opening it for her to see the object she held. A rock. A very large rock.

A threat.

Beth stopped, about fifteen feet away from the group now. She stared challengingly at the woman, who didn't move, but met Beth's gaze with an equally challenging look. That was when she noticed rocks in the other townspeople's hands as well.

"Suffering is the path to redemption, my dear," a tall man said behind her.

Jonah. She shook her head at him, smiling sardonically.

"How very Christian an ideal," she said. "If this is what your religion is. What's with the wounded mother in that circle of stones? Your own version of Christianity?"

A memory surfaced at the corner of her mind, from her Bible School days as a child. Her parents had been Presbyterians, her religious upbringing full of terrifying stories of fire and brimstone, the cost of disobeying God. Hell, she'd learned, was a place where your soul could be cast for simply doubting the precepts taught you by your parents, your community.

Silence descended upon the place again, a feeling of ominous deja-vu creeping up on her. She was not the first one to be here, she thought, surrounded by these people. Two hundred, four hundred years ago, there had been another Beth, with a different name, facing these same people, wanting to escape them. Ready to be obliterated by them.

The two groups started walking forwards, encroaching on her.

Beth ran back towards the stone quarry. The groups didn't move any faster, but changed their direction, following her towards the rock pit. She climbed onto the fence and hoisted herself up, the thin, metal wires strung horizontally across it cutting into her palms. The pain didn't faze her. Adrenaline spurred her on, up, towards the top. She heard murmuring again behind her as Jonah's group came to a standstill behind her, watching her climb. A man's quiet laughter pierced the silence. It was the easy, indulgent laugh of a parent watching a child perform an action that they knew would fail, like trying to jump for a forbidden apple that lay too high on a tree.

Her palms were bleeding when she finally reached the top, dripping onto her clothes and the fence. She stood up at the top, a deadly bundle of barbed wire between her legs. The wind picked up again, whipping her hair around her face. She looked back, craning her neck to see Jonah and struggling to keep her balance on the fence at the same time.

She smiled at them, then looked ahead of her again, at the stone face of the quarry. The rock looked back, impassive, hard, eternal. Inscrutable. She jumped.

Hannah's eyes flew open. She'd been dreaming, a sweet, blissful dream, one she couldn't quite remember.

It was done, she knew.

"All is as it should be," she said, and reached for the cup of Mother's Milk.