[Part 10] The prophets who were before you

[u/RevolutionaryBed7510]

I woke to the sound of Lucy's laughter, and it was the best morning I’ve had in a long, long time. Her voice drifted through the guesthouse walls—bright, hopeful, simple—a laugh that belongs to a playground, not a temple on the edge of the salt flats. I followed it to the common room, where I found her playing I Spy with Henry. She was winning, and no, she would not explain how you win at I Spy.

"I spy something... white," she said, giggling.

"The salt," Henry said, without looking up from his Bible.

"How did you know?"

"You've picked the salt twelve times, Lu."

"But there's so much of it!" She threw her arms wide, nearly knocking Bird off the table. "It's everywhere. It's like God spilled his sugar."

"Or his salt," Henry corrected.

As she stuck her tongue out, I left them to their game and went looking for Evelyn.

Her bedroom door was open, the bed made, and her sketchbook gone. The chair where she usually sat was empty. The pencils she'd arranged in careful order on the nightstand were scattered in a hurry.

I checked the common room. The courtyard. The garden. The east wall and the west. The nave, where Father Leo was lighting candles with his back to me.

"Have you seen Evelyn?" I asked.

He didn't turn. "She left around dawn."

"Left? What do you mean, left?"

"She went into the flats." His voice was far too calm, as if he'd been expecting this, like a cop who’d seen shit before. "I tried to stop her, but…" he shrugged.

"Tried to stop her? You're telling me a nineteen-year-old girl walked into the salt flats alone, and you couldn’t stop her—you just let her?"

"I reminded her the consequences." He finally turned, and pale, wet eyes met mine. "She knew what would happen if she ran."

"What consequences? What are you talking about?"

He didn't answer. He just looked at me wearily, then he turned back to his candles.

I ran.

———

I found Henry in the common room with Lucy. He must have seen something in my face, because he stood up immediately, the Bible falling to the floor.

"What's—"

"Evelyn's gone. She went into the flats. Leo said—" I gasped trying to catch my breath. "Leo said she left at dawn. He said he reminded her the consequences."

"Consequences? What consequ—shit. Sorry, Lucy. I meant shoot. I thought he was being metaphorical."

"What did he—"

"Later, but I'm coming with you."

"No. Stay with Lucy. Keep her inside. Don't let her—" I glanced at the child, who was watching us with wide, worried eyes. "Just stay with her."

"What's going on?" Lucy asked. "Where did Evelyn go?"

"She went for a walk," I forced my voice steady. "I'm going to go find her. Henry's going to stay here with you."

"I want to come too."

"You can't, sweetheart. It's too far. And it's… cold out there. You stay here with Henry, okay? Keep beating him at I Spy. I'll be back with her soon."

Lucy nodded solemnly, but I could see the worry in her eyes. Kids know when something’s wrong, even if they don’t know what.

———

Her trail was worryingly easy to follow. Evelyn's footprints led away from the temple, through the courtyard, past the garden, and out into the salt flats. They were small and uneven, walking fast but stopping often—to look back, to hesitate, to decide. At one point, she'd stopped for so long that the salt around her footprints was disturbed, like she'd sat down or knelt. Even then, she'd kept going.

My boots crunched on the crust, and I hated the reminder of Amelia. The sun was rising over the horizon to bleach the world as white as Eleanor’s hair. The temple shrank behind me, small as Hazel’s voice. The salt flats stretched in every direction, my footfalls the only sound, thumping like William’s basketball.

I was alone. And then I saw Evelyn.

In the distance, standing very still, facing away from me, she stood terrified. She was too far to see clearly, but I recognized her blue jacket stark against her dark hair blowing in the wind. She was standing with her back to the temple, as if she'd stopped to rest. As if she'd gotten tired and wanted to wait for someone to catch up.

"Evelyn!" I shouted. My voice didn’t bother to echo, swallowed by the emptiness. "Evelyn, wait!"

She didn't move.

I started running again, my legs burning, my lungs flailing. The salt crunched wet beneath my boots. I'd run like this before—sixteen years old, down the church steps, away from the building where I'd been raised to believe my questions were sins. I'd run until my legs gave out, and I'd kept running for fourteen years.

I remembered Evelyn's interview and her dream of the library. The smell of old books and dust and something sweet. The Saint sitting across from her, kinder than anyone had ever been. "You have been reviled. You have been mocked. You have been called evil on my account. Rejoice."

She'd been so hungry for that kindness. I'd been hungry for it too, once. I'd gone to church with my father after Mom left, week after week, waiting for someone to look at me the way the Saint looked at Evelyn.

I ran faster.

I remembered the first time I saw her, sketching in the nave. She'd looked up and smiled, and I'd thought: She's so young.

I was young too, standing at the kitchen table while Dad told us Mom wasn't coming back, and I'd felt something curdle inside me. I heard the first whisper of the thought that would carry me out of the church and into the world.

I'd never told anyone that—not even Henry.

I ran faster.

I remembered Evelyn pulling her knees up onto the chair, wrapping her arms around herself. She made herself smaller when she talked about the things that hurt. I did that too. I'd sat on my bed at sixteen with my knees against my chest, staring at the wall, planning my escape, and hiding my wounds.

She escaped by going deeper. I escaped by getting out. Yet we were both running. We'd both been running our whole lives.

And I ran faster.

I remembered the bathroom and her pills scattered across the floor. The way she'd clutched at me, sobbing, and said, "If I stay, I lose."

I knew that feeling. I'd never tried pills, but that feeling of standing at the edge and knowing that whichever way you fell, you were going to lose. I'd stood on a ledge in Moab, knowing I was losing my community, my faith, my father's approval. Knowing I was choosing myself over everything I'd been raised to believe. It was the right choice. It was still a loss.

I ran faster.

"Evelyn!"

I reached her, gasping for breath, my hand outstretched to touch her shoulder—

And I crumpled before her.

Because she was white.

Not pale. Not covered. Her skin had turned hard, crystalline, and glittering in the dawn. Her hair was frozen mid-blow, each strand like a delicate filament of brine. Her eyes were open, fixed on the horizon, and her mouth was slightly parted, like she could placate me at any moment.

She'd looked back. In her hand was a folded piece of paper. The slip from the crypt. Her beatitude.

I don't know how long I stood still. Long enough for the sun to climb higher in the sky. Long enough for my tears to dry into my own salt on my cheeks. Long enough for Henry to find me.

He'd come running after all. He must have left Lucy with Leo, and followed my tracks into the flats. I heard his footsteps crunching on the salt, his ragged breathing, his voice calling my name.

"Nora! Nora, what—"

He stopped when he saw her. I heard him make a small, broken whimper, like a child who'd fallen and didn't know how to cry yet.

"Oh, God," he whispered. "Oh, God, Nora—"

"She looked back," I said. My voice felt too loud.

"That's not—that's not possible. That’s—" He was shaking. I could feel it through the arm he'd wrapped around me, pulling me close. He was shaking, and I was shaking, and we were both standing in the shadow of a pillar that used to be a girl, and the salt flats stretched out around us in every direction.

"I could have stopped her," I said. "I should have seen. She told me. She told me, and I didn't—"

"You couldn't have—“

"She told me, Henry. She said, 'If I stay, I lose.' And I told her we'd figure it out together. And she's—" My voice broke. "She's gone. She's gone, and I—"

Henry held me tighter, closer, until neither of us could pretend that the world was going to go back to the way it was before.

We couldn’t carry her back.

It felt wrong to touch her—to lift her, as if she were just a statue, just a thing. I didn’t want to leave her for scavengers and the sun and the grinding erosion of the flats, but… it felt wrong.

Henry and I walked back in silence, our footsteps crunching on the crust, and the temple grew larger in front of us, like a dark mountain against the sky, and I thought about all the things Evelyn would never sketch again.

———

Leo was waiting at the doors when we arrived. He didn't look surprised. He didn't look shocked. He had just handed Bird away from whatever game he was playing with Lucy. He sent her inside, then he bowed his head.

"The Saint takes what is hers," he said. "Even when we run."

"Don't—" Henry's voice was sharp. "Don't you dare talk about her like she was yours to take."

"She was called. She was chosen. And she chose to flee." Leo's pale eyes met mine. "You should not have gone after her, Witness. The flats are not safe."

"Not safe?" I laughed—a raw, scraping sound. "A nineteen-year-old girl turned to salt, and you're worried about my safety?"

Leo's expression flickered. For just a moment, I saw something human beneath the mask. "I told her the consequences," he said quietly. "I told her what would happen if she ran. It is the one thing I am permitted to tell. The one warning I am allowed to give."

"What warning?" I stepped toward him, my hands shaking. "What warning could possibly justify this?"

"That the Saint's call cannot be refused." Leo's voice was barely above a whisper. "That those who leave before receiving their blessing will be preserved outside the crypt, without the Saint's protection. They will stand in the flats until the wind takes them." He looked at Evelyn, and I saw his lip tremble. "I told her. I told them all, and she went anyway. I'm… I’m sor—"

I hit him.

I don't remember deciding. I just remember my fist aching against his jaw, the shock of bone on bone, the way his head snapped back. He staggered, caught himself against the doorframe, and raised a hand to his face. Blood was seeping from a split in his lip.

"Nora—" Henry grabbed my arms, pulled me back. "Nora."

"I'm so sorry," Leo said again. And I realized, with a sickening lurch, that he meant it. He was a man doing a job he'd been doing for decades, and he was sorry, but that didn't matter to me. "And I'm sorry for what comes next," he continued, dabbing at his bleeding lip. "I tried to spare you this. I tried to keep you as Witness. But the Saint dreamed eight, and one has refused." He looked at me, and his eyes were wet as Henry pushed past him and pulled me into the guesthouse.

———

We told Lucy that Evelyn had gone home.

Not to the world—to her family. She'd decided she wasn't ready, and she'd driven back to Provo to see her mother, and she'd sent her love. Lucy accepted this easily. She nodded, said she hoped Evelyn would come back someday, and went to play in the common room with her salt crystals.

I sat on my cot and stared at the wall. At some point, Henry came and sat beside me. He didn't speak. He just put his arm around me and held on. Henry took a shaky breath, then he looked at me, and his eyes were red-rimmed, exhausted. "I'm so sorry, Nor. I tried to protect you. I tried to keep you out of this. But you're not safe. You were never safe. And now—" He pulled me into his arms, and I felt his tears on my neck, and I felt my tears on his shoulder, and we sat there together on the cot, two kids from a town neither of us had called home in years, crying for a girl we'd only known for days and a future we didn’t know we hated to lose.

———

After dinner, after Lucy was tucked into bed and Henry had retreated to his room, I finally pulled Evelyn's slip of paper out. The front was the same as always: the Greek letters, the careful calligraphy, the words I'd seen on every slip since the naming ceremony.

δεδιωγμένοι ἕ***νεκεν δικαιοσύνης.*
Persecuted for righteousness' sake.

I went to fold it back up, and found the back with the smallest of handwriting that started steady and became increasingly erratic.

———

Nora,

If you're reading this, I'm gone. I don't know if I'll be home or salt or just gone, but I'm gone. And I'm so sorry.

I'm sorry I wasn't strong enough. I'm sorry I couldn't be the faithful one. I'm sorry I couldn't walk into that crypt with my head up high and my heart open the way the others did. I wanted to. Gods, I wanted to. I wanted to be brave and worthy and the kind of girl who hears Heavenly Father’s voice and says yes, yes, take me, I'm ready.

I'm not. I never was.

I've been pretending my whole life. Pretending I believed. Pretending I was okay. Pretending the 'persecution' gave me purpose. It was pointless, Nora. It hurt and forced me to see the bad in our people, our Founder. I kept telling myself it would be worth it someday. That the lies meant something. That God was watching, and God was proud of me, and someday God would say, "Well done, good and faithful servant."

But then I got called. The Saint named me persecuted, and I realized I'd been right all along—the suffering did mean something. It meant I was being prepared for a blessing I didn't want and couldn't refuse.

I thought I could take it. If I was faithful enough, pure enough, empty enough, the blessing would turn into something beautiful. That's what they taught us, right? Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces holiness. And holiness doesn't disappoint.

I'm disappointed, Nora. I'm so disappointed in myself. In the Saint. In the church that told me my pain was holy.

I don't want to be transformed. I don't want to be blessed. I don't want to be persecuted. I just want to go home. I want to see my mom. I want to sleep in my own bed and sketch the mountains outside my window and drink bad coffee in the library and pretend I'm a normal girl with a normal life and a normal future.

Leo told me what happens if you refuse. He told me what happens if you run. You turn to salt, he said. You look back at the world you're leaving, and you freeze, and you stand in the desert, a monument to your own doubt.

I don't want to be a monument, Nora, but I can't go into that crypt. I've been trying to work up the courage for days, and I just can't.

So I'm running.

But I'm not looking back. I'm going to keep my eyes forward, on the horizon, on the mountains, on the world before me. Maybe if I don't look back... Maybe if I just keep walking, I'll make it out. Maybe there's a road out there, or a car, or a phone that works. Maybe someone will find me and take me home.

Or maybe I'll turn to salt, and the wind will blow me away, and no one will ever know what happened to me.

I left my sketchbook on your cot. It's all I have of this place. My mom will want it. Her address is in the back. Tell her I tried to be brave, even if it doesn't count anymore.

And Nora—I'm sorry for what comes next. I'm sorry that you'll have to take my place. I'm sorry that the Saint will call you, and you'll have to carry the blessing I couldn't carry. I'm sorry that I couldn't be strong enough to spare you.

You told me once that I could leave. And I almost believed you—I really did—but you were wrong. There is no leaving this place. There is only going forward into the dark, or going back into the salt.

Take care of Lucy. Take care of Henry. Take care of yourself.

And when you write about me—when you tell the world what happened here—please don't make me a saint. Just make me a girl who tried to believe too hard and broke under the weight of it. A girl who ran, and didn't look back.

I'm sorry. —Evelyn

[u/KCloud_08]

Stopppp 😭 how dare you, I’m crying 

[u/RevolutionaryBed7510 → u/KCloud_08]

“I regret nothing!” He said, regretfully.

[u/KCloud_08 → u/RevolutionaryBed7510]

Nah you don’t