Behold, the day of Ah-Ren is coming soon, a day when the shackles of His wrath are shuffled off and His fury runs wild in the land. Take heed that only His devout will live to see the day that follows. The Lord has appointed a day of ruination for those who withhold their obedience.
-Gospel of Lucence, Tract 35, Lines 5-7
The Everswamp
They were fifteen believers in all. They’d left their entire lives behind them. Ahead of them, it looked like only death.
Charming woods and hills snaked through with those pellucid rivers laid by Ah-Ren Himself had given way to the wetlands, and beyond them, the true bog itself. The Everswamp. That region, so unsightly, so unforgiving, cloaked in a shroud of dense fog, that was at once inhospitable and indifferent to them. Waterfowl watched them with their sideways gazes. Green gunk festered on the surface of the stagnant water like the most putrid rug.
The only way to traverse the terrain, or lack thereof, was by boat. The flock had spent the last of their silver scales five days earlier on a ramshackle cavalcade of four rowboats that each held four rowers, just enough to seat them all. All fifteen believers who remained.
Gone were the pleasant hikes through forest and meadow. Now they strained to drag their paddles through the miry soup that stretched neverendingly in all directions. Frogs croaked and iridescent insects buzzed as they skimmed along the dingy face of the bog. Somewhere, a bird called out to no one, forlorn. Alone.
The whole place smelled like a corpse.
But when they reached their destination, Beam knew it would all be worth it. She needed only reflect on her hopeless years in the brothel to remember the wretched state of the world. How even now, there were hundreds, maybe thousands of women in conditions as deplorable as hers—but worse, they had never heard the good news of the Lord Ah-Ren.
Even worse were the slaves. Men and women alike who were worked to the bone, mistreated and abused daily. Many of them were subjected to the same kind of treatment as the ladies of a brothel, or even crueler; the only difference was that they were never paid even a single coin for it, and if they tried to flee into the wilderness, they were caught, and they had one of their hands severed for it.
The world was an ugly hell with sinful men to rule it. That would all change when Ah-Ren remade it in His image.
“Overcast today,” Glint commented over the sloshing of bog water.
“No, that’s just how the swamp is,” Fulgor, a bald old man, said grimly. “Get used to it.”
He was right. The dense canopy of willow trees, oaks, and all manner of foliage blocked out most of the sun. They could only tell the time by the narrow columns of daylight stabbing through the gaps between the leaves.
“We will not be here long,” Beam assured her flock. “Our faith will see us through to the other side.” She bowed her head in silent prayer.
Beam prayed more fervently than ever in the Everswamp. She prayed for safe passage to the dry land on the other side—Holcort, the capital city where King Garrotin lived and reigned over his cruel kingdom. She prayed for protection from the monsters that prowled the bog. She was most afraid of the gators, but she also remembered legends of other things that lurked here in the dark so far from civilization. She prayed that Ah-Ren would keep them all safe. Prayed and prayed and prayed.
In the short term, she prayed for nothing but some dry land where they could set up camp. They’d been boating nonstop since the day before and taking turns sleeping and rowing. Those relieved of their rowing duties curled up at the bottoms of their boats, dozing against nothing but the hard wood. They all needed better rest soon.
Were your prayers in the brothel answered? Beam wondered. Was that her own thought, or was that the Lord speaking directly in her mind as He sometimes did? She wasn’t certain. It brought her comfort either way. Every time she thought she saw a shadow move in the deep trees, she looked away and put her faith in Ah-Ren.
The Everswamp had its ways and wiles. She refused to give it what it wanted—her fear.
The one thing in the whole bog that did delight her was the firefly. The glowing golden bugs twinkled in and out of existence like little shooting stars, little embers gliding over the mire. She’d seen them before on warmer nights in Claeloch—never this many at a time. In the dark, they reminded her of stars in the night sky come to earth.
“They’re courting each other,” Luster said from the stern behind her.
“Really?” Beam giggled. “How do you know?”
“I just do. Read it somewhere once.” The water sloshed heavily around his oar. “That’s why they glow. They’re showing each other the light they have within them.” She turned back to see him smiling warmly at her. “That’s how they find their partners. That’s how they find where they belong.” She returned his smile. Did he know what he was saying to her, or did was the love of the Lord Above Lords shining through him without him even knowing?
The others weren’t all as content as Luster.
“Agh!” grumbled Lambent, slapping the back of his neck. He was a man in his fifties with a big, bushy, brown mustache that trailed down past his chin. Whenever he talked, it was only his mustache that seemed to move. “These damned biting flies... There’s no end to them!” He swatted another one off his left wrist. “Ah-Ren damn this accursed place...”
“You should never use the Lord’s name in vain,” Glimmer corrected him as she rowed. “Shame on you!”
“It will be forgiven,” said Beam. “The Lord Above Lords only asks us to admit our sin and place it at His feet. ‘For he turns our transgressions to righteousness and transforms our sin to glory.’”
“That’s from the fourth Tract, isn’t it?” Glimmer, the young barmaid from Pythe, was one of Beam’s earliest and most eager converts.
“That’s right. Good memory, Glimmer.”
“When you pray for forgiveness,” Fulgor muttered to Lambent, “ask Ah-Ren when we might find something to eat, while you’re at it.” He snickered softly to himself in that way of an elderly man, not caring how many laughed along with him but content simply to have tickled his own humor. Indeed, no one else laughed. Yet no one could disagree either.
It had been a few days since they’d eaten. Unlike before, when there was an end in sight to their planned fast, they didn’t know when they would eat again. It was starting to worry Beam. But whenever she worried, she chastised the worry away. Where my fear is, let there be faith. Where my fear is, let there be faith...
The four boats pressed onward. Onward into the depths of the Everswamp, where the canopy thickened overhead, where the daylight thinned and grayed like an old woman’s hair near the end of her life. They were fifteen believers in all, and they were far from home.
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***
The next day, one of Beam’s prayers was answered.
It was on their sixth day adrift that they finally spotted a lone hill in the bog, a muddy bit of risen land wide enough for them to tie up their boats and make a decent camp for the first time in days. The whole flock cheered when they saw it.
They unfurled their tents, stretched their legs, jumped up and down for joy. Four men gathered the driest tinder they could find; they scraped lint off their clothing to supplement it. Glimmer and Ray, with Fulgor’s guidance, speared a duck and four fish for the group to eat.
Others gathered wood for the cooking spits. Green wood was best, wet wood, and there was no shortage of that all around them. They needed a thicker branch to use as the spit for the duck, which several people pitched in to pluck, gut, and clean. Beam and Luster helped clean the fish, and when they were done, they scooped up the cleanest bog water they could find.
Ray knew an old wives’ trick to filter out the impurities. Using a broken bottle and one of her cooking pots, she filled the bottle with stones and poured the murky water through it, so that only clear water flowed into the pot. They set the first pot to boil over the fire.
“Ah-Ren provides,” Beam said solemnly.
“Ah-Ren provides,” her flock echoed gratefully.
She breathed a sigh of relief. “Even here.”
Aurora was the youngest of her disciples; she had silver-blond hair tied in a youthful braid that she threw over either shoulder to get it out of her way as she worked. At only sixteen years of age, she was exceedingly capable and contributed as much as any of the adults. Aurora picked dandelions and other edible weeds from their tiny island that could be boiled along with the water. “Greens help stretch the food,” she said cheerfully in her small, soft voice. “That’s what my mother always said.”
“Wise words,” Ray nodded. “She sounds like a wise woman.”
Aurora nodded, her smile fading. “She was.”
Beam felt the sting of that past tense. Aurora was a quiet thing, keeping mostly to herself, and she stayed mum about her upbringing except to say that she could no longer stay in her childhood home. An orphan? Beam wondered. Like me? Or maybe Aurora’s mother was the only parent it hurt to lose, as was often the case with children in Grackenwell.
“You’ll see her again one day,” Beam assured her. She hooked her finger under the girl’s chin, lifting her face gently. Aurora’s eyes brightened a bit. “Won’t you?” The girl nodded. “‘Who can raise the dead but Ah-Ren?’”
Aurora shook her head faithfully. “No one.”
“Hope you all like your duck on the undercooked side,” said Shine. She was a short-haired, androgynous woman only a year or two older than Beam. She turned the spit-roasted bird over the feeble flames. “I don’t know how much longer we can wait!”
Luster snorted good-naturedly. “That’s how you cook it, when you know what you’re doing. Preserves the flavor!”
Steam rose from the roasting fish. Duck fat sizzled and popped from its skin. The aroma alone was enough to ease Beam’s gnawing hunger, just the promise of food to come. The bitter bite of the greens would pair well with the richness of the duck, and the nutritious fish would fill them up and make them strong. Even in this most grotesque of places, Ah-Ren provided. They would feast on the fruits of their faith.
Luster passed Beam the pot of drinking water, which had finally cooled after its boiling. She drank from it and passed it on. She was so thirsty that she didn’t even mind its off taste—she trusted it was safe enough to drink. Safer than dying of thirst, surely.
Dinner was smaller than everyone expected. A duck, four small fish, and a handful of dandelion greens could only go so far, for they were fifteen believers in all, fifteen hungers to be sated. It was just enough food to take the edge off. The pot of boiled water was empty save for a sip by the time it returned Beam, and she gave this remainder to Aurora. Everyone started to pass around the remnant water that held the dandelion greens. People sucked bones clean.
It was no feast, but it was enough for now. The flock was so grateful for this respite that few remained around the campfire at the end of the night. Ray slept little; she was always up late and up early. She and Aurora were still up chatting that night when Beam retired.
She lay her head down next to Luster. She was tense, expecting him to be amorous again like the last night they shared together. The bog was too unnerving for her to relax enough for him in that way.
But he was barely awake when she crawled up next to him. They kissed each other goodnight. Moments later, he was snoring. She sighed and gazed out the tent as she drifted off to sleep, listening to the murmurs of her disciples and the nighttime sounds of the swamp. It was all strangely serene to her now.
As she teetered on the edge of dreaming, she spied two fireflies hovering above the bog, two dim gold lights just over its surface that cast reflections on the water. They never went out. They never flew away. They must have been intent on courting each other.
She fell asleep thinking of Luster.
***
Beam woke up in the night. Her sleep was restless, despite her exhaustion. Everyone had gone to bed for the night by then. The only sounds that remained were the crackling fire, the chirping of insects and frogs.
One of her eyes eased open and she glimpsed many courting pairs of fireflies hovering above the swamp. There were too many to count. There must have been dozens.
They all hovered in place. They never went out. They never moved. Two by two, they levitated silently in the air, two by two as far as she could see, receding into tiny pinpricks of light deeper into the swamp. Pair after pair of golden lights in perfect harmony, each of the two a finger’s length apart.
She fell back asleep.
***
It was deep into the heart of the night when she woke again, the no man’s land between midnight and the early morning. Nothing good came at such an hour—she remembered this bit of wisdom from her childhood. The campfire had started to die down into embers. The swamp was eerily quiet, the insects all gone to bed, too, and the frogs must have hopped elsewhere.
Even the fireflies must have flown away in their mating pairs. Only two of them remained. Two still fireflies suspended in midair over the water.
Then they both went out at once, only for an instant, and then they lit up again in unison. How could they have coordinated something like that? Beam sat up in her tent, leaned forward for a closer look.
Only then did she see that they were not fireflies at all. The two lights sank suddenly into the water. Just before they disappeared, she saw the two black slits that split them down the middle.
They were eyes.
***
Beam shot up in bed.
It was still dark outside. The fire still burned low. There were no fireflies left at all, nothing but the embers of their cooking fire and the howling dark abyss all around. Water trickled and swished softly against the island.
It was all a bad dream. Fireflies didn’t stay glowing like that—they couldn’t. Of course it was all a figment of her imagination.
But in her dream, how had she known the fire would have burned out the way it did? And how would she have known all the fireflies—the real ones—would be gone? She pinched herself to make sure she was truly awake this time. She was.
She lay her head back down. It took her a long while to fall asleep again after that. Where my fear is, let there be faith. Where my fear is, let there be faith.
It didn’t work so well this time. All she could do was try to forget what she saw.
But as with many things in her life that she’d wanted to forget, all she could do was see it over and over again.
***
“Is everything all right, Lady Beam?” Glimmer asked her the next morning. They had packed up their camp and set back out in their boats into the water.
“Of course, Glimmer,” Beam lied.
“You seem tired. Did you sleep well? What troubles you?”
Beam didn’t want to tell her, or anyone else, the truth—not even Luster. “Plagued by visions.” She told a half-lie instead. Glimmer looked like she only half-believed her. “Fret not, Glimmer. The Lord Ah-Ren guides us.”
They rowed on for a long while in silence. Ray hummed an old song to herself. Beam looked over the edge of the boat discreetly, scanning the water for any of those golden eyes looking back at her. She saw none.
Of course they’d hide now, she thought. Even down here in the shadow of the willows, it was light enough that some dregs of daylight still reached them. Ah-Ren, protect us. The spirit of the Bogman and the evils of this place are all around us. Only You can protect us.
“Lady Beam!” Shine called from the head of the cavalcade. “Up ahead! Do you see that? Look!”
Beam picked her head up. She looked ahead of the procession of boats and her jaw dropped. “Ah-Ren above,” she gasped.