into everything she touched. Alex began to speak again and Jeanine stopped, hand in the punch bowl, liquid up to the cord tied around her wrist, its frayed ends now bobbing in the cold red. “At long last,” Alex sighed. He held up his hands and all eyes were drawn to the scars; long gashes up both arms where he was cut and left to bleed out. The others turned from his scars to look at their own. Jeanine was a deep suffocation blue, purple veins marking trails across her body. Others were missing parts of the skull, or it was sunken in. A few were burnt, like Clara. Some still wore the sacks they were tied in, fashioning them into some sort of shirt or dress. These badges of memory were evident on each person in the room. “We the sins,” Alex said, his voice gaining in strength. “We their sins.” Hope looked around the room and saw collective memory kick in. The firstborn contained the sins of the parents. It was only in their death that the world was kept pure. Hope had been the first to appear in the meeting room, and as far as she knew she was always there. But the scar on her stomach, a slice from navel to neck, told a different story. Then came Alex. When he spoke everyone remembered their death. They remembered their anger, and the sin their parents had filled them with. “Through you,” Alex said, sweeping his hands to include everyone in the room, “I found a way to save us all. We found a way. And, as it was written, a child shall lead us.” The room was cramped. More people were showing up each day. Hope missed those first days when she was the
Timeless Tales 2 63