Page 62 of Taken

“Was it hard?”

He shrugged. “Life can be hard no matter what’s going on.”

“How many other survivors are out there?”

“You’d be surprised.”

I sighed. He wasn’t exactly being forthcoming, but I knew why. “It’s okay if you can’t explain it all to me. You’re much smarter. I probably wouldn’t understand.”

With one hand, he brought my face up so our eyes were forced to meet. “Jolie, you need to stop doing that. Stop acting like you aren’t just as smart as me.”

“But I’m not. It isn’t possible. My father says—”

He cut me off. “I know, I know. He says men are leagues above women in every way, and he knows this because of his visions from your God.”

“Yes. He’s right, too. I know because the men here are much smarter than me and all the other women.”

Mason sighed. “Jolie, that’s not true.”

“It is,” I insisted.

“No. You just think it is. If you have something drummed into you for long enough, you start to believe it. You may even start to act like it.”

“So you’re saying my father is lying about the things he tells us?” I asked, my body turning rigid.

Mason shook his head. “No. But the thing is…” He hesitated for a second. “I think it could be possible that he might interpret a vision incorrectly on occasion.”

I stayed quiet, waiting for him to continue. And he did. He told me there were other prophets where he came from who were given totally different messages from different Gods. Messages which placed women on the same level of importance as men. He also explained to me how every single message my father claimed to have received was very convenient for him.

He really emphasized that word. Convenient. I didn’t understand what he meant at first, and to be honest I was still having trouble with the concept, but essentially, he said something along the lines of it being oh-so-convenient for my father that our God had declared all women stupid and inferior, automatically rendering them a slave class for the men.

I saw his point, but at the same time, wasn’t that right? Men were bigger and twenty times stronger than women. Didn’t that mean they were twenty times smarter too, and therefore entitled to have the lower class—all of us women—serve them?

Mason said no. He said that men had brains and physical strength, and on the other hand, women had equally-powerful brains and strong intuition to complement their counterparts’ physical abilities. He said women also had a different sort of physical strength that men couldn’t even dream of matching.

We could grow an entire human in our wombs, then endure the pains of labor to bring that new soul into the world. He said most men, no matter their size or strength, would fall to the ground squealing like a child if you so much as jabbed them in the testicles. If any of them were forced to endure pregnancy and labor pains instead of women, the human race would’ve likely died out years ago.

I giggled at that. It sounded about right.

I was beginning to think Mason was right about a lot of the other things he said too. The men here at New Eden were so fragile about their masculinity that they couldn’t handle even the slightest comment against it, even in jest.

Elena once received a backhand across the face for simply smiling in amusement when one of the men here dropped something he was carrying after finding it too heavy, when just moments earlier he’d taken one look at it and said it would be very easy for him to lift up. It was funny. But the way he reacted… you’d think Elena had actually stabbed him in the chest and stolen his children. He was that insecure about a woman laughing at him.

“You really think my father is wrong about all those things?” I asked when Mason finally trailed off. My mind was buzzing with wonder and confusion.

“I do. Where I’m from, men and women are considered equals in most ways. It isn’t always great for women, because sometimes men still treat them badly or try to take away their rights, depending on where they are. But on the whole, it’s a lot different out there than it is down here.”

I frowned. “Do you mean were?” I asked. “As in women were considered equal?”

“No. Are.”

“But there aren’t any women left in the world, apart from those of us here at New Eden. You’re making it sound like there’s still lots of them out there, even today.”

“There are.”

My brows shot up. “Other women actually survived the Great Reckoning?”

“Yes. Like I said before, your father might misinterpret his visions sometimes,” Mason said. “But trust me. There are lots of other women in the world.”

---