Goldeline by Jimmy Cajoleas (i read books txt) 📕

You remember how I used to be. How I would read the Book to you when you were a child, how I took care of you and your mother. We were happy, Goldeline. It could be like that again. I want to be good to you, like a daddy would. Like I offered to your mother all those years ago.

I am shaking, and the kitten shivers in my arms. The Preacher pulls his face away from mine. He speaks louder now, so everyone can hear him.

“All you have to do is repent, Goldeline. Renounce your mother. Call her what she was: a witch, a servant of the Evil One. Confess it with your mouth. I’ll forgive you, God will forgive you. All you have to do is come with me, be my family, and you’ll be free of your mother forever.”

The Preacher reaches his hand out to me and brushes the ashes from my cheek. His fingers are soft, not at all like Gruff’s. His eyes blue and sparkling, almost pleading.

The kitten hisses and thunder cracks above me. I remember again, Momma talking with the Preacher like they were old friends. I remember the Preacher attacking her. I remember every awful truth of it. I remember his name.

“Mr. Cyrus,” I say. “Cyrus Cantor.”

I did it. I said his name out loud. I named him. Above me flits a cardinal, a red bird like a tongue of fire over my head.

“Cyrus Cantor,” I say again, louder, more unscared. Because there’s power in a name, magic in who a person truly is.

More cardinals now, two, three, six. They perch in the trees, gathering like judges. The cardinals are listening.

“Cyrus Cantor,” I say a third time, because magic comes in threes.

A single cardinal lands on my shoulder. The kitten doesn’t even flinch at it.

“Yes, Goldeline?” says the Preacher. His eyes are wide, begging me to forgive him.

“You’re a fraud, Cyrus Cantor,” I say. “You’re a faker and a liar, and I’m not scared of you anymore.”

For just a second his eyes wince with pain, like what I said hurt him, and I realize he really did want me to come home with him. He really did want to be my family. But it only lasts a second.

“Do you reject the salvation of the Lord?” says Cyrus, in full booming preacher voice again.

“It ain’t salvation if it means I have to belong to you,” I say.

Cyrus stands to his full height. His nightmare-black suit, his wild white hair. He gestures wide to the circle of men surrounding us.

“You have heard it yourselves! Before a crowd of witnesses she has denied the Lord. She is her mother’s daughter, corrupted through her bones, deep into her soul. God’s mercy is useless on her. She stands condemned.”

He looks over to Regis, whose gun is trained at me.

“Shoot her,” says Cyrus.

I watch Regis’s hands shake, his confused look back to the Preacher and then to the people of the town. Because that’s who they are—I recognize so many of them now in the torchlight. They are from Templeton, the Townies, the same ones who condemned my momma. Mr. Busby, the baker who used to give me sweets, Mr. Smithee, who owned all the pigs. I know these men. I used to. They were there when Momma died. They remember.

All around us more and more cardinals gather in the unburned trees, the full of them bright as autumn, a forest of movable fire. I can feel a change, something quiet and hidden rising up in the invisibles of me, like something broke open inside of me, filling my heart with fire and with light. I stand taller now, I speak louder in a voice I’ve heard a million times, a voice that isn’t mine but has been with me all along.

“You wanted my momma for your own, Cyrus Cantor,” I say. “You came by our house and begged her.”

“I begged for nothing,” says Cyrus. “Shoot her.”

Regis looks back and forth between me and Cyrus. He glances over his shoulder at some of the other men. They open their eyes wide at him, maybe confused, like maybe they don’t know who to trust right now.

“I can’t just shoot her,” says Regis. “She’s a little girl.”

The kitten meows in my arms.

“You loved my momma,” I say. “You brought her flowers at night. You wanted to marry her.”

Mr. Busby takes his hat off, looks down at his feet. He’s remembering. He’s remembering how pretty Momma was, how maybe some time in his life he wanted to bring her flowers too. I can feel it, I don’t know how, but I know it in my heart.

“What’s this about, Preacher?” says the third man.

They’re questioning him now. They won’t do just anything he says. Something is changing, in the sky, in the clouds and in the wind. I can feel a moon rising in my blood. The Townies are waking up.

“Lies,” hisses Cyrus. “Did I not warn you all? Did I not tell you she had a serpent’s tongue? This girl speaks with the very words of the Evil One, with the authority of the grave. They are sweet to your ears but sour in your belly. Is a large fire not set by a tiny spark? Her words are the spark to a furnace full of lies. Shoot her now lest that fire consume you too.”

“You begged her to marry you. You tried to force her,” I say. “I saw it. But she fought you. She fought hard, my momma did. That’s how you got your scar right there, ain’t it?” I’m crying now. This is all I got. “Tell them, Cyrus Cantor, you murderer. Tell them what you did to my momma.”

I point at the Townies, and two or three of them take a step backward, as if I’m accusing them too. One shorter man, I think he was a butcher in Templeton, he meets my eyes for a second. His are gray as a stone, and he drops his head down,