The Fire Sermon. Francesca Haig

doll in the red dress that Zach had buried there.

       CHAPTER 3

      Downstairs, Mum and Dad were fighting again, the sound of their argument drifting up through the floorboards, insidious as smoke.

      ‘It’s more of a problem every day,’ Dad said.

      Mum’s voice was quieter. ‘They’re not “a problem” – they’re our children.’

      ‘One of them is,’ he replied. A pot clattered loudly on the table. ‘The other one’s dangerous. Poison. We just don’t know which one.’

      Zach hated to let me see him cry, but the dregs of the candle threw out enough light for me to see the slight shuddering of his back under the blanket. I slipped out from under my quilt. The floorboards creaked slightly as I took the two steps to the edge of Zach’s bed.

      ‘He doesn’t mean it,’ I whispered, putting a hand on his back. ‘He doesn’t mean to hurt you when he says things like that.’

      He sat up, shrugging off my hand. I was surprised to see he didn’t even try to wipe away the tears. ‘I’m not hurt by him,’ he said. ‘What he says, it’s all true. You want to pat me on the back, comfort me, act like you’re the caring one? It’s not them hurting me. Not even the other kids, the ones who throw stones. See all of this?’ The sweep of his hand took in the sounds from the kitchen below, as well as his own tear-streaked face. ‘It’s all your fault. You’re the problem, Cass, not them. You’re the reason we’re stuck in this limbo.’

      I was suddenly aware of the cold boards underfoot, and the night air on my bare arms.

      ‘You want to show you really care about me?’ he said. ‘Then tell them the truth. You could end it right away.’

      ‘Do you really want me sent away? It’s me. I’m not some strange creature. Forget what the Council says about contamination. It’s just me. You know me.’

      ‘You keep saying that. Why should I think I know you? You’ve never been honest with me. You never told me the truth. You made me figure it out for myself.’

      ‘I couldn’t tell you,’ I said. Even admitting as much to him, alone in our room, was risky.

      ‘Because you didn’t trust me. You want to make out that we’re so close. But you’re the one who’s lied this whole time. You never trusted me enough to tell me the truth. All these years, you left me to wonder. To fear that it might be me who was the freak. And now you think I should trust you?’

      I retreated to my bed. He was still staring at me. Could things ever have been different, if I’d trusted him with the truth? Could we have found a way to share the secret, to make our way together? Had he caught his distrust from me? Maybe that was the poison I’d been carrying – not the contamination of the blast that all Omegas bore, but the secret.

      A tear had settled on the top of his upper lip. It glinted gold in the candlelight.

      I didn’t want him to see the matching tear on my face. I reached out to the table and snuffed the flame.

      ‘It’s got to end,’ he whispered into the darkness. It was half a plea, half a threat.

      *

      His impatience to expose me grew with our father’s illness. Dad fell sick when we’d just turned thirteen. As with the previous year, there was no mention of our birthday – our age had become an increasingly shameful reminder of our unsplit state. That night, Zach had whispered across the bedroom: ‘You know what day it was today?’

      ‘Of course,’ I said.

      ‘Happy birthday,’ he said. It was only a whisper, so it was hard to tell whether he was being sarcastic.

      Two days later, Dad collapsed. Dad, who had always seemed as robust and solid as the huge oak cross-beam that ran the length of the kitchen ceiling. He hauled buckets of water up the well faster than anyone else in the village, and when Zach and I were smaller he could carry us both at once. He still could, I thought, except that he rarely touched us now. Then, in the middle of the paddock on a hot day, he stumbled to his knees. From where I sat, shelling peas on the stone wall at the front of our yard, I heard the shouts of the others working near him in the field.

      That night, after the neighbours had carried him back to the cottage, our mother sent for Dad’s twin, Alice, from the Omega settlement up on the plain. Zach himself went with Mick in the bullock cart to fetch her, returning the next day with our aunt lying in the hay on the back of the cart. We’d never met her before, and looking at her, the only similarity I could see between her and Dad was the fever that currently slickened their flesh. She was thin, with long hair, darker than Dad’s. The coarse, brown fabric of her dress had been mended many times and was now flecked with hay. Beneath the strands of hair that stuck to her sweaty forehead we could make out the brand: Omega.

      We cared for her as much as we could, but it was clear from the start that she hadn’t long. We couldn’t allow her in the house, of course, but even her presence in the shed was enough to enrage Zach. On the second day his fury climaxed. ‘It’s disgusting,’ he shouted. ‘She’s disgusting. How can she be here, with us running around after her like servants? She’s killing him. And it’s dangerous for all of us, having her so close.’

      Mum didn’t bother to hush him, but said calmly, ‘She’d be killing him more quickly if we’d left her in her own filthy hut.’

      This silenced Zach. He wanted Alice gone, but not at the expense of admitting to Mum what he had told me in bed the night before: what he’d seen at the settlement when he collected Alice. Her small, tidy cottage; the whitewashed walls; the posies of dried herbs hanging above the hearth, just as they hung above ours.

      Mum continued, ‘If we save her, we save him.’

      It was only at night, when the candle was out and no voices could be heard from Mum and Dad’s room, that Zach would tell me about what he’d seen at the settlement. He told me that other Omegas at the settlement had tried to stop them from taking Alice away – that they’d wanted to keep caring for her there. But no Omega would dare to argue with an Alpha, and Mick had brandished his whip until they backed away.

      ‘Isn’t it cruel, though, to take her from her family?’ I whispered.

      ‘Omegas don’t have family,’ Zach recited.

      ‘Not children, obviously, but people she loves. Friends, or maybe a husband.’

      ‘A husband?’ He let the word hang. Officially Omegas weren’t allowed to marry, but everyone knew that they still did, although the Council wouldn’t recognise any such unions.

      ‘You know what I mean.’

      ‘She didn’t live with anyone,’ he said. ‘It was just a few other freaks from her settlement, claiming they knew what was best for her.’

      We’d barely seen Omegas before, let alone spent time in close quarters with one. Little Oscar next door had been sent away as soon as he was branded and weaned. The few Omegas who passed through the area rarely stayed more than a night, camping just downstream of the village. They were itinerants, on the way to try their luck at one of the larger Omega settlements in the south. Or, in years when the harvest had been poor, there’d be Omegas who’d given up on farming the half-blighted land they were permitted to settle on, and were heading to one of the refuges near Wyndham. The refuges were the Council’s concession to the fatal bond between twins. Omegas couldn’t be allowed to starve to death and take their twins with them, so there were refuges near all large towns, where Omegas would be taken in, and fed and housed by the Council. Few Omegas went willingly, though – it was a place of last resort, for the starving or sick. The refuges were workhouses, and those who sought their help had to repay the Council’s generosity with labour, working on the farms within the refuge complex until the Council judged the debt