Hallowed Ground

Chapter Nine

She crawled out of the night like a creature from hell, seeking salvation.

There were no saviours in The Deacon’s city of canvas and prayer.

She knelt, flakes of hard rock cutting savagely into her knee. There was so much pain in her thin body she barely felt the bite of the stone. The tears in her eyes robbed the clutter of tents of any defined shape or form. The light she'd seen flickered above her like hot flames, and colors bled into one another as her grip on the world slipped away. The world had descended into the primal, leaving her to fight for her life on instinct alone, her mind too numb from the pain for coherent thought. Cramps tore at her stomach in waves. She cradled her belly and whimpered into the darkness that rose up to swallow her. For one single beat of her fracturing heart, she gazed up at the sky and saw that it fill with a thousand points of silver light, and then a million and a billion as the pain exploded white-hot across her eyes. Then everything dipped to black.

She lost her balance, unable to stay up on her knees. She slumped and curled in a foetal position, instinctively trying to protect her unborn child from the agony devouring her flesh. There was no protection. No relief. There was nothing she could do as another stab of pain tore up through her womb and into her heart.

Somewhere deep inside, a sound echoed. She latched onto it, clung to it like a branch held over quicksand. It came again, louder, and she fought to make it out. The pain threatened again and she bit her lip hard, willing it away. She needed to hear that sound, to hear any sound, to see or feel something beyond the pain.

She turned her face to the sky again, but there were no stars. Instead she saw a face, a man's face. He smiled down at her gently.

"Something's wrong." She said. "It hurts..God, it hurts..."

The words choked out of her, so drenched in tears and misery they were barely coherent. She spoke to the man, but whispered to the world. They were simple, heartbreaking words; the desperate plea of mother who felt the impending loss of a child she'd never even seen.

"Hush girl."

The man's voice soothed her. He knelt beside her and rested a hand on her distended belly. He kept his voice low, a gentle barrier against the pain raging through her. She surrendered to that voice, grateful she was no longer alone.

When she opened her eyes, he asked, "How far along are you?"

She tried to think. Voices swirled through her thoughts, breaking them apart before she could pin them with her tongue and spit them out. She concentrated.

"I don't know." She said. "I..."

She couldn't get beyond that thought. She had seen childbirth. She knew the risks. If her child came like this, it would die – she would die.

"Help me, please." She clutched the stranger’s hand. It was firm and strong, and just for a moment that touch steadied her. He didn’t pull away as her cracked and broken fingernails dug into his wrist. She fixed her gaze on his lips – he was saying something but she could not hear the words. A prayer? An invocation? Her fevered mind imagined he might be beseeching the heavens or calling down an angel to guide her soul to the next world. She tried to shake the thoughts free, but they lingered. His voice was not only soothing – it was mesmerizing.

She felt blood and water between her legs and she knew it was too late. She was as good as dead. She didn't scream. The finality of the moment slid into her like a long, sharp blade of ice. She closed her eyes. The last sight she saw was the rough wooden cross, high atop the biggest tent. That image strobed in her mind, and she felt the tickle of her heartbeat. It was funny, after everything that had happened to her, that two lengths of wood should evoke such a sense of hope. But just as there were two spars to the cross there were two underlying sensations; the first was the hope, the second weighing down so heavily on her she could barely breathe, was futility.

Fresh cramps tore through her and she drew her legs up tight to her stomach even as the man hushed her again.

"What’s your name, child?"

"Mariah."

In a gesture of curious tenderness the man wiped a finger across her cheek, his warmth absorbing the tears that stained her face. She felt a tiny flicker of heat swell beneath his touch and spread slowly through her skin into the bones beneath. He stroked her gently, his hand moving from her cheek down her neck and between her breasts to her distended belly, and lower. There was nothing sexual in the connection despite the fact that she found her body responding to the warmth, her back arching even as he knees drew up tighter to her stomach.

"A pretty name," the man soothed, keeping his voice calm. "Around here they call me The Deacon. Believe me when I say that it was God’s will that you found me, child." He let his hand linger above the birth canal. "Of all the people you could have run to, He guided you to me. That in itself is a miracle."

"Something's wrong," she said. She felt stupid and helpless, repeating the words over and over. "You have to make it stop."

An agony of tears stained her face. "Something’s wrong," she barely got the words out the second time. "I can feel it."

"Have faith, Mariah," The Deacon whispered. Her eyes flared open as she felt the heat of his touch sink deeper beneath the skin as though being absorbed by the dying child in her womb. It had to be the pain, making her crazy. She needed that pain to stop, but she knew that it wasn't going to happen. Not while she lived. Not while she bled.

He withdrew his hand and raised it to his lips, as though to taste the heat of her pain and the life of her child on his chapped lips, and then stood.

"Don’t leave me," she pleaded, reaching up until another wave of hurt caused her to double up again. He didn’t seem to hear her. Between the tears the world blurred, all the colors swirled into a chiaroscuro wash of unrelenting pain. It looked to Mariah as though he reached inside his chest and pulled something – his heart? – out. She shook her head. For a full minute the world refused to focus, and then she saw his fingers fumbling with the drawstrings of a small pouch.