He didn’t choose a new name when everybody else did, for example. He’s trusted, though, because he’s steady, and he’s clever, which is why he’s the one who comes to Dunedin for meetings and supplies. He’s in charge of all the big projects. Dunno what you’d call them.”
“Capital projects?” Gray suggested. “Equipment? Construction?”
“That’s it. Not in charge of the farms, you know. The alpacas, the lavender, the honey—no, though he helps with the contracts. More of a … business person. Logistics person, I guess. He’s like a mechanical engineer, or maybe an architect, because he can work out any sort of solution, but he doesn’t have the training. He’s just clever.”
“So you got in touch with him,” Gray said.
“No. Are you joking? I didn’t get in touch with anyone. I’m dead, don’t you see? I’m dead.”
Gray’s steps faltered, then picked up again. “How?” he asked, and there was a note in his voice I hadn’t heard before. Grim, maybe.
“When you leave,” I said, “you’re excommunicated. They can’t talk to you. They can’t talk about you. They don’t mention your name. You’re among the Damned now, and you don’t exist anymore.” The remembered terror of it made me want to shake, so I ran faster.
“Even to your family,” Gray said, keeping up, not even sounding like he was breathing hard.
An All Black. A very well-known All Black. Part of a band of brothers. With a mum he loved, who loved him back.
The familiar loneliness washed over me like a wave, and I thought, No. You have Fruitful and Obedience now, and you have Dorian. You’re not alone. You are not alone.
“Especially to your family,” I said. “Other extreme religions do that, too, I found out. The Amish, in the States. Some Hasidic Jews. And cults. That’s why I can’t believe anymore. Too much about pain and punishment, and anyway, I don’t know what’s true. But it works, you know, the shunning. People can’t bear to be shunned. When you grow up in it, when the community is all you know—it’s losing your place in the world. It’s losing everybody who loves you. It’s losing everything. It’s too hard to do.”
“But you did it anyway,” he said. “You and Dorian. Was it his idea?”
“No. He was all right. Uncle Aaron had him working with him even before he left school. His apprentice, you could call it, because Uncle Aaron needed help, and Dorian was the cleverest. Everybody knew that, but there’s no being the best at Mount Zion. Everybody is the same. Everybody is a cog in the machine, moved around from one place to another, wherever they need a cog.”
“Except the Prophet.”
“Yes. And men are above women, of course. But among men, among women … everybody is the same. There’s no competition. There are no sports. There’s no leadership, either, not really. There’s the Prophet, and there’s everybody else. But that’s not how people are. People are different. They have different talents.”
“Yes,” Gray said. “I’m not one to say, maybe, as I wouldn’t know how not to be competitive, but you’re right, people are different.”
I went on, “Dorian hated it when school ended. They put him on the farm at first, and when Uncle Aaron would ask for him, it was like getting out of prison. He helped more and more, but he needed more maths. Algebra, geometry, things like that. Uncle Aaron had a computer, and he had the Internet, because he needed it. He taught Dorian what he knew, and on one of their trips, they bought a couple of textbooks so Dorian could learn more. They kept them in the office so our father wouldn’t know. So the Prophet wouldn’t know.”
“So Dorian was escaping already, in a way,” Gray said. “But not you.”
“No. Not me.”
I could tell he wanted to ask me more. I couldn’t tell him. I’d never told anyone. I said, “After we left, after we came here, I saw Uncle Aaron. I was in the Octagon, and there he was in front of me in his brown trousers, his white shirt, his Mount Zion hair. I froze. I wanted to run, and I wanted to stand my ground. I didn’t do either. I just stood there.”
“If you stood there,” Gray said, “you stood your ground.”
I tried to think of it that way. It wasn’t easy. I’d been so terrified, as if a flock of shrieking harpies would come up from Hell, summoned by the Prophet’s fury, and pull me down into the fiery pit. All