Izea pulled on one dusty white glove at a time slowly wiggling and stretching her long slender fingers pulling the glove into place. She wrenched the long glove sleeves up to her elbows. White gloves. Never brown, cream, nor even a dusty green like the moss creeping up the fence posts of the garden. Always white. Carefully she pulled the ruched sleeves of her cream linen underdress down to her wrists make sure that the gloves were tucked in tight beneath her sleeve. She adjusted her wool pinafore apron tying the stays tightly behind the swell of her back. Then tugged down the bunched up grey outer garment skirt underneath so it didn’t choke her waste as she worked. With a deep sigh she raised her chin and wrapped the wide gauze ties of her woven straw hat around her neck placing the bow in the back to protect the nape of her neck from the late afternoon sun. Once her trappings were all in place, she placed her hand on the top of her hat and the other on her waist throwing her chin up and forward toward the low hanging sun. Her eyes closed softly and Her chest swelled with the intake of a long regulating breath. Just for a few seconds. A few seconds of feeling the light on her skin.
The sound of dirt and straw crunched a few feet away and Izea quickly shoved her chin down towards her chest. She quickly clasped her hands in front of her and starting to move her lips in silent worship.
A voice whispered behind her, “Izzy! It’s just me!” Martha brushed around her shoulder as she leaned in and winked, “No need to pretend your supplications around me,” she said with a hushed chuckle. Martha’s wool skirts sashayed past Izea as she carried a large thick basket with her own gloved hands.
“Let’s get on with it! We don’t need Micah on our hems nagging about our tardiness,” Martha grumbled backwards towards Izea. Martha’s twin brother was a rule follower and mostly liked to follow Martha around to make sure she was… well following the rules set by the parish and the Counsel of Gods. After Martha and Micah’s father was lost to the light years ago, Micah had been forced to shift from parishioner to priest overnight. The kind soft spoken Micah who had cared for hurt small toads and field mice was still soft spoken; but it was cold and curt and in a way that made the back of your neck shiver. The loss of a parent tends to do that to some.
Izea would know. There were moments after her parents were lost that she felt the bitter cold creeping into her own soul. The nights after were filled with hot wet tears and sobs that shook her shoulders until they ached. However, there was a time after the tears had run dry from Olmec’s well that a coldness had started to creep up through the soles of her feet grasping at the anger and grief like ivy trying to climb into her heart and throat.
Izea’s salvation had been Martha. Parents lost on the same night Threshing had bound them together as one. During the consecration of souls to the light, Martha and Izea had been sat next to each other near the Sacellum’s dais. Martha had slipped her hand out of her vestment glove, slid it across the rough-hewn wood bench and wound her pinky around Izea’s while Izea was trying to withhold her heavy sobs into a whimper. Izea had not succeeded, and the silent ceremony was repeatedly interrupted with high pitched gasps emitted from her grimaced mouth. Martha had been her anchor. She still was.
Martha and Micah’s mother had survived. Barely. Her face slit from neck to temple and her thigh gashed. Her face had healed only left with a dark pink scare that could be seen more clearly in certain light. It almost glimmered in sift candlelight. No one asked about it because they didn’t want to remind her of her sorrows. She had been a gorgeous beauty and it still shown through when she found the energy to laugh beyond her grief.
Her leg, however, did not heal well. Bone had been seered and tendons slashed. The light had worked its way down from her head, down the leg leaving tendrils of black bolts down her chest, trunk and burst forth through her thigh. Right near her knee that had just hit the ground to reach for her beloved laying already gone on the earth’s floor. Martha’s mom, Jestile, could still walk but needed the support of a thick cane and truly her walk was more of a hobble. She preferred to sit and had found a new calling within the parish spinning yarn and weaving the wool fabrics that supplied the parish with its rudimentary clothing.
Jestile’s body had mostly recovered, but her heart had fully recovered. She threw herself into her new work and into raising Martha and her siblings. They were given penance from the parish which allowed her to live and focus her life on supplication. Most days she could be heard singing and laughing from her wheel perch chatting with the other elder women. Unless of course she was chastising her young. Martha’s youngest brother Peter still scat about the parish causing little disturbances here and there. Nothing malicious but defiantly noticed.
Izea’s life after that Threshing night and time of mourning had changed drastically. At 8 years old she found her life completely upturned and changed. She had no other living relatives within the parish. She knew her Mother’s sister was still living in another parish, but the crossinglines had long been closed due to the danger of Moros, the God of the sky’s fervent anger. She was alone in fact and in spirit.
After the time of mourning she was housed in her childhood home with a watchmaiden. The morning after the required time of mourning was over, she awoke to find the watchmaiden gone and the Elder of the Right sitting at her table. He instructed her to grab her belongings and follow him where led her to his own home. She was told that that the Left Counsel of the Gods had declared she was to be adopted by the Elder of the Right and taken into his family. Izea had never fully adjusted into her new family’s home. Her adopted mother, Berkin, had been kind and nurturing enough. She was attentive to her own children’s needs and seem to take similar interest in her new daughter’s needs. However, soon after, Izea was not the only child to be brought into the family. Over the course of the next few sun cycles, two more children were taken in. Both daughters. Soon Izea found herself placed in between these two sets of children, much older and belonging to her adoptive parents; and much younger who needed diligent care. This did not help her feeling of being out of place as she grew. Martha had been her escape. Her anchor. Her found family. She was to whom Izea ran after her adoptive father’s sanctions either left her bruised or downtrodden.
A snapping of fingers caught Izea’s attention. Her eyes flashed forward to the present and she looked up catching Martha quizzically looking at her with hunched eyebrows and a tilted mouth, “Off to the trees again Iz?:
Izea shook her head side to side shaking off the dust that clung to her memories, “Must have been. Sorry. I am here now. Let’s get to work..”
Martha turned and walked deeper into the garden with her basket as Izea sighed one last time bending to pick up her own basket filled with garden tools.
They found each other near the beats and plopped down to dig.
“How was your introduction last night,” Martha curiously whispered as they pulled out their shovels to dig up the small beets they were meant to harvest this evening.
Izea rolled her eyes and shoulders and grimaced.
“That bad huh?”
“I just was so bored! He had the personality of dry toast and looked like one too. Instead of asking anything about ME, he assessed my knowledge of the testaments and the dictums of the Gods. It was like being in primary having old man Hagar lecturing us on the dos and don’ts again. I pinched a hole in my thigh with my fingernails in my frustration and boredom.”
“Oh come on! I took the long way back from the Sacellum just to grab a quick peek. I saw him arrive at your house. He was pleasant looking. NOT like dry toast,” Martha paused, “What does dry toast look like anyway?”
Izea counted the beets she had already dug up and placed the into her basket, “Flaky. He looked flaky. His skin was dry. He clearly had not used any balm after bathing and I am pretty sure I could see a rash developing on his neck when he got angry that I did not remember the complete dictums of Rush. That was the worst part! The rash was the only color on his face. He was as white as the snow that falls in the hind cycle,” Izea barked in frustration throwing her hinds down.
Martha stopped; face aghast. Then she suddenly let out a loud laugh raising her head to the sky, “Izzy! It could not have been THAT bad. Surely, he had more color to his face than dry toast.”
“No. No he did not,” Izea conveyed seriously. “Marty, how am I supposed to bind myself to a man and produce his young ones when I won’t want to open my legs because…” Izzy looked up finding Micah’s location with her eyes. He was safely far away enough from them not to hear her whisper, “his dryness will rub off on me and he won’t be able to enter.”
Martha’s face turned as red as the beets in her hand as she gasped, “IZZY,” she growled under her breath, “just because you got to attend the ceremony of awakening doesn’t mean that we can talk about it! Micah will hear! Dictum of Elmec states…”
Martha was cut off by Micah’s sudden appearance at their side. He stood over them casting a long shadow on the rows of beets they had not yet attended to.
“Micah will hear what?” he questioned.
Martha scrambled, “Ahh… soo.. Izzy was just…”
“I was just telling Martha that we are getting caught up in our gossip and are running behind in our work. I didn’t want you to hear because you will remind me, once again, that steady work is a gift to the parish and our parishioners. I didn’t want to disappoint you.” Izzy tiled her head with a coy smile and batted her eye lashes twice.
Micah chuffed not picking up on Izea’s sarcasm, “Ah yes! Of course. I did notice that you both were not moving as fast as you should be. I was coming over to remind you that as I was watching you, I was particularly thinking of the dictum in the last testament about a woman’s work is to be effic…”
Micah stopped cold in the middle of his word. Martha and Izea pulled back as he blanched lifting his arm at his side to point down.
“You… you… your.. g..gl..oov…” Micah stammered as he pointed down more fervently. His eyes wide glaring at Izea’s hands. He turned his feet scrambling in the dirt as he immediately began shouting for the elder on watch of the garden. Izea, confused, looked down at her hands and lifting them up to see the dirt below to see whatever he could be upset about. She did not see anything until Martha grabbed her wrist.
“Iz. Your glove.” Martha froze with Izea’s hand in midair. Her face white and her shoulders starting to quiver.
Martha’s breath stilled as Izea looked to her hand to find that the shovel had somehow sliced through the side of one of her gloves leaving the pale skin on her palm exposed. A light dusting of dirt covered it.
It is known that sometimes when we are wounded, out brain does not comprehend the reality of pain until we see with our own eyes what has occurred. Izea found this to be true as she looked at the dirt on her palm and began to feel the searing pain slide up from her palm into her wrist and up her arm. She grabbed her wrist with her other hand as Martha ripped her glove off trying to brush off the thin layer of dirt that gently clung to the side of her palm. Izea felt herself scream as terror rose up in her throat clawing its way out. The scream escaped and Izea gasped with pain as she watched bright glowing lines grow up her wrist and arm. The pain tingled and thrashed leaving tracks behind its wake as elders and nursemaids ran from the other corner of the garden in alarm and haste. Micah made it back first catching Izea as she collapsed backwards. He grabbed her arm and held it out as a nursemaid with a bucket of water almost crashed into Martha.
Martha tumbled back out of the way as another elder grabbed Izea’s arm from Micah and thrust it into the bucket of water cleansing off the dirt just as Izea’s eyes blinked and rolled back leaving her lifeless in Micah’s arms and her name crying from Matha’s lips.
Her arm sizzling in the bucket below.