Agnes at the End of the World by Kelly McWilliams

The world went silent, all song snuffed out like a candle flame. That she’d never heard such lovely, evil things.Īgnes pretended so hard not to hear that one day, she didn’t. That night, hand throbbing and swollen, the girl told herself she didn’t hear the sky singing or the earth humming. The woman bent and poured poison into her ear. Then she slammed a Bible’s spine across her knuckles, over and over, until the middle knuckle of her left hand cracked like a nut. She grabbed Agnes’s arm, her face purple with anger, and stretched it across the desk. “Because God is singing, everywhere, all the time.”Ĭhildren snickered. King asked the children if they remembered to pray. Perfect obedience produces perfect faith. The girl was too young to see the danger in being singled out in a land where the Prophet expected his faithful to march like paper dolls, arm in arm, and all the same. He’d scratched the earth with His fingernail and revealed a hidden world. The girl smiled, her heart full, because God had opened her ears. Rocks pulsed, stones echoed, and clouds, trees, leaves rustled with melody. She pressed her ear to the ground and listened. She was dancing when the hum rose up through the bottoms of her feet and into her small, little-girl bones. Loved the meadow and the rocky canyon and the hawks that screeched overhead, winging impossibly high. At twelve, boys and girls were forbidden to play together, and the Prophet called the children little sinners with a sneer.

She wore homemade dresses that draped every inch of skin, though they were far too hot. In Agnes’s world, secular music was forbidden, as was television, radio, and all technologies of sin.

When the girl wasn’t praying or busy with chores, she’d spin in meadows dancing with bees and dandelions, until Father called her name from the porch: “Agnes, back in the house!” The Prophet, a scowling crow of a man, presided over everyone and everything. Once, a girl lived in a double-wide trailer on ranchland, beneath a wide white sky tumbled with clouds. Excerpt - AGNES AT THE END OF THE WORLD Prologue

Agnes at the End of the World by Kelly McWilliams