Free Sinners and the Sea by Rebecca Kanner Page B

tent. I must see the girl today, before my solitude drives me to madness.
    I wore a swaddling cloth under my tunic and left my sandals inside the door of our tent. The sandals were only thin straps ofleather, but still I feared I could lose my feet for them in town.
    With my head scarf secured over my brow, my heart beating hard in my chest, and stones piling up in my belly, I went to find Herai. I saw no one until I had ventured at least a hundred cubits. Men and women were gathered with their backs to me around a tent. The tent hung from old wooden supports that leaned toward each other beneath its weight.
    Vultures circled above. I heard babies crying, and over their crying, a woman shouted, “We must kill them.”
    “No, only two of them.”
    “But which two?”
    “They are all spawn of the demon that split a man’s seed into three parts. Each of them must die,” said the unusually beautiful girl with a head of very long hair except for one patch that was only a few moons long.
    “A demon does not waste time with a woman once a man has left her,” Javan said.
    “Then what is it that happened to your daughter? What was it that made her slow if not a demon?”
    Javan was silent. I had not thought it was possible to silence her, and I was surprised to find that her silence did not please me. A few breaths later, she again tried to save the babies. “The girl has lain with three men, and they each planted a son in her.”
    “Then why has no one else had three at once?”
    Again Javan made no reply. I tried to think of something to defend her argument, though I was not sure I had the courage to risk the wrath of the mob. People were starting to raise their voices andshift around. I was glad when another woman cried out, “If we kill the demon’s babies, will not the demon kill us?”
    No one listened to her. Shoulders collided, and elbows stabbed at the ribs of the bodies around them. Shoving broke out. Through the gaps that appeared in the mob, I saw the girl with only one hand lying on a blanket stained with afterbirth. Babies’ cries rang out from either side of her. The arc of the mob tightened.
    I called upon Noah’s God: God of Adam, these babies need your protection.
    It would have taken two hands to hold one baby, and the girl was trying to hold on to all three with only one. They were quickly ripped away from her. Each baby was taken by a different woman, separating the mob into three parts. One part came rushing toward me.
    I felt something sharp against my head and then warmth. The warmth quickly ran down my neck. I looked down at the rock that had hit me, and then I was slammed to the ground. A foot stepped partway on my head, and another crushed my thumb and forefinger.
    I will see her burned alive echoed in my head. I did not know why I bothered to pray to Noah’s God, but I did: God of Adam, please help me from this place without allowing anyone to see my mark. I held my scarf to my brow, stood up, and started stumbling home. A few times someone knocked into me hard enough that I should have fallen, but I did not. Perhaps Noah’s God had heard my plea. Perhaps he was my God too.
    • • •
    T hat night Noah raged through the town. “The fury of the One True God grows. It is His place to do as He will with the lives of children. Who are you to usurp Him as ruler of all the world?”
    I had no way of knowing what had happened to the babies. Perhaps that is best, I told myself. Now that I suspected the God of Adam was as powerful as Noah said He was, I would not be able to help being angry at Him if He had let them die. I laid the side of my head that did not ache on my sleeping blanket and hoped I would not wake up for a long time.
    I dreamed that the sea fell from the sky and beat upon the earth with fists of rain. The rain piled higher, until it was as tall as a man. People screamed as huge hands made of water pulled them under. No one was spared—children, women, people who had lost a hand