Cataclysm Baby

Nessa, Neve, Nevina

All afternoon, we watch our kids scatter through the fields, lowing and bleating, until what storm they smell in the air chases them back to us, to the fence-line that separates pasture from village. They put their hoofed hands upon the rungs of our fences, then resume their sad noises, the warning signs our village long ago learned to heed.

Within an hour we are gathered in the meeting-hall, where, one after another, we men say what we always say first: What bad timing our children have, when all around us grow these fields of barely-hay, of almost-wheat, our first true harvest in almost a decade, more precious than anything else we’ve grown on this blasted plain.

Still, if it comes down to our children or our crops, then for once we must pick our children.

We say this, and we do our best to mean every word, but without our crops, we will starve.

Without our children, without their wool-covered skins so easily shaved, we may be cold, but we will not be hungry.

I am not the richest man in the village, nor the tallest nor the strongest nor the smartest, but I am a married man with my own farm, and so in the meeting-hall my voice is the equal of any other. Once everyone has spoken, I stand again and say what must be said next, what has always been called out whenever wild weather waits on the horizon, whenever our children have warned of some dust-storm or sod-twister threatening our homes and our fields.

What I say is this: It is not all of our children who have to go.

One will be enough, I say.

I say, One has always been enough before, and then my neighbors clamor to their feet, clapping their hands and stomping the wooden floorboards in assent, praising me for my bravery.

This praise, I have seen it given to others but have never received it, and so I beam as I organize the writing of our children’s names on slips of paper, then the mixing of the slips into my hat.

All that’s left is for someone to pick a name, knowing that for the next year he’ll be the most reviled person in town, hated for singling out someone’s son or daughter for what must be done to save the rest.

When no one steps forward, I volunteer myself, because my wife and I only have one child, and out of all the other possibilities what is the chance of her name being the one I choose?

And then reaching into the hat.

And then pulling one slip out.

And then reading my daughter’s name, first to myself, then slowly to the others assembled, who again chant my name, applaud my ability to save their families.

While my wife wails, I go with the other men to lift my daughter over the fence-line and into the town square, the open butcher-block of this shared abattoir. I stroke her head, her long ears. With my nose to her muzzle, I tell her I love her, that her mother loves her, that what happens next is not her fault.

I say, You’re just a little girl—all child-fur and finger-hooves—and so how could it be?

Even though this is her eighth season, still she bawls when we shear her, and even after, when she is naked of wool, folded and trembling in my arms. By dusk-light I hold her quiet so each husband and wife can lay a hand on her forehead, so all that we have done wrong—our petty crimes, our coveting and untruths, our backward parenting, inadequate for these new children— all can be displaced upon my daughter’s back.

As I walk her out of the village with my wife and our neighbors trailing behind, then I try not to look at the empty sky, at the lack of storm our children’s crying prophesied. At the lack of obvious reason for what we are about to do.

I try not to think about how we haven’t had a plain-storm in years.

Not since I was a boy, maybe.

Thanks to this ritual, I tell myself. Thanks to these sacrifices.

Past the far limit of our fences, at the crossroads between our village and the wilderness, there I set down my daughter.

I step back, and from the distance between us I take a stone.

While she quivers, cold on skinny legs, I choose another.

It is enough to simply drive her off, so to the others I say, I do not wish to see my daughter hurt—but as all around me the rocks fly, what hurt there is, what whimper in her throat, what storm in her eyes!

And in return her herd sounds from beyond the fences, adding their voices to her crying, her begging caught beneath our hail of scape-stones that must continue until she is gone away. The other children bang their bodies against the slats, bleat with their mouths so different from ours, enough to distract us, to give us pause.

To give us pause, but not to make us stop.