She could see his chubby, wet, red cheeks. She could see his tiny, white, baby teeth. And then she couldn't see anything at all.
He was gone.
Swallowed by the fog.
She made to follow, but Destiny held her back.
His wailing was quickly muffled, absorbed by the swamp, with its sopping trees, its thick moss, and its moldy earth.
The outdoor noises came back. Frogs croaking. Wart-lizards hissing. Trees dripping.
A fat blob of water fell from a tree and splatted onto her face. Repentance swiped it off with the back of one hand. "He didn't break any of the rules," she whispered. Fear rose in her throat like a purple-fruit pit—a thick knot that made it hard to swallow. "They aren't supposed to take us kids if we don't break the rules. Why did they take Trib?"
"It's Grief Day," Destiny said. "Keeping the rules doesn't count on Grief Day."
Sorrow crouches at the heart's door,
like a cat, waiting the perfect moment to spring.
~Lawful Atwood II, during the first year of the captivity
Chapter 1
Repentance Atwater sat still as a rock, clenching her hands in her lap to keep them from trembling.
She glared at her reflection in the shiny, wet, black stone before her. She was acting like a child—not like a girl who had seen sixteen years. She was full grown, for the love of Providence. Old enough to button.
Or to refuse to button, if she so chose.
Old enough to choose her own fate.
Still, no matter how bravely she attempted to paste a happy expression on her face, she only managed to get the terrified look of a rabbit caught in torchlight.
Mother stood behind her, gently raking her fingers through Repentance's freshly washed hair. She hummed a lively buttoning tune as she worked, oblivious to the pain that would come with the night.
A weeping and a wailing.
There would come a weeping and a wailing. Repentance had been through plenty of Grief Days and failed button ceremonies. She knew what it felt like to stand helpless before the overlords as they loaded up the slave carts.
Mother began to plait Repentance's hair. All the button girls wore braids to keep their hair from frizzing in the humid air.
Repentance closed her eyes, trying to focus on the tune her mother hummed, but she could not shut out the sound of the steady drip from the fog-drenched trees. Even sitting in the back of the cave, through thick stone walls and two leather curtains drawn down, she could hear the incessant drip, drip, drip.
A weeping and a wailing.
She didn't want to be the cause of it. But what could she do? Inside she'd been weeping and wailing all her life.
She could go along with the buttoning, that's what she could do. She could learn to be content like everyone else.
But she was not like everyone else. She tried to be. She wanted to be. She had practiced the precepts of Providence since she was no bigger than a swamp rat. To be discontent is to complain against Providence himself, to call him a liar, to say he has not provided as he ought.
And yet, Repentance Atwater was not content living in the breeder village. She was not content with the fog that clung like a burial shroud. She was not content with the muggy, oppressive heat, which threatened to smother her. And, most assuredly, she was not content to be buttoned to Sober Marsh and to bear sons for the overlords to take as slaves.
"You're too quiet," Mother said, after she'd finished one braid and started on the second.
"What is there to say?" Her voice sounded high-pitched and desperate.
Mother seemed not to notice. "I know you're worried, but you'll grow to love Sober. Your father and I would never have agreed to the buttoning if we did not think it was so."
"You had no choice. Who else would have me?"
Mother evaded the question. "You are a beautiful girl, Repentance Joyous Forgiveness Abounding Atwater. A beautiful girl."
Repentance cringed at the use of all of her front names. No one in remembrance had four front names. The closest was Grace Renewed Springside, so named because a week before her birth her father had captured a second milking pig after her mother, in a fit of pregnancy fever, had gambled the first one away. It was rare for most families to own even one sow, let alone to gain a second after the first was lost. Grace Renewed, indeed. It was a fitting name for the baby, even if it was a two-parter.
"And you're a smart girl," Mother continued. "Sober will learn to appreciate that."
"A beautiful and smart girl that no one wants." Repentance said.
She knew she wasn't wanted. She was different from the others. It wasn't just her name. She looked different, too. Everyone else had black hair and dark brown eyes. Repentance had hair the color of dried marsh grass and eyes a shade lighter—almost golden—with green flecks that flared up when she was agitated.
"I don't care that they don't want me," she said, "I don't want any of them, either." She looked at herself in the reflecting wall and her eyes spit green sparks back at her.
Why would she want to be buttoned to boys who thought she was cursed?
She'd heard the whispers all her life. It was largely supposed that Providence cursed her for the sin committed by her mother before her birth. And, truly, it must have been a terrible sin. What else would have required that her mother give her such a lengthy name? Repentance Joyous Forgiveness Abounding—it must have been a great sin for her mother to gush so over the forgiveness of it.
The villagers didn't think it forgiven, though.
