The Furies (47 page)

As they walked, Ariel placed John's hand on her belly. “Jaunui's been kicking a lot today. And stepping on my bladder too. I've been running to the bathroom every five minutes.”

John pressed his hand flat against her blouse and waited for a kick. Jaunui—which was the word for water in the language of the local tribes—wasn't really the baby's name. It was just a nickname they were using until the child was born. They didn't know yet if the baby was a boy or a girl.

Ariel frowned. “Wouldn't you know it, now it stopped. Every time I get up, Jaunui takes a break. But as soon as I sit down and try to work, it starts up again.”

“Well, that makes sense. When you're walking, you're rocking the baby to sleep.”

“I'm telling you, I don't remember so much kicking the last time I was pregnant.”

John chuckled. “That was three hundred and forty years ago. How can you remember anything from back then?”

“Oh, hush. I wish you could get pregnant. Then you'd know what I'm going through.”

They walked on in silence. John sensed that something was bothering Ariel, something besides the baby's kicks. Now that the relocation was mostly complete, she'd started looking for other challenges to take on, and one of them was inheriting her aunt Cordelia's role as the family's prophetess. She'd already set up a satellite dish so she and her cousins could access the Internet, and now she spent a few hours each day scanning the world's news so she could see where things were headed. Unfortunately, the news was bad more often than it was good.

“Okay, what happened?” John asked. “Another nuclear test in North Korea?”

She shook her head. “No, not yet. It's just a million other things. In Africa, in China, in the Middle East. And nothing's going right. There's so much work to do, I don't even know where to start.”

He draped his arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “Don't worry. You'll figure it out.”

“The situation is getting worse, not better. It's going to take hundreds of years to turn things around.”

“But that's okay. You got all the time in the world, right?”

She stopped walking and looked at him. It was true, she had more than enough time ahead of her, a long golden trail stretching to the horizon. But he didn't. That's what was bothering her. “I'm sorry, John,” she whispered. “Let's talk about something else.”

He smiled. They were very near the stone ledge at the rim, but instead of heading for it he turned Ariel around and pointed at the fields they'd planted inside the bowl. “Look what we've done,” he said. “We've made our own garden. It's not Paradise, but it's enough for me.” Then he pointed in the other direction, at the vast carpet of rain forest surrounding Monte Mariposa. “And this is for you. You're going to turn the whole world into a garden. And maybe Jaunui will help you.”

Ariel started crying. John touched her cheek and wiped away a tear with his thumb. Then he led her to the stone ledge and they sat down to watch the sun set. The fiery circle was just about to touch the green carpet.

“There's only one thing I feel bad about,” John observed. “I'd like to see God being born. You know, with the manger and the farm animals and the three wise men and all.”

Ariel laughed through her tears. “It may not happen exactly that way, you know.”

“Do me a favor. When you see Him, give Him my regards, will you?”

“Of course. I think She'll enjoy hearing about you.”

Then John kissed her, and the sun sank below the horizon.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

I got the idea for
The Furies
from one of my son's term papers for middle school. He was reading about the Salem witch trials, and during the course of his research he came across a fact that startled me: the witch hunt in the Massachusetts Bay colony was just one episode in a long, terrible series of massacres. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, witch-hunters in Germany, France, Switzerland, and Great Britain killed thousands of people. In the late 1500s, for example, 368 accused witches were burned to death in a campaign begun by the Archbishop of Trier in Germany. The great majority of the victims were women. Two villages in the area were left with only one woman each.

Historians have struggled to explain the causes of the mass hysteria and slaughter. Some have noted that the period of the witch hunts roughly coincided with destabilizing events such as the Protestant Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, and the rise of nation-states. In the midst of chaos, local authorities may have sought to bolster their control by encouraging the persecution of the least powerful members of society. But this argument isn't entirely convincing. It doesn't explain why the churchmen and secular leaders focused the public's hostility on witchcraft in particular, or why the persecution was so brutal.

I decided to invent another explanation. I imagined the Furies, a large, secretive family living in Western Europe at the time of the witch hunts. Although they dwelled side by side with other villagers, the Furies had their own history and customs. The family was led by its women, who shared an idealistic, pre-Christian philosophy. The Furies also shared a genetic distinction, a hereditary trait that made them the target of their neighbors' fear and hatred. The markers of this trait were red hair and green eyes, which were considered the signs of a witch in premodern times.

As in my previous novels, I've tried to incorporate real-world scientific ideas and technologies into the book. The descriptions of gene expression, evolutionary biology, and therapeutic proteins are based on the latest research in those fields. I'm grateful for the encouragement and support from my colleagues at
Scientific American
. I'd also like to thank my agent, Dan Lazar of Writers House, and my editor, Peter Joseph of Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press. And thank you, Lisa, for giving me the love story that I've retold here.