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“But it’s the only place that was spared for women,” a petite brunette piped up. “There are only male outsiders. We’ve never heard about any girls or women surviving the Great Reckoning, other than us.”

“I know. But what if we aren’tthe only girls who survived? Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

A titter went through the crowd. “What is she talking about?” a girl muttered from somewhere behind me.

“I mean: just because we haven’t seen them doesn’t mean they don’t exist. What if Prophet Jacob doesn’t know everything about the world?” Elena went on, ignoring the whispers and murmurs. “What if there are other places that women can live? Nicer places, where men are kind. Above ground. Less rules. Less punishment.”

“Rules and punishment are important,” another woman insisted loudly. “Women cause all forms of sin, and we must be kept in line so we do not fall to temptation. You know that, Elena. We all learned that a long time ago.”

Elena sighed. “We learned that from lessons designed by Prophet Jacob, and also from reading His Word, which was written by Prophet Jacob. So what I am asking here is: where is the proof for any of this, aside from the Prophet’s word?”

“Proof?” another woman said indignantly. “Our God speaks directly to the Prophet. He knew the Great Reckoning was coming, didn’t he? What more do you need?”

Elena kept going. “Don’t you think it’s strange that we’re the only women who survived?”

“We are the chosen ones.”

“Why us, though? Really, what’s so special about us? The men constantly drum it into us that we are weak and dirty and sinful like every other woman who ever existed, so if that’s the case, why didn’t we die in the Reckoning too?”

A tall blonde woman to my left shook her head to indicate her disapproval at Elena’s questions. “Our God chose us. We don’t know why.”

“Well, maybe He chose others as well, and we just haven’t seen them.”

I chewed on my lip as I thought about what she was saying. What if there were other places out there where it was safe for women to live? What if there weren’t such strict rules in those places?

How nice it would be if I could follow Mason out of New Eden to a safe place like that. One where we could speak to each other without fear of having our lips sewn shut. One where I could admire his handsome features and tall, muscular body without worrying about being severely punished or executed for lust.

“This is dangerously close to blasphemy,” Martha said in a warning tone. “You are implying that our divine Prophet is either wrong or lying to us. I am not sure we should stay and listen to you any longer.”

The muttering grew louder. Elena was losing her audience.

“Wait!” I called out. “Just… wait. I think we should hear her out. We all know Elena is smart. She wouldn’t bring us up here if she didn’t have something worthwhile to say.”

Everyone went quiet, and Elena shot me a grateful look.

There wasn’t anything in particular that made me stand out amongst the other women. I wasn’t the smartest like Elena, I wasn’t the shortest like Amy Moreau, I wasn’t the tallest like Eve Cottrell, and I wasn’t the most striking from a distance like Martha with her fiery red hair. But I was the only daughter of the Prophet. That got me some respect from most of the other women.

Sometimes I wondered if the matter of my parentage actually made some of the women resent me, as the men were slightly nicer to me than they were to them. I knew I also had some small privileges that they didn’t get. For example, even though I was a woman, I didn’t have to participate in the Joining rituals to the same extent as everyone else. I only had to take the men in my mouth, while the others had to take them in other more painful places.

Still, whether they resented me or not, they all listened when I told them to.

“For a while now, I’ve been questioning the things we’ve been taught,” Elena said. She slipped something out of a pocket on the front of her dress. It was one of the twice-daily vitamin pills we were supposed to take. “I stopped taking these a few weeks ago, and my mind feels better somehow. Sharper.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I think these pills might not only contain vitamins. Maybe girls are just as smart as boys, and women are just as smart as men, but when we take these pills, it dulls our brains so that we think less. Question less. I’ve noticed that when we are given large doses of these, I don’t remember anything at all.”

I frowned as I considered her words. I thought I found it easier to think before I came to New Eden, but maybe I was just misremembering things. I was only a child back then, after all. Besides, my father had explained to me many times that memories could not always be trusted. Like my memories of the fields here, for instance.

During the spring wedding ceremonies, I would often admire the pink and red azaleas and camellias which grew in the fields nearby. I would also wonder why they were allowed to grow here when my father had always taught us that bright pinks and reds were sinful colors. Women used to apply those colors to their lips in the old days to entice men into committing acts of lust.

When I asked my father about it, he told me the flowers here used to be pure white, but when the world was struck by the blasts, they were all poisoned, and now they grew in bright, sinful colors. I argued that I remembered those flowers being pink in the old days, but he patiently explained to me that my memory was playing tricks on me. Sometimes we thought we knew something, but we were wrong. We simply layered new memories on top of old ones to convince ourselves we were right; a trick of the brain.

So perhaps this was a similar thing. I thought my mind was sharper in the old days, but I could just be remembering incorrectly.

Or maybe something else was happening, like Elena was implying…

One thing that had always bothered me about the flower story was that my father said the New Eden flowers were poisoned. We were all taught that the land here had been protected from the apocalyptic blasts by angels, so how could our flowers be poisoned?

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