Chapter Five: God's Gift
Anja struggled to sit upright, a hollow effort since she had no real place to move to even perceived safety.
Jericho continued speaking in the wake of Anja's trembling form, wracked with sudden anxiety.
"She was nearly robbed of her ability to speak, all that remains is a whisper," Jericho stated in a softer tone as he approached his young daughter, kneeling down next to her and pulling her close to his side.
The little girl smiled up at her father, a tapestry of adoration on her soft features as she gazed at her father, her eyes shining as bright as the stars, the pupils a rich, wet black.
"She can only whisper the name her mother called her, nothing more," Jericho murmured as he tucked an errant lock of his daughter's hair behind her ear. "Tell her what your mother called you my heart," Jericho whispered to the little girl, his large hand engulfing the rounded cap of her small shoulder as he gave it an encouraging squeeze.
The little girl looked away from her father's face, moving her eyes to Anja's.
"Baba Gorl," her little lips formed, the air exhaled with her whisper couldn't have blown over a house of cards.
"Baba Gorl," Anja carefully echoed.
"It means grace from the heart," Jericho murmured, settling on a heavy, woven rug closer to Anja.
She was acutely aware of Jericho as he sat, but distracted by the little girl who parroted her father by sitting down across from Anja.
"She's very lovely," Anja commented, "your mother was certainly beautiful," she said to the little girl.
"Yes," Jericho said softly, taking a deep breath before he spoke louder.
"You will raise her, become her mother."
As Anja could barely begin to process Jericho's declarations, he continued, his demands growing, besting the rate of in utero cell division.
"As soon as you birth the child you are carrying, you will give me a son."
The kinetic energy produced from Anja's swarming thoughts could've risen the Titanic.
She fell clumsily to her side as she attempted to crawl, despite there being absolutely nowhere for her to find escape, respite, or peace.
Anja screamed as Jericho's strong hands were at once gripping her upper arms, bringing her back to an upright position. "I did not invite Talia and the father of your child to invade my land and defile the soil of my father," Jericho roared as he settled a large hand on her swollen belly.
"I prayed as I held my dead son in my arms," he continued, his fingertips moving in slow circles on her distended belly.
Anja held her breath, afraid for her unborn child as he brought his face closer, his breath hot against her cheek as she turned her face away.
"Talia brought death to my door, I stopped herding animals and tending the fields, I lowered my staff and lifted up my vengeance."
Anja struggled uselessly in Jericho's unbreakable hold, squeezing her eyes shut, sending subliminal, comforting thoughts to the fetus growing inside her.
"I prayed for a son, I was answered with the knowledge of your existence, you are the reward for my suffering, a jewel in my crown to continue the name of my father's father and every generation before," Jericho cried out joylessly, releasing Anja and settling back on the expertly crafted rug, the brilliance of the burgundy threads certainly a color unmatched even in nature.
"You're crazy," Anja spit, anger flashing in her eyes at what she was hearing, the thought process behind his reasoning.
"No," Jericho barked, "I believe in something greater than myself, the generations of my family that have tended this same land outnumber the stars, the same God has watched over us from when where we grew in our mother's bellies."
Jericho rose to his feet, leaving Anja staring up at him. "You are here, you now belong to me," he added in a ragged tone before abruptly turning towards the closed flaps of the tent.
"You can't do this to me," Anja shouted to Jericho's departing back.
Jericho paused, speaking as he turned around and stalked towards her, his voice booming, "this has been ordained, blessed by divinity."
"You are now at my feet," he added as he stopped within inches of her feet, staring down at her.
Anja refused to look away, willing herself not to blink as she stared up at him.
Jericho's lips pulled into a wide smile, a deep laugh made its way from his belly to echo inside the warm tent as he squatted down and gripped Anja's chin. "You are certainly a gift from God, the fire inside you will keep me warm at night, your light will bring life and wholeness back to Baba Gorl," he whispered as he pulled his daughter close to them, a sudden and violently formed family thrust together.
"You will give me the same, it has been prophesized," he hissed authoritatively, holding Anja's gaze, not allowing her to shake her chin free of his grip. "You are a reward for my faith," he whispered as he brought his face closer to hers.
Anja narrowed her eyes, anger surging through her, her pupils became like the nuclei her father wrote about splitting, offense filling her, releasing a mass amount of energy like the glorious papers her father Doctor Leonid Pavel published.
For a brief moment, Anja was again a child, perched on her father's knee as he worked through the tedious mathematical equations, writing a blueprint for how to harness the powers of the cosmos.
"I don't believe in you or your God," Anja barked, her voice harsh from the dry air. She couldn't help but chuckle at the look of righteous indignation that washed over Jericho's hard, sun-weathered features.
Her faith was placed in the splitting of atoms.
She believed in disrupting the sound barrier, creating a roadmap that could threaten to tilt the earth on its axis, pull the sun from the sky and destroy mankind.
The right and left hand of Anja's god was certainly plutonium and uranium.
Jericho raised his hand, his eyes spitting fire, lowering his hand at Anja's dry scoff that tapered into a cough.
"Now that's real and I believe that," she said. "Hit me, you can just ask your God for forgiveness, your god will forgive you, my husband will not."
Jericho didn't hit her, instead he snaked his hand to her bound wrists, tightening his fingers around the fine bones, yanking her wedding ring free of her finger.
Anja cried out, helpless to keep him from taking the heavily jeweled ring that Bane had slipped onto her finger after selfishly taking from her body.
Jericho stared down at the ornate ring that Bane accepted in trade from a dying man who didn't want to die thirsty.
"My faith will sustain us," Jericho finally said, tucking the ring into his robes before he left without a glance back at Anja or his daughter.
Anja finally felt like she could pull a full breath into her lungs when Jericho left, leaving her and Baba Gorl alone, the light low from the dying fire.
Her voice was robbed away as Baba Gorl reached behind her and loosened the rough ropes, freeing her hands and chafed wrists.
Anja could only cry, hot tears rolled down her cheeks as Baba Gorl wiped a cloth, damp with tepid water on her abraded wrists before pressing her lips to the top of Anja's hand.
Across the world, the weather back to zero visibility, blizzard condition in Alaska, Bane paced the wood floor of his and Anja's bedroom. The boards creaked under his weight, each footfall heavy and deliberate.
The trail for Anja was becoming scarce, fewer, and fewer breadcrumbs could be found.
Doctor Cain Adamson was pressing his contacts to within an inch of theirs lives, milking sources for every scrap of life they possessed.
Cain watched Bane begin to fray around the edges, threats of fragmentation to his soul with each passing moment that Anja was away from him and the children.
Tortured.
Cain accompanied Bane wherever was needed, stood by in silence or participated as asked without question.
He kept his words to himself and thoughts off his face as Bane followed through to boil people until their very ligaments turned to jelly if he was dissatisfied with a whisper of an answer under extreme duress.
Cain watched as Bane's fury grew, frustration manifested in the growing number of lives he took in order to find a trace of his beloved.
He knew the gravitational pull of Bane's anger would eat the light, that'd he collapse inward, become dark matter, devoid of humanity, lost.
"It's time to call him," Cain said to Bane's broad back as he stared down at the surface of the fifty-gallon drum.
The body of the man who provided unsatisfactory answers was slowly turning into sludge within the soup base of sodium hydroxide and some other potent connective-tissue dissolving ingredients.
Bane turned towards Cain, never distracted by the glaring port wine stain that was startling where it splashed across Cain's rugged, classically handsome features.
The two men stared at each other wordlessly, the only sound was the popping on the surface of the flesh-eating fluid that reached the brim of the steel drum, gases released as fat, flesh and muscle was reduced to a viscous, wet smear.
Cain never blinked or looked away from Bane as he fished his satellite phone from the innermost pocket of his multiple layers.
"It is time to call Him," he repeated as he held the slate grey phone out towards Bane.
Bane tried to stand his ground, tried to ignore the obvious.
He failed.
Bane's massive chest deflated, his broad shoulders sagged, and he looked down at the ground ever so briefly before he reached out for the phone.
He didn't need to tell Doctor Cain Adamson that he was correct as he began to tap out a long series of numbers on the phone, the time for the call to connect seemed to measurable in light years, crackly.
The call was answered after eleven rings.