The Stars Never Rise Read online

  “Don’t swear, Mel,” I scolded, but the warning sounded hollow and hypocritical, even to my own ears. We both knew better than to curse in public, but there was no one at home to hear or report us. “Profanity is a sin.”

  Melanie rolled her eyes. “Everything worth doing is a sin.”

  “I know.” And honestly, it was kind of hard for me to worry about the state of my immortal soul when my mortal body’s need for food and shelter was so much more urgent.

  I plucked the two slim silver rings from the top of our dresser and tossed her one. Melanie groaned again, then slid her purity ring onto the third finger of her right hand while I did the same. “Nina Kane” was scratched into mine because I’d “misplaced” it four times during the first semester of my freshman year and Sister Hope had engraved my name on the inside to ensure that it would be easily returned to me.

  Ours weren’t real silver, and they certainly weren’t inlaid, like Sarah Turner’s purity ring. Ours were stainless steel, plucked from the impulse-buy display at the Grab-n-Go one afternoon when I was fourteen, while Melanie distracted the clerk by dropping a half-gallon of milk in aisle one.

  Fortunately, the sisters didn’t care where the rings came from or what they’d cost, so long as we wore them faithfully beginning in the ninth grade as a symbol of our vow to preserve our innocence and virtue until the day we either gave ourselves to a worthy husband or committed to celibate service within the Church.

  I knew girls who took that promise very seriously.

  I also knew girls who lied through their teeth.

  I didn’t know a single boy who’d ever worn a purity ring. Evidently, their virginity was worth even less than the stolen band of steel around my finger.

  I grabbed my satchel on my way out of the room, and our conversation automatically paused as we passed our mother’s door. In the kitchen, I pulled the last half of the last loaf of bread from an otherwise empty cabinet, and Melanie frowned with one hand on the pantry door, staring at the calendar I’d tacked up to keep track of my erratic work schedule—I worked whenever the nursery needed me. “What’s today?”

  “Thursday.”

  “Thursday the fourth?” Her frown deepened, and I had to push her aside to grab a half-empty jar of peanut butter from the nearly bare pantry. “It can’t be the fourth already.”

  “It is, unless four no longer follows three. Why?” I glanced at the calendar and saw the problem. “History test?”

  “What?” Melanie sank into a rickety chair at the scratched table. “Oh. Yeah.”

  “You didn’t study?” I set a napkin and the jar of peanut butter in front of her, then added a butter knife and one of the two slices of toast as they popped up from the toaster.

  She shrugged. “It’s just a fill-in-the-blank on the four stages of the Holy Reformation.” But the way she spread peanut butter on her bread, her gaze only half focused, said she was worried.

  “And those stages would be…?”

  Melanie sighed. “The widespread decline of common morals, the subsequent onslaught of demonic forces, the glorious triumph of the Church over the worldwide spiritual threat, and the eventual unification of the people under a single divine ministry.” She was quoting the textbook almost verbatim.

  “Good. Come on.” I took the knife from her and made my own breakfast, then tossed Melanie a modest navy sweater and herded her out the back door, where the town perimeter wall was easily visible between the small houses that backed up to ours. The wall was solid steel plating fifteen feet tall, topped with large loops of razor wire. In the middle of the night, I heard the metal groan with every strong gust of wind. I saw the glint of sun on razor wire in my dreams.

  But clouds had rolled in since my predawn activities, and the sky was now gray with them.

  “December eighth, 2034,” I said around a mouthful of peanut butter and bread as we rounded the house and stepped over the broken cinder block hiding the emergency cash I kept wrapped in a plastic bag. If Mom knew we had money, she’d spend it on something less important than heat and power, two resources I greatly valued.

  “Um…the first televised possession, caught on film at a holiday parade, before the Church abolished public television to support and protect the moral growth of the people.” Melanie shoved one arm into her sweater sleeve, then transferred her toast to the other hand and pulled the other half of her cardigan on over her satchel strap. “So, how dangerous could secular programming have been, anyway? It’s just a bunch of videos, like the discs in Mr. Yung’s basement, right? Stories being acted out, like we used to do when we were kids?”

  “I guess.” But according to the Church, those videos tempted people to sin.

  Mr. Yung had an old TV and a disc player that still worked. I’d seen one of his videos once, but the disc was badly damaged, so I only caught glimpses of couples swaying in sync with one another, dressed in snug clothes. At the time, I’d been scandalized by the sight of boys and girls in open physical contact with one another—those would be secret shames in our postwar world. But the adults in the video didn’t seem to care, and no one was driven to wanton displays of flesh or desire, that I could see.

  There was no sound on the video, though, so I couldn’t hear what kind of music they’d had or what they were saying.

  Maybe the sin and temptation were more obvious in the parts I couldn’t hear.

  We turned left on the cracked sidewalk in front of our house, and I eyed the dark clouds in the sky, struggling to bring my thoughts back on task. “September twenty-ninth, 2036.”

  Melanie held her toast by one corner. She still hadn’t taken a bite. “The first verified exorcism. Established worldwide credibility for the Unified Church, whose exorcist—the great Katherine Abbot—performed the procedure in front of a televised audience of millions.”

  “Good. June—”

  “Did you know that wasn’t even her real name?” Melanie said suddenly.

  “What wasn’t whose name?” We turned left again and followed the railroad tracks between the backyards of the houses a block over from ours. The train hadn’t run since long before I was born, but little grass grew between the rails, which made it an easy shortcut on the days we were running late. Which was most days, thanks to my sister.

  “Katherine Abbot. Her name wasn’t really Katherine. The Church renamed her because they thought her real name didn’t sound serious enough, or holy enough, or something like that.”

  “So what was her real name?”

  Melanie shrugged, and her uneaten toast flopped in her hand. “I don’t know.”

  “Then how do you know it wasn’t Katherine?”

  “Adam told me.”

  “Adam, who needs your help to add double digit numbers?” I said as we cut through the easement between two yards and back onto the street.

  “He’s bad at math, not history. His dad says the Church does it all the time—changes facts. Mr. Yung says history is written by the victor, and if the elderly don’t pass down their memories, eventually there won’t be anyone else left alive who knows how the war was really fought.”

  I stopped cold on the sidewalk and grabbed her arm, holding so tight she flinched, but I couldn’t let go. Not until she understood. “Melanie, that’s heresy,” I hissed, glancing around at the houses on both sides of the road. Fortunately, the street was deserted. “If Adam Yung and his father want to risk their immortal souls”—or more accurately, their mortal lives—“by questioning the Church, that’s their business. But you stay out of it.”

  Skepticism and profanity were largely harmless in private, and goodness knows I couldn’t claim innocence on either part. But the more often they were indulged, the more likely they were to be overheard. And reported. And punished.

  “You’re going to have to tutor him in public. At the laundry, or the park, or something.” Anywhere public exposure would keep him from filling my impressionable sister’s head with dangerous thoughts she couldn’t resist sharing with the
rest of the world.

  I wanted to tell her to stop tutoring him, but frankly, we needed the food.

  “Why aren’t you eating?” I glanced pointedly at her untouched breakfast.

  “I told you. I don’t feel good.” She scowled and pulled her arm from my grip. “Next date.”

  “Um…June 2041.” I pushed her toast closer to her mouth, and she finally took a bite.

  “The Holy Proclamation, establishing the Unified Church as the sole political and spiritual authority,” she said, with her mouth still full.

  “Okay, let’s backtrack.” I made a gesture linking her breakfast and her face, and Melanie reluctantly took another bite. “May twelfth, 2031.”

  “The Day of Great Sorrow.” Her face paled, and she chewed in solemn silence for several seconds before elaborating. “The day the number of stillbirths officially surpassed the number of live births. A day of mourning the world over. The Day of Great Sorrow led to the realization that the well of souls had run dry, which led to the discovery of demons among us. Which then led to the Great Purification, undertaken by the Unified Church, and the dissolution of all secular government in the Western Hemisphere. Right?”

  “That’s a bit simplistic as a summary….” The discovery of demons was a particularly grisly time in human history, and the various factions of our former government didn’t disband voluntarily or peacefully. “But probably good enough for a tenth-grade history test. Eat your toast.”

  We could see the school compound by then, behind its tall iron gate. She couldn’t take food inside, and we had only minutes until the bell.

  “Here. Take half.” Mellie ripped her bread in two and gave me the bigger piece. “I can’t eat it all.”

  I shoved the bread into my mouth and chewed as fast as I could—we couldn’t afford to waste perfectly good food—and I’d just swallowed the last of it when the bell started ringing.

  “Come on!” I pulled her with me as I raced down the sidewalk, and we slid through the gate a second before it rolled shut behind us.

  “Cutting it close again, Nina,” Sister Anabelle said as she locked the gate, her skirt swishing around her ankles beneath the hem of her cassock.

  “My fault!” Melanie called over one shoulder, racing toward her first class in the secondary building, her hair flying behind her. “Gotta go!”

  “What do you have this morning?” Anabelle fell into step with me as she tucked her key ring into a pocket hidden by a fold in her long, fitted Church cassock—light blue for teachers. Anabelle’s robes were very simple and plain because she was still a pledge, but once she was consecrated, they would be embroidered in elaborate navy swoops and flames, signaling her status and authority to the entire world.

  “Um…I have kindergartners today.” All seniors began the day with an hour of service. I’d been selected as an elementary school aide because I already had experience with kids, from working in the children’s home on weekends.

  “Have you given any more thought to making an early commitment to the Church? I think you’d make a wonderful teacher.”

  I glanced at the brand on the back of her right hand—four wavy lines twisting around one another to form a stylized column of fire, burned into her flesh the day she’d pledged. A permanent mark to seal a permanent choice.

  Anabelle’s brand was a simplified version of the seal of the Unified Church, displayed on flags, official documents, currency, and the sides of all public vehicles. Each individual flame represented one of the sacred obligations, and together they formed the symbolic blaze with which the Church claimed to have rid the world of evil.

  Except for the degenerates roaming unchecked in the badlands and the demons still resisting purification in several volatile regions in Asia.

  But no one was worried about any of that. Not openly, anyway. The Church had it all under control—they told us so every day—and the only time willful ignorance didn’t qualify as a sin was when the Church didn’t want us to know something.

  Which was why Melanie couldn’t understand my determination to pledge. But Mellie and I were living different lives, with different obligations and responsibilities. She had three more years to read illicit books and pretend to care about math while she tutored Adam Yung while wearing stolen mascara.

  I had a deadbeat mother to hide from the Church, utility bills to pay, and a decorum-challenged little sister to shield from the watchful eyes of the school teachers. The Church represented my best shot at holding all that together until Melanie was old enough and mature enough to fend for herself.

  The catch? Church service was forever. Mellie would grow up and have a life of her own, but I would not. I would belong to the Church until the day I died, and even when that day came, they would decide what would become of my immortal soul.

  I’d been mentally fighting the choice for months, scrambling to find some other way to make things work, but my miracle had failed to materialize, and wasting the rest of my senior year wasn’t going to change that.

  I couldn’t officially join until I turned eighteen, which was still a year and four days away, but early commitments were encouraged, and the earlier I pledged, the more likely I was to get my first-choice assignment.

  Teaching. In New Temperance. Near Melanie. That was the whole point of pledging, for me.

  “I was thinking of doing it during the afternoon service.” I took a deep breath and swallowed a familiar wave of nausea. “Today.”

  “Oh, Nina, I’m so happy for you!” Anabelle threw her arms around me as if nothing had changed since I was a needy twelve-year-old, desperate for friendship and advice, and she was a senior, already pledged to the Church and assigned to mentor the girls in my seventh-grade class. Anabelle knew about my mother’s problem—she’d known even way back then—but she hadn’t told anyone. She trusted me to take care of Melanie and to ask for help when I needed it.

  Sometimes talking to her still felt like talking to an older classmate, but the powder-blue cassock and the brand on the back of her hand were stern reminders of her new reality.

  She was Sister Anabelle now. The Church owned her, body and soul.

  Soon it would own me too.

  “I have to admit, I’m happy for me too,” Anabelle said, and her smile was reassuring. If she loved her job so much, pledging to the Church couldn’t be that bad, right? “I was hoping you’d decide to pledge before the consecration. I didn’t want to miss your big day!”

  “Oh, I completely forgot!” Anabelle had been selected for consecration into the leadership levels of the Church just five years after she’d joined, much sooner than the average. Unfortunately, after the annual ceremony—just a few days away—she would be transferred to another town, to learn under new guidance and to experience more of the world than New Temperance had to offer.

  I could hardly imagine school without Anabelle. Even with our age difference and her Church brand standing between us, she was the closest thing I had to a friend.

  We were three doors from the kindergarten wing when the rain started, an instant, violent deluge bursting from the clouds as if they’d been ripped open at some invisible seam. Even under the walkway awning, we were assaulted by icy rain daggers with every gust of wind. Anabelle and I sprinted for the door, but the knob was torn from my hand before I could turn it.

  The door flew open and Sister Camilla marched past us into the rain, dragging five-year-old Matthew Mercer by one arm. If he was crying, I couldn’t tell—he was drenched in less than a second.

  “Blasphemy is an offense against the Church, an insult to your classmates, and a sin against your own filthy tongue!” Sister Camilla shouted above a roll of thunder.

  Yes, Matthew Mercer was a brat, and yes, he had trouble controlling his mouth, but he was just a kid, and everything he said he’d probably heard from his parents.

  I stepped out from under the awning and gasped as the freezing rain soaked through my blouse in an instant. Anabelle pulled me back before I could say some
thing that would probably have landed me in trouble alongside the kindergartner.

  “Blasphemy is a sin,” Sister Anabelle reminded me in a whisper.

  Of course blasphemy was a sin. A lesser infraction than fornication or heresy, but a grievous offense a strict matron like Sister Camilla would never let slide. Even in a five-year-old.

  Especially in a five-year-old who’d already demonstrated a precocious gift for profanity.

  Anabelle and I could only watch, shivering, as Sister Camilla dragged Matthew onto the stone dais in the center of the courtyard, then forced him to kneel. She was still scolding him while she flipped a curved piece of metal over each of his legs, just above his calves, then snapped the locks into place, confining the five-year-old to his knees in the freezing rain.

  The posture of penitence. Voluntarily assumed, it demonstrated humility and submission to authority. And contrition. Used as a punishment, it was a perversion of the very things it stood for, just like anything accomplished by force.

  In third grade, I’d once knelt in the posture of penitence in the middle of the school hall for four hours for turning in an incomplete spelling paper.

  I’d never failed to finish an assignment again.

  Sister Camilla marched toward us in the downpour, wordlessly ordering us inside with one hand waved at the building. At the door, I looked back to see Matthew Mercer bent over his knees, his forehead touching the stone floor of the dais, his school uniform soaked. He’d folded his arms over the back of his head in a futile attempt to protect himself from the rain.

  “Pray for forgiveness,” Sister Camilla called to him over her shoulder. “And hope the Almighty has more mercy in his heart than I have in mine.”

  Well, I thought as the door closed behind us, he certainly couldn’t have any less.

  “Okay.” I crossed my legs and angled them to one side, trying to get comfortable in a chair built for five-year-olds. On the other side of the room, one of my fellow seniors had her own group of six kids assembled at the reading center while Sister Camilla taught math to six more at a table covered with little plastic counting cubes. I was in charge of the faith unit. “Who can name one of the four obligations of the people to their Church?”