I tried to move and found my hands were bound together and a rope had been slipped around my ankles. It was the same with my friends. All the young people stood around us. None of the old-timers were present. It was an under-twenty-five crowd only. The children had been gathered and brought around. They looked sleepy and curious, like this was some kind of game they were playing but they didn’t understand the rules just yet.
“What are you doing?” I croaked.
“Putting things right. Saving Necuratul before it’s too late,” Mariana answered.
“The old-timers. Did they make you do this? Are they forcing you to—”
They all laughed.
“The old-timers? Force us? They begged us not to do it! Every single one of them was ready to pack up and leave Necuratul, let the bulldozers and ‘progress’ take it. Be obliterated by people with more power than we have. ‘Make do,’ they pleaded. ‘Appreciate what you have.’ But we’ve seen the world. We know only the powerful are respected and safe.” She joined hands with Vasul and Dovka. “So we start the tradition again. But we modernize. Why sacrifice our own when we could sacrifice others?”
Dovka snipped a small section of hair from each of us. “Once we join your hair to the goat’s head, your souls will be promised to the other world.”
“But that’s not fair,” Isabel said. “We had no say.”
“Life isn’t fair,” Dovka answered.
John was sweating heavily. “Look, my parents are rich. They’ll pay any ransom.”
“John, what are you doing, man?” Baz growled.
“S-sorry, cuz,” he stammered.
“John,” Baz said again, but that was all.
Mariana glanced from John to us and back again. “You would be willing to leave your friends, your own cousin, to their fates?”
John wouldn’t look at us. “Don’t hurt Isabel.”
“John…” Isabel started and stopped.
“The breakdown of civilization, the end of the tribe. No loyalty,” Vasul said. “This is what the world is.”
“At the club where I work, there are so many bored, rich kids. Totally entitled. Always looking for that next thrill to talk about over beers. Just like this one,” Dovka sneered.
“I didn’t mean any disrespect,” John choked out.
Mariana thought for a minute. “Very well. You can be part of our new tradition.”
“Whatever you want. I’ll do it.”
“I am glad to hear it.” She jerked her head, and Dovka drew a razor from her pocket and moved so fast I could barely register what was happening. I hope it was the same for John. Isabel shrieked John’s name, and the next thing I knew, John was on the ground, lifeless, and the rest of them were spattered with blood.
“Oh god, oh god, oh god,” Baz keened. He closed his eyes and started a prayer in Hebrew, even though I knew he hadn’t been to temple since his bar mitzvah. This was the kind of fear that made you pretend there was a god to save you. The kind that brought everything into such sharp relief that you could watch a friend die and still hear a mouse scuttling in the corner, the wind whistling against the side of the church.
Isabel had gone silent.
Mariana put her hand on John’s head. “We offer not only our loyalty but this blood as well, O lord, as a promise of our fidelity. From now on we will always make such an offering. It is a new world and that calls for new commitment.”
The kids huddled together. They looked scared. Dovka spoke soothingly to them and they calmed. She had them wind our hair into the braids on the goat’s head and they did it without question. Dovka said something in Necuratuli. “To prove our loyalty,” she translated, looking at us.
Mariana opened the ancient rites book and began to read in a tongue that demanded attention, a language that spoke to your bones, made your heart beat faster, whispered to all those places inside that hide our worst thoughts, our most terrible fears. It was a calling-up, a calling-out. A naming. When she was finished, she closed the book and forced us to our feet. The kids had finished their grisly task, and Mariana’s crew tied Baz, Isabel, and me together. Our hands were fastened to the point of pain. Another rope was tightened around our waists and Dovka held the slack. Vasul and the other guys carried John’s body on their shoulders like pallbearers.
Just then the door to the church banged open. The old-timers blocked the exit with their shovels and lanterns. Mariana’s mother spoke sharply to her daughter, and Mariana answered in English.