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Agnes at the End of the World
Author: Kelly McWilliams

PART ONE

 

 

PROLOGUE

 

Once, a girl lived in a double-wide trailer on ranchland, beneath a wide white sky tumbled with clouds. The Prophet, a scowling crow of a man, presided over everyone and everything. When the girl wasn’t praying or busy with chores, she’d spin in meadows dancing with bees and dandelions, until Father called her name from the porch: “Agnes, back in the house!”

Run.

In Agnes’s world, secular music was forbidden, as was television, radio, and all technologies of sin. She wore homemade dresses that draped every inch of skin, though they were far too hot. At twelve, boys and girls were forbidden to play together, and the Prophet called the children little sinners with a sneer.

Nevertheless, Agnes loved her world. Loved the meadow and the rocky canyon and the hawks that screeched overhead, winging impossibly high.

One day, the meadow spoke. She was dancing when the hum rose up through the bottoms of her feet and into her small, little-girl bones.

It was like a song. An old song. She pressed her ear to the ground and listened. Rocks pulsed, stones echoed, and clouds, trees, leaves rustled with melody. The girl smiled, her heart full, because God had opened her ears. He’d scratched the earth with His fingernail and revealed a hidden world.

The girl was too young to see the danger in being singled out in a land where the Prophet expected his faithful to march like paper dolls, arm in arm, and all the same.

Perfect obedience produces perfect faith.

In Sunday school, Mrs. King asked the children if they remembered to pray.

“I don’t need to pray,” said Agnes. “Because God is singing, everywhere, all the time.”

Children snickered. Their teacher swiftly crossed the room. She grabbed Agnes’s arm, her face purple with anger, and stretched it across the desk. Then she slammed a Bible’s spine across the girl’s knuckles, over and over, until the middle knuckle of her right hand cracked like a nut.

Pain exploded up her arm. She knew better than to scream.

The woman bent and poured poison into her ear. “Insolent child. Only the Prophet hears the voice of God. Lie again and I’ll show you real pain.”

That night, hand throbbing and swollen, the girl told herself she didn’t hear the sky singing or the earth humming. That she’d never heard such lovely, evil things.

Never. Never.

Perfect obedience produces perfect faith.

Agnes pretended so hard not to hear that one day, she didn’t. The world went silent, all song snuffed out like a candle flame.

When she returned, hesitant and barefoot, to the bee-spun meadow, she heard nothing.

Nothing at all.

 

 

1

 

AGNES


Sickness is punishment for your rebellion. It must be corrected by prayer alone.

—PROPHET JACOB ROLLINS

Agnes, are you in rebellion?”

The question startled her like a rifle’s crack in the dark. Agnes froze with her hand on the trailer’s doorknob, her backpack slung over her shoulder. It was a quarter to midnight, and her fifteen-year-old sister was sitting bolt upright in bed, staring hungrily at her.

Agnes’s pulse throbbed in the hollow of her throat, beating a single word: Caught.

She’d been sneaking out the last Saturday of every month for two years, and she’d never been seen before.

Such an obedient daughter, the matrons always said.

No one would ever suspect that such a sweet, hardworking girl regularly broke one of Red Creek’s strictest Laws—no contact with Outsiders.

It was an act for which she could be banished, and she never would’ve risked it if her brother’s life weren’t at stake. Luckily, her family were deep sleepers. But some sound—or dark intuition—had woken her sister tonight.

Are you in rebellion?

Agnes shut her eyes, dreading the truth.

She’d always wanted, more than anything, to be good. Would God understand she’d never wanted to break His Laws?

Would the Prophet, if he ever found out?

“You can tell me,” her sister coaxed. “I won’t condemn you. I’m the only one who wouldn’t.”

“Please, Beth,” she pleaded. “Go back to sleep.”

Beth was already standing, shivering barefoot in her white nightgown. Her eyes shone lambent in the dark, and Agnes felt a cold wash of fear. She was well acquainted with her sister’s stubbornness.

Oh, why couldn’t she have slept on, like all the times before?

“Wherever you’re going, take me with you.”

“It’s too dangerous.”

Beth’s eyes flicked over the living room. “I don’t care. I’m bored to death here. Please.”

The twins rolled over in their cot. Agnes held her breath, but the younger girls didn’t wake. In the far corner, a crucifix night-light illuminated Ezekiel’s sleeping face.

For as long as Agnes could remember, she and Beth had shared everything—a bed, a hairbrush, their dreams.

Everything, except this. Agnes’s only secret, too dangerous to share.

Beth’s eyes lit up. “Is it a boy? Is that it?”

Agnes pinched the bridge of her nose. She loved her sister dearly, but people whispered she was trouble waiting to happen. They whispered that she was impulsive, spoiled, vain, and exactly the sort of girl to lead an innocent boy into the shadow of the valley of death.

But Agnes loved her too much to believe it.

“No,” she said miserably. “I’m not meeting a boy. Why would you even ask me that?”

Beth cocked her head, calculating. “If not a boy, then what on earth—?”

Agnes’s cheeks burned. She hated living this shadowy double life—the lies breeding ever more lies, the constant shame like a ball of fire in her chest.

She met Beth’s too-pretty eyes, green as lake shallows, and nearly confessed.

I have no choice, she wanted to say. I sold my soul two years ago. If I hadn’t, we’d have buried Ezekiel in the meadow.

Yet to save his life was a grave-deep sin, and so it must be her cross to bear—hers, alone. As much as she loved her sister, she knew Beth wasn’t strong enough to carry that burden for long.

To save her brother’s life, Agnes bit her tongue.

“If you are in rebellion, I understand,” Beth insisted. “Don’t you know I have doubts, too? Lately, I think Red Creek is—”

“Stop,” Agnes whispered fiercely. She’d had enough of her willful younger sister for one night. “It’s none of your business where I go!”

Beth rocked back like she’d been slapped. Then a chill settled over her fine features, an icy mask of rage, and Agnes trembled despite herself.

“Everyone always says you’re so faithful,” Beth bit out. “But it’s all lies, isn’t it?”

“Beth.” She willed her to understand. “I’m trying my best.”

And not everything is about you.

Agnes glanced at Ezekiel clutching his stuffed toy Sheep, then quickly looked away.

“You think I’m a child.” Beth’s voice smarted with hurt. “But you can’t keep me in the dark forever.”

“Don’t tell,” she said urgently. “Hate me if you want, but don’t tell.”

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