Free The Crossing by Mandy Hager Page A

her chin between his forefinger and thumb and raised her head to study her. “Nice,” he purred.
    Before she could duck away, he crushed his mouth againsthers—his tongue forcing through her shocked lips and delving deep. She wanted to gag, wanted more than anything to break away. She fought beneath his vice-like grip but he was taller and more strongly built, and backed her against the handrail until she leaned precariously out over the sea.
    Then, just as suddenly, he pulled away. She ran at him, slapped him so hard on his smirking face that he reeled back, the sound an explosion in the sleeping night. Something mean crossed his face. Holy Father, what had she done? She ran for it then, just reaching the doorway, relieved that he did not pursue her, when his parting words stabbed through her like a sharpened spear.
    â€œAre you a bleeder or a breeder?”
    She stumbled, wounded and confused by this. What, in all Heaven, could he mean?

Sleep eluded her, as Maryam struggled to make sense of Lazarus's words. She was a bleeder, she supposed, in that her Bloods had finally come. But breeder?
    She thought of Rebekah, ripe with her third child, and the other pregnant women she had seen. Was this how she was destined to serve? As breeding stock, like the female goats put to the billy to increase their flock? And Mother Elizabeth, was she subject to this, too?
    What frightened her was not the thought of bearing a child, although she knew virtually nothing of this. It was the process to conceive the child that scared her so. If only she could speak to Mother Elizabeth now—to tease out some sense from everything that had passed these last two terrible days. It seemed impossible that she had looked upon her journey here as the start of something fine and good. But now, regardless of whether the Lord was testing her or not, she feared the approaching dawn.
    When, finally, her brain had tied itself into such tired knots her thoughts lost sense, she drifted into fitful sleep. Strange disjointed dreams chased her down dark corridors and, when Rebekah knocked on her door bearing breakfast, Maryam had to force her way out through the maze to wake.
    â€œMake sure you drink every drop,” Rebekah instructed her, as she laid a tray beside the bed.
    Maryam took up the offered cup, recognising the caustic smell of the anga kerea toddy before she even saw it. Anga kerea. What did it mean? The language of her childhood hiddeep beneath the overlay of English words she had since learnt. Then it came to her— sacrificial . So why must she drink this yet again? Had she not gone through the sacrificial rites already? She looked up at Rebekah, not daring to speak, but trying to transmit her worry through her eyes.
    Rebekah giggled. “I know it tastes horrible, but you get used to it after a while—even start to want it. And as you get more used to it, it will not send you off to sleep, just make the day pass easier.” She stood there, hands on hips, waiting for Maryam to down the drink. “Anyway, it's not as strong today, now that you've been tested.”
    â€œTested? What do you—”
    Rebekah held up her hand, silencing her. “Please, Maryam, do not speak. Mother Michal is close by and if she hears you we will both be punished.”
    Maryam bit back her frustration. If she could not even speak to another Blessed Sister, then how was she ever to understand the workings of this strange new place? They seemed so unfair, these so-called tests, and she was terrified that she would fail—that the Lord would see inside her heart to her resistance and send her straight to burn in Hell. She raised the cup to her lips and drank a quarter of the toddy down, trying to hold back the wave of nervous nausea that swept her. Rebekah nodded, encouraging Maryam to drink it all, and she took the rest in one mouthful—holding it unswallowed while Rebekah made to leave.
    â€œI will return shortly,”