Into the Wilderness: Blood of the Lamb (Book Two) Read Free

help!” Now she turned to Lazarus, all playfulness fading from her voice. “Just keep away from me. I'll work the tiller; you do the ropes and sails.”
    He saluted, mocking her resolve, but quickly scrambled tothe place at the prow where the deck between the two hulls narrowed to a thin walkway, only two planks wide, that cantilevered out over the oily black sea. At the walkway's end he nestled against the carved figurehead of a warrior, whose inset shell eyes stared off towards the unfathomable west. Instantly, Maryam felt the tightness in her chest diminish a little.
    Joseph and Ruth struggled to their feet and retreated to the shelter that straddled the two sturdy hulls. A dense thatch of pandanus leaves shrouded the tightly lashed bamboo frame, forming a roof and walls to hold out wind and rain—a dry place to sleep and shelter for the stores Joseph and his mother, Deborah, had packed inside.
    Maryam shifted into the seat Joseph had vacated, huddling down as she took possession of the tiller for this first night shift. It fought against her, as if wanting to swing the boat around, and she had to lean into it, using her body-weight to hold it firm.
    Up to the south, the Maiaki Cross was the only familiar marker in the cloud-rinsed sky. She tried to recall the constellations she'd studied in Mother Deborah's book, as well as the lessons from old Hushai's tales of their ancestors’ fabled travels. But she couldn't recognise any other feature in the vast network of stars. What kind of navigator was she, to sit beneath uma ni borau—her ancestors’ great roof of voyaging—and not even recall the simplest of stars?
    Yet as she willed her panicked pulse to slow, some of the familiar blueprints of the stars emerged and grew more solid, like the peaks of Onewēre's highest mountains when the mist that cloaked them in the squally months began to clear. There was the crab-like constellation Tairiki off to the north; that hungry shark Te Bakoa, with his gaping mouth and gloweringred eye, lurking around the reef of stars in the north-east. And there, flowing between them all like a silted tidal stream, the wash of stars the Apostles called the Milky Way.
    That these ancient markers had not altered since time first began, and even now had not deserted her, was somehow soothing. When all else around her was uncertain and unknown, at least she could rely on these shining beacons to guide their way.
    Maryam could just make out Ruth and Joseph inside the shelter as they tried to settle on the sleeping mats. Poor Ruth. She was so scared, and so reluctant to take on this voyage, it was impossible for Maryam not to feel responsible for her safety now. For a wild moment she was tempted to push the tiller hard around to head them safely back to land. But then the horrors of the previous weeks returned to her, and she knew the only escape from the Apostles’ cruel control lay in fleeing the Holy City and never looking back.
    How innocent she and Ruth had once been: to believe they were the special ones—the Lord's Chosen, Blessed Sisters raised to obey the Apostles’ stringent Rules and to think of sacrifice as the fulfilment of devotion to a loving Lord. How foolish that thinking seemed, when all the time those same Apostles planned to steal her blood to save themselves from Te Matee Iai, proclaiming that it was the Lord, and not the lifeblood of the Blessed Sisters, who was protecting them from the plague's harsh grip. As for Ruth, destined to a life of shame, her body used to serve her masters as nothing more than breeding stock…no! No matter what hardships now lay ahead, nothing could be worse than that.
    As the night wore on, Maryam fought the ever-growing compulsion to drift off to sleep. She had not yet regained herstrength after the last transfusion, feeling the way it sapped her and resenting it even though the last donation was of her own making to save Joseph's life. Even now she was