Influences of Stars

Part 2- After

Chapter 17

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Something strange hangs from the trees. Gideon can't look at it. It is a distortion of someone who had cradled him and kissed him as a child, her face now blackened by death and her eyes hollow, dampened by metal coldness.

He never can look. Every time he stands back and watches the others sign off another person to death, he turns away when it comes true. He wouldn't have to if he spoke up for them, but he never does.

Four have been brought to justice now. Still, the minister is not satisfied. He says, and Yeardley agrees, that the town is far from purified. Only yesterday, another baby had been born dead. Something is sucking the life from the town, refusing to offer it the fruitfulness that God demands. They are commanded to multiply upon this land, and the wicked are obstructing this.

Gideon is to transcribe the next meeting. Shall he say anything this time? He never bothers lying to himself. Standing before the house of the newly elected governor, he can see nothing but a darkness which casts a shadow he cannot escape from. He willingly seeks himself into the pit, knowing he shall never reach the top anyway.

He shall stay quiet if it means safety. He can hide his pains with ease as he sits within the meeting and records everything which is spoken. By the end, his pages are soaked in blood but he uses it as ink, and waits. He thinks of nothing; the words are meaningless to him until they are acted upon. Deciding he has time, he ignores the weight of what he listens to and instead remembers what little he can do the moment it ends.

On the way out, Gideon trails behind the others. They must notice he does not follow them out, but nobody turns around to find where he has gone. Doubtless they believe he's trying to soften Yeardley towards him and, what with him being so young, they let him.

However, Gideon doesn't return to the new governor. Instead he takes himself to the back part of the house and whispers the name Tibby gave to him. "Charis?" he says. The first time he stepped throughout the house looking for her, he had called her Mrs Yeardley, but when she appeared she looked so frail and unsuited that he decided never to again.

She appears to him once more. Sometimes she doesn't dare to. Gideon always waits for her for a while at least, though that time she came the moment her name was called.

"Good day," she says, giving him the same small smile she always does. It is so forced that Gideon fears it may rip at her skin, which already looks like it belongs to someone much older. Is it his fault?

"How are you?" he asks. He struggles to look at her in the eye.

She doesn't answer. "How are the others? I...miss them so terribly." She doesn't even have the lifeline of seeing them at church anymore. That used to be like being given air. Now she worships at home.

"Everyone is as usual," he told her. He hasn't heard their laughter outside the house since Charis married, though they have started stepping inside now, sitting at the table and smiling through memories which they are tired of feeling saddened by. Anyone would think she had died, though they haven't seen her in far too long and they know she is being whittled away.

"They send their love," he says. His words are a diluted version of the ones he had heard, but he cannot capture the love that sits within it. Therefore, his words are clinical. He hopes Charis can see that he has inadvertently torn at them.

Neither of them dare to stay any longer than these pleasantries, but as he walks away, she calls after him. "Mr Marlow?" she says. He turns around to face her once more, her voice a gentle plea and her face shattered. "Promise me that you shall always be good to Tibby."