The Crossing Read Online Free Page B

the water to the Holy City far beyond. The village chief, a strong-armed man adorned with a shark's teeth collar and flax skirt, dragged forth a struggling goat from amidst the bystanders and, before Maryam had time to turn away from the animal's terrified rolling eyes, he slit its throat. Brother James bent down beside the poor creature and held an ornamental gourd up to the gaping wound to catch its blood.
    Maryam swallowed down rising vomit as the goat's glazed eyes accused her of its sudden death. Shakily she lowered her hand, which had shot up to her mouth, and tried to slow her breathing down to clear her head. Why hadn't Mother Elizabeth warned her of this? Then, at least, she could have prepared herself and closed her eyes.
    The coppery smell clung to her nostrils as Brother James dipped his finger into the still-warm blood and smeared it out across her cheeks. She tried not to shudder when he dipped again, running his finger down her chin and staining her white gown as his finger glided earthward. Once more he dipped andsmeared until, upon her chest, a crimson cross was outlined. Then he took the gourd and poured the remaining blood across the entrance to the causeway, so she would have to step through it to reach her goal. “Go now, Sister Maryam,” Brother James intoned. “Go now, as our Lamb once did, to serve your Lord.”
    At this, he pressed her pitifully small bundle of belongings back into her arms and when she did not move he pushed her forward, propelling her bare feet through the sticky blood and up onto the bamboo slats that formed the causeway out to sea. The villagers began to sing, their voices rising and filling the sky as she took her first tentative steps. “ I taku nako im, Tei rake, ao tabeka am kainiweve ao nako n am auti… ”
    The causeway rocked beneath her feet, and she realised that it floated on the surface of the water like an anchored boat. Ahead, the great hulk of the Star of the Sea beckoned her, rust streaks as starkly outlined on its vast steel body as the reeking cross of blood she wore. And now, behind, a trail of bloody footprints linked her future to her past, her only known world.
    A sea breeze had risen since her journey to the island and it rocked her now, tugging at her gown and hair. She looked ahead, watching the causeway undulate like a sea snake, and tried to focus her mind on staying steady in the centre of its swaying tail. Of course, if she fell in she could always swim. But caked in blood like this she'd draw the interest of te bakoas, the sharks that prowled around the reef. They were always hungry, these heartless beasts, and had plucked the life from many an unfortunate who crossed their path. Besides, none whose Bloods were on them would dare risk a swim.
    She wondered at the people who had built this causeway, desperate for help in the dark days after the Tribulation whenthe sky had erupted with great bursts of poisoned fire, while monster storms raged around the planet, blew up all the power sources and the other trappings of that godless age, and churned the sea. All the Sisters had been taught how flying machines fell from the sky, buildings toppled and boats were sunk, the whole world in a toxic fiery meltdown as the Lord sent forth His wrath.
    Here, too, the islanders were struck down by the fires, the storms and pestilence, many blinded, most destroyed. And those few who remained were powerless against the Tribulation as they watched their crops and fish stocks die—both sea and soil blighted—and their children born with monstrous defects that passed down through generations and were present still.
    Meanwhile, in the midst of this, the great Star of the Sea floundered in the massive waves until they hurled her, by the Lord's sweet grace, onto Onewēre's brutal reef. Nothing they could do would move her, as her bowels hemorrhaged deadly black pools of oil toward the land. But the ship refused to sink. And her surviving