Read Online The Quickening by Michelle Hoover - Free Book Online

heading toward the smoke and heat with fear in their eyes.
    Then it was before us. The prairie was afire—a good acre or more of it, without source it seemed, for the land itself was isolated and barren, without a single building or tree that could have burst and ignited the ground. The snow had melted a good distance, but the grass around the fire remained untouched, as if the flames had dropped from the sky. Enidina tied the horses and we ran out to see. Along the outskirts, a crowd stood, blackened with ash from head to toe. Others sat on the ground, having watched for hours while the seats of their trousers grew wet with snowmelt.
    That was the way it was, the old watchers quiet with waves of newcomers coming in—and with them, rumors spread like a fever, so while the fire cooled, the crowd heated. It was a boy’s trick, some said. It was an accident, said others. “I saw it myself,” a man yelled. “A rock fell from the sky. It burst in the air.” Others cried in agreement, said they had seen it too—it broke the glass in their windows for miles around. The crowd jeered, chattering nonsense. In their midst, a woman still heavy with birth and milk stood dumb with her infant, ignoring its wails. Her face was colorless, her shoulder soaked with drivel. The child itself was red-skinned and crying, a furious body in its mother’s arms—its cries shivered through the air. At last a voice shouted, “It was a sign from God.”
    I looked up into the sky. My tongue tasted sour and black, the smell of burning meadow. Next to me, Enidinastood with her legs wide, watching the others more than the charred prairie itself and me more than anyone else. When a sob rose from my throat, she took my arm in her terrible grip. “This here is nothing,” she whispered. “This is just natural. Best we don’t look for reasons at all.”
    I wrenched my arm away. The baby’s wail grew. All around us were farmers and wives staring into the blackness, and I knew God had come. I saw His face looking down at me from the very clouds. There was no place He wasn’t—and worst of all there were places He was without question, and no heavy hand was going to keep the world from trembling. I left Enidina where she stood and I stumbled forward into the backs of strangers—they parted like grass to let me go on. Before me the land had been touched by greatness and I threw myself into it, surrendering myself to that fertile ground. The arms of forgiveness gathered me in, a warmth rising from the cold, and I let myself go numb.
    It was then I slept—and in that sleep I imagined myself sitting in an empty pew at the back of the chapel. The air shone through the windows with a yellow haze that warmed my lap, so different from the light that left the fields in their pale coating of dust. The rest of the chapel had fallen into darkness, not a sound from the back hall, and I pressed my forehead into my hands. Out of the shadows a boy came and stood at my feet, blocking out the light. He was restless and smelled of smoke, all muscle and bone as some boys are just before they turn men, and in his fist he held a bloodyhandkerchief—as I watched, that handkerchief grew to the size of a sheet and I shielded my eyes.
    When I was young, I had found such a light in an opening of the woods. The trees broke, leaving a wide stretch of grass where I could lie on my back and let the narrow shaft of sun hold me in its grip. I had escaped my mother’s house for a few moments of peace and found this place where I was hot-skinned and drowsy, the center of all I could see. Lying there, I believed something was beginning—it was something I believed I should feel ashamed for, but didn’t, and as I slept after that fire I felt that beginning again. The boy stood in the chapel at my feet, but now such a pleasure rose in the core of my stomach—quick as a liquid that would keep me swollen for months—and I knew I could hold on to that feeling as if holding on to a