Eden West Read online

  Part 1

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  2

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  Part 2

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  11

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  Part 3

  13

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  Part 4

  24

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  Part 5

  33

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  Part 6

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  43

  Acknowledgments

  And the Lord of the sheep went with them, as their leader, and all His sheep followed Him.

  — Enoch 89:22

  I know that the World is a terrible place, filled with wild animals and evil men and wicked women. I know that the Beast stalks the streets of the cities, and the canyons and footpaths beyond, and that only the strongest and wisest of men can resist his seductive ways. I know that the End Days are coming.

  I know that the Lord will visit His wrath upon this World, and that all who remain are doomed to pay a terrible price, for as their fathers have sinned, so sin their sons. I know this day will soon come upon us.

  I know how fortunate I am to be of the Grace, G’bless, and my parents, G’bless, and Father Grace himself, G’bless, and the Archangel Zerachiel, who needs not my blessing for he is himself the Lord’s Command. And I know that His light shines upon Nodd, and that Zerachiel will come to carry us away from the horrors and pain of the End Days. I know that the Ark will come.

  The Day will come, and the Ark will come.

  The Ark will come.

  The Tree grows in the Sacred Heart of the Village. Brother Benedict and Brother Jerome tend it now, examining the leaves and bark for signs of infestation or disease. To tend the Tree is a great privilege.

  I kneel, my knees fitting into depressions worn in the hard soil by other Grace’s knees. I rest my elbows on the smooth top of the stone wall that surrounds the Tree, and I think how wondrous a thing it must be to tread upon those roots and upon the fallen fruit, to be trusted so by Father Grace, by Zerachiel, by the Lord Himself. In nine short months, I will have eighteen summers, and I will become a Higher Cherub like Benedict and Jerome. Perhaps one day Father Grace will allow me this honor as well.

  The Tree itself is a gnarly, ancient thing, its knotted trunk bigger around than Father Grace’s belly, its three main limbs as thick as his thighs. It is as wide as it is tall, arms cork screwing out from the trunk, sprouting uncountable leafy branchlets, reaching almost to the wall, which is itself thirty cubits across.

  It is morning now; sunlight grazes the uppermost leaves of the Tree. A pair of jays alight noisily to peck at the ripe fruit. Brother Jerome rattles the leaves with his staff. Startled, the jays take flight. Leaves fall to the earth.

  I close my eyes and whisper all one hundred eight lines of the Arbor Prayer. When I get to the last line — and the Fruit, and the Lord, and the Ark will come — I open my eyes to find that I have been joined at the wall by several other Grace whispering their own morning devotions. I touch myself with the sign of the Tree and leave the wall to report to Archcherub Brother Enos. Today is second Landay.

  Today, it is my privilege to patrol the borders of Nodd.

  I walk the edge on the second and fourth Landays of the month. Brother Will performs the duty on alternate Landays. We patrol our borders to keep our land pure, to protect ourselves from the evils that lie beyond.

  Nodd covers 7,800 acres. Much of the land is steep and forested, but there is sufficient grazing land for five score sheep and a small herd of milk cows, and enough tillable land for our crops. The fence, eight-foot chain-link with loops of razor wire coiling along the top, is more than thirteen miles long. It takes the better part of a day to walk it.

  In the spring and fall, when the weather is fine, to walk the fence is a pleasure. On this warm September day, I follow the well-trodden path at a leisurely pace, stopping frequently to look out over rolling hills dotted with juniper and sage.

  The world beyond the fence is deceptively peaceful looking. The grass is shorter; the landscape crisscrossed by cattle trails. I see them in the distance, scattered groups of twenty or fewer, each beast branded with the mark of the Rocking K Ranch, our neighbor to the north. The cattle often walk close along the fence line; you can see bits of their coarse hair caught on the chain-link. They hope to find a way into our fertile land. Only rarely do we glimpse the Worldly men of the Rocking K. Though they be sinners all, they forbear to trespass upon us.

  The south of Nodd borders upon the godless Fort Landreau Indian Reservation. The elders of this Lamanite tribe have agreed to respect our borders. Even so, a year ago some of their young men chose to trespass upon us, cutting through the chain-link to poach our pronghorn and mule deer. Brother John discovered the cold and ugly remains of one of their camps, all ashes and gut piles. I pray that I never stumble upon such a scene.

  The river Pison, fast and treacherous, forms our western border. There is no fence, only the water, and it is there that the wild creatures may come and go at will.

  There, I laid eyes upon the wolf.

  It was late last winter, bitter cold and blowing as only Zerachiel himself can blow. The sky was bright blue, the land covered with drifts of crystalline snow, fine and sharp. Now and again gusts of wind tore at the drifts to send clouds of ice particles swirling through the air. Walking north along the Pison, shards of blowing ice and snow cutting at me, I was thinking irreverent thoughts about Brother Enos for sending me out on such a day. Every few minutes, the blowing snow would come so hard I had to stop and pull my hood over my face and wait for the ground storm to subside.

  The Pison herself was nearly frozen; a rare event. A jagged channel about ten cubits across showed black and wet near the center of the river. I was wiping ice from my eyes when I saw the dog sitting at the edge of the ice on the far side of the channel.

  Except it wasn’t a dog. It had a wildness to it. A coyote, I thought. I unslung my carbine, knelt in the snow, and aimed. The creature was a good three hundred cubits off. I did not trust myself to make the shot at that distance. The carbine is a small rifle, and mine was not mounted with a scope. I would have to wait. Should it choose to cross into Nodd, I would send the beast to Zerachiel.

  A fresh gust of wind kicked up another cloud of ice particles, and for several seconds I was blinded by the mini-blizzard. When the snow settled, I saw that the creature was in motion, trotting along the edge of the channel. I knew in that instant, seeing those long legs and the proud tilt of its head, that this was no coyote. It was a wolf.

  As if sensing my thoughts, the wolf stopped and looked directly at me, or so it seemed. It sank back on its haunches and leaped, its long gray body stretching out, impossibly long, sailing over the open water for what seemed like seconds, dropping soft as a shadow upon Nodd’s ice. It trotted casually up the sloped bank and stopped not fifty cubits away. Again, I raised the carbine to my shoulder.

  The wolf looked at me, and this time I was sure he saw me. His tongue showed and his mouth curved into a canine laugh. I released the safety and sighted in on his body, his chest, his heart. My breath came ragged and harsh. I fought to control my breathing. We Cherubim are well trained in the use of firearms. A shot taken in haste is a shot w
asted. I willed my pulse to slow. The wolf laughed, his eyes locked upon me. My finger touched the cold steel of the trigger. Two more slow breaths, I told myself — but I had waited too long. The wolf became a gray blur, kicking up snow, instantly reaching pronghorn speed and disappearing into a stand of juniper. I never fired.

  I returned to the Village, shaking with cold and excitement, and reported what I had seen. Brother Enos questioned me at length. It was clear that he doubted my eyes. “A coyote can look much larger than it is, Brother Jacob, especially when one is alone.”

  “I saw what I saw,” I said. No one in living memory had seen a wolf in Nodd. There are wolves in Yellowstone, but that is hundreds of miles away.

  Despite his doubts, Enos promised to send Jerome the next morning to search for wolf sign.

  That night a Chinook blew in and the temperature shot up into the sixties; the snow melted, the river opened wide, and the ice never returned that year. Jerome found no wolf sign, and neither I nor anyone else has seen the wolf since that day, but I sense its presence, and I wonder at the several lambs that went missing from our flocks last spring.

  Now, months later on this bright September day, Nodd’s border seems a wonderful place to be. I daydream as I walk along the northern fence, imagining myself as a winged Seraph gliding low over hills of gold. My carbine is slung over my right shoulder, its butt slapping my butt with every other step like the hard, encouraging hand of Zerachiel. I feel safe and strong with the fence on my right and the autumn sun warming my face, hearing the faint scuff of my boots on the dry path and the rattling flight call of a meadowlark. On such a day the thought that a wolf might be raiding our flocks fills me not with fear but with reverent wonder that a creature so large, so deadly, so powerful, could make its home unseen among us.

  I am thinking about this when I hear the Worldly voice.

  “Hey, Cult Boy.”

  I jump from the path and land in a crouch, ready, my rifle pointing through the fence at . . . nothing? I look around wildly, searching for the source of the strange voice, but there is no one in sight. Did I imagine it?

  “Are you gonna shoot me?”

  He sounds young.

  “Who’s there?” My own words are sucked up by the sky.

  “I don’t want you to shoot me, Cult Boy.” The voice is coming from beyond the fence.

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Why not? You’re in that cult, aren’t you?”

  With my ears I can tell where the voice is coming from, but my eyes see only tall grass. I move closer. Some of the grass looks different. It’s not grass at all, but some sort of netting. Camouflage netting. I swing my rifle toward it.

  “Show yourself,” I say.

  “Not with that gun pointed at me.”

  “I order you to show yourself.”

  “You got no right to order me, Cult Boy. I’m not on your land.”

  He is right. As long as he stays on his side of the fence, he can do whatever he wishes. We are not permitted to exert our influence beyond the borders of Nodd. I lower my gun.

  “Besides,” the voice says, “how do you know I don’t have a gun pointed at you?” The netting rises; I can see the shape beneath it. A slim hand appears and tugs the camouflage netting aside, and I see three things:

  A rifle, pointing at my belly.

  A smile, lips stretched over the whitest teeth I have ever seen.

  A long, unbound shock of sun-colored hair.

  It is not a boy. It is a girl.

  “My name’s Lynna.” The girl lowers her rifle and walks up to the fence. She is wearing faded blue jeans, pointed boots, and a light camouflage jacket, unzipped. Beneath the unzipped jacket is a thin black shirt.

  I step back a pace.

  She laughs and shakes her head. Her long hair, the color of autumn grass, parted in the middle, moves like a thing alive. Her eyes are the color of the top of the sky at sunset. Many among the Grace have blue eyes, but none so deeply blue as hers.

  “Scared of a girl?”

  “You startled me,” I say. “I could not see you.”

  “That’s why it’s called camouflage, Cult Boy.” She gestures toward the netting with her rifle.

  “Do not call me that.”

  “Why not? You’re in that cult, aren’t you?”

  “We are not a cult.”

  “Yeah, right. You got a name?”

  “I am Jacob Grace.”

  “Jake?”

  “Not Jake. Jacob.”

  She laughs again. It makes me think of bells wrapped in velvet.

  “I’m sorry I scared you, Jake-ub.”

  “I should not be speaking with you.”

  “How come? Am I the spawn of Satan or something? Shit.”

  I am struck speechless by her invoking the name of the Beast. And I have heard the word “shit” only rarely, as when Brother Wallace pronounced it after being butted by one of our rams.

  “You don’t talk much, do you?” she says.

  I ignore her question. “What are you doing here?” I ask.

  “I live here.”

  “I mean here. Right here.” I point at the ground beneath her feet.

  “I’m hunting,” she says.

  “Hunting what?”

  “Cult boys.” She makes her eyes go bigger, then laughs before I can say anything. “Just kidding. We lost a couple of calves out this way,” she says. “Cal says there’s a wolf, or a pack of ’em. We see tracks, but never the wolves.” Her teeth flash in the sunlight. “Ghost wolves.” I can see her neck, soft and tanned, all the way down to her collarbone. As if divining my thoughts, she shrugs off her jacket. “Getting warm out,” she says.

  The thin fabric of her black T-shirt does nothing to conceal the shape of her breasts. I look away. It is, in fact, warm. Beads of sweat have gathered upon my brow. I see the sheen of moisture coating her forehead as well. Vividly, and for but an instant, I imagine wiping it away with my palm.

  “So tell me, O talkative one,” she says. “What do you guys do in there all day? Just, like, pray and stuff?”

  “We pray,” I say. “Don’t you?”

  She snorts. “Yeah, right. Pray to get the hell out of Montana.” She rakes her fingers through her hair, lifting it off the back of her neck.

  “I should not be speaking with you.” I take a step back.

  Her mouth widens; her eyes become slits. Silent laughing now, like the wolf.

  “It was not my intention to amuse you,” I say.

  “Well, you do,” she says. “You’re so stiff.”

  “I must leave.” I continue walking along the fence line.

  She follows me along the fence, letting her left hand drag noisily across the chain-link. “Where you going?”

  “I am walking the fence line.”

  “You do that every day?”

  I stop walking. I know I should not reveal our ways to one of the World, but I hear myself say, “I walk the fence every other Landay.”

  “Landay?” She gives me a puzzled look.

  “You call it Tuesday,” I say.

  “Oh. That’s weird. Why don’t you just call it Tuesday?”

  “Tuesday is its pagan name.” I start walking again. It bothers me that she thinks I am weird.

  “See you in a couple of Landays,” she calls after me.

  I do not look back.

  I return late to the Village.

  Brother Will sees me as I trudge the last few steps to Menshome.

  “Brother Jacob!” he says. “You are just now getting back?”

  “I was delayed,” I tell him. I have missed supper, but that is the least of my concerns. I have much to think on after my encounter with the Worldly girl.

  “We gather for Babel Hour,” Will says. “Hurry!”

  I have forgotten. Tonight the unmarried men and women of Nodd gather in the Hall of Enoch for Singles Services, better known as Babel Hour, the most eagerly anticipated event of the week, for it is the only time w
e men are encouraged to speak to the unmarried Sisters, and they to us. And there will be food.

  For the moment, thoughts of the Worldly girl are driven from my head. I cleanse my hands, face, and feet, change into my formal garb, and make my way to the Hall of Enoch.

  Babel Hour starts with we unwed Brothers, thirteen in number, standing at one side of the hall. We are wearing our robes of somber gray, the color of fortitude. The eight unwed Sisters, gowned and scarved in pale, modest earthen tones, line the opposite wall. Elder Abraham Grace enters the room, takes his place behind the pulpit, and leads us in callbacks. Elder Abraham has four score and six years, but his voice still rolls with Heaven’s thunder.

  “And Arphaxad lived five and thirty years —” he booms, facing the women.

  The women do not respond immediately. That first call comes out of nowhere, and it is often hard to know which Scripture he is quoting.

  “And begat Salah,” one of the women calls back. It’s Sister Olivia Grace, one of the older unmarried women.

  Abraham turns to the men. “And Arphaxad lived after he begat Salah four hundred and three years —” says Elder Abraham.

  “And begat sons and daughters,” shout several of the men. It’s easier once you find your place. Tonight, Abraham has chosen Genesis, which we know well.

  “And Salah lived thirty years —” Abraham calls to the women.

  “And begat Eber,” shout nearly all of the women with one voice.

  We’re rolling now. It goes, back and forth, the men competing with the women to recall every line.

  Elder Abraham can keep it up for more than an hour before his voice gives out, but on this night he ends with Genesis 11 — and Terah died in Haran. It is time for snacks and conversation. That’s the good part.

  And the part that scares me.

  Sister Ruth, daughter of Peter and Naomi, has eyes the color of honey, with flecks of green. Like all the Sisters, Ruth keeps her hair tied back in a bun and covered with a scarf, but her hair is so thick and willful that no matter how tightly she binds it, a few coils of brown always manage to escape. I think about her hair a lot, the fingers of my mind gently tucking those loose strands back beneath her scarf. During Babel Hour, my eyes constantly seek her out. Tonight she is at the far end of the row of women, shouting out responses confidently, a faint smile playing across her lips as she waits for the next call.