Chapter 4: Sacrifice Day

The forest was as still and as quiet as it had been the night before. As the branches around her became denser her apprehension grew. After hours of wandering, Abish was certain that she was lost. Without her father to follow she had no confidence in her ability to find the path. She was also much clumsier. She hadn’t realized just how many branches her father had held out of her way until she was by herself. She walked into a small clearing and looked around, desperate to spot any landmark that might give her a clue. There was nothing—only dense jungle surrounding her on all sides. With no other choice before her, Abish fell to her knees and timidly poured her heart out to the Lord the way her father had shown her.

She paused at the end of her prayer and sat quietly. She heard the gentle breeze rustle the leaves around her and a voice on the wind whispered stillness to her soul. God had not smiled on her departure only to allow her to perish in this place. The breeze continued swirling around the clearing as Abish breathed deeply and tried once again to get her bearings with a clearer head. Almost imperceptibly, she saw the breeze part the branches at the edge of the clearing. She squinted in the darkness to make sure her eyes were not deceiving her, and she saw it again—the branches moved back, just for a moment, beckoning her into that part of the forest. She stood and walked in that direction.

After two or three steps into the forest, she saw a path. It was old path, not the one that she and her father had stayed on for most of the night before, but there was a definite pattern to the twisting and turning. With renewed energy, she forgot her exhaustion and moved swiftly through the woods. Very soon she saw a tree with three distinctive trunks, which she and her father had passed the night before. The old, rough path she was on joined the new, smooth path and she was on her way again. She paused briefly to utter a prayer of thanksgiving for being led to the right way. As she said her prayer, she turned to gaze at the path she had just come along, but it was gone. There was no place in the trees to indicate where she had come from.

Within minutes she came to the rock where her father had taught the truths in his vision. Suddenly overcome by exhaustion, she rolled her blanket out on the ground and fell into a deep and dreamless sleep for the remainder of the night.

When Abish awoke late the next morning, the sun was beating on her face. Two nights’ journeys had left her exhausted enough to sleep well through her normal waking time. By now her mother and father would know what she had done. She wondered what would happen. Would her father try to find her? He might guess where she was even though she had left no message. Would her mother stay to see what became of her, or would she be too worried about her own safety to stay? In her mind she could imagine them arguing over breakfast.

Abish prayed again, asking the Lord to remove the last of her anxiety. She didn’t want harm to come to her mother any more than she wanted her father to be killed, but she couldn’t abandon him in his greatest need. She couldn’t. She would stay in the forest until the day of the sacrifice. Then she would go to the city to see what would become of him.

The forest tempered the heat of the day somewhat, but Abish took to resting during the hottest part of the afternoon, as well as night when it was so dark. She gathered what food she could, trying to make her stores last longer. She explored the forest around the grove where she stayed and pondered the things she’d been taught. She also spent time writing her thoughts on her tablet, liking the way her letters seemed to improve every time she wrote them.

It was the late afternoon before the Day of Sacrifice. Abish rested in the heat and fell into a dream. She walked with her father into the forest, but everything was tinted blood red. He did not seem to share her anxiety: his face held the same placid assurance it had the night he taught her the gospel. Then, from the forest came hundreds of hands grabbing for them. She fought and pushed and escaped to a place beyond the red, but as she did so, she realized she was utterly alone. She sat up sharply from her sleep and yelled, “Father!” Suddenly she realized where she was and sank back to the earth. Alone in a forest of brilliant color. She felt sick at heart.
Exhausted, but unable to sleep any longer, she left the grove to travel before complete darkness made such a thing impossible. Her plan was to reach the edge of the city and rest for the night in the forest’s margin. At sunrise, she would join one of the many caravans which had come to Middoni for the holy day. She would tie a scarf around her head and try to avoid the notice of people who might be familiar to her. The sacrifice day was big business for the traders. Many families from all over the surrounding countryside gathered on that day to spend a week in feasting and homage.

Abish knew that despite the jubilant mood as her people looked forward to the end of the drought, there was fear as well. The sacrifices to the war gods were enemies, but the rain god’s victims came from their own people. Abish had once marveled at this: how could any man be willing to do such a thing? Her father had told her that the volunteers were either very pious, and saw sacrificing oneself for the rain god to be a guaranteed fee for salvation. Other victims came from families who were poor and starving. In exchange for large sums of money, men volunteered to give up their lives. Every time she closed her eyes, she could imagine their mostly naked, ceremonially cleansed bodies, marching without words or struggle, move peacefully up the stone steps ready to meet their awful fate.

She made her way carefully through the woods and managed to avoid getting lost. Her sleep was fitful, but at least free of dreams about blood and sacrifice. She woke, well before sunrise, trying to stop her heart from racing, but failing miserably. The memories of her father’s explanation about the process of sacrifice pounded her consciousness and it was hard to think of anything else. He had described for her, in great detail and at her insistence, the various ways the victims were cut after being taken to the top of the temple and restrained. The priest’s apprentices used very sharp knives, executing their ritual with exacting perfection as the drums beat relentlessly. Several cuts to the arms first, and then the legs. The victims felt great pain and cried out, it was thought that the rain god liked this vocal display and they weren’t silenced. The wounds were allowed to gush for several minutes before the major vessels in the armpits, groin and neck were cut. Just before the victims slipped into deep and silent shock, the chest cavity was stabbed—the priest himself bringing down the knife with two hands straight into the heart. After copious amounts of blood were smeared on the altar, the mutilated bodies were paraded through the street, so the people might see the depth of the god’s demand. The bodies were then burned, unclaimed by their families.

Just as the first hint of pink showed in the east, she heard the unmistakable clamor of people on the road. It was far enough away that she was unable to see those making their pilgrimage to the city, but she could tell there were many. She made her way to the edge of the woods hiding until she saw a place where she could discreetly join the crowd. She was dirty and dusty and dressed simply, so she looked exactly like every other traveler on the road. She melted in quickly and within several minutes was through the gate. The soldiers asked questions and poked around in bags and wagons, but none of them bothered a gawky young girl with a simple sack over her shoulder.

The sacrifices always took place at the temple when the sun was high overhead. At midmorning, the gates to the temple would open and the people would rush in to get the best positions. Abish knew there was no place to stand where you could really see what was going on. The glare on the pale colored rock was too great. Any attempt to look up was thwarted by the sun. The sacrifice and ceremony lasted a couple of hours at the most, and while the actual event was difficult to see, the after-effects were obvious. The blood stains on the temple steps lasted for weeks and weeks, even after the rains came.

Though she had never tried to be close to the temple on sacrifice day, on this morning she carefully elbowed her way to the front. Her heart was in her throat, and the dream-memory of the red hands grasping after her in the forest made her want to run, but she forced herself to stay in the thickest part of the crowd. Then she heard the steady beat of the drums beginning—the drums that called the crowd to witness the carnage. The crush of bodies was powerful around her as people pressed for advantage near the temple gates which opened suddenly. The surging mass pushed through. The stifling heat and the stench from the crowd surrounding her were nearly overpowering.

Only minutes later she saw him. He marched out of the temple entrance behind the priests, dressed in his apprentice robes with his long, sharp knife at his waist. She knew the drill; some of her earliest memories were of these feast days. The crowd around her suddenly hushed as the chief priest stepped to the front and began to speak. Some prayers would follow and the victims would be led up the hundred temple steps to the altar on the top.

Before many words left the priest’s mouth, however, she saw her father step out of line and interrupt in a loud voice. The gasp was audible in the crowd around her. Such a thing had never been done.

“I have had a vision!” He announced.

The chief priest whirled quickly and his dark eyes narrowed as glared at her father. “Armac. Now is not the time!” His voice was a hiss barely above a whisper, but Abish heard every word.

“It is the only time! Before another drop of unnecessary blood is spilled I must be allowed to speak.” There was a stunned silence from the priests and apprentices. Abish didn’t read the silence as permission, but it was the only chance he would get. So he did the one thing he could. He testified. She heard his voice ring out clear and true above the noise of the crowd. For a few brief seconds, the melee was still as her father spoke quickly of love and kindness and the God of mercy. And then, just moments after he began, people began jostling and booing around her. She lost her vantage point, but she could still faintly hear his testimony above the fray. Then she heard a barked command from the high priest and her father’s voice was silent. Abish elbowed her way to the front again, surely they hadn’t killed him already? Her heart sunk as she heard the jubilant cheer from the crowd over something they had just seen.

Then she saw. He had been stripped of his robe, bound and gagged. His eyes were clear, and even bound he held his back straight and his chin high. He did not struggle. The chief priest tapped his large staff several times on the cobblestones and the commotion subsided. Even in the heat, she could see that the color had drained from his face and his eyes were hard and angry. “Armac’s vision is false. The Lamanite gods will not stand for such Nephite heresy on a feast day. They demand his blood in sacrifice as well!” His voice escalated near the end and the shout went up around her, praising the gods. “This extra sacrifice will bring a rainy season more bountiful than any we have yet seen!”

Her stomach suddenly churned and she feared that she’d be sick, right there in yard of the temple. As the world spun around her, she struggled to take deep breaths--in and out, in and out. She would not leave; if this was the only way she could support her beloved father then she would do it. Then, he saw her. His eyes clouded with tears. Her own did the same. She knew that his tears were not for the inevitable sentence, they were a goodbye.

It seemed like only seconds later when Armac was taken up the steps of the temple with the other victims. His feet had been loosely tied and rather than wait for his hobbling, a soldier was pulled from the crowd to drag him. Abish’s heart ached at the show before her. She wished they would untie him: she knew that he would not protest his fate, and he might at least maintain some dignity in death.

The sun was bright as she peered toward the top of the temple. The brightness caused the tears in her eyes to spill down on to her cheeks and she had to look away. There was more pompous display and speeches, most of which was impossible to hear. But then the drums began again. They pounded relentlessly in her brain and her head ached from the noise and the glare and the heat. She strained to hear, anything. Would he find a way to speak one more time before the screaming began?

Then, miraculously, above the drums she heard his voice magnified impossibly loud ring through the crowd, “This day you shed innocent blood, and the true God of Heaven will withhold the rains until you are ready to hear his message!” A murmur of fear electrified the crowd, and Abish knew that all had heard his last, prophetic words, for at that moment, his voice was cut off. Before she had time to wonder if he had been gagged or killed, shouts of obeisance and fear rose up all around her and her eyes focused at the pinnacle of the temple just long enough to see the chief priest hold something up. A severed head. Her father’s head. The man who had loved her and been the center of her tiny world. Butchered.

The drums began in earnest now, the ritual proceeding as normal—as if anything would ever be normal again. People surged around her as she fought her way outside the gate. Arms were raised and the chanting matched the drums, beat for beat. Bile welled up in her mouth and she didn’t know how she would hold the contents of her stomach. Finally free of the square around the temple, she found shade to the side of a small market stand and collapsed to the ground, taking great big gulps of stale air.

She buried her head into her filthy arms, holding them over her ears so the merciless pounding and screaming wouldn’t burrow so deeply into her brain. Then, it was over. She knew that at any minute, people would come pouring out of the gate, ready to line the dusty streets as the bodies were paraded toward the pyre. Despite her weakness and exhaustion, she knew that she couldn’t stomach it. She didn’t know where she was going, but she could not stay to watch the carnage. She stood weakly on her feet and wandered from the public street.

The feasting and the trading would likely continue for many more days and she was vaguely aware that she would soon have to formulate a plan for what to do next, but her thoughts wouldn’t focus. Every time she tried, she saw her father’s head raised in triumph before his enemies. She wandered for a long time, paying little attention to where she was headed, until she recognized her own street. She stopped before its door, and a momentary, familiar calmness came over her.

Abish had a dim idea that it was dangerous to step through the door. Though most people were in the center of the city that day, there was still a chance of running into someone she knew; someone who would know that her mother had left or that her father had been killed and wonder what she was doing there, but she couldn’t keep herself from going inside. The curtain on the door had been removed, probably taken by Lanishe in her escape. Their sparse furniture was still there, but there was no food; her mother’s clothing was gone, as well as her few precious items. She buried her face in one of her father’s clean tunics that had been folded neatly into a small basket near her parents’ mat. She sobbed until she thought she would lose her voice. She was ten years old and all alone in the world.