Exit Kingdom

the axe over his head and brings the blade down on the ice to the left of the dead man. A crack extends through the surface of the pond, and water splashes out. Then he hefts the
axe twice more – once onthe other side of the dead man and once beyond where the head is. Then he sets the axe down and slides the loosened sheet of ice away leaving a rectangular patch of
water where the dead man is.
    Moses kneels in the water at the edge of the pond, before the floating slug. The ripples in the water diminish until the surface is flat and unmoving. Then the dead man begins to rise.
    But hehas been underwater for too long. The face, as it rises out of the water, melts away, the loosened flesh slipping off bone, the mush of his features splashing into the water, scalp and
ear floating mildly on the surface like lily pads. The jaw seems to open, too, but it does so by gravity rather than hunger, because the muscles are rotted away as well. The man cannot hold himself
above water,and as soon as his shoulders clear the surface he falls back again. Again he rises, and again he falls back.
    Moses doesn’t know what he expected to happen. Perhaps he thought the man would rise like the body of a saint, held aloft on columns of light, lifted to cloudy heaven. Maybe he thought the
man would emerge dripping, cleansed, baptized, and steal away into the wilderness to encounterfully his final communion with the earth.
    What Moses had wanted was to free the man. But this horror does not look anything like freedom.
    He bows his head and sighs as the slug rises again and falls back, the wrinkled flesh of his fingers sloughing off as he reaches for purchase at the edges of the ice.
    Then Moses stands and picks up the axe again. He turns it over and uses one handonly to bring the pick end down and bury it in the dead man’s skull.
    The pick slips out as easily as it went in, and then the body sinks again for the last time.
    Moses looks to the sky again, but nothing has changed. The stars are the same ones he saw before. They are the same hoot owls that once again commence their haunted calls. He is still thigh deep
in the pond, but he cannot feelthe cold.
    He turns to the Vestal Amata who has watched the whole thing in silence. He starts to say something but then trails off:
    Well, at least . . .
    At least what? the girl asks.
    But diminished so to smallness is the world that the least of anything is difficult to determine.
    *
    That is their fifth night at the cabin. Moses does not know how he will endure asixth – for slowing down means growing blind to promise, and a cessation is the ignoblest
kind of death. So what will a sixth day look like? What sallow universe will be born?
    But he does not have to discover it, because before dawn on the next day the visitors arrive.

Seven
    Two Men and a Woman » Bloodshed » A Plan » ‘Kill em Good’ » A Kiss and a Belt » A Showdown on the Bridge » Shooting Wild »
A Farmhouse » On the Topic of Family » Void »
An Apology
» The Love of Broken Things » Gunnison » Arrival
    It is the Vestal who wakes Moses when the light is still grey and misty. It is no longer snowing, and instead of the tap-tap-tap of the flakes on thewindowpanes, there is only
a muffled silence that sanctuarizes their small and fractured home.
    The Vestal says nothing. She simply puts a hand against Moses’ cheek, and he wakes. He opens his eyes to see her holding a finger to her lips, hushing him. She points to a window and bids
him to wait and listen.
    He remains still, and then he can hear it. The stuttering groan of snow beneathclumsy boots. It is difficult to sneak up on someone in the snow. The ground itself cries out your presence.
    Did you see them? Moses whispers.
    The Vestal nods.
    Three of them, she whispers. Two men. One woman with a bow. Fletcher’s people.
    Moses wakes his brother, and they creep to the windows, peeking out from behind the ratty curtains they kept closed in case of just such an intrusion.

    The men’ll come through the door – both at once, Abraham says. The woman with the bow, she’ll stay back, watch for runners.
    Right, Moses says and nods.
    What do we do? the Vestal asks.
    Moses turns to her. They are all three crouched to the floor.
    You want to go back with him? Moses asks her.
    No, she says and shakes her head. Why would I—
    You’re goin with him or you’recomin with us. My brother and I, we put our necks out there to get swinecut again, you’re comin quiet. No