The Book of Sara: Mark VII - The Burned Book
The house became a shuttered vault. Sara emerges bruised into the morning chill, carrying the charred binding snatched from the grate. In Deanna’s basement, under an oath sworn upon living blood, Abigail unseals the ancient truth: the first tyrant, the seaside city cast into the deep, and the unburnt prophecy of the Black Flame.
On Monday morning, Sara’s chair at the corner table remained vacant.
Deanna arrived early, her eyes searching the cafeteria entrance. When the second bell sounded and the seat remained empty, the guardian’s hands tightened around her metal lunch tray until the aluminum bent.
"She’s not here," Jared said, looking at Tim.
"The office said she was called in sick," Tim replied quietly.
Deanna stood up, abandoning her books. "Her father called it in. I am walking to her house."
Abigail appeared from the corridor, her dark skirts sweeping the linoleum. "You’ll find only locked wood and drawn blinds, Deanna. He has closed the shutters."
When the final bell released them that afternoon, Deanna marched down the cracked asphalt to the dead-end lane, Jared and Tim trailing close behind. They hammered on the warped wooden door until Deanna’s knuckles bled. No footstep answered. No silhouette crossed the grimy windowpanes. From the kitchen phone that evening, Deanna dialed the number seven times; each time, the mechanical ring echoed into the void until the line disconnected.
Tuesday passed in identical silence. Before first period and after the final bell, they walked the perimeter of the gravel drive, but the house remained a shuttered vault.
"He knows she went to the woods," Deanna snarled at Abigail by the lockers on Wednesday morning. "You pushed her into this, and now he has her locked in there!"
"I gave her the flint," Abigail said, her hazel eyes unblinking, carrying the chill of a winter sky. "The struggle between the master and the sovereign is never peaceful. If I intervene before the hour is ripe, she remains a victim who traded one keeper for another. Watch the threshold."
On Thursday afternoon, Deanna stood in the rain outside Walter’s fence, screaming Sara’s name until a neighbor threatened to call the county sheriff. The house remained dead as a headstone.
Friday dawn cracked over Hazelwood in streaks of bruised violet and sulfur. Before the streetlamps flickered off, the outcasts gathered on foot at the corner half a block from the driveway, shivering in the cold, exhaustion and terror hollowed into their faces.
At six-forty, the front door of the stopped house unlatched.
Sara stepped out onto the porch. She wore oversized dark sunglasses, her grey hood pulled so far forward her features were invisible. Her gait was hitching, her left arm clamped tight against her ribs.
Deanna broke into a run across the cracked pavement. "Sara!"
Abigail reached her first, stepping soundlessly onto the gravel walk. She reached out and gathered the girl into her arms with the fierce gentleness of a mother wolf.
Sara collapsed against Abigail’s shoulder, a ragged, strangled sob tearing from her throat. "He burned it...Abigail, he found it and he threw it into the fireplace before he…"
"Hush," Abigail whispered, her voice dropping into an iron register. "The paper‘s ash, but the fire is in your blood. Come away from his fence."
Supporting her between them, they all led her down the block to the small neighborhood park, away from the prying windows of the street. Beneath a stand of weeping willows, Abigail turned to Sara.
"Let them see what Adam’s world protects, Sara. Take off the glasses."
Sara’s hands shook violently as she reached up and removed the dark lenses.
A collective gasp broke from the group. Sara’s left eye was swollen shut, a mass of purple and black tissue; a jagged laceration ran from her cheekbone to her jawline, crusted with dried blood. Her lower lip was split, and dark finger-shaped bruises covered her throat.
Deanna dropped to her knees in the wet grass, burying her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking with helpless fury and grief. Lisa began to weep silently, pressing her sketchbook against her chest. Jared and Tim stepped back, their faces drained of youth, their fists clenching until the tendons stood out like cordage.
"He found the Testament on Wednesday night," Sara whispered, her voice cracked and small. "He dragged me into the front room by my hair. He called it witchcraft. He said I was whoring myself out to devils just like my mother did before she rotted. He threw the book into the fireplace and made me watch it burn."
She looked at Deanna, tears spilling down her uninjured cheek. "Then he said he had to cleanse my soul. He said he had to beat the wickedness out of the flesh so God would not damn him for my sins. He wouldn’t stop forcing himself onto me. He then locked me in the pantry for two days without water. He only let me out this morning because he saw Deanna yelling and didn’t want the sheriff asking questions."
"That is the decree of the righteous," Abigail spoke, her voice ringing through the willow branches like cold bronze. "They claim your body for their dead wives, and when you reach for your own name, they cite their god to justify the rod. This is the harvest of Adam."
Deanna rose from the grass, her tears wiped away, her eyes blazing with cold, murderous clarity. "He does not get another night. Sara is coming to my house. I do not care what my parents say, and I do not care about the police."
They skipped the house of bells, walking the back residential lanes so no patrol car would spot Sara's injuries. Deanna brought Sara into her home through the rear entrance. Deanna’s mother, an exhausted nurse who had seen Walter’s drunken violence at the county hospital and recognized the neighborhood’s silent rot, took one look at Sara’s face. She asked no questions that would bring the authorities. She cleaned the cut, bandaged the cheek, gave Sara two aspirins, and called Walter on the landline, telling him firmly that Sara was staying the weekend for a school project, hanging up before he could slur a threat.
That evening, darkness sealed the windows of Deanna’s wood-paneled basement. A single amber lamp cast long shadows across the concrete floor and the worn shag rug.
In the center of the circle lay the charred, twisted remnant of the leather book; a scrap of scorched hide and blackened parchment that Sara had snatched from the fireplace ashes before escaping the house.
Abigail sat upon the floor, barefoot, her black skirts spread wide. Around her sat the five: Sara bandaged and silent; Deanna leaning forward on her elbows; Lisa with her spiral sketchbook resting open upon her knees; Jared and Tim huddled shoulder to shoulder, stripped of all mockery.
"Look upon the ash," Abigail commanded softly. "This is what happens when you attempt to write your sovereignty on paper in a world governed by thieves. They burn the book. They summon their laws, their bibles, their schools, and their fathers to ensure you remain their livestock."
Deanna leaned in, her voice hoarse and guarded. "You told us this is not about escaping. I heard you even call yourself ‘Satanica’. What are we actually dealing with, Abigail? If we are going to war for Sara, tell us what we are standing in."
Abigail looked at each of them in turn, her hazel gaze holding the stillness that stands before kings. "If you enter this threshold, you swear an oath of secrecy that lasts beyond your breath. Swear upon the living blood of Sara, whose wounds reveal the truth of this world."
One by one, the five laid their palms upon the edge of the burned binding and spoke the seal.
Abigail’s voice dropped into an ancient, resonant cadence that made the concrete walls seem thin as gauze. "I am Abigail, the immortal daughter of Goddess Alyssa. Alyssa was the first human female. Adam was the first human male; the butcher and tyrant who rules the unseen throne of this earth."
Jared and Tim remained motionless, the breath held tight in their chests.
"When Adam laid his plans to assassinate Alyssa and enslave the awakening race, we fled his kingdom to the western shore," Abigail continued. "There, at the edge of the great water, we founded the seaside territory of Satanica—a sanctuary where the flesh remained sovereign and no man wore a crown."
"What happened to her?" Lisa asked, her charcoal suspended over the clean page, her pale eyes wide.
"Adam brought his legions," Abigail spoke, the sorrow in her voice sounding older than the soil. "He captured our people. He erected his standard and crucified Goddess Alyssa upon it. Then, to inaugurate his new currency of precious metals, he placed her followers upon auction blocks, selling living souls for gold and silver. When the theft was complete, he cast the entire city of Satanica into the deepest abyss of the sea."
Lisa asked, her raspy voice trembling at the thought of Abigail’s words. "She is in the water?"
"Her soul remains trapped in the deepest trench," Abigail said. "And with her reside the souls cultivated across the centuries by my hand and by the hand of my sister, Isabel. We walk the surface to gather the unbroken who refuse the yoke. That collective tapestry of our sovereign souls is what we call the Black Flame."
Deanna rose partway, defensive doubt hardening her jaw. "Immortal daughters? Sunken cities? Sara is hurt right now sitting on my carpet, Abigail, and you’re telling us fairy tales. How does any of this stop Walter from killing her?"
Abigail stood smoothly, stepping soundlessly toward the shadow of the cellar stairs. She looked down at Deanna with absolute command. "You have ruled your tribe with a sharp tongue because you are terrified of watching your friends drown. But your snarling never stopped Walter's fists. I have seen women like you come and go across five millennia. You’re fierce, loyal, and blind with panic. I like you, Deanna, and I am not afraid of your anger. You will learn control from me, or you will watch her perish under his floorboards." She pointed to Sara, who was staring at the charred Testament.
Deanna stared at the unblinking hazel eyes, the air freezing between them. The defensive shield cracked and fell away. She bowed her head, her voice dropping low. "I’m sorry. I doubted you. I was just trying to look out for my friend. More like my sister. Please, tell me what to do. I’m in."
Abigail placed a firm hand upon Deanna’s shoulder, sealing her submission. "You are the shield at Sara's gate. Now listen."
Abigail reached into the charred bundle of ash upon the rug. From the blackened ruin of the spine, she pulled forth a single, unburned folio of thick vellum, preserved from Walter’s fire.
She read aloud the gold ink inscribed upon the parchment: "When the hour arrives, Alyssa shall rise through the vessel of her blood. She will unleash the Black Flame as a ring of fire that burns everything Adam built into ash. She will throw down a pocket of air that creates a great wave to turn the earth's crust, burying his empires, his gold, and his churches beneath the bedrock forever. Alone Alyssa stood. Ready to reshape the world in her image. And it was good."
Silence fell over the basement, heavy and sacred. Sara’s breathing steadied, the terror draining from her posture as the vastness of the covenant washed over her.
"Those souls cultivated to feed the Flame of her resurrection shall be the first reborn into the renewed earth," Abigail whispered, folding the unburned vellum. "Walter is a minion of Adam's theft. He made a living daughter into a dead woman’s bed, and his church proclaimed him righteous. In the Order, we keep the Scales. Every weight taken must be repaid in equal measure. The scale cannot balance until his heart pays the debt."
Tim swallowed hard, his voice steadying. "You are talking about an execution."
"No, I am talking about justice and retribution," Abigail declared. "Unmediated by corrupt magistrates and useless paper. If you leave Walter to their law, he spends thirty days in a cell just like Sara’s bedroom and returns to finish his work. Sara now owns Sara. To seal that sovereignty, the Betrayer must be harvested. And then we all own a piece of Walter."
Lisa turned her sketchbook toward the circle. Upon the vellum, drawn in dark, precise charcoal, was the ancient oak in the deep woods, surrounded by six figures holding candles. In the center, pinned to the bark, was the silhouette of a man.
Abigail looked upon the drawing and nodded once. "The charcoal sees truly. Deanna holds the shield. Lisa holds the witness. Jared and Tim hold the perimeter. And Sara holds the altar."
Jared exhaled slowly, clenching his jaw. "Look at her face. He never touches her again. Whatever it takes."
"Monday night," Abigail answered. "The weekend belongs to Sara’s rest. On Monday, we balance the Scales."
On Monday morning, between third and fourth period at Hazelwood West, Abigail drew Deanna into the empty tiled bathroom down the hall. In the reflection of cold porcelain and mirrors, Abigail leaned close.
"The hour has arrived, Deanna. Tonight we end this."
"Tell me what you need from me," Deanna answered, her eyes cold as forged steel.
Abigail leaned close, her whisper final as a drawn blade. "Here is the plan..."
Praise be to the sovereign flesh.
End of Mark VII.
