Rain.
blood rain is on white snow, and the snow drinks it, and turns pink, then red, then flesh color. Three hours before the light. We lie in a windbreak above the road, twelve men, and breathe up our sleeve so that the steam does not give out.
Beautiful.
Tell me it's not nice, and I'll spit in your mouth.
Pink snow. Black guns. The road below is a gray ribbon, and the lucky ones will be walking along it now.
Breathe up your sleeve. Breathe up your sleeve, kids.
My name is Yarmila, daughter of Yarmila, daughter of Anezka. I'm thirty-one years old. I took communion four times in my life: at seven, at fourteen, at twenty, at twenty-nine.
She was in my language four times.
Not diluted. Not red water. Not wine with a meerka, like the one they drink in open service. She.
The first time, I cried. The second one is I don't remember, I was sick. Three, I saw the light and couldn't eat after three days. The fourth is nothing. Nothing at all. Just a cold heaviness on the tongue, and the taste of iron, and that's it.
Father Ondrey said, "You're ready."
I asked why.
He said, “There is no light every time.”
Our house is seventeen houses in decay behind the Goat Ridge, and a wall and a prayer hall without a cross, because the cross is a sign of execution, and we do not honor execution, we honor the Judge.
Listen to what it was like.
In the year one thousand two hundred and four heavens were opened, and the Son returned, as promised, with the sword as promised, and the world expected that he, the world, people, us, the dirty, the weak, the thieves, the fornicators, the beating children, would be judged.
We weren't judged.
Judged the Perfect.
He who knew everything and could all, who made the world as it is, who saw every child dying in a hole and did not move his hand, that was the one who was put before the sword. The Son asked the Father, and the Father did not answer, for there was nothing to answer.
And the sentence was executed.
With my hands. He put his hands in his chest and tore it to pieces, because that is the way those who do not have a hangman above are executed.
That's our faith. It is shorter than any other, and it requires no hope, no return, no tomorrow.
We don't expect a resurrection.
We've seen the trial before.
The train is on at four o'clock.
You hear it before you see it: wheels, chains, coughs. Always coughing. Everything in this world coughs.
Eight carts. Twenty-two guards were Tobias’s, and Tobias never makes a mistake because Tobias counts aloud and twice, and for that he was beaten as a child, and for that he is now taken to every exit.
Twenty-two. We're twelve.
Good.
Not because we're stronger. Because they are going and we are lying down, and the one lying down is worth three walking, and also because they are carrying someone else’s, and we are going after ours.
In the third cart, under straw, under bags of salt, in a box of yew, covered with lead, a reliquary from Khlumets. Ours. The one taken from us in the sixty-third, when the Imperials came, they burned the chapel, took away two brothers, and took the vessel away, and there were four measures in the vessel.
Four.
For eight years he stood in the treasury of the First Emperor, and no one opened it, because to open it is to spend, and spend only those who have a lot.
Now he's on his way. Kutna. Sell it.
Sell it.
Say that word out loud. Ride it in your mouth.
To sell the blood of the Convicted, for mines, for guns, for four months' wages to two companies.
Father Ondrey said as we left, not for revenge.
I said, Of course, Father.
I lied to the priest in the face and he knew it and he blessed me, and that's part of the rite, even though it's not written about.
Time.
Tobias flints. Fire goes along the cord, the cord goes under the pine tree, the pine falls across the road, and it's the simplest thing in the world, and it always works.
Scream.
The horse stands on its hind legs, and the cart goes into the ditch, and the bags of salt open, and the salt in the pink snow is white, dazzling white, whitest than anything I have seen in eight years.
We're going down.
Don't run. Come. Father Ondrei taught that the one who runs comes without breathing and dies first.
The first one I kill in the neck. He's young and in imperial gray, and he turns to me, and he has that expression on his face -- "I'll explain it now" -- that people have in the moment before.
He doesn't explain.
Heat on the arm. Steam from heat in cold air.
The second unwraps the gun, and Tobias breaks his elbow, and he screams very thinly, thinner than the women scream, and falls to his knees in salt.
Martin laughs.
Martin is nineteen. Martin laughs all the time, every time, and then he's been vomiting for two days, and he doesn't remember that he was laughing, and we don't tell him.
Red snow. White salt. Black guns.
Scream. Metal. Someone calls their mother in our language or in theirs, you can't tell, the mothers who call have the same language for all.
Beautiful.
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, and here is the truth about who I am.
Twenty-two of them, and they're not cowards.
The sergeant gathers six at the second cart, and they get up right, back to back, and fire a volley, and Havel falls, and Brzetislav falls, and Marta, who baked bread at everyone, sits in the snow and holds his stomach with both hands and looks down in surprise.
Marta.
I'm not going to her. I'm going to the third cart because that's why we're here, and because if I go to her, we'll leave without a vessel, and then the Marta will sit in the snow for nothing.
That's what faith is made of. Not out of the light on the tongue.
Because you don't turn your head.
Tees. Lead. The castle.
The castle is good, it's imperial, and I hit it with a butt four times, five, six times, and on the seventh it bursts, and the lid goes up, and inside it is straw, and in the straw it is.
The silver is darkened. Gran glass in silver. The seal is chlumetsky, ours, with a nail and a sword.
I'm holding it for the first time in my life.
I think I'm holding it.
I think I am thirty-one years old and everything that was up to that moment was the road to that minute.
I lift it up, silly, childish, overhead, so that we can see it, and ours see it, and someone shouts it, and the scream is picked up, and that scream is probably heard in Khotsen.
And the sergeant is shooting.
He didn't aim at me. He was aiming at me, but the bullet is going to silver.
The glass doesn't break. The glass breaks -- different, quieter than you expect, with a short dry sound, like when you step on ice, and I feel it getting easier in my hands.
Four measures go into the snow.
They don't spread out. They go down into the salt, into the pink, united body, and the snow around them darkens, and I kneel and I row it with my hands, snow with salt and with it, and shove it into my mouth, and swallow and cut my lips against the ice, and swallow, and there is nothing under me but the ground.
Earth.
She went into the ground.
Like then. As the first time, six hundred and sixty-six years ago, all in the earth, and this is how it was, this is what those who stood under the sky then saw and looked upwards saw.
Nothing's going on.
I'm kneeling, I have a mouth full of salt, snow and iron, lips slashed, hands in someone else's blood and in his, and nothing happens.
No lights.
It's not always light.
The sergeant dies at the hand of Tobias, who counts aloud and therefore knows that he fired and did not have time to reload.
We're leaving with six. Six out of twelve. Marta is not with us. Havel's not with us. Brzetislav is not with us.
We carry away the empty reliquary because silver is silver and we are not rich.
Martin laughs all the way to the pass. At the pass he vomits, then cries and asks whether we got Marta out, and we tell him yes.
We lie to the young, and that is part of the ritual, even though it is not written about.
Father Ondrei is listening and silent.
Then he asks, have you been drinking?
I said, I was eating snow.
He asks, was there light?
I say no.
He's been looking at me for a long time, and I'm waiting. I expect him to say, “I’m not worthy.” So, guilt. So the rite is wrong, and we have to repent.
He says:
- All right.
I ask, what's good?
He says:
- It's good you didn't lie to me about the light. People lie about light. One in two who returns lies about the light because they fear that without the light they will be driven out.
He puts his hand on the back of my head like they put it on kids.
- The trial took place, he says. It happened once, in front of everyone, and the whole world saw it. You don't have to feel. You're supposed to remember.
I remember.
I remember the snow was pink and the salt was white.
I remember that she went to the ground as one body and did not mix until I started patting her hands.
I remember that Marta was holding her stomach with both hands and that I didn't turn my head.
I remember feeling good. This is what I remember best, and I don’t say it in confession, because it’s not penance, it’s just that they stop looking in the eye.
I felt good.
blood rain. White salt. Black guns. Twenty-two and twelve and six ago.
Tell me it's not nice.
Tell me this as you look at me, and I will accept everything from you, a trial, a sentence, a sword, anything.
You won't say that.
You come to us in the spring, when you don't have your third child in a row, and you'll queue up against our wall with strangers, and they'll pour you red water and a meerka, because we don't have the real one anymore.
You'll drink.
And say you've seen the light.