Acolytes (The Enclaves Book 1)

by Nel Franks

  Tomma gulped, and put her arm around the mother’s waist, holding her up.

  ‘Let’s walk together. I’ll help you,’ she murmured.

  A woman banged into me from behind. She too was sobbing, tears streaming down her face.

  ‘Take him, please take him!’ She thrust the shrieking baby into my arms. ‘I can’t do this!’ she screamed and ran back up the road.

  One of the Healing Mistresses went after her as I stood, shocked and immobile, holding the squirming baby. Mistress Noola came and turned me back down the road.

  ‘Come, Rosie, you seem to have been given a greater responsibility than we expected.’

  I pushed the baby towards her, but she shook her head.

  ‘No, it was given to you to do. I will help you, in the same way I would have helped his mother. This is baby Nevi, his mother is Tueli. You will have to give his name as you pass him through the Gate.’

  I started shaking, feeling overwhelmed. I had never thought I might have to take responsibility for giving a baby away. As we walked, my heart and mind were racing. I was angry that I had been put in this position. But as I looked down at the little red face, now hiccupping into silence, I felt my rage change. This little baby didn’t know what was going to happen to him, but it was for the best – there was certainly no place for him in the Female Enclave. It was better he was sent away. Then I felt anxious; would I know what to do at the Gate? Could I do it correctly? I remembered Gaia explaining how women gave their own names so that the baby might go to their known father.

  ‘This is something you’ll always remember I expect. I suppose you’ll never be able to forget the names of Tueli and Nevi, will you?’

  Why had she emphasised their names again? Did she think I would be unable to do it? I would show her I could manage whatever came my way. I walked on unsteadily, clutching the baby to my chest. He had quietened, not screaming now, but snuffling against my shoulder.

  At the Gate, the women milled around. Most were in tears now, some leaning against their partners, the babies between them. Others were bent over their children, rocking and weeping. I began to feel the wash of agony, grief and trauma. And then I got so angry, my throat tightening until I thought I wouldn’t be able to speak. This was wrong! No woman should have to give her child away. I would work out how to have only female children.

  I stared at the Gate, willing my eyes to be dry. The black iron bands that held the heavy timbers together seemed to swallow the light. It looked implacable and foreboding. The tops of the great leaves of the Gate disappeared into the dark, until it felt as though the gate and the Wall rose interminably into the night sky, cutting off the world. The only reality was this group of wailing women, their grief, this terrible self-imposed loss.

  The Chief Mistress of the Temple walked heavily towards the Gate and raised her arm. The sound and tempo of the howling around me increased. She knocked. An answering knock, loud and firm, came back. The Chief knelt by the little Crawling Gate, set into the left leaf, and unlocked it with an enormous ornate key, held on a long ribbon around her neck.

  As she pulled the little door open, a forest of legs showed in the lamp light. Suddenly the closest set of legs bent, and a pair of bony knees landed on the soil. A man bent forward until his face was framed in the opening. He was gaunt, and his large hooked nose seemed to intrude into our space. He looked like a carrion bird, thrusting his naked dirty neck through the gap and bobbing up and down, looking for a baby to snatch. I was appalled – this was no senior lord, no respected dignitary come to respectfully claim their part of the growth of Enclaves. This was a schemer, a trader, a foul man intent on doing harm to our children. I swallowed painfully against the lump in my throat. My arms hugged my little boy harder and I stepped away.

  The Chief Mistress beckoned the first woman, who screamed and pushed back into the group. A Mistress went to her and helped her to the Gate. She collapsed to her knees beside the Chief Mistress, crying loudly, the Mistress helping her to hold out the baby. The beaky man’s hands came through, and grasped the boy, and she suddenly fell down, almost shoving her face through. ‘I am Torri, and the boy is called Liuwin! His father is Noolan!’ she screamed. The Chief Mistress helped her up and she stumbled into the arms of the Mistress who had supported her.

  Each woman coming forward did much the same. Some seemed to have reached a plateau of bereft composure and held their babies out calmly. But they all said their names and the names of their child. I was surprised how many did not name a father. As I got closer to the little Gate, I could hear the man repeating the name of the woman and the baby loudly. Sometimes I could hear calls from a crowd of men who must be gathered on the other side.

  The Chief Mistress beckoned me, and I felt a deep terrible reluctance. This could not be right, this abandonment of babies to unknown fathers! How could they love them the way their mothers and partners did, who had known them from birth? They were strangers, with no maternal instinct to guide them in loving the child and bringing them up securely. From what I’d heard, they lived in individual families and didn’t have a brotherhood the way we had sisters to help us raise the child. This was so wrong! Little children should not be torn from their mothers like this. Some of these babes were not yet completely weaned. What would happen to them in the Male Enclave? How would they be properly fed? All this misery could be avoided if I could work out how we could have female children only.

  Mistress Noola tugged on my elbow. ‘Come, Rosie, it’s time for you to pass Nevi through the Gate. This is how you assist your sister Tueli. Come, now.’

  I shook. My head at her dense repetition of the names – I wouldn’t forget them. She glanced at me, a wondering look. As if I would fail to do something! I crept towards the Gate. It looked black and sinister, a gaping maw into which we were feeding babies. Suddenly a pair of disembodied arms reached through the Gate, almost catching my skirts, and inadvertently I sqeaked. Well, more of a shriek, really. I fell down onto my knees, jolting Nevi who started to screech again. Sister Noola bent over beside me, her hand on my back. The Chief Mistress looked at me questioningly then looked up at Noola.

  ‘This is not one of the mothers.’

  ‘No, Mistress. Sister Tueli was unable to manage. She gave Nevi to Rosie to pass through.’

  The Chief Mistress nodded sharply. ‘Well, come then Rosie. Pass the child through. It is not as though this is one of your own.’

  She was not unkind, but she was as unyielding as the Wall.

  I swallowed hard and placed baby Nevi into the waiting arms. I bent forward onto my hands and knees and said as strongly as I could manage,

  ‘His mother’s name is Tueli, his name is Nevi.’

  ‘Mother Tueli, baby Nevi,’ I heard the man call loudly.

  There was no response from the men, and I saw the baby passed off to a man beside the Gate. What would happen to him if he didn’t have a father? Oh, this was so completely wrong!

  I shuffled back out of the way as the last of the women gave up their sons. I stood angry and silent in the crowd of bereaved women. Some straightened, raising tear-wracked faces to the sky and rubbing backs aching with anguish. Others had fallen, unable to bear the weight of their pain.

  Eventually, the little group unknotted, and began the impossible trek back to the Core. We made a slow, mournful progression. The black shadows thrown by the torches clung to the women, wavering and heaving like demons of grief.

  Tomma walked with me, for once subdued and silent. Halfway up the pale dusty road, she said, ‘If it is this bad, giving up your baby to the father, imagine what it must be like for the mothers whose babies are sacrificed. Goddess, I can’t imagine anything worse. I mean, giving birth to a defective child must be so awful. The devastation, all your hopes gone as soon as you realise there’s something wrong. And then knowing, knowing all the time that someone will come and take the baby away and it’ll be killed! Oh, it’s barbaric! The pain those women suffer!’ She too had tears stream
ing down her face.

  Stiffening my spine, I said, ‘Yes, it’s terrible. But they must get over it. It’s better than trying to bring up a child who can’t learn, can’t develop.’

  ‘But surely they can achieve some things. They’re not just blobs of tissue lying there, they’re human beings!’

  ‘It’s better for the Enclave if they’re sacrificed. Our religion demands it. You know it’s to lift the Goddess-curse from the mothers. And besides, it would be too much work, too many resources spent on something that isn’t going to pay back in any way.’

  Tomma stared at me in horror. ‘How can you think like that, Rosie? They’re not things, they’re people! What about the pain those mothers go through – you saw them tonight and this is not the worst of it. Having your baby sacrificed must be so much worse!’

  I turned away, unable to get her to see sense. She was always so emotional. And it was true that tonight had been moving. Very sad. As we walked, a confirmation grew in my mind. I was going to work out a way to make sure that women had only healthy intact daughters, not leaving it to chance. Surely, no woman would want to have a son she would have to relinquish so completely. At least you could continue to see your daughter in the Enclave. This was going to be my gift to my sisterhood, a way to avoid pain completely. We would need only the barest input from the males, and we would live in sisterly love, without loss, all our lives.

  Tomma and I peeled out of the group as we approached the Acolytes Hall and wearily made our way up the stairs to our room. Neither of us could bear to speak. I had found the exposure to so many swings of emotion very wearying. We silently got ready for bed. Lenna came into the room and looked at us enquiringly.

  ‘Oh, Lenna,’ burst out Tomma, ‘I never realised how awful it was to give up your son. I’m so sorry I wasn’t more sympathetic.’

  The anguish in her voice made my throat close up. Lenna came over to us, looked concerned and confused. I faced her carefully.

  ‘We went with the women, to the Gate, to give up the baby boys.’

  Comprehension flooded her face. She winced, and tears started down her face. She began to heave with sobs, which made Tomma cry all the more. I couldn’t bear any more. I turned away as Tomma and Lenna stood and hugged each other in tearful sympathy.

  Sacred Release

  Rosie, Late Autumn, Year Three, Initiates

  THREE WEEKS LATER, all the Temple Acolytes, including those of us from Healing, were brought together for special instruction. Mistress Noola was the most serious I had ever seen her.

  ‘Initiate Acolytes, this week you will participate in the most solemn ritual of our religion. When mothers of healthy intact babies relinquish their children, the mothers of babies with serious birth and developmental defects must also surrender theirs. Ordinarily, girl babies go to the Infant’s Dormitory in the Children’s Rooms, just as you did when you were infants. And you recently witnessed the boy babies being passed to the Male Enclave.

  ‘As you now know, mothers who give birth to babies with deficits have sinned against the Goddess. The seriousness of the mother’s sin is shown by the severity of their child’s abnormality. In the most serious cases, the Goddess is merciful and calls back to herself those foetuses who could not and should not survive, those with the most severe deformities. It may happen during pregnancy, that the infant dies before it is due to be born. Mothers whose children die in the womb are obviously the worst sinners, because their babies are so affected, they cannot be carried to a living birth. That death is the evidence of the Goddess’s mercy in calling back to her the baby, and equally evidence of the mother’s sin. From the moment of their child’s death and its stillbirth, these mothers are cursed. It is our duty as disciples of the Goddess to enact Her punishment upon those who have sinned against her.’

  Salart raised a very cautious hand. At Noola’s nod, she tentatively began her question.

  ‘Mistress, what is the ... er ... I’m not sure if this applies to us, but ... are we supposed to ... what is the punishment we must, if it is us you mean, that we should ...’ she trailed off in inadequacy. I was so irritated by her hedging that I had to clamp my jaws together to prevent myself interrupting.

  Noola looked at her for a long moment. Then she sighed. ‘I think you have two questions there, Salart. One question is ‘What it the punishment that is proper for the sinning mother?’ and the other is ‘Are acolytes expected to carry out the punishment on the mothers?’ Is that correct?’

  Salart’s face was a study in relief, doubt, embarrassment and a dawning hope that her muddle would be clarified. ‘Yes, Mistress!’

  ‘The punishment is fitted to the sin. The Council of Mistresses decrees the level of punishment, and if required, all members of the Enclave, including acolytes,’ she swept her stern glance across all of us, ‘must enact the terms of the punishment.’

  The acolytes stilled, looking awed and a little scared. Noola went on, ‘Those who are Goddess-cursed by the death of their babies in utero are condemned never to go to the Summer Field again, and thus lose their right to birth. In addition, they are shunned for a period of time equal to the length of time the child should have had remaining in the womb. Obviously, the earlier the baby dies, the greater was its abnormality, and thus the greater was the mother’s sin, and the longer the period of shunning.’

  Something I had read suddenly made sense. I knew from my time in the Birthers that many mothers did not declare their pregnancy until more than three months after Summer Festival. But I had not understood why—they must have known as soon as their monthly bleeding did not occur that they were pregnant. Then this year, in an obscure ancient text from the Time Before, I had read that the loss of a foetus (which the book termed ‘miscarriage’) happened frequently in the first three months of pregnancy. The ancient researchers attributed this to a natural process in which a non-viable foetus would spontaneously abort. Those ancients did not attribute it to the Goddess; they understood that this was a human physiological process! Excitement flared in me – there was a scientific explanation for all this! I was going to find out how and why it happened when I became a Temple Researcher in conception.

  I realised our sisters who found themselves pregnant would wait long enough to see if they would spontaneously abort in the first trimester—just long enough to avoid the terrible spectre of being Goddess-cursed, punished and shunned—before declaring themselves joyously pregnant for the Goddess. It dawned on me there must be a whole body of deep common knowledge about pregnancy, not talked about but shared surreptitiously when a woman needed to know. I needed to know it. I didn’t want to be pregnant, but I wanted their knowledge!

  My absorption in my thoughts had made me miss what Noola said next. It was probably just a recitation of the levels of severity, judging from what she was saying now.

  ‘At birth, babies born with serious physical deformity become offerings to the Goddess through assisted stillbirth. Their mothers—who so evidently have sinned significantly—face an equally significant punishment: they are Goddess-cursed; and banned from Summer Festival for life. However, given they delivered their child, they are not shunned.’

  What was assisted stillbirth? I was intrigued by the term but couldn’t follow my train of thought as Noola was forging ahead with her listing of abnormalities, sins and punishments. She covered in detail the levels of abnormality for physical deformity, mental insufficiency, sensory loss, strange metabolic disorders that gradually rendered a child abnormal, and many other conditions from which sinning mothers could be identified and punished. A mother was ‘Goddess-cursed’, but her child was deemed to be ‘Goddess-gifted’. There was some convoluted reasoning that such a child was given to the community as a gift, an object lesson and an opportunity to learn generosity and tolerance. Ah, so that explained why Lenna had been spared. Her deafness and speech deficit had not prevented her learning to work well in the kitchen under Mistress Cook’s supervision. Mistress Cook had obviously learned her ‘le
sson of generosity’, I snorted to myself; Lenna must be a terrible burden on her.

  I caught up again with Noola’s interminable drone. ‘This year we have a particularly serious sin which has only slowly become apparent. A child who has been found to be deficient is to be given to the Goddess, in expiation of the mother’s sin.’

  There was a deep uneasy shift among the girls around me. I didn’t share it; I agreed with the principle that deformities and deficiencies should be eradicated—it was good practice to minimise the waste of resources in the Enclave and to preserve healthy breeding stock among the women. We had all grown up experiencing the privation and food rationing that occurred after major raids by the Outcasts. It seemed like simple common sense to eliminate non-productive mouths that must be fed, housed, and cared for. I could understand that it would be a strong emotional event for the mothers, just as it had been at the Gate for the boys’ mothers, but I could see that it was necessary.

  However, I kept my head down and my expression pious. It was also common sense not to speak out against religious conventions at this time.

  Mistress Noola went on to teach us about the ritual itself and our role within it as witnesses. Then she dismissed us, with an exhortation to spend the next days in meditation upon the likely outcomes of sinning. I was thinking how unlikely it was I would ever fall into this trap as we left the teaching rooms. Tomma walked beside me. She had tear tracks down her face and she was still sniffing.

  ‘Oh, I don’t want to go to this!’ she burst out after a few minutes.

  ‘Why not?’ I wasn’t trying to be supportive—she was being overly emotional as usual. Like me, she should be curious about how the ceremony was actually carried out.

  ‘Rosie!’ she cried, ‘How can we just stand there and watch them deliberately murder a child? It’s inhumane!’

  ‘Actually, I think it’s very humane. It’s for the good of us all.’