It is Jed. I didn't hear him approach but I can smell him now, the scent of woods and work and the smoke from our house. I don't bother to look at him, I just know that he is behind me and I sag back against him. He's home from his rotation on the fence line just in time to see our mother die and Return.

Later, the Guardian in him will question me and chastise me. Because I allowed my mother to make this choice and because I failed both him and her by dallying near the stream. Because I was too selfish to understand that my mother would go to the Forest without me and because I was not there to stop her.

But for now he is my brother and both our parents are gone and we are all we have left.

The first thing the Sisters do when Jed walks me back to the Cathedral is strip off my clothes and half-drown me in the sacred well. I wait to see if the water will burn off my flesh now that I no longer believe in God but nothing happens as the Sisters chant prayers and scrub my body. Through the water and past the arms of the Sisters, I see Jed being escorted from the Cathedral.

They pull me out of the holy water, my eyes stinging and my long hair like a spiderweb over my face so that I sputter and cough. “You will stay here within the Cathedral walls,” the Sisters tell me. “We cannot have you going back to the fence line.” I understand this and I know that no amount of protesting will change their minds. But still, it irritates me that they think I would be so stupid as to go after my mother.

She no longer exists.

A blanket finds its way to my shoulders and I am led along a hallway I never noticed before, down a set of stairs and into a room with stone walls, a stone floor, a cot and a window that looks out past the graveyard toward the Forest. I want to laugh; if they are so afraid of my doing something drastic after facing my mother's death why do they place me in a room that overlooks the site where she turned? I can clearly see the series of gates through which she was dragged and I can even see a few Unconsecrated pressing against the fence line. Their moans slip lightly through the open window.

“Why can't I go home?” I ask as they close the door behind me.

The oldest, Sister Tabitha, pauses on the threshold. “It is better that you stay here.”

“But what about my brother?” I cross my arms over my chest, cupping my elbows in my hands and folding in on myself.

She doesn't answer. Then the door closes and I can hear the lock slide into place. I am alone with the sound of the Unconsecrated.