Lieutenant Sajira regarded the two other women, both as downcast as if they were going to the executioner’s block instead of a hero’s quest. The small cart in front of them seemed more excited. The Mayor droned on and on. “Three women chosen to represent the mind, body, and soul!” he shouted to the crowd.

More likely, she thought, three because there were three seats in the damned cart.

“And young women because of their connection to the seasons and the moon!”

Or because the seats were made for smaller people, and they couldn’t send children. Lieutenant Sajira sighed. Her mother would have been ashamed, but if they hadn’t wanted anyone to second-guess them, they shouldn’t have picked someone so smart to be the ‘mind’.

The Mayor finished speaking, and as the crowd roared approval, Lieutenant Sajira leaned to the left and whispered in Missy’s ear. “Remember, pregs, stay behind me.” She drew back quickly, noting the pregnant woman’s odd, unpleasant smell.

*

Missy nodded as the Lieutenant once more told her what to do. Just ’cause the Lieutenant was smarter didn’t mean Missy couldn’t remember. She didn’t say anything aloud, though. The Lieutenant’s knives looked sharp as all get out, and Missy didn’t want to tangle with them. The Marchioness had once beaten her with a knife handle, and that had been close enough.

Missy rubbed her tummy, the home of the sacred baby. She scanned the crowd and spotted the scowling Marchioness. If it weren’t for the lottery to choose who would go, the Marchioness would have no other trouble than a bastard grandchild that could be shucked from the estate, but a sacred baby needed a father.

Missy wiped a tear from her eye. She’d have excused the Marchioness’ son. Any baby of hers wouldn’t need nothing but her. She wouldn’t have even entered the lottery if her friend Nell hadn’t done it for her. Missy scanned the crowd again, but the Marchioness hadn’t let anyone else from the household come, including her son, it seemed.

That was all for the good. Missy patted the secret in her pocket and stepped down into the cart.

*

Green Woman followed her two fellow heroes into the tiny cart that would take them underground, into the planet’s belly where they would restart the World Clock.

She didn’t really know what that meant. The lottery had come to her chapterhouse. They needed a young woman, and she had just cast off her given name to become Green, one with the planet. The elders had said it would be a good final test.

“Green Woman, blessed be, please take all my sins from me,” the lottery takers had said as they knelt at her feet. She had listened as they rattled off thoughts or deeds that were unworthy of the human soul. Afterward, she’d cut herself, her skin weeping tears of blood as she absorbed all their wrong-doing and purified it. As the blood spilled, she knew she would be the soul of the latest group, the soul of her generation.

Later, when she’d cut that pride out, it hadn’t even hurt. But after a lifetime of taking the sins of others and cutting them out of her, how much of her would be left?

*

Lieutenant Sajira passed by the crone, a seer who had taken this same journey almost a century past. The old woman leaned in toward Lieutenant Sajira’s ear and gave her a personal prophecy. “One of your comrades will betray you.”

Lieutenant Sajira stiffened and would have stopped, but the old woman pushed her on with hands weathered into steel hooks. She eyed the other two as they paused for their prophecies, watching their faces blanch. As the cart started down the long tunnel that would take them to the World Clock, Lieutenant Sajira wondered if they’d all been told the same thing, and she regretted telling the pregs to stay behind her.

*

Missy had been working at the Marchioness’ house since forever. She could remember being five and in the Marchioness’ bedroom, tasked to clean the floor, but trying on a scarf instead. The Marchioness had caught her with, “I don’t know who you think you are, missy, but in this house…” And it went on and on. The Marchioness had made missy her name, since she said the girl thought so much of herself. Missy couldn’t recall who she had been before.

But Evan had been sweet. Little Evan, the Marchioness’ child, who had played with Missy sometimes when she was able to catch a break. And when they were older, he had done different things with her, tender things. She’d known they could never really be together, that he would marry another woman someday, but that was no excuse for forgetting his herbs, for panicking, for everything that came after.

Missy gripped the cart’s handles and thought of her personal prophecy. “Only one of you will make it out alive.”

*

Green Woman tried to swallow her fear as the townsfolk began to crank the tremendous wheel, and the cart slipped down into the dark. The Lieutenant lit a lantern, but it only cast light forward. A glance behind showed a veil of blackness.

Her superiors had told her that the dark existed as a natural state, just like light, but she carried doubt in her heart. The world was filled with light, even starlight at night, and the only way to avoid it was to shut it out. And how could that be natural?

She shook her head as the cart slid to a halt, deep inside the ground, and the Lieutenant lit another lantern, leaving it beside a connecting, downward-sloping tunnel. She gave Green Woman and Missy a hard glance before she started down.

Green Woman kept right near the Lieutenant’s back, wanting to feel the light’s touch as they made their way toward the World Clock. She reached a hand behind her. “All right, Missy? Need any help?”
“No, I’m fine.”

Green Woman made a fist. She’d been hoping the girl would take the hand so Green Woman could pull some comfort from it herself. She put her hands together in front of her instead.

“When you’re needed, you’ll run,” the old crone had said. Green Woman didn’t know if she’d run for help or run away from responsibility.

Fear wasn’t a sin, but Green Woman gripped her old scars anyway, letting the pain focus her mind. Worthy, worthy, she must think worthy thoughts. The soul of the generation had no time to worry for her own.

*

Lieutenant Sajira ground her teeth as Green Woman, the “soul” of the group, kept gripping her old wounds and gasping. Lieutenant Sajira’s mother had taken her to the Green Women when she was a child, but Sajira always had a hard time imagining that the women could take sin away by cutting themselves. It had made her sick to her stomach then; now, it disgusted her in a different way.

She tried to steady herself. “How are you?” She tried to sound kind, swallowing the need to call the woman a thrall.

“Fine,” Green Woman whispered. She cleared her throat. “Good. The dark makes me a little uneasy.”

Lieutenant Sajira shrugged. “Perfectly natural. When it’s dark, we can’t see. When we can’t see, we don’t know what’s going on, and we tend to panic. Perfectly natural.”

“Is everything so easily understood for you?”

Lieutenant Sajira scowled. “I don’t want to get into a debate. We’re nearly to the first door.” Why couldn’t people just trust what she said? She had an education, a military one, finest to be had, yet a Green Woman—all daughters of farmers, no less—saw fit to argue with her.

“Just try and relax,” she said again. She thought of her medical studies. “Take deep breaths.”

*

Missy peered around the two women, watching as the old metal door came into view, its dull surface coated with dust. She didn’t understand the others. She liked the dark; a body couldn’t see, but no one could see her, either. All their education, and they don’t know that?

She put the thought away and got to business, thinking of what they’d told her to do. The other two stuck their hands in holes that were set in the door. Missy knelt and reached into another hole, feeling around inside. She came in contact with the smooth metal bar and gripped it.

“Ready?” the Lieutenant asked. “On three. One, two, three!”

Missy turned her bar when she was supposed to, grunting with the effort. The other two women turned theirs, and soon the door was unlocked, resting easily on its hinges. Missy backed up, and the Lieutenant opened it.

“Easy as pie,” Missy said. The other two smiled at her, but she didn’t think of them as friendly. No one was friendly unless he or she wanted something. Evan had taught her that.

After they’d passed through the door, Missy stuck a rock between it and the jamb in case it had to be opened in a hurry.

*

Green Woman smiled at the crystal-covered chamber on the other side of the door, glad to shake off some uneasiness. The Lieutenant stood back and gestured for her to take the lead. The crystals covered the chamber and led down the various connecting tunnels. Light from the lantern glittered off millions of multi-colored facets.

Green Woman dug into a bag at her hip. She pulled out a pouch of silver powder and said a quick prayer over it, asking the planet to guide them. She sprinkled the powder along the floor, and some of the crystals glowed, lighting a path through the dark. Breathing easier still, Green Woman guided the others’ steps as she picked her way through the crystalline maze, following the glow. As they passed various tunnels, she spotted the Lieutenant stooping and making little marks, obviously not trusting magic to get them out again. Green Woman smiled. The mind would be the mind, but perhaps the Lieutenant would learn trust someday. Green Woman wondered if there were military bones lost in the maze, soldiers who didn’t trust their “souls.”

Green Woman’s confidence grew as she walked. She had her magic to keep her company; the Lieutenant had knowledge and knives, but Missy had nothing. Green Woman relaxed. Even with child, Missy trusted in fate; surely a Green Woman could do the same.

*

Lieutenant Sajira began to doubt that anyone but three women could make it through the tunnels. She had been told that, after the crystalline maze, only the blood of a pregnant woman could open the second door. She hadn’t believed it. It didn’t seem a fitting answer for a puzzle, but pregs stepped forward, nicked her arm on a pair of kitchen scissors she pulled from her apron, and smeared the blood on the stone door.

The door shuddered and grated open. Lieutenant Sajira shrugged and took the lead again. Maybe there was something to it: a show of keeping to old traditions, solidarity to get things done, to do what was needed.

Something to think about, anyway.

*

Missy let the other two pass, and just as she had for the first door, she put a rock on the threshold so it couldn’t close again. They hadn’t seen that the scissors were already bloody when she pulled them out of the apron pocket where she kept her secret. She wiped her scissors on the bottom of her shoe and followed the other two down the hall.

The Mayor had tried to explain all about the World Clock—that it kept the seasons going—but not how the seasons kept going before the Clock was made, or who made it, or why? Seemed to her, it took great magic to make something so big, so it must’ve taken great magic to screw up the seasons so there’d have to be World Clock in the first place.

*

The tunnel ended in a wide chamber, and Green Woman eyed the World Clock that didn’t resemble a clock at all. A great bulk of machinery cradled a huge, smooth sphere at its center. As she went up on tiptoe, she could see that the sphere hovered, and rings revolved sluggishly around it. They should have hit each other, but they seemed to veer and stretch, bending the eye and hurting the brain.

As the Lieutenant examined the machinery, figuring out how it worked, Green Woman stayed away from it. Tingles chased each other like red ants over her skin. It reeked of old magic, far older than Green Women and far beyond their ken. It tugged and tugged at her. As she focused on the other two women in the World Clock’s soft glow, fighting the sensation, she knew why they kept the Clock so far underground. She licked her lips.

The Lieutenant set the lantern down and gestured for Green Woman and Missy to approach.

*

“I think I found what we need to do,” Lieutenant Sajira said as she climbed up on the machine. “I’ll flip this switch. Pregs, you pull that lever.” She looked back over her shoulder at Green Woman. “Come hit that button. And we have to do it all at once, so get ready.”

*

Missy did as she was told; she knew how to obey no matter how much it irked her. The Green Woman stepped hesitantly to her position, rubbing at herself as if she had a bad case of nits. Missy put her hand on the lever and waited. Just as they all were where they needed to be, the light flickered and went out.

*

Green Woman froze. She couldn’t see it anymore, but she could feel the World Clock like a deer feels a wildcat in the dark. It didn’t just want to consume flesh, it wanted a soul, and she was the soul. Panic bloomed like a spot of blood in her chest.

*

“Damn it all!” Lieutenant Sajira said. She heard a gasp and paid it no mind. “Just get ready to pull or push on three. It should give us enough ambient light so that I can find the lantern. Ready? One, two, three.” She toggled the switch. But instead of humming gently to life, the World Clock bucked, sending Lieutenant Sajira flying. As she landed, a glow filled the room, revealing the jerking, hiccupping Clock, its smooth rings banging into one another.

She covered her face as dust and rocks fell from the ceiling and cried out as a heavy weight pinned her legs. Screaming, she couldn’t take her eyes off the point where the rock began, and her legs seemed to end.

She saw movement, and Missy came into and out of the light as she skirted the falling rocks and pressed the button that Green Woman should have pressed. The cavern stopped quaking as the machine settled into its former steadiness.

“Help me.” Lieutenant Sajira wheezed. She couldn’t feel anything from her thighs down. “Can you two pull me out?”

Missy knelt just out of arm’s reach. “I’m dead sorry, Lieutenant. She ran for it, but only one of us gets out alive, you see, and it has to be me.” She picked up the lantern, relit it, turned on her heel, and walked away.

Lieutenant Sajira screamed at her until she turned a corner, lost from sight.

*

Missy had been happy to be pregnant, and she hadn’t wanted anything from Evan, but he had panicked. Like any coward, he’d laid a trap for her. Him and his men held her down and had an old woman take a long hook to her insides where the baby was meant to come from. She’d felt pain as bad as if her soul had been mauled with a hot poker. They’d attacked the core of her till her pre-baby had spilled from her in a rush of blood and mess and hurt.

He’d whispered sorry in her ear while they’d done it. She’d bitten him so hard that she took a bit of flesh from his chin.

It wasn’t enough. He had to die in a right horrible way. She passed through the rock door; she hadn’t needed to bar it open. Green Woman had knocked it back open in her flight, or maybe the small stone had helped her do that. And it was easy as pie to follow the Lieutenant’s marks; Missy didn’t need any magic at all.

She put her hand into her pocket and caressed the bag that held the pre-baby, her little secret. She slipped the scissors out and got them ready.

*

Green Woman pressed her head to the wall, the lantern from the tunnel’s mouth clasped in her hands. The shaking had stopped. Now that the World Clock had been revived, she could hear its hum and nothing else; even the screaming had faded.

“Green Woman…b-b-blessed be…please, p-please, please…” She shook and cried and longed for her knife so she could cut the self-loathing out. One job to do and she’d failed. She’d taken too many sins, and now nothing was left of her. She didn’t have enough of a soul left to be the soul of her generation. And newly named, as well, so there must not have been that much soul in her to begin with.

When she heard a step, she jumped up and lifted the lantern. “Missy!” she shrieked. Green Woman leapt toward the young servant and hugged her hard.

*

Missy endured the Green Woman’s embrace and thought about letting her live. The old crone could have been wrong, but had they ever been wrong before? She’d been told to trust the old woman’s words, so she did what she had to.
“The door didn’t need woman blood, but the baby blood that flows in woman’s blood,” she whispered, “just like I figured. I’m smarter than people think.” She took the scissors out of her dress and plunged them into Green Woman’s back.

*

Green Woman jerked and stumbled away, her hands searching for whatever had just hit her. She stared into Missy’s face with wide eyes.

Missy shook her head. “I am real sorry, Green Woman, but I can’t take the chance of not trusting the crone’s prophecy, and I don’t need no soul slowing me down.”

Green Woman tried to step away, but warm moisture dribbled down her back, and she felt as if she’d been punched by something heavy; it knocked the wind out of her. Missy caught her arms and spun her around, and the ache came again as whatever had been put in her back was removed.

Then her vision narrowed as the same something entered her neck, and all turned to light and air before blackness.

*

Missy let the corpse drop and wiped the scissors on the bottom of her shoe again. “Green Woman, blessed be, please take that sin from me.” She patted the dead woman’s back. “You’ll go to a good place, don’t you worry.”

She got back in the cart and pulled the rope, signaling that the job was done. Sunlight and cheering crowds greeted her, but joyous shouts changed to cries of confusion as she emerged from the tunnel.

“What happened to the others?” the Mayor asked as he helped her from the cart.

“Cave-in ’cause we didn’t do all the things at one time. But we made the Clock go again.”

The Mayor nodded, but his eyes turned sorrowful. “Things have gone wrong in the past, but if the World Clock is going again, it should sort itself out.” He eyed the blue sky. “We might be in for a wild winter. Missy, can you say what—”

Missy put her hand to her head as if she would swoon. “It’s taken a lot out of me, Mayor, all that dark and dust.”

“Of course, of course,” the Mayor said as he caught her arm. “This way, dear child.”

The old crone cackled.

The Mayor led Missy to a small house. “This will be yours while you await the birth of the sacred baby.”

Missy didn’t correct him. Evan hadn’t come forward ’cause he didn’t want to be caught. She didn’t want him caught either, except by her.

As the Mayor left her at the door, she grabbed his coat. “Evan, the Marchioness’ son, is the baby’s father. I’d like to see him, please.”

“I’ll see to it,” the Mayor said with a smile, leaving her be.

Evan soon came and stood in her doorway, knocking timidly, hat in hand, shuffling from foot to foot. She eyed the wound on his chin. He opened his mouth to speak.

“Get the tea,” Missy ordered before he could say anything.

He raised his face to her, and it darkened for a second as if he would scold her for ordering him about. But she put on her best Marchioness-like face, and he did as he was told. While he bent over the stove, she did him like she’d done the Green Woman, and he collapsed, blood pumping from the hole in his neck.

“That’s for my pre-baby who woulda been sacred,” she said as she stood over him. She put a small note on him that said Sake-red Baby Killer, in her unsteady hand. She left the scissors by his side, bloody as can be, walked out the door, and headed for the tunnel underground where her fellows, mind and soul, had died, and where the World Clock waited. She took the little bag out and hugged it to her chest, thinking the sacred cavern a good resting place for them both.

---

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About the Author

Barbara Ann Wright is a science fiction writer from Texas. She writes novels and short stories when not adding to her enormous book collection or ranting on her blog. She is a member of the Writers’ League of Texas and helped create a writing group in Houston called Writer’s Ink. Believing in oneself, in her opinion, is the most important thing a person can do.

She can be found online at www.barbaraannwright.com.