The Fire Sermon. Francesca Haig
have been less horrifying than the occupied ones that normally plagued my nights. It just sat there, a glass belly waiting to be filled.
For the fourth night in a row, I dreamed of the same tank again. It sat in the same dull light; the wires and pipes clustered above it as they always had. The curve of the glass was the same, but something was acutely wrong. This time the glass curved not away from me, but around me. I could feel a tube in my own mouth, its rubbery intrusion into my windpipe, and the pain at the corner of my mouth where, protruding, the tube had eroded my skin. I couldn’t close my mouth, or keep out the liquid that now filled the tank, foully sweet. My eyes, too, couldn’t close. The viscous fluid blurred my vision, everything wavering and softened, as if seen through one of the heatwaves that hovered above the settlement’s fields on midsummer days.
When I woke, I screamed until my throat was gravelled and my voice couldn’t stick on any note, juddering and jerking between them. I screamed Zach’s name, until that single syllable took on strange shapes, became unrecognisable. In my first weeks in the Keeping Rooms I’d learned that screaming achieved nothing, brought nobody to the cell door, but I screamed nonetheless.
For six more nights I felt the tank fill around me, unable to move as the fluid took possession of my flesh, closing finally over my head, around the tubes that threaded into me at the throat and wrists. Each night, until I woke myself, screaming, I was suspended from the throat tube like a fish on a line.
I couldn’t eat. Each attempt to swallow reminded me of the tube down my throat, and I gagged and retched. I did what I could to avoid sleep, when the visions came most easily. At night, I paced the cell, counting footsteps until the numbers blurred. I took to pinching my arms and pulling hairs from my head, one at a time, trying to use the pain not just to keep myself awake, but to locate myself in my real body, and to keep at bay the tanked self of my dreams. Nothing worked. It was all unravelling: my body; my mind. Time itself was jumpy and fragmented now. Some days I slipped through hours like someone skidding, out of control, down a scree-slope. Other times I could have sworn that time stopped, and a single breath seemed to last a year. I thought of the mad seer at Haven market, and the mad Omega on the ramparts. This is how it happens, I thought. This is how my own mind deserts me.
In the end, I scratched a note into the meal tray with the edge of my blunted spoon. Zach: urgent – important vision. Will tell you (only you) in exchange for ten minutes outside, on the ramparts.
He sent The Confessor, as I’d known he would.
She sat in her usual chair, back to the door. The previous days must have left me looking ragged, but she made no comment on it. I wondered whether she even saw it, or whether her mental acuity meant she had no need for external observations. ‘Normally, you’re not so keen to share your visions. Quite the opposite. Which makes us curious, you see.’
‘If Zach’s so curious, send him. I won’t tell you.’
I’d known this would be the hardest part. I could feel The Confessor probing my mind, the way our mother used to pry open the shells of river-mussels, circling the seam, testing with the knife for the one weak spot from which to lever open the shell.
‘Closing your eyes won’t stop me, you know.’
I hadn’t even noticed I’d closed them until The Confessor spoke. I realised that my teeth, too, were clenched tight. I forced myself to look straight at her. ‘You’ll get nothing.’
‘Perhaps. Maybe you’re getting better at this. Or maybe there’s nothing there – no special vision, no helpful insight.’
‘Oh, so it’s a trap? What am I going to do? Shimmy down the walls on a rope made of bedsheets? Come on.’ I paused. It was hard to talk and brace my mind against The Confessor at the same time. ‘I just want to see the sky. If I’m going to tell you what I know, why shouldn’t I trade it for that?’
‘It’s not a trade if you’ve got nothing to offer us.’
‘It’s about the island,’ I blurted. I’d hoped not to give away even this much, but the terror of the tanks made me reckless.
‘I see. The island that you’ve insisted for the last four years doesn’t exist.’
I nodded, mute. While her expression didn’t change, I felt her mind, eager now, like the hands of an unwelcome suitor. I concentrated harder than ever, trying to open my mind without allowing her full access. I focused on giving away only a glimpse, just a fraction of a glimpse, enough to confirm the value of my visions without revealing anything that would be disastrous for the island, or for my own plans. I fixed my mind on a single image, the way a lone shaft of light would fall between the curtains of my kitchen at the settlement, illuminating only a fragment of the opposite wall. Just the town on the island, just one of its busy, steep streets. Close-up, no identifying features of the landscape. Just the town, its market-hub, the houses stacked on the rising ground. Just the town.
I heard The Confessor’s intake of breath.
‘Enough,’ I said. ‘Tell Zach what he has to do, and I’ll tell him everything.’
But it wasn’t enough. The probing continued, almost frenzied now. Once, at the settlement, I’d woken to find a raven had picked its way through a gap in the thatch and become trapped in my tiny bedroom, dashing from wall to wall in a cacophony of feathers until it found the open window. The Confessor’s presence in my head felt like that now: the same mixture of desperation and aggression.
I didn’t speak. Instead, for the first time, I tried to match The Confessor in her probing. I pictured my mother’s hands above the mussel-bowl. I tried to make my mind the knife. I’d always resisted doing this: visions had always been something I’d suffered, rather than used. The violation I’d felt in my sessions with The Confessor had made me even more unwilling to use my own mind that way. So I was surprised at how easily it came to me: like peeling back a curtain. And what I saw were just fragments, just like my dreams, but it was enough. I saw a place I hadn’t seen before. A huge, round chamber. There were no tanks this time. Only wires, like those in my visions of the tank room, but infinitely multiplied. They climbed the curved walls, which were stacked with metal boxes.
I felt The Confessor recoil. She stood so quickly the chair was knocked backwards, and she leaned over me. ‘Don’t try to play me at my own game.’
I tried to hide my shaking hands as I met her gaze. ‘Send me my twin.’
*
When he finally came, the next afternoon, he looked shocked at the state of me.
‘Are you sick? Has someone done something to you?’ He rushed to where I stood, grabbing my elbow and guiding me to the chair. ‘How did they do this? Nobody else can get in here, except The Confessor.’
‘Nobody has. It’s this place itself.’ I gestured at the cell. ‘You can’t seriously expect me to be blooming with health and joy. Anyway,’ I said, ‘you don’t look so great yourself.’ I still hadn’t got used to this new Zach, his face stripped back to bone, with dark circles spreading like stains from beneath his eyes.
‘Probably because I’ve been up most of the night trying to work out what you’re playing at.’
‘Why does it have to be complicated? I need to get outside, Zach. Just for a few moments. I’m going mad in here.’ It was no ploy to say this, even if I couldn’t let Zach know the true source of my terror. I was genuinely at the limit of my endurance, as my shattered appearance attested.
‘It’s too dangerous. You know that. You know I don’t keep you in here for fun.’
I shook my head. ‘Just think about how dangerous it is for you if I go mad. I could do anything.’
He just laughed. ‘Trust me – you’re not in a position to threaten me.’
‘I’m not threatening you. I’m offering you something – something that could really help you.’
‘And since when have you ever been interested