Garden of Serenity (2 page)

“I can’t hold you to that.”

“Do you not want me to have this?”

Merenith smiled shyly. “I would be honored for you to wear it. At the very least you can claim you are promised.” She shrugged. “It does make the breeding a little less demanding and the breeders do stay away from those who are claimed.”

“Well, then it’s decided. I’ll wear your ring. I’ll do anything to avoid the breeding obligation and keep those men from me. And really, can you see a man being with me longer than it takes to impregnate me?”

They both laughed at the absurdity of her question and relaxed into a comfort of their surroundings. A beetle buzzed nearby. It was joined by another and another until the noise became loud and persistent.

“Jahara.” Merenith’s mouth formed her name, but her voice was otherworldly. “Jahara the garden is beautiful.”

Merenith melted into the forest and Jahara forced her eyes open. It took her a moment to orient herself. The noise had not come from insects, but rather the cacophony of female voices blending in excitement.

Attika knelt in her seat, facing out the window. “Hey sleepy-head, we’re nearly there,” she said over her shoulder. “I didn’t think you’d want to sleep all the way to the Garden.”

Jahara looked at her timepiece. She’d been lost in her own head for over two hours. Not a good sign. Her meditations had been getting more intense, taking her farther away from the natural world and deeper into her own reality. She knew better than to let herself free associate without someone to watch over her. Thankfully, Attika had roused her.

“Isn’t it just about the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen?” Attika asked.

The Garden of Serenity was still miles away, but the curve of its dome reached high into the hazy sky. It looked to be thirty stories, perhaps more at its peak. Arcing gracefully down to the earth like a rainbow, the edges were lost in the succulent green of the exotic foliage.

The dust on the edge of the desert had given way to long green shafts of plants that bowed and swayed in the wash of air from the train. The palm trees lining the road were new to her. She’d only seen pictures of them in textbooks. They were very different from the prickly pines that grew in the forests of the mountains where she’d grown up.

An involuntary shiver crawled up her spine. She’d been exposed to men her entire professional life, but she’d never had to think of them as anything more than a living creature in need of her healing talents—no different from the animals Merenith tended. Now, she had to think of them as co-creators of her offspring. She didn’t find the thought of the new experiences awaiting her at the Garden as exciting at all.

It took them nearly twenty more minutes before the helo-train pulled up to the receiving platform outside the bubble of the Garden, the car now heavy with their breathless anticipation. Claustrophobia squeezed her lungs and clawed at her throat as Jahara realized she would be hermetically sealed into the confines of this dwelling for nearly two years.

Like a fish caught in the current, she moved with the other women, stepping off the train and onto a reception deck. Women of all clans, dressed in pale yellow tunics and skirts, greeted them with unnaturally cheerful smiles.

“Fifty-two square miles in total, with twenty-eight square miles for agriculture.” Attika stood next to her, whispering in her ear. “There are five thousand three hundred fifty-two people of whom two thousand one hundred eleven call this their permanent home. Seventeen thousand six hundred nine megawatts of solar power required on a daily basis, with five hundred eighty-two wind turbines providing a backup source of energy. Two hundred five thousand, one hundred thirty-eight pounds of food consumed per day. That’s one million, four hundred thirty-five thousand, nine hundred, sixty-six pounds a week, all grown and cultivated inside the Garden. Four–point-two babies born per week, only two-point-one of whom live through their first month. There are forty-seven living abodes, thirty-one specifically for breeding, twenty-two billion—”

“Attika,” Jahara said quietly, interrupting the verbal assault. “I get it. This place is big.”

Attika smiled shyly. “Bad habit. The number thing, I mean. I already apologized for the rambling. When I get nervous or agitated, the numbers help me focus. As excited as I am, this whole thing is a bit scary for me.” Her gaze dropped, her face deepening in color. “Reading about mating and well … doing it … are two different things entirely aren’t they?”

Apprehension coiled cold and hard in her gut. Despite what Attika thought, or any of the other woman who must look at her as some sort of elder, Jahara was feeling the same.

“Welcome to the Garden of Serenity.” A woman stood high above them at a podium, her flaxen hair cascading over her naked torso and falling to her hips. “I’m Kylie Devereaux, the hostess for your breeding group.” Her lilting words hummed through the voice amplifier, drifting down on the one hundred or so women who’d just stepped off the train. “As most of you know, the Garden is a closed ecosystem.” She paused to let the wash of the departing helo-train subside.

“The greeters on the platform will separate you into groups of twenty and escort you to your temporary housing. The first living area is where your families, friends or partners will visit you.” The steady hum of a motor could be heard. “You will spend only one night there, going through the purification.” The wall behind Kylie receded, revealing an open-air foyer with large trees and flowering shrubs. “In the morning, you will enter the heart of the Garden where we hope to make your stay as enjoyable and comfortable as possible.”

Kylie lifted her hand gracefully in the air. “Welcome one and all to your new home. Please, enter and make yourselves comfortable.”

Jahara moved with the rest of her breeding sisters, feeling very much as if she were walking straight into the den of a lion. The wall slid closed behind them, sealing out the rest of the world and trapping Jahara within its confines.

Had she not seen it happen, Jahara would have believed they were still outside. A gentle breeze lifted her hair and the bluest sky she’d ever seen arced over them, complete with billowing white clouds. Though the false sunlight heated her skin, Jahara rubbed her hands vigorously over her biceps, trying to ward off the inexplicable chill coursing through her veins.

Chapter Two

Jahara dropped into the overstuffed armchair, exhaustion and bitterness weighing on her body in equal measure. The last eighteen hours had been pure hell. The Garden had worked to strip her of every shred of dignity, but she’d be damned if they would break her spirit.

The moment she was ushered through the dome doors, they lined them up and offered each woman an opportunity to use a video-communicator. But Merenith hadn’t answered her call. There hadn’t been time to contact someone else and certainly no time for the tears she’d wanted to shed before the connection dropped and she was escorted from the room and another woman allowed to say her final good-byes to friends or family.

Last evening they’d served them a lavish meal on elegant tables set in an “outdoor” restaurant. It was supposed to be her opportunity to bond with her breeding sisters. But her frustration sat like an unwelcome guest at the table and made her terrible company. Answering polite inquiries about her personal life with minimal information at best, monosyllabic responses at worst, Jahara had bored everyone at the table. Eventually even Attika had given up and directed her ramblings at others.

 Kylie had circulated around the tables in a flowing white chiffon dress that swirled about as if she radiated the false moonlight itself. Conversing with the women in overly cheery tones, she worked to keep their minds off the obligation they were brought here to fulfill.

Jahara had washed down her spicy meal with copious amounts of wine, listening to the young girls giggle and prattle on about men and sex. Though their furtive glances were aimed her way, no one asked about copulation. No doubt they assumed, like Attika, that she’d been mated before. That thought had just pissed her off more.

She’d returned to her room, wanting only to fall into bed and mourn the loss of her life as she knew it. But her body had had other plans. Painful cramping had been followed by waves of vomiting and loose bowels. Everything she’d consumed began purging itself from her body. Not just the meager supper she’d picked at—but from the number of hours the retching had continued—likely everything she’d eaten in the last few days.

Jahara could hear Attika, who had asked to room with her, vomiting in the adjoining bathroom. Spent and weak, they’d crawled into their beds, shortly after the midnight hour, moaning in pain and discomfort. She’d chastised herself for not recognizing the ancient herb that had been mixed in her food. It was once widely used to cleanse sickness from anyone who consumed it. She knew it from her training as a healer. It had been years since she’d prescribed it to any of her patients. There were other less foul ways to cure an ailing body.

Only hours after she’d slipped into a restless sleep, two women entered their room. Their jovial voices as they pulled them from their beds, grated across the fine hairs on the back of her neck. With military precision, they stripped Attika and Jahara and led them back into their separate bathrooms.

Closing her in a cubicle, the woman sprayed her with pungent chemicals that blistered her skin and filled her lungs with noxious fumes. The resulting coughing fit lasted only a couple of minutes, but cleared everything from her bronchial tubes. By the time Jahara stepped from the intense green lights that dried and prickled her skin, she was weak as a kitten. Her attendant led her back to the shower and scrubbed every part of her body under a scalding cascade of water until her skin burned from the sharp bristles of the brush and harsh soap.

She and Attika returned to their beds, remade with a fresh set of linens. Their attendants massaged every inch of their bodies with sweet-smelling lotion that soothed their sensitive skin. Antibiotics were inserted in her body, but Jahara was too wrung out to care about the humiliating invasion of privacy. Only pride kept the tears burning in her eyes from running unchecked down her cheeks.

The woman massaged her sensitive skin, masterfully stroking and comforting even as she apologized for the difficult purification. Jahara listened to Attika’s muffled moans across the room, but had no problem ignoring the intimate caresses on her own body. No one here could ever satisfy her.

She drifted off to sleep, dreaming of Merenith’s gentle touch.

This morning, fresh fruit, nuts and coconut milk had been left in their room. Jahara ate cautiously, unsure whether the food would stay down. Their traveling garments had been replaced with flimsy tunics and pants made of nearly transparent gossamer fabric. Her black triangle of hair was as obvious as Attika’s bright red curls and their areolas visible through the low cut-tunic that exposed a good portion of their cleavage.

As a healer, Jahara had seen naked women of all sizes and shapes. This attempt to strip away any sense of modesty was just another strike against the government. It didn’t matter. She’d resolved to do her time here, endure whatever the administration of the Garden saw fit to put her through, birth two babies for the good of womankind and leave with her sanity intact.

She and Attika had left their room nearly an hour ago through a hermetically sealed door and followed their breeding sisters through the streets to another building. Women in yellow separated the crowd into smaller clusters and sorted them into various meeting rooms. Jahara now sat next to Attika in the brightly lit room, feeling very apprehensive about what this day would bring.

Looking around, she noted the stunned expressions of the nineteen other women and knew they had endured the same humiliation the night before. The plush, faux leather chairs were arranged in a semicircular fashion, facing a wall that projected the hologram of a tropical garden. The birds chirping in the background were no doubt being piped in through some hidden speaker system. She hadn’t been here twenty-four hours and Jahara wanted nothing more than to run back home. If last night was any indication of the trials ahead, her life was about to become a living underworld of misery. Not that she expected anything different.

Kylie strode into the room, her shoulders thrown back, exposing her perky breasts. A white skirt wrapped low around her hips, billowed down in soft waves to brush along her ankles adorned with gold jeweled bands, matching the rings on her toes.

“Good morning.” She stretched the words out in a long singsong tone that grated uncomfortably along her nerves. “I trust you all slept well?” A graceful hand adorned with many rings brushed back her sweeping mane of hair. “We do apologize for the cleansing, but it is a necessary step all women must endure before entering the Garden proper.” She cupped the face of the woman closest to her, a plastic smile conveying an empathy Jahara didn’t feel.

“Men are such weak creatures,” she continued. “We fuss continually about their immune systems. We can’t be too cautious about outside spores, bacteria or viruses.” Kylie strutted to the center of the hologram. “That’s the only time you have to go through that unless you have visitors. Then you must leave here and go through it again before reentering the Garden.”

“Doesn’t look like my family will be visiting,” Attika whispered. “I have no intention of enduring that torture again.” She shot Jahara a tremulous smile. “The only comfort was the wonderful massage. I haven’t slept that well in months.”

Kylie paraded in front of the women, her hands fluttering over her flat abdomen as she preened for the new breeders. “Today you will hear a brief history of the Garden of Serenity, learn about our laws and,” she paused for effect, “meet a male breeder.” Murmurs rolled through the group, and Kylie’s synthetic smile of satisfaction flashed again. Jahara wanted to scream. The other young women might be buying Kylie’s sincerity, but she knew it was as false as the golden mass of hair. Kylie wasn’t Olakuma, her eye lashes and brows were much too dark.