Strange Children by Sadie Hoagland

Author:Sadie Hoagland [Hoagland, Sadie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Red Hen Press

But what of the Prophet? Did He feel when He saw her sitting in his congregation again? He did not see her, no doubt, as often as she saw Him. But He did see her. Get up from her chair that day. He saw her limp down the aisle to the door, her blonde braid swinging, saw her presence after an absence, as it was His job to notice these tokens of impiety with everyone. But especially that one. That one had plagued him since she was born and then more and more as she got older. He bit the corner of His lip ever so slightly, a twitch almost no one would notice but that I could see meant He was thinking.

Thinking like He’d done the night after He took her, said He’d marry her, meant to marry her, but then did and didn’t. Meant to but stopped. Something had frightened Him in that ghostly flesh. Disgusted Him, maybe. He’d meant to get her up and send for a witness and her Pa to make it official. He had already spoken to his third and favored wife about her, and the quiet threat she clearly was, and his plan to subdue her and make her a regular wife. But then he hadn’t and that very night after he’d let her walk out the door—that night he had wavered, had let her walk out, had kicked at her undergarments until He finally bent down, picked them up, and put them in His pocket, that night when his third wife lay asleep unworried beside Him —He deigned to speak to God.

He reminded God that He had meant to kill her when He became Prophet. He remembered aloud to the darkness and me that when she was born with a blue twisted limb they tried to straighten it by binding it to a board, but it would not take, and her Pa had looked to His father, then Prophet, and His father had said, Let this child be and then He had known that His father was too weak. He knew, He told God, that they hadn’t built a Great Peoples in the desert by being weak, by allowing this clear sign of witchery to thrive just because it was attached to a baby girl. He had vowed He would cut her down and when He came to power He watched her. Watched her for five years. He was not surprised when she became beautiful, a creature of the Devil would embody temptation, but He was surprised how much harder He found it to hear God on the subject of her. He asked God, why didn’t I hear you? I did not hear you tell me to kill her. And He knew He had to be sure on that point, to kill a young woman was different than a babe. So He just watched her and in fact didn’t hear God at all on this (Why?) until He had the dream when

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