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Morning prayer is Sophie’s favorite part of the day. Those first thirty minutes of silence, sitting in the dim common room of the children’s compound, feel so different from the rest of her life that it’s easy to forget where she is. Now that she’s thirteen, she gets woken with the oldest children to help take care of the younger ones, which means the sun is barely rising on the horizon when she has to shuffle from bed into the common room.
The minutes are passed without talking or music or noise beyond what can’t possibly be helped, because their first thoughts in the morning must be worship of God. The mind is at its clearest before the day has filled your thoughts, the Father teaches. God does not ask His followers to do what is easy, He asks them to do what is righteous : that’s been written in neat, slanting cursive across the top of one of the common room’s walls, above the large framed portrait of the Father.
If Sophie sits in the back, she can see out the window as the sun starts to rise, slowly climbing its way about the mountains, and she can pretend that things are normal again. She can flip, silently, through the pages of the copy of The Book of Joseph and pretend to read them, and nobody questions her. For those sweet, sweet minutes of morning prayer, Sophie is allowed to be herself.
But the time ticks by quickly, and one of the adults finally breaks the silence with a softly whispered, “Good morning.” Morning prayer is over for the older children, which means it’s time for them to clear out of the common room to make way for the younger group. Sophie will follow the rest of her peers down the hallway and back into their dormitory, put on her plain ankle-length dress and the long white pinafore. Let all the children of God wear white, so that their innocence may be plain for all to see. Another quote from the Father, written on posters taped over the door of the changing rooms.
Sophie is still half-asleep as she helps in the kitchen, scooping oatmeal from a massive pot into individual bowls. She’s not tired enough to not notice the weird, tense expressions on the faces of every adult, though, and how the cooks are rushing to get breakfast out into the cafeteria. They all look... anxious. Sophie hurriedly finishes her job and takes her seat at the round table dedicated for all the students in the seventh and eighth grades, breakfast tray in hand.
The doors to the cafeteria swing open and every adult in the room is now visibly on the edge of panic.
It’s the Father.
He’s in a small group with his personal Chosen, but it’s the Father, smiling and trying to ease some of the tension he clearly knows his sudden appearance has caused. Teacher Sarah is talking to the Father, body bent over in something that wasn’t quite a bow, her hands clasped together as he leans in to her personal space and presses their foreheads together. Whatever she says, Sophie is too far away to hear it, but she can imagine it’s apologies for not being ready for his visit.
It’s been weeks since Sophie saw the Father. He gave evening sermon at the compound at least once a month, standing in front of his own portrait in the common room, but it’s almost the end of March and he hasn’t been back since mid-February. Sophie assumes it’s because of the Resistance (because of her mother, out there somewhere in the county). She shovels her breakfast into her mouth as quickly as she can manage, staring down at her tray.
Teacher Sarah claps her hands twice to get everyone’s attention, her smile wavering as the Father looms behind her. “Today’s morning will proceed as usual,” she says with enthusiasm that only seems a little fake. “But we are honored to have our holy Father in attendance as we study his divine Word.”
Breakfast was rushed, trays collected by the kitchen workers before some children were even finished. Teacher Maria leads Sophie’s grade group from the cafeteria into their classroom, for Sophie’s least favorite part of the day: lessons.
Sophie’d been a freshman at Brush Creek High School until last September, but at the Project she had been grouped with the middle schoolers. When she came to the children’s compound, Teacher Sarah had given her a long, confusing test with questions that didn’t seem to have any real answers. In the end, Sophie was grouped with the older middle schoolers, for “necessary spiritual development,” even though she was past the rest of the class in every other topic. She struggled to fit in with the fourteen other students in her group, and between that and how far ahead she was academically, lessons were agonizingly boring for Sophie.
She’s pulling out her binder of hole-punched printouts that passes for a textbook here, emblazoned with the Cross of Eden, when the Father strolls into their classroom, hands in the pockets of his jeans. Teacher Maria’s face burns bright red and she nods her head, like Teacher Sarah had done, in something that wasn’t a bow but wasn’t not a bow either. “We’ll start with our English lesson,” she says.
Sophie can feel the eyes of the Father on her as she turns to the page that Teacher Maria has written on the blackboard. Does he know? He couldn’t. The Father-- Joseph Seed was just a regular man. He wasn’t actually a prophet, and he couldn’t read minds. Not even Sophie’s mother knew she was here, sneaking around.
The page is an excerpt from another religious text, like it always is. Thankful are we, oh Lord, for the Father, who was chosen by the Voice, for the Herald who defends us from evil, for the Herald who listens to the secrets of our hearts, for the Herald who brings to us Your divine Bliss. The Book of Joseph, Covenants of the Chosen, Chapter I, Verse V.
“Who remembers the context of this passage?” Teacher Maria asks. Sophie can feel sweat bead on the nape of her neck as the Father slides into the empty desk behind her. She raises her hand, shakily. “Sophie?”
“It’s from, um.” Sophie stumbles over her words. “It’s from Covenants.” That’s a stupid answer, and Sophie feels herself burn bright red. She wants to blend in, not make a fool of herself. “From chapter one, which is for giving gratitude to the Lord for what we have been given in this world and what we will receive in Eden.”
Teacher Maria smiles, and Sophie swears she can hear the Father let out a small sigh. She feels like she’s passed a test she didn’t know she was taking. The lesson itself is easy, something about how to infer context from an excerpted work, but the Father’s presence has everyone on edge. It was one thing to sit every day in this classroom with its copy of the photo of the Father and his Heralds, the American flag with all fifty stars replaced by Crosses of Eden, learning lessons painstakingly plotted around shaping them into ones who will be worthy of following the Father into Eden, but another thing altogether for the Father to sit there and watch.
English becomes History class with a flipping of the textbook to the right section, and History becomes Devotional Studies. The Father clears his throat as Teacher Maria wipes the board clean to start the Devotional. “I’ll speak now,” he says, in a way that leaves no room for Teacher Maria to protest, rising from the desk. “Thank you, Maria. You’ve done well.”
Teacher Maria looks overwhelmed, worshipful, like the acknowledgement of the Father was a blessing. “Thank you, Father.”
“And the Voice spoke, and revealed to the Father the truth of the world,” the Father says, staring up at his own likeness on laminated poster-board hanging above the blackboard. “That the only way to enter the promised Garden through Eden’s Gate was to live apart from the wickedness, to live together, away from the evil that would devour all in its grasp. Thus we live away from the fumes of the world’s pollution, their hateful creations of culture, the lies that are taught in their schools, the government that would seek to destroy us. We must reject the poisons that they seek to cull our minds with, all the manipulations whose purpose is to enslave us and distance us from our original virtue. As Noah built an arc, so the Father and his Heralds would build the Project, so that we may be saved from wrath.”
The Father writes the book and chapter numbers on the board in a messy scrawl: The Book of Joseph, Revelations and Prophecy, Chapter 1. He turns around slowly, eyes narrowed as he stares down at the students. Sophie shivers again, pinned by the weight of his stare. “But the world cannot have such purity in it without seeking its destruction. There is a snake in our garden, and the sinners, the apostates have gathered around it. They have seen the goodness and the light of our Project and want to destroy it. They saw our church and defiled it.”
One of Sophie’s classmates, a boy named Trevor, makes a noise of agreement. Some of the other students are nodding, too. Sophie’s heart beats a little faster--the Father is talking about her mother. The Resistance.
“They came to take me away! To raid our home and our Project. But God--God saw this, and He protected me. He would not let them take me. I meditated for hours, praying and listening to the Voice, and then I knew. I knew that we cannot let this snake steal what we have built, to desecrate our holy work. We will fight. We will resist the sinners with everything we have. But I can’t manage this fight alone.” The Father raises his hand, pointing to students at random. “The Voice gave me a vision, and it was of a great army. I need to raise my ranks, to pick the next generation of Chosen so we all might be ready.”
The Father’s pointing at Sophie and smiling, but it isn’t friendly. He’s sweating, beads of sweat dripping on his brow, and he’s looking at her like a vulture circling around a dead animal on the roadside. She feels frozen, all of her limbs suddenly stiff and unable to move. “I needed you,” he says, voice pitched softer than when he’d been preaching. “My Chosen. I see now.”
Sophie can feel the weight of everyone in the classroom staring at her, like she’s supposed to be doing something but she doesn’t know what. The Father paces towards her, his hand settling underneath her chin to force her to look up at him. “You should have no fear, child,” he whispers. “You’ve been chosen.” Up close, he smells like the Bliss flowers, a heavy overwhelming floral scent mixed with sweat, like the oil they anoint people with after their baptisms. It makes Sophie dizzy.
The Father lets go of her jaw and turns to Matthew, sitting two desk over. He’s still talking, probably something about Matthew being Chosen too, but Sophie’s still reeling, unable to focus. Chosen. The Father doesn’t pick his Chosen this young, that’s an honor for the oldest teenagers, what would have been the seniors and juniors in a real school. Does Sophie’s mom have something to do with this? She knew her mother was throwing the Project--no, the cult into disarray. Was it that bad? Had desperation pushed the Father into picking his Chosen at the youngest level possible?
Sophie’s only pulled out of the whirlwind of her thoughts as Isobel, the girl who sits behind her, nudges her on the shoulder. Quickly, Sophie folds her hands together and bows her head as the Father starts to pray. “Dear God, we are thankful today for Your infinite wisdom, for Your sacred guidance, for the Bliss, for the Heralds, and for the Word of the Father. We are thankful for the sacrifices of the Chosen and for Sophie and Matthew, who You have called to serve in Your ranks,” Joseph whispers. “Amen.”
“Amen,” the class murmurs in answer. Sophie keeps her eyes closed for a minute longer than necessary, trying to reign in her pounding heart. Her eyes dart right to Matthew, who looks ecstatic. Wasn’t this the greatest honor any member of their Project could hope for? Wasn’t this what Teacher Sarah was supposed to prepare them for?
The Father kisses the back of Teacher Maria’s folded hands, leaving the classroom with a vacant smile and a nod. Everyone mumbles a thank you, Father, as he leaves. Teacher Maria’s face is flushed, and for a moment Sophie wishes she genuinely believed the way Teacher Maria did, that things like this could bring her that kind of pure divine joy.
“We’ll pray, again,” Teacher Maria say immediately, dropping to her knees and shuffling so she can face the portrait of the Father. “Our Father,” she begins, and the class follows her example, on their knees with their hands folded.
It’s not until Sophie’s back in her room, in the scant hour of free time she gets between the end of lessons and afternoon prayer, that the impact of the Father’s proclamation hits her. She’s hunched over in a corner of the otherwise empty common room, clutching at her now-worn copy of the Book of Joseph with white knuckles as her body shakes with tears. Chosen. What does that even mean? For the children so close to adulthood it was only a technicality of one or two years separating the boundary, it meant withdrawal from school, into secretive meetings and practices and life away from the compound. It meant serving one of the Father’s Heralds personally, as a warrior or a translator or assistant or specialist, but Sophie wasn’t like any of the other Chosen. She was too young to have shown exceptional talent in anything or otherwise catch anyone’s attention. Her only talent was making herself small and unnoticed among a crowd of people just like her.
Someone shaking her by her shoulder startles Sophie out of her tears. It’s Teacher Sarah, in her long black prairie dress, and one of Herald Faith’s Chosen priestesses, all in soft white with a Bliss flower tucked in her dark hair. “You were Chosen,” Teacher Sarah says softly, with a small smile, like she’s trying to comfort Sophie. “I know it must be scary right now, but God does not ask us to do what is easy.”
Sophie leans into Teacher Sarah, into the rough polyester of her dress and the warmth of her shoulder and baby-powder scented perfume, as her body shakes with a cry. He asks them to do what is righteous. Another cheap quote from the walls. Teacher Sarah shushes Sophie the same way the nursery attendants shush the babies.
“You will be baptized tonight,” the Chosen priestess says soothingly. She rubs a palm over Sophie’s back. “John will see to it personally, with the Father watching. It’s a honor.”
Teacher Sarah pulls away with a click of her tongue. “That’s a rare privilege. Most of our flock go their entire lives without being given a sacrament so personally.”
Sophie nods shakily. She knew it was an honor, she wasn’t stupid. “Thank you, Teacher,” she manages to squeak out. She wipes at her tears futilely with the long sleeve of her dress. Was Matthew this shaken? Had she given her secret away so easily?
“When you’re ready,” the priestess says, “I’m here to take you to your new home. Don’t take anything. Everything you need now, the Father will provide.”
The Father had already provided Sophie with everything she had--even the shoes and socks she’d worn on her arrival to the compound had been replaced with ones given to her by Eden’s Gate. But Sophie doesn’t feel like arguing, so she just bobs her head obediently. Teacher Sarah presses a kiss to Sophie’s temple with what looks like something dangerously close to motherly affection.
Sophie lets out a long, shaky breath. She doesn’t have a choice anymore. “I’m ready.”
It’s just barely spring outside, just barely warm enough where Sophie isn’t shivering without a coat over her long dress. How Sister Adilene, in her short white dress and bare feet in imitation of Herald Faith herself, isn’t cold is beyond Sophie.
Matthew isn’t waiting in the plain white pick-up truck outside like Sophie had hoped. She and Matthew were never close, but he was at least a familiar face. Sister Adilene must be able to read the apprehension on Sophie’s expression, because she lets out a quiet laugh as she slides into the passenger side seat. Sophie’s left sandwiched between Sister Adilene and the truck driver, who doesn’t even react to their arrival.
“Your friend is fine,” Sister Adilene soothes. “He’ll be baptized tomorrow. He wasn’t quite ready yet.”
Sophie doesn’t answer. The children’s compound, with its concrete walls and barbed-wire fence rapidly vanishes from view, into the darkness of the surrounding woods. She knows that she’ll never see the old elementary school that the Project had repurposed again, and for some reason the realization hits her like a stone. For months, that compound had been the only home she’d ever known. She could barely even remember what her own bedroom, back in Brush Creek, just beyond the collapsed Whitetail tunnel, looked like.
She tries to track where they’re going, like her mother always told her to do if anyone ever took her, but they take so many old dirt roads deeper into the woods that Sophie can’t even figure out what direction they’re driving. By the time the sun sets, Sophie gives up completely. It’s too dark to decipher any potential landmarks.
It’s at least a thirty-minute drive, Sophie guesses, before the driver pulls down towards an old boat launch. Sister Adilene stretches her palms towards the sky with a small sigh as Sophie scrambles out of the truck. “Have you seen a baptism, Sophie?” Adilene asks.
Sophie shakes her head. Only the oldest children who “graduated” from the compound got baptized. Sister Adilene smiles. “You’ll do fine.” She offers Sophie her hand, and holds it loosely as they make their way through overgrown grass in the dark, towards what at first looks like only a pinprick of flickering yellow light.
As they get closer, Sophie realizes it isn’t just a pinprick of light. It’s a bonfire, burning on the bank of the river, and in the distance, huddled around it, people are gathered, singing hymns. The devil knows our fears, he told all his friends. A few men are dumping the contents of mint-colored barrels into the water, though Sophie doesn’t know what it is or why they’re doing it.
On the banks, water lapping around his ankles, is Herald John. Sophie’s breath catches in her throat. She’s only seen the Father in person before, none of the other Heralds paid any public visits to the children’s compound. He’s shorter than the Father, but he looks just as commanding, gesturing wildly with his hands as he talks in a quiet whisper to Joseph. There are two of Herald John’s Chosen on the riverbanks, too, holding crosiers topped with Crosses of Eden and heavy white leather versions of the Book of Joseph.
There’s a few people like her, too, Sophie realizes. People who clearly have come to be baptized tonight--not too many, maybe five in total. Sister Adilene squeezes her hand and shakes her head. “You’ll be the last one,” she whispers. “Because you’ve been Chosen, and they have not.”
“Were you scared, when you were Chosen?” Sophie asks. She’s looking for comfort, reassurance, anything to hold onto. She wasn’t frightened when she came to the compound. She wasn’t frightened when she joined the Project. But now....
Now Sophie is terrified. She has no idea what’ll happen to herself. She has no idea where her mother is, or what she’s doing--her mother doesn’t even know where she is. Raw anxiety churns Sophie’s stomach and her eyes are hot with tears she’s trying so desperately to hold back.
“Of course.” Sister Adilene brushes her palm against Sophie’s cheek. “I was so, so scared. But the Father... He showed me the light through my fear, and then, when I was Chosen... He showed me how to help other people find that light, too, working with Faith. You don’t have to not be scared, Sophie. You just have to trust the Father.”
Sophie bites back a sob. She thinks of her mother, angry when she found out that Sophie had been taken to an Eden’s Gate service by the family of her best friend in middle school: Joseph Seed was a cult leader, a fraud, a scam artist who’d lead his followers into their own deaths one day. He wasn’t a prophet, but. But.
There shouldn’t be a second part to that sentence, Sophie knows, but she’s seen too much, read too much, looked for too long at the same oil portrait of Joseph Seed hanging in almost every room she’s occupied for the past seven months.
Sister Adilene kisses Sophie on the forehead. “Can I ready you?” It’s said like a question, but Sophie knows she doesn’t have a choice. Instead of answering, Sophie just closes her eyes. Sister Adilene’s fingers are nimble as they untie Sophie’s pinafore, tugging it over her shoulders. Sophie shivers as Sister Adilene steps behind her, undoing each one of the buttons on the back of her dress. “What you were before this night doesn’t matter. The Father and his Heralds will remake you. When their work is done, you’ll be ready for Eden.”
Sophie steps out of the pooled dress with a deep breath. Though the heavy white under-dress had felt ridiculous to wear at the compound, she’s suddenly grateful for it. Sister Adilene kneels, her knees in the mud of the riverbank, as she helps Sophie toe off her plain black school shoes. Sophie focuses on Adilene, on how she’s been stripped of everything except her underthings, on the chill that’s rapidly settling over the river now that sun’s gone. Anything except the baptism.
But eventually Sophie’s barefoot, bare-legged, standing and shaking with the cold on the muddy riverbank, Sister Adilene’s hand on her shoulder as Herald John turns to her, beaming in the dim firelight.
Herald John’s heavy hand replaces Sister Adilene’s and into the cold water Sophie wades, toes digging into the silt as the Baptist leads her into water that nearly covers Sophie’s chest.
“Sophie.” Herald John is smiling, but it’s not the right kind of smile, like the Father’s smile. “Do you recognize Jesus Christ as the Lord and Savior?”
Sophie’s teeth are clicking together. The water is so cold, and her vision is blurring. The scent of flowers is so heavy now, but she can’t figure out why. “Yes,” she manages.
“Do you recognize the Father as the leader of God’s church on Earth and as the rightful prophet of Eden’s Gate?”
Why doesn’t Herald John seem bothered by the the water? Sophie’s head spins. “Y-yes.”
“Then in accordance to the commands of the Lord, I baptize you, Sophie, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”
And before Sophie even knows what’s happening, Herald John pushes her backwards, into the water, his hands holding her below the surface even as she instinctively struggles against it. Water floods her lungs, burning her sinuses. It burns, Sophie realizes. The water burns, like when there was too much chlorine in the pool or when she’d helped her mother wash their floors with bleach and some got on her skin.
She thrashes, but Herald John is far stronger than she is. She’s so dizzy. Was it always so hard to think? Green sparks flash against the black of her closed eyelids. The water is so cold.
It reminds Sophie of when she’d gone swimming in the old quarry last summer and swam too far into the quarry’s center, trying to get to the platform there. The water had been so cold, so deep, and Sophie could feel herself panic but all it did was waste her energy. There was a second, before her hand managed to grab the floating platform’s edge, that she knew if she slipped below the water’s surface it was over. She wouldn’t be strong enough to battle back to the top, and her friends were too far away to notice her struggle.
Sophie feels like she did in that second: terrified, so frighteningly aware of how fragile she was, of how close to death she was, but this time she doesn’t have the burst of adrenaline to stretch her hand out that last inch and grab the platform. Her fingers relax their grip where she’d latched onto Herald John’s shirt. She couldn’t save herself this time. There’s water in her lungs and she’s so, so tired. She gasps again and more water floods her mouth, choking her.
Sophie’s on the edge of unconsciousness when Herald John pulls her out of the water. She feels her body heave, coughing up bitter-flavored river water. In the darkness of night, her vision swimming, the only thing she can see is Herald John’s face. The shadows should be terrifying, but Sophie doesn’t feel frightened. She feels... peaceful.
“Welcome to Eden’s Gate,” Herald John murmurs, hauling her up to the riverbank when Sophie loses her footing in the mud.
“Do you see?” It’s the Father. His voice is so clear, so powerful. Sophie’s limbs don’t seem connected to her body, clumsy and heavy, and when Herald John lets go of her she falls to her knees in front of the Father. It feels right though, looking up at the Father. He’s got gold-green oil on his fingers, the air so heavy with that flowery scent, and Sophie’s skin tingles as the Father draws the eight points of the Cross of Eden over her forehead. One point for Herald John, one for Herald Faith, one for Herald Jacob, and one for the Father. Then the smaller points: one for the self, one for family, one for mortal world, and one for what lies ahead in Eden. “You’ve been saved now.”
Sophie closes her eyes. She’s never felt so tired in her life, so sore and exhausted. The dizziness has settled into a buzz that reminds her of what adults described being drunk as, a soft fuzziness to everything. The Father pulls her to her feet, and leans in to press his forehead against Sophie’s. It’s comforting in a way that inexplicably reminds Sophie of her mother, coming home from a long night at work and checking on Sophie, who’d been tucked into bed hours ago. It’s a warm, soft memory: her mother’s weight dipping the mattress as she leaned in to kiss Sophie on the forehead, a little whispered “I love you.”
“Let me bring you to Eden.” The Father pulls away slowly. “Let me bring you to Eden, my child. My Chosen.”
In that minute, with Joseph’s hands on her shoulders, there is nothing that Sophie has ever wanted more than this promise of Eden.
It was the old elementary school, before the county consolidated down to just the two buildings in Brush Creek. June had been one of Fall’s End Elementary School’s last students when she moved on to middle school back in 1998. The building had been empty for years, until the Seeds bought it in what, 2014? 2015?
Grace whistles at the barbed wire fence around it. “They really got this place locked up, don’t they? I sure as hell don’t remember this being here a few months ago.”
June just nods. This is the children’s barracks, if the map she stole off some Peggie VIP’s corpse is right. Makes sense, strategically, it’s a decent sized building with a back-up generator and plenty of space for everything a cult could want. She can’t see shit through the fencing, but she can imagine it’s full of the same old shit they’ve seen at every cult building so far: that yellow-background portrait of Joseph Seed, dozens of white leather copies of their cult bible, guards carrying automatic weapons patrolling the grounds.
The kids had still gone to the school in town for a while, when Eden’s Gate was still just a weird preacher and his small flock. June had seen them sometimes when she’d picked Sophie up from school, the girls in aprons and dresses that reminded her of Anne of Green Gables, the boys in plain white button-ups and black pants. When it became apparent that Eden’s Gate was more than just a weird preacher and his flock, the children vanished, were withdrawn from public school.
Presumably, this was where they’d all gone. The county had called in Child Protective Services a few months after the kids vanished, after an anonymous tip. Whitehorse had accompanied the social workers, but there was nothing illegal happening inside Eden’s Gate. No child abuse, no neglect. June had never bothered to look at the files or the photos they had been taken, but now she wishes she had, if for no other reason than to get an idea of how many children lived within the walls of that old school.
June tightens her grip on her shotgun. She thinks of Sophie, tucked away in Brush Creek, away from this nightmare. Probably in school right now--it was just now two in the afternoon, and the secondary school didn’t get out until two-thirty.
How many girls lived their lives within this barbed-wire fence? Girls like her own daughter, who’d once gone to the same school and whose parents June might have once known. June grits her teeth together. She can’t let anyone attack this compound, she knows. If there’s anything she’s learned about Eden’s Gate in the past few months, it’s that they’ll do anything to preserve whatever they perceive as the “greater good.” If that meant abandoning a few hundred helpless children to die, or turning kids into soldiers, they’d do it. June doesn’t doubt that for a minute.
So she’ll guard this school from the Resistance, like Eden’s Gate guarded it too. Those children will emerge from that school safely, and June will kill Joseph Seed with her own bare hands if she has to, just to guarantee it.
“You gonna be okay?” Grace shifts her rifle over her shoulder. That’s why June’s always liked her, really: no bullshit, no incessant need to fill up perfectly fine silence with words.
June nods tightly. “Burn any map that you find that marks this. And what we saw here?” June points at the school, at the fence, at however many families and children and babies Joseph Seed has hidden away in those concrete walls. “This never leaves us, got it? You hear that anyone wants to attack this place, or investigate it, you shut them down.”
“Whatever you say, ma’am.”
“Good.” June shakes her head, like she’s trying to shake the awful images she’s already imagined free from her thoughts. “Good.”