Aĉaĵego

XI: What Karesema Kept to Herself, Part 1

Go home. Get the medicine. Survive, and stall. These were the orders Karesema had to kept repeating to herself the first time she had to run back down the mountain. The voice was the only bit of clarity that came through her aching head, making itself known through her hunger, thirst, sore legs, and exhaustion. Karesema had always been a bit defiant, but she knew better than to defy the voice in her head that told her what to do in times like these, the voice that always remembered the path she was supposed to follow, even when every instinct screamed she was making the wrong choice.

She had relied on the voice often since her childhood, since her mother's death. Floreca followed the ghost of her mother's voice, always basing her decisions on what her mother – and by extension, the priests, and the goddesses, and her father – would have approved of. But ten years ago, Karesema had ignored the voice in her head when it told her to follow her mother to the lake. She had trusted her mother, who had said it was all right and she "just needed to be alone." That day, Karesema had learned the voice in her head was the only one she could trust. Not her mother. Certainly not her father. Just the voice. She never ignored it again.

She didn't know where the voice came from. Floreca would say it was a goddess giving her advice, and Karesema would have once thought that was a possibility. Terdiino, most likely – she was the goddess who most often intervened in human lives. But there was no Terdiino. There was no reason to think there was a Terdiino, except for the priests, who were liars, and the stories, which were lies. So why would there be any Terdiino? Any heaven? There was no reason to believe in any of it.

She knew it hurt Floreca that she felt that way. Floreca always chided her to be more faithful, as though Karesema chose to have blasphemous thoughts. Before being arrested, she hadn't disbelieved in the goddesses – she just believed in them less than she believed the voice in her own head. And she couldn't believe in both anymore. They were incompatible.

She tried not to get caught up in unhappy memories when she reached the base of the mountain. It was better to focus on problems she could solve. And she had a lot of problems to solve. But still, angry tears welled up in her eyes as she passed the offering spot, the stone slab at the base of the mountain where they'd tied her up to wait for the Aĉaĵego. She remembered being tied up, prodded along, screaming about injustice, pleading for mercy. She'd searched the crowds for sympathy, but no one wanted to hear her side of the story – she was a criminal. Perhaps some people pitied her in the way they pity livestock. More of them seemed simply curious, even amused, that the sacrifice was making a spectacle of herself. No one would help.

The guards had slammed her onto the stone, held the wooden wine bottle to her lips. But Karesema had to be sober and conscious, because Floreca would come looking for her to say good-bye. Karesema had spat the sour liquid out, but the guards had more. "I don't want – " she started, but a guard had grabbed her by the hair and yanked her head back, forcing her jaw open, and when the next guard poured the remainder of the foul liquid down, she accidentally breathed instead of swallowing and then she was drowning in it and it was coming up her nose. Both guards laughed, the one guard loosened his grip on her hair for half a second so she could tilt her head up and breathe, but before she was even done coughing he had yanked her head back down again and the bottle was back on her mouth.

That time she drank, and didn't stop drinking even though her eyes watered and she wanted to beg them to tank the rancid stuff away already. "We would have just left this with you to drink of your own volition, but you had to go and make things difficult," the man holding the couple had said.

When the wine was gone, she coughed weakly, and the guards laughed. The one who had been holding onto her hair let go, but the other one used a finger to tilt back her chin. "That'll calm the bitch down," he muttered.

"Leave me alone," she spat, all the indignation she could muster without full control of her face.

He laughed and pushed her chin backwards, so she was looking back at the mountain instead of at him. "Go to sleep already."

"Don't touch me!"

"You sure?" asked the one touching her. "We could give you a good time, before we go. No point in saving yourself for a husband anymore, now, is there?"

She'd been taken aback; for once too afraid to say anything in retort. But both guards just laughed. "I was just joking, you ugly farm bitch. You smell like chicken shit anyway."

They'd left her there, trembling, tears stinging her eyes, while they went to stand at attention on either side of her, each one a few yards away. Don't pass out, she told herself. Floreca would come soon, she had to say goodbye to Floreca. She didn't want those vile words to be the last any other person had said to her. And that's when it had hit her: this was it, she was really going to die, and that meant Floreca would die. And even though she'd always been a bit skeptical, how ironic it was that now, when it would be most comforting to believe she would go up into the clouds to see her mother again, the priests had proven to her beyond a doubt that they were nothing but liars.

...

But Karesema shouldn't be dwelling on that. She wasn't the sick one. She wasn't the one who was trapped. The apathy of her neighbors, the cruelty of the guards... that was all in the past. She'd learned a lesson. She'd learned those people didn't matter.

So she ignored their gawking, as she made her way through the fields through which the trail to the mountain passed, the same way she ignored the searing pain in her injured head, the way she ignored her hunger, her thirst, the way the ground wavered with each unsteady step. Just like she ignored the guards at the front of the temple, demanding a tithe she did not have, ducking under the arms they held out to block her passage. She ignored them calling after her.

She reached the orphanage, and found the one person in the entire town who did matter. Jadinda seemed content enough, eating fish and fruit under an eggflower tree in the orphanage courtyard with a handful of other girls. Karesema had to swallow her own spit before her throat was wet enough to call Jadinda's name. For a split second she leaned against the courtyard fence, catching her breath. Then an angry guard called out to Karesema from behind, and all the orphanage children looked up curiously, and Jadinda caught her eye.

"Jadinda," Karesema managed to say.

Jadinda burst into tears. In a blurry second, she was sobbing in Karesema's arms. Tell her you're sorry, and you won't leave again, Karesema told herself. Tell her Floreca is alive. But the words wouldn't come. And in spite of being the oldest sister, in spite of pride, and dehydration, Karesema burst into wordless tears, too.