Eden Box Set

by G. C. Julien

  “Oh,” is all that comes out of my mouth. Was that even English? Papav—something.

  Mavis scoffs. “Does more than relieve pain.”

  Perula smiles at me. “Opium poppies.”

  I still don’t know what she’s talking about.

  Mavis lets out an annoyed sigh the way someone does when they think a person’s stupid. “They’re basically drugs.” She then looks over at Perula. “And this is why kids aren’t supposed to become Healers.”

  Perula flicks her wrist at her sister. “She’s sixteen. She can handle it.”

  I like Perula. For once, an adult is treating me like an adult and not like some snotty little kid who doesn’t know any better.

  “Why do you drink it?” I ask. “Are you in pain?”

  “Always,” Perula says. “I got shot during the revolution.” She pulls the neck collar of her black dress down, revealing pink scarring on her collarbone. “It caused nerve damage.”

  I grimace. “I… I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” she says. “That’s all in the past now.”

  “Got you!” Mavis shouts out, and my shoulders jerk forward.

  She pulls an ugly, beige-colored root out of a bucket of dirt and raises it at eye level.

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  Instead of lowering the root, she tilts her head and looks at me, but she doesn’t say anything. She turns around and carries it over to what appears to be a cutting counter underneath the shack’s window.

  “It’s ginger,” Perula says. “Helps calm the stomach.”

  I nod slowly. Ginger for stomach problems, poppy seeds…no, poppy flowers…poppy something for pain relief.

  I stand up and slowly make my way around the cabin. Plants are everywhere, and it smells like moist earth. Some kind of watering system that’s made out of vines looks like it’s connected to the outside of the cabin. I assume it waters the plants using rainwater. The room is hot and humid, and if it wasn’t hot enough already, the sun is beating down on us through the glass ceiling. I wonder where they got the materials to build this place

  Then, on a shelf, in between two bushes of giant green leaves, is the weirdest plant I’ve ever seen. It looks like a little red tree full of eyeballs.

  “What’s this?” I ask, reaching toward it.

  “Don’t!” Mavis shouts, and I jump.

  “Please don’t touch anything without asking,” Perula says. She gets up from her chair, and it almost looks like she’s in pain simply doing that. She winces and grabs her shoulder.

  “This,” she says, now standing directly beside me, “is a Doll’s Eyes plant. The berries are poisonous.” She hovers a finger over the black pupil of the white ball, then looks down at me. “If eaten raw, there’s enough poison to stop your heart.”

  I swallow hard.

  “But if prepared correctly,” she continues, “these berries can be used to create medicine.”

  “Where did you learn all of this?” I ask. “Did you work with plants before coming to Eden?”

  I ask because her hair is dark with white streaks throughout. I was never good at guessing someone’s age, but I know she’s old enough to be my grandmother. And that means she had a long life before coming to Eden.

  She throws her head back and laughs. “Oh, goodness, no. We collected many books before coming to Eden.” She points at a shelf behind Mavis. Thick spider webs are spread across the very top corner of a row of books. From what I can see, the books are all about plants and natural medicine. “Mavis and I worked together at Little Blue’s Aquatic Wildlife Rehabilitation Center.”

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “It was a rehabilitation center for aquatic animals. Whales, dolphins, fish…” she says.

  She eyes Mavis for a brief second, and they exchange a look. They are twins, after all. It’s almost like they can read each other’s minds.

  Mavis rolls her eyes. “Yeah, until they barricaded us from entering.”

  “Barricaded?” I ask.

  Perula nods. “After the big riot started around the White House, men came together to prevent us from returning to work.”

  I wasn’t following.

  “A bunch o’ purple loons!” Mavis cries out. “They thought that by denying us work, we’d eventually give up on the whole rebellion. That without money, we were nothing. Men are so stupid”—she’s gripping a spoon or a spatula and her knuckles are all white—“and they think everything revolves around money and power. Women didn’t want power. We didn’t want money, either. We just didn’t want governmental knives shoved up our cahoochees and killin’ our babies.”

  “Mavis,” Perula warns.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I used to listen to the news in my bedroom then. My mom thought I wasn’t listening, but I was. I know all about everything. About how they made it illegal and then wanted to start forcing women to have abortions if the baby was a girl.”

  There’s a silence in the room, and I think they’re surprised that I even understand what an abortion is.

  Perula steps closer and rests a nurturing hand on my shoulder.

  “Lucy?” she asks.

  I look up.

  “Whatever happened to your mother? Am I allowed to ask?”

  No one’s ever asked me that before. Not even Nola. My throat swells at the thought of my mother, but I swallow down my sadness and replace it with anger.

  “Someone killed her,” I say.

  Lucy – Flashback

  “Come on, sweetheart, hurry up,” my mom says through my door.

  I don’t understand why she’s doing this. What are we running from? I look at Mr. Shilo, my giant panda bear, and I want to cry. He’s too big to take with me. So instead, I grab Stripes and stick him in my backpack. He’s a little tiger the size of my hand with yellow eyes and big brown stripes.

  My bag’s almost too full to close, but I think I have everything: my toothbrush, pajamas, clothes, socks, my H-Cap … I think that’s everything.

  “Lucy!”

  “I’m coming, Mom!”

  I throw my bag over my shoulder and glance back at my bedroom one last time. I look at the purple star stickers above my bed and at my collection of action heroes on my dresser. I thought about taking them with me, but I don’t have room.

  The scary part is that I don’t think I’m coming back here ever again. I can’t explain it. It’s a feeling I have. Like I’m saying goodbye forever. I have no idea where my mom’s taking me, or why we’re even leaving in the first place. I think it’s because of Jason.

  My mom reaches for my hand when I step out into the living room, and she pulls me close beside her.

  “You got everything, honey? We’re taking a little trip, okay? So make sure you have everything.”

  I start counting my clothes in my head, and I think of Stripes, my toothbrush, and my H-Cap.

  “I have everything,” I say.

  “Good.” She rushes out of our apartment and closes the door without even locking it. That’s not like her. Mom always locks the door.

  “Where are we going?” I look up at her, but she’s walking fast, and her eyes stare straight ahead. It’s like she doesn’t hear me.

  Inside the elevator we take down to the main floor, an old lady stands beside us and smiles down at me like I’m the cutest thing she’s ever seen. I should smile back; I always smile back at strangers, but I’m too scared. Too worried about what’s going on right now, and I can’t think.

  We rush out of the elevator’s big silver doors, and I have a hard time keeping up. If Mom wasn’t holding my hand, I’d probably be way behind.

  “Mom?” I say.

  She doesn’t say anything.

  “Mom, where are we going?”

  Nothing.

  She pulls my bag off my back and puts it in the trunk of the jeep, then tells me to get in the car. I clip my seat belt together and wait quietly. If I don’t say anything at all, she might tell me what’s going on.

 
So I wait.

  She gets in, starts the car, and takes off like she did the other day at the grocery store. Like she’s running away from something.

  I look at the clock in the car. At the small blue numbers. It’s been seven minutes since we got in. She still isn’t talking to me.

  Nine minutes.

  Ten minutes.

  I try to be patient, but I can’t.

  “Mom?”

  She reaches over, squeezes my thigh, and smiles big at me.

  “Everything’s okay, honey. We’re going to stay at Grandma’s for a little while, okay?”

  “Grandma’s? Why Grandma’s?”

  Why is she being so weird? Mom and Grandma barely get along. Why would she want us to live there?

  “I’ll explain everything later, okay?” she says, looking at me.

  I sigh and press my face against the window, and my breath makes a cool gray circle in front of my lips. I don’t believe her. She won’t tell me what’s going on. She thinks I’m too young to understand, and she wants to protect me.

  “Goddamn it,” my mom says quietly.

  I follow her eyes. She’s looking at a group of women who are running across the street. They’re holding signs and punching upward. What’s going on? We come to a full stop in the middle of the road. I think we’re stuck in traffic.

  “What are they doing?” I ask.

  My mom lets out another big sigh. “They’re rioting.”

  “Because of the abortion law?” I ask.

  Her eyes get big and she looks at me like I just told her I saw an alien.

  “How do you know about that?”

  “I know more than you think, Mom.”

  She nods, and I think she understands me. I think she realizes that I’m not a little kid anymore.

  “Yes,” she says, “it’s about the abortion law, and other things, too.”

  “What other things?” I ask.

  She looks at me, her eyes glossy, and her lips curving down. What is she sad about?

  “Sweetheart, the world is falling apart. Women are outnumbering men, and men don’t like it. Men can be very dangerous sometimes.”

  “Because they’re stronger than us?”

  She smiles at me. “They can be, yes. But only with their bodies.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “Women are strong with their minds.” She pokes me in the forehead. “That’s why all these women are out here. They don’t agree with the laws men are putting in place. They know it’s unfair, and they’re fighting for their rights.”

  I watch as three women chase a man back into his car. I think he was trying to tell them to shut up, and they didn’t like it.

  “So it’s okay?” I ask.

  “What’s okay?” my mom asks.

  “What they’re doing,” I say. “This… rioting. Is it okay?”

  She squeezes the steering wheel a few times, then turns her head toward me and bites down on her lip. She always does that when she’s about to have a serious talk with me.

  “All I know is that men shouldn’t have a say in what happens inside of a woman’s body. I can’t tell you that it’s okay to riot because people get hurt in riots. But I can tell you that even though I don’t like it, I do support it. I think it’s the only choice we have… It’s the only way to fight for our rights.”

  CHAPTER 16 – EVE

  Eve – Present Day

  I watch Lauren from behind my Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses—a pair of big brown lenses that I found on a sidewalk in Washington DC before I fled. There’s a chip on the bottom lens, but it’s not very noticeable. I also realize that these sunglasses carry no monetary value in Eden, but they still make me feel, in a sense, like royalty.

  Lauren laughs with the other women with one hand on her belly, the other pulling loose strands of golden hair that keep dancing with the wind out of her mouth. Eight months, I think, trying to calculate the amount of time that’s passed since the rape outside of Eden’s walls.

  This isn’t the first time a woman in Eden is pregnant. When women first started arriving inside the walls, a few of them were already pregnant. They all, however, lost their children to miscarriages and stillbirths. Mavis and Perula disagree on the reasoning behind this. Mavis, being as stubborn as she always is, says that all the stress from the revolution is to blame. Perula, on the other hand, believes the miscarriages are the result of malnutrition and dehydration.

  I can’t argue with either one of them, and as terrible as it may sound, I’m relieved that children weren’t brought into this horrid world. Furthermore, what if a child had been born male? I know it’s incredibly rare these days, but it could happen. What then? How am I supposed to tell a mother that her son isn’t allowed in Eden?

  Or do I allow young boys into Eden? Will raising them in a society of women make them worthy of this place? I pinch the bridge of my nose, thankful that I’ve never had to make such a difficult decision. But as I watch Lauren, I can’t help but wonder: what if it’s a boy?

  I tilt my head, analyzing the size of her belly, attempting to guess its gender.

  A little girl, I keep telling myself.

  She catches me watching her, and she quickly averts her gaze. A few of her friends timidly wave a hand in my direction but walk away, their footsteps short and rapid. Do I intimidate them?

  A shadow suddenly covers my boots and legs.

  “Hey, stranger.”

  I glance up and spot Freyda who’s sitting atop Pearl, her Akhal-Teke—a breed of horse known as a supermodel horse. It has an astounding silky pearl-like coat and beautiful golden-blond hair. Mind you, she’s a lot of maintenance and can sometimes fill Division Three’s garden with a farm-like smell, especially on top of our livestock, but Pearl provides Eden with fertilizer.

  “What’re you doing out here?” Freyda asks me.

  The one thing I admire most about Freyda is that she doesn’t treat me like a goddess—she treats me as an equal. Most women in Eden believe me to be their savior for having guided them through the revolution. Although I appreciate the admiration, being in a position of such power can become lonely. I look back at Lauren and the group of women, who have fled over to the back gardens and as far away from me as possible.

  I raise a hand above my eyes to block the sun. “Getting some air.”

  She grins—a stunning, magazine-worthy smile that would have forced any man to his knees in our old world. Her long dark hair is pulled back into a tight ponytail, and there’s a thick stripe of black chalk across her hazel eyes. Her strong, square-shaped jaw gives her a bit of a badass appearance, and she is wearing her usual combat attire—a bulletproof vest and army pants salvaged from the remains of our old world. Two semiautomatic pistols are holstered on the side of her belt, but she never uses them—at least, not since I’ve locked the gates of Eden, not since Lauren’s rape. But she enjoys dressing in combat attire, so I allow it. Behind her shoulders, two sword hilts point upward, forming an X. An entire Olympic pool could be filled with the blood of the men Freyda has killed with these swords since the revolution began.

  I can’t imagine Eden without her.

  She smirks, almost tauntingly. “Some air? Something bothering you?”

  I cock an eyebrow and cross my arms over my chest. “How could anything be bothering me?” I lie. “Look at this place.”

  It’s hard to smile up at her when I feel like I’m losing control.

  She shrugs, and her heavy combat gear makes a chafing sound. “It may look like paradise, but we’re still surrounded by danger.”

  I avert my gaze toward Alpa’s highest point. We’ve come so far, but I know there’s still a long road ahead of us.

  She climbs off Pearl and sits down beside me, her hips touching mine. “Still haven’t changed your mind?”

  Her persistence is admirable. I know precisely what she’s talking about—training women for combat. Although I do believe that our women should be trained in combat, I also believe i
t’s a bad omen. I’ve tried explaining this to Freyda countless times. Eden is a place of peace—a place where war is nonexistent and only beauty surrounds us.

  Why train women for battle if we have no intention of fighting?

  She catches me smirking at her. “I know, I know. You don’t want to attract any negativity.”

  I let out a sigh and gaze around Division Three’s courtyard—at all the beauty surrounding us. I make an effort to visit different courtyards throughout the week. It’s important that the women of Eden know I’m as much a part of this place as they are. I want the same things they do.

  She tries again. “Being prepared doesn’t mean anything is going to happen.”

  I rest my chin in the palm of my hand and turn my head toward her. “You don’t give up, do you?”

  She grins, and I look away. Her smile always weakens me.

  “No, I don’t,” she says smoothly. “And think about it, Eve. What’re you gonna do if a handful of men show up at the gates of Eden with pistols or rifles? With trucks? With machine guns? They’ll wipe us all out. Sure, the gates may be locked, but they’ll find a way in. And they won’t be coming in here to kill us, either.”

  I bite down hard. The last thing I want to picture is a bunch of men forcing their way into my paradise and onto my women.

  “Please,” she continues. “Think about it. I could have a dozen archers trained. We could make bows and arrows. We could protect our wall at all times.”

  “We don’t even know how many males survived,” I try.

  “No, we don’t,” she says. “But isn’t it better safe than sorry? And what’s going to happen when we start running out of resources? The women can’t survive on fruits and vegetables forever. Plus, what if our livestock die? It’s a possibility—they could carry a disease.”

  She pauses because she knows I’m getting irritated.

  “Look,” she says softly, “you and I both know that eventually, we’ll have to open those gates. I only want Eden—this magical place you’ve brought us to—to be safe. For all of us to be safe.”

  I look over at Eden’s wall—a massive construction of concrete covered in moss, green vines, and purple flowers. The thought of men climbing over the wall or blasting their way through it sickens me beyond belief.