Free The Bone Wall by D. Wallace Peach Page B

on top of me, pinning me with her body. Her knees hold down my arms as she leans over me, a fall of pale hair casting her features in shadow, eyes black as midnight. “You’re hurting me,” I yell. She slaps a hand over my mouth, pressing my lips to my teeth, her knees digging into my arms.
    Beneath her weight, my pleas rupture into muffled sobs, strangled breath snorting through my nose as terror and pain flare inside me. Rimma’s breath touches my ear. “Papa chose to protect the innocent, the future of the world, even though that choice required his life. That’s how I choose to define myself. This is who I am now, the hawk.”
    Our father’s words haunt me, twisted by anger and fear, her body bruising my arm bones as I writhe, her hand crushing my screams against my lips. Without a word, she sits up, relieving the pressure on my arms, slowly withdrawing her palm from my mouth. My hands fly to my face, hiding from this stranger, my sister, my mirror. I feel as if I’ve never known her, don’t remember this woman at all.
    “You are the future of the world,” Rimma says, her voice softer, more familiar. She touches my arm gently and I twist away, sobs racking my body.
    “Please, Rimma,” I beg, “get off me.”
    The shield glitters, tiny cracks rapidly lacing the entire surface, the spectacle dazzling my eyes. My sister’s a black spirit silhouetted against a brilliant blue fire. “Give me your oath,” she insists, “that you will guard your innocence and hope, Angel. Nothing more. Then I’ll make the hard choices to keep you true.”
    “I promise. I swear it,” I cry out of desperation. The shield wall flares and winks out. I hold my breath. Rimma raises her face to the sky, the cold wind blowing through Heaven. Then the shield begins its tireless drone and the waves of light rise in the south and ripple over us once again.
    **
    Rimma’s smile looks the same. Physically we still mirror each other, impossible for the descendants of Heaven to tell apart, even our mother. But my sister feels different to me, hard and cold as iron, resolute, fierce and frightening. I can’t describe what happened the night she cut my lips on my teeth and bruised my arms, only that she’s ready to face the Biters.
    The shield wall shimmers and snaps constantly now, day and night, hissing and sparking, splinters of light crackling like broken glass underfoot. Blind and deaf, the descendants of Heaven go about their daily routines in a delusional dream of salvation as if the shield will suddenly awaken, grow up, and assume some responsibility. As if God intends to reach down from the pearly clouds and perform a trick of magic, as if we bear no accountability for our own survival, as if Biters abide only in ghoulish bedtime tales, as if we never locked out the descendants of Paradise.
    No less illusory, Rimma believes she can embrace evil. She cleaves us in two, breaks us into pieces and sort the shards into distinct piles, no air between. Yet I recognize the seed of hope inside her, if only in her desire to protect me. How can she not see the same contradiction in me?
    “Are you coming?” she calls from the ladder’s bottom rung.
    My foot reaches down, finding a toehold and I clamber down the wobbly thing as quickly as I can, afraid it will shake loose on me.
    The East Spoke still beckons us and we stroll it almost daily. Rimma trains with her weapons with the same intensity, but I sense she’s more realistic about her capabilities. I don’t think she expects to live long when the Biters storm Heaven, and I doubt I can live without her. I still climb the metal platform but rarely observe her mad dance. Instead, I lean over the rail and watch our flowers wither. Bare stalks with sprays of silvery seed quiver forlornly from the blue jar. It hardly matters, the wild flowers have vanished with every remnant of green, and we lack the courage to open the gate.
    Always gently now, Rimma takes my hand, and we stroll down the