Acolytes: Enclaves, #1

By Nel Franks

For Gaia, Tomma and Rosie, their cheerful childhood in the Female Enclave has hidden darker truths. Inducted at puberty into the Acolytes, they gradually discover the rigid restrictions and brutality that control the lives of every woman in the Encalve. The rigid controls and the Goddess fertility religion were introduced when the Enclave was founded, over one hundred years earlier, in response to the horrific pandemic that nearly wiped out the human population. And now those restrictions force Gaia to choose between her self and her loyalty to her sister-friends. For Tomma, it's about family, partners and children, all of which are prescribed by the Enclave, and none of them the way she wants. And for traumatised Rosie, the fertility religion's restrictions push her to breaking – the rules, her sanity, and the barriers to her life's research. Each of the three girls is searching for her own true path, and their friendship will be tested beyond its limits. Will the Enclave survive what they must do? 

Acolytes (108000 words) is Book 1 of the Enclaves series by Nel Franks.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nel Franks
• Release date: Jul 2, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201187354

Nel Franks

Mostly I write at home in South Australia, close to the most beautiful beach. There have been other locations too – in roadside camps in the desert outback, in tropical towns, and under a few gum trees in National Parks. I love getting immersed in new worlds, through travel, or in books. Fantasy and science fiction with a dystopian bent are my reading staples. I started writing in school magazines – most of which are lost in time, thank the Goddess. Then I graduated to serious professional journals. Writing fiction is much more fun! Few of the constraints of professional writing apply, except the ones about being lucid, succinct, accurate, informative, fluent and grammatically correct. Oh, and writing for your audience. I hope I’ve achieved that.

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Prologue

Gaia, Summer Festival, Year One, Initiates

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MY HEART WAS POUNDING. Breathe. Breathe. I had to keep remembering to breathe. I had waited my whole life to see what was on the other side of the Gate, and tonight it was finally going to open. Breathe. I was going to see the other side; and see them. Oh, deep breath!

All the acolytes lined the road curving down the hill from the Temple to the Gate. The eldest, the Apprentice Acolytes, were at the head of the road nearer the Temple. Then came the Novices halfway down the road. Then we forty-two first-year Initiates were placed closest to the Gate. Each of us was dressed up and holding a flaming torch. I kept getting distracted by the silly dress. I felt so uncomfortable in it; it didn’t suit my personality at all. It was hard to hold up the torch while bending down to tuck the skirt between my knees. And every time I did, the neckline dragged down too low, and I had to pull it up. Goddess, I hated this!

Earlier that evening I had been so flustered about Summer Festival and everything that would happen tonight that I had just grabbed the first dress I saw in the robing room. It was too tight up under the arms, but I couldn’t stop to care. Now I wished I had let the elder sister adjust the laces down the back to make it fit. When I convinced her to give up trying, she had signalled to me to let down my hair and do a twirl. Rosie and Tomma had both gasped. I still felt awkward, though I did like the way the silky top layer, all orange, peach and apricot, swirled out around me. But I wanted to be back in the pale blue work robes we had received two months ago when we transitioned into the Acolytes — at least they were comfortable and practical.

It felt peculiar to have to dress up for tonight’s ceremony. Why did we have to look different just for one night? What was wrong with how we normally dressed? Surely our value didn’t depend on what we wore. And making such a spectacle of our femininity seemed—I couldn’t put my finger on it—but it made me uncomfortable. So blatant? So manifestly about our female nature? Even as I was musing about this, I looked along the lines of girls on either side of the road. I must admit we did look spectacular. Girls kept leaning forward, glancing down to the enormous wooden Gate, their faces flickering in the wavering light. Their floaty dresses in pastel shades were fluttering in the breeze, and the torch light flared and leapt, gleaming and glimmering over the silk. But the torches themselves felt heavier by the minute. Goddess, when would the Gates open?

I tugged at my dress again and snuck a glance across the road, back up the hill, to where Rosie and Tomma had their heads together whispering. Rosie’s blonde hair was gleaming against Tomma’s rich chestnut. I wished I was over there with them. Little Rosie had chosen a pale lavender dress that made her look ethereal in the moonlight. Tomma looked like a woodland elf; her dress was in greens that made her toffee-coloured skin and hair glow. Rosie was sheltering behind Tomma’s shoulder, gripping her hand so hard I could see her knuckles gleaming white in the shifting light. But dear Tomma, always patient, didn’t seem to mind.

There was a Temple Mistress pacing behind Tomma, and she told them to correct their spacing up the line. Rosie had to let go of Tomma’s hand, and she started gnawing on her nails. I flashed her the hand-sign for courage, and she gave me a wobbly smile. I straightened my shoulders and faced forward again, just before the mistress on my side reached me.

My anxiety was rising again too. I wanted to be with Tomma and Rosie. When we were little, we had run down this road so many times, jumping up to touch the iron bands on the Gate, squawking with mock horror about the idea that they might open the Gate and look at us. And now, it was actually going to happen — and I didn’t know what to feel anymore.

A tremendous BOOM! echoed from the Gate. Every girl jumped and squealed, the torch light heaving. The mistresses hushed us, encouraging stoic stances and strong shoulders. But we all flinched again when another BOOM! rolled out. My heart raced. BOOM!

Then from the other side of the Gate came the first male voice I had ever heard.

‘We are the men of the Male Enclave. We ask for your grace to let us enter.’

Gaia, Summer, Year One, Initiates

PART ONE

TOMMA

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First Year of Initiate Acolytes

Transition

Tomma, Early Spring, Year One, Initiates

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OFFICIALLY, WE WERE going to stop being children today. Today was the day our time in the children’s learning rooms ended, and we were to transition into the Acolytes. Bursting with nerves and excitement, Rosie, Gaia and I had managed to finish all our chores in the least time ever. We had run all the way down the road to our special place, a little dip or hollow in the earth right beside the wall, about twenty paces to the right of the Gate. Rosie picked stems of flax seedpods and heads of wheat and made each of us a circlet crown, while Gaia stared into the distance, her fingers jiggling on her knee. I sat down, and got up, and sat down again. We knew we would be assigned to work in one of the nine Production Houses, and we kept going over all the possible options. Gaia said the least, as always, but she reminded us we couldn’t predict what the elder sisters would choose for us.

‘I hope they assign me to the Children’s Rooms, Tomma,’ Rosie sighed, ‘and then I never want to leave. And I never want to do a rotation on the Perimeter,’ she added with a challenging glance at Gaia.

Gaia said, ‘But you know we have to rotate every year to a different House, Rosie – that’s how we find out what we truly want to do. And everyone has to serve in the Perimeter Squad, even if you don’t like it.’

Rosie pouted.

I grinned at her. ‘You might hate the Children’s Rooms, Rosie. Remember when all those kids got diarrhoea? That was disgusting!’

Rosie grimaced and grinned simultaneously.

I turned to Gaia. ‘What do you really want, Gaia? Say True.’

‘Oh, why did you have to make it Say True?’ She frowned into the distance and hugged her skinny knees. Then she pushed herself up straight, shook back her long black curls and said slowly, ‘Alright: True. What I really, really want, is to know what it’s like on the other side of the wall.’

That stopped us both completely. The other side of the wall?

‘But, but...’ Rosie was almost speechless.

‘You know what’s on the other side of the wall,’ I said, trying to be firm. ‘It’s either the Male Enclave, the Expelled or the Outcasts; and they’re all terrifying. Why would you want to know about any of them?’

Actually, I was really curious about what lay outside the wall surrounding our Enclave, but I’d never admit it. Showing any interest in those who lived outside seemed risky. Gaia always seemed to know about such things, and I wanted her, in her calm knowledgeable way, to tell us all about them. But she didn’t.

My mind wandered to what the men were like on the other side of the wall in the Male Enclave. We thought about them often, even though we’d never met any. Maybe there were some there now, just through the stone, wondering about us. We would never know. But looking at the wall made me wonder how thick and strong it was, if it could keep out men. It was way over head-height tall, made of large blocks of smooth-faced stone laid so tightly together there was not even a finger- or toe- hold for climbing.

We sat quietly, each engrossed in our own thoughts, until the flax shadows reached us. Gaia glanced at the sun almost touching the horizon and sprang to her feet. ‘Come on, we will have to run to make it back before sunset—you know that’s when the ceremony starts. I don’t want to be punished for being tardy!’

Rosie gasped and leapt up, running toward the Core. This was the start of our adolescence. We could not be late.

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WE HAD A FAREWELL SUPPER in the Children’s Rooms before our transition. It started with a buffet of our favourite children’s foods—mine was sausages and gravy with mashed potato—and ended with a decadent adult dessert we had never tasted, containing dried fruits soaked in brandy and set alight. I was amazed they would let us even taste alcohol, though Gaia said it would have all burned off. I don’t know how she knew.

With full stomachs, we made our way to the small Reverencing Hall, tucked away on the eastern side of our village, behind the Acolytes Hall. It was the place we went to meditate and receive some of our spiritual instruction. I loved the windows, the clear glass panes etched with patterns of the leaves of herbs—I had spent ages identifying all the different ones when I should have been meditating. The glass gleamed with the last of the dusk, and the pale carved walls were flushed with gold. One of the tutors lit the tapers in silver candlesticks on each windowsill, and I watched the way the light glowed on the faces of my friends and companions. I looked at them all, tall, short, thin, wide, pale, dark, round-eyed and heavy-lidded. It didn’t matter what we looked like or who we were, we were all about to become acolytes!

All the girls whose monthly goddess-time had started within the last year were there, with Mistress Birther and the tutors from both the Temple and the House of Healing. We sat through another long lecture about how our goddess-bleeding was a sacred passage into womanhood and our adult responsibilities. We had heard it all before during the endless ceremony training that we’d had over the last eight weeks. I started daydreaming about what flowers I would pick tomorrow to make a celebratory posy each for Rosie and Gaia. I snapped back to the present when each of us was required to report about when our menstruation had begun. It was the third phase of our learning about our female body functions. The previous two stages had happened when we were first told as a group about the coming changes in our bodies, and then individually when our goddess-bleeding had begun. Now the tutors nodded encouragingly; Mistress Birther was stern. I couldn’t work out if she was judging their teaching or our learning.

We had to describe all the processes of using the cloths we had been given by the House of Healing to catch our flow, including proper cleaning, drying, blessing and storage. We detailed the ritual burning of the first cloth each month as a sacrifice and dedication to the Goddess. Mistress Birther didn’t even give us a smile for our efforts.

Then she wanted us to describe for which menstrual conditions we would consult an apothecary to get an herbal remedy. ‘And what is the proper name for an herb that harmonises menstrual flow?’ she asked. She said it in that patronising voice adults use when they think they know more than you. But I did know this one; I was really interested in medicinal herbs, so I’d taken note when a tutor from the Apothecaries described ‘emmenagogues’. It was fun watching Mistress Birther’s face go from smug to grudgingly impressed when I answered. Gaia looked at me with amazement and pride.

‘So,’ said Sister Medic looking at me sharply, ‘and do you also know which herbs are used this way?’

‘Yes, Mistress. Various mixtures of parsley, ginger, yarrow, feverfew, rosemary and sage,’ I rattled off, ‘when prepared by ...’

‘That will do, young sister.’ She frowned again. ‘Display is not be used for the sake of pride; you know that.’

I felt quashed and looked at Gaia in dismay. She gave me the hand-sign for courage. I swallowed, pushed my chin up, and decided I’d never be cruel to my students when I was Chief Apothecary. Whenever that might be.

Mistress Birther went on to test us on the moon, the symbol of feminine power.

‘Tell me the phases of the moon, and how they relate to the phases of your life. Susa?’

Susa leapt to her feet. ‘New moon is the time of flow which occurs for a few days. The longer period afterwards leading up to the full moon also represents the Maiden, the phase of life when we have energy for new beginnings.’

She sat back down, her wide pale face beaming.

‘That’s correct, Susa. You too should be cautious of the fault of pride.’

Oooh, sometimes I hated Mistress Birther. She thought she could and should cure us of anything she judged an ill. Poor Susa shrank back in her seat.

‘And after the new moon, what comes next? Allana?’

Allana gulped, and said as quickly as she could, ‘Full moon is the time of the mature egg when pregnancy is possible for those who participate in sexual intercourse.’

‘Yes, correct, Allana. But please speak up and go more slowly, so we can all have the benefit of your knowledge,’ Mistress Birther said.

She swivelled to stare at Gaia, who was looking intensely uncomfortable.

‘And you, Gaia, can you tell us the rest?’

‘Mistress, I ...’ Gaia swallowed, then obviously decided not to protest, and parroted in a monotone,

‘The longer period leading up to the old moon represents The Mother, which is the nurturing phase of life when we have energy for the care of the young, in field, fold and house. Old moon is the time of cleaning of the womb. It also represents The Woman, when we have energy to give back into the tasks of the community. Then, the dark of the moon is the moment of time between one cycle and the next. It represents The Destroyer, sometimes called The Renewer; the phase when death makes space available for new life, giving back nutrients to the earth.’

Gaia was pale but she had her impassive face back in place. I didn’t know why she was so uncomfortable; she had recited perfectly. Mistress Birther opened her mouth, undoubtedly to criticise, but just then the Chief Mistress of the Temple swept in and took over. She was utterly terrifying: tall and really big, with a fierce square face, thick silver hair that shone against her black skin, and a scowling mouth. She was the second most powerful and important person in the Enclave, after the Most Elder Sister. Everyone was scared of her. Other acolytes said if she knew your name you would never do well, because she only ever paid attention to troublemakers.

‘Alright young women,’ she said in her gravelly voice. She had enough power in her voice to fill the whole Temple, we knew. Here in the small Reverencing Hall, it sounded like a rock fall. ‘Tonight, you enter the Acolytes, nine years of learning to find your place in our Female Enclave. I need to know that you fully understand the journey before you. Recite for me the Acolytes Creed.’

We stood with a whisper of the worn hand-me-down smocks we all wore. There had been countless rehearsals as we learned the words and debated all their layers of meaning. We’d all stumbled, giggled, gone blank and feared we would never get it perfect. There was a swoosh as we all took a deep breath.

‘We are Acolytes of the Enclave. In purity we enter the Initiates where we will remain for the next three years. We pledge to attend faithfully, learn gratefully and demonstrate honestly all that our seniors can teach us.

‘In the following three years as Novices, we will become useful and contributing members of our society. We promise to learn respectfully from our teachers to the best of our ability, and to train to defend our sisters with all our strength and determination.

‘In our final three years, we will be Apprentices. We promise we will share our skills with those who come after us, give respect to our elder sisters, and work earnestly to become worthy of our place as adult robed women.

‘In all our endeavours, we will act for the glory of the Goddess, the benefit of our sisters and the integrity of the Female Enclave.’

There was a hush as we stopped chanting. A drop of sweat was tickling on my eyebrow, but I dared not rub it. All eyes were fixed on the Chief Temple Mistress. She glared at every one of us in turn, and then in a deep voice like a drumroll, she said,

‘You have spoken your pledge to be worthy Acolytes of the Female Enclave. Your promise has been heard and witnessed.’

‘Heard and witnessed!’

It rolled around the room, repeated by every robed woman. I had thought this was just a rehearsal! But it was our actual oath-giving. I wasn’t ready! A cold shiver swept over me, as the full solemnity struck me. Gaia gave me a tiny crook of a smile without looking at me, and I relaxed. Really, I was going to have to say it at some stage tonight, so why not now? Taking a deep breath, I looked at all the older sisters with a new appreciation—they had each done this, passed through the Acolyte journey that lay before us, and they had survived becoming full members of our Enclave. Maybe I could, too.

The Chief Temple Mistress softened fractionally. ‘Very well. Tonight, make sure you meditate on your pledge and our sacred creed, and on what being an acolyte means.’

Everybody relaxed. The tutors waved to us to form up at the door for our walk to the next phase of the ceremony in the Temple. There was a bit of excited jostling as we got into our proper places, then Mistress Birther inspected us. When she had corrected our posture to her extreme standards and twitched our smocks straight, she gave the hand-sign for forward, and we went out into the chill starry night. The tutors were all carrying flaming torches that made it very hard to see clearly. Goddess, those gravel paths made our bare feet hurt! We hopped and tiptoed over the rocks and puddles along the backstreet leading to the main road to the Temple.

As we turned the corner, I was surprised to see all the adult women of the Enclave lining the route, carrying flaring torches. Then, all together, they began to sing—a song I had never heard before. It was a hymn of transition, just for us. Tears prickled my eyes, and I had to swallow hard. The torchlight played across all the faces: the young acolytes around me, the very old white-haired women supported by their carers; the dark skinned and the fair. The taller women at the back made space for the shorter at the front. All the capable wonderful women I’d known my whole life were gathered to wish us well, beaming with affection and pride. A few were crying openly, staring at particular girls. I straightened my shoulders and put my chin up, ignoring the tears on my cheeks. If they were so proud of us, then I was going to live up to it. Hundreds of voices blended and separated as we passed and the harmony washed over us, sometimes sharp and poignant, sometimes rich and joyful. The sound was so clear in the crystal air, I got those strange shivers that start behind your ears and make you shudder with a kind of painful delight.

As we approached the Temple, I could see the torchlight only reached partway up the immense grey walls. I looked anew at the huge building. In class, someone had said it was the same shape as a structure called an igloo she had seen in a book, and the learning mistress had scoffed at her, claiming that igloos were tiny and made of ice. I could see why she laughed; tonight, the Temple was grand and powerful. We had been taught it was shaped to represent the Womb of the Goddess, the source of all life. It was roughly circular in shape, and its massive stone walls were rounded up to the roof. There was a central low turret that crowned the building, with slightly bulging windows that were gleaming. Those lens-windows directed light onto the Shrine at all times of the day. And when the Temple was lit inside, like tonight, rays of golden light shone out through the windows across the whole of the Core.

We tiptoed silently in through the covered portico. At the end, the enormous doors into the chamber were fully open, which only ever happened for very important ceremonies. We all stood up a bit straighter as we glided in. It wasn’t often that young girls like us were the centre of celebration.

Exactly as we had practiced, we processed into the middle of the Temple, between the tall swelling columns on their curved paths that outlined the shape of a woman’s labia, around the Fount of Life. But tonight, in the ceremony, it felt so different from our giggling rehearsals. The Temple at night was awe-inspiring; the light from the huge candelabras filled the centre but faded away until the distant walls were shadowed and mysterious. Usually, the air smelled flat and dead, but tonight it smelled like wax candles, incense, and flowers. Over the shuffling of our feet, I could hear the soft splashing of the sacred Fount. The water bubbled up into its dark bowl in the floor in the exact centre of the chamber, surrounded by the columns. The Fount of Life was the spiritual heart of the Temple and we’d been told it was a mystery; nobody knew why the water rose from the deep well beneath the foundations, or whether it would ever run out.

Beyond that, against the far wall, the Goddess statue on the Shrine gleamed in the soft light. The central aisle dipped gently; the enormous slate flagstones were worn all along the meditation path, skirting the columns, then in towards the Fount, around it and out the other side. It amazed me that the ordinary shoe leather of generations of sisters could wear down stone. I craned my head back, trying to see the figures carved on the tops of the columns. The Chief Mistress of the Temple harrumphed behind me, and I quickly dropped my head back to a proper respectful position. We’d been told often enough during our instruction in the Ways of the Goddess that ‘the whole Temple was a glorification of the unique power of women to bring forth life’. But tonight, it seemed especially significant and obvious to me—now I was old enough to bear a baby.

Surrounding the Fount and between the columns were the uncomfortable benches where we had to sit for our transition vigil. We settled onto the benches, facing towards the Shrine for our meditation. Of course, they placed us too far apart to be able to whisper. The tutors, six Temple Apprentices in their dark blue robes, were murmuring behind us. The two with the first watch began to pace the circuit around the outside of the pillars. They reminded me of silent shepherd dogs circling settling sheep.

We had to stay seated all night, which I’d never be able to do. I was restless and fidgety. Everyone else began to relax into the meditation we’d been taught, and gradually became calmer and still. I tried; I really did.

Eventually though, I was just cold, and fighting to stay awake. The tutors prodded us if we nodded off. We were supposed to stay awake all night contemplating the meaning of becoming an acolyte. But I’d already thought of everything I possibly could. I’d considered how I’d no longer be a child living in the Children’s Dormitories, with the same group of girls that I’d known all my life. I couldn’t imagine life without Gaia and Rosie with their beds beside mine. Gaia and I had been in the same dormitory forever. I had a faint memory of when Rosie came to us; she’d been in some kind of trouble in her old dorm room. Gaia had decided to adopt her, and we’d been sister-friends ever since.

‘Becoming an acolyte is the turning point of a young sister’s life’, so they kept telling us. Maybe some of my turnings were going to lead to disaster. I was so clumsy I was dreading Perimeter Squad training. It was going to be so bad. We’d been told we wouldn’t be sent to the perimeter until we were much older. As the target of the marauding Outcasts, acolytes were kept safe in the Core whenever there was a raid, while the older women were the fighters. Our contribution was going to be working in logistics, food, and healing. Even so, we still had to do physical drills. Oh, Goddess!

Over the nine years of being an acolyte we were also supposed to discover our life’s work. But what happened if you couldn’t decide on what you wanted to do? Or you were really bad at it?

But these were all old thoughts. I couldn’t come up with anything new.

So, I watched the tutors without turning my head. Their soft leather shoes paced the path worn in the stone around us. My feet were freezing; I wished we’d been allowed to wear shoes. The swish of their dark blue Apprentices robes, and the colour and glimmer of their silk year-bands kept catching my eye. I was trying to identify where they had been each year. The one in charge, a final year apprentice, had the full set of nine year-bands. Each band gleamed in the colour of the House she had been assigned to, with short strips of ribbon of different colours identifying the various disciplines she had studied. I could see her lowest band was red, and the first ribbon was white, so she had spent her first year in the Healers and her initial deployment there was as a First Aider. I wondered how she felt going to an emergency when she was so inexperienced? Her eighth and ninth bands were both pale grey for the Temple, with black ribbons, meaning for the last two years she had chosen to specialise as a Reverencer. I wondered what it would be like to be so sure of what you wanted to do.

Tomorrow, I would have new robes, coloured pale blue for the Initiates level. I was sure to make a mess of sewing on my first-year band, coloured for whichever House they had chosen for me. What would they put me in? What had I shown interest in? I couldn’t decide, and went over all my favourites – definitely gardening, herbs, I would love animals, possibly the Children’s Rooms. But Gaia had suggested earlier that perhaps the Council of Chief Mistresses would choose something I was bad at, and I should improve in. Well, that could mean almost anything. But wouldn’t they save that for later on, when I might learn to do it properly? Oh, please, let it be that.

Shifting uncomfortably, I could see Gaia, a few rows ahead of me, sitting straight, gazing serenely at the Shrine. She seemed to have recovered from whatever she had been uncomfortable about. She has always been good at meditation. It made her annoyingly calm when everyone else got tense. Perhaps she would get her preference for the Reverencers in the Temple. She did everything well, so elegantly, she would always be beautiful. Not like me, clumsy as a new calf.

I slid my eyes sideways, as I heard the soft swish of a passing tutor. I could see Rosie down the row. She hadn’t pulled up her hood, despite the cold. Her ears were red, and occasionally she snuffled. What would the elder sisters choose for her? Oh Goddess, not animals! She was scared of the big ones. She was good with the little meat stock, poultry and rabbits and guinea pigs, but she cried every time they went to slaughter, so that would be a year of hell for her. Perhaps she’d get lucky and they’d send her to the Clothing Rooms in Crafts. She loved sewing. On the other hand, she’d always said she wanted to save that for her Apprentice years. I couldn’t work it out anymore; I was too cold and sleepy to think.

To keep myself awake, I began to see how far I could look around the Temple without moving my head. That gave me a headache, so I looked instead at the great gold sculpture of the Goddess on the Shrine; it almost seemed to breathe as the candlelight shifted over its form. It was not an actual person shape, sometimes it looked like an old woman, and sometimes a girl, and sometimes just an abstract lump. How had it been made? Gaia would be proud of me; she always wanted to know where things came from or how they’d been made. Then I stared blankly at the wall behind the Goddess, trying to work out how you could cut stone so smoothly. The Temple was very old, so it must have been done in the Time Before. That meant the blocks must have been cut at least several hundred years ago, maybe thousands. I couldn’t remember exactly how long ago the Great Disruption had been. All I could remember was that the pandemic of the Great Disruption marked the end of the Time Before, and then came modern times. I really should have listened more in the children’s learning rooms. Oh Goddess, I hope I didn’t get assigned to the Temple—they’d expect me to remember all that stuff!

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AT DAWN, THE PALEST sunlight reflected off the Shrine. Finally, we were motioned to rise, with the silent signal, so I stifled my moans as my stiff back complained. My stomach rumbled and I looked an apology at the tutor nearest me. She had her knitted cap pulled low to keep her ears warm, but I caught the corner of her grin as she gave me the slight hand sign for ‘no matter’.

We filed back down the hill then to the small Reverencing Hall. No singing crowds lined the route this time; lucky things, being warm inside now! We walked in silence, hopping between the ice-covered puddles, our bare feet so cold we were stumbling and shivering in the damp morning breeze. I did manage to glimpse the first slivers of early spring sun shining through the thin new leaves; they glowed like the flesh of limes.

Inside the Hall it was much warmer, with a fire in the large grate at the back of the room. At the other end, the Chief Mistresses from each of the nine Houses were standing behind a long table loaded with pale blue robes. They each clutched some woven silk bands in the colour of their House, and in the other hand, short ribbons in a variety of colours for each of their disciplines.

The Most Elder Sister stepped up onto the dais, signalling for silence as we pottered to our places on numb feet. My place was always at the back behind Marien, who was about twice my size, so I was glad the Most was raised where I could see her. At least I had the fire behind me, and I would thaw out.

The Most took off her hat, which meant we could push back our hoods. Her fine silver hair rose out to frame her face, which looked pale and worn, and I suddenly realised she must be really old. But her voice was warm, and she smiled with beauty, all the lines of her face crinkling to make her radiant.

‘Young sisters, this is a great day for you. Today you stop being children and begin your journey as acolytes towards adulthood. You become part of our productive workforce, and you will begin your training in the Perimeter Squad, taking part in the defence of our beloved Female Enclave.

‘You also start your journey towards your right to give birth. All girls begin this process at the time of puberty. Giving birth is still some years