Gabrielle peered silently at her reflection. Still have the wavy-frizzy brown hair. Same bony nose. Same pale complexion and perma-chapped lips. I don’t look all that much different from when I did as a kid, she mused. But on the inside, I’m such a different person… but I still haven’t changed all that much, except now, I’m allowed to question authority.
Gabrielle sighed. It’s an amazing thing… children are sponges when it comes to learning. They soak up everything, whether we realize it or not. In the right environment, this can lead to intellectual giants. But all too often, children are forced to only see things in one perspective, to not consider that sometimes, there’s no one right answer. And that is what leads to inner conflict…
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The instructor stands before the class, lecturing. Her face and appearance are stern and austere. She has dedicated herself to Fraeloia, Deity of the Youthful, and she instructs youngsters, teaching them about their community’s beliefs, making them think that these beliefs are normal, rather than morbid.
“Children,” she says, in her almost ridiculously high-pitched voice, “You must learn to embrace death; it brings relief from the strife that comes from dealing with the world of the living. In death, you may find paradise and true happiness. Do you think you are actually happy down here on Earth? No joy or pleasure that you can experience in the living realm can equal that which you will find in the world of the dead. But to get there, you cannot take your own life, or tell another to do so for you. No, that wouldn’t be fair at all, would it? You must wait for the deities to choose to take you. The younger you are when taken from this world, the more the deities favor you. Only the good die young; elderly people are stuck here on Earth until the deities take pity on them and permit them to finally rest for all time. Elderly people have done something to anger the deities enough to where they are not welcome into the land of Paradise. They shall have to deal with Brienal, Punisher of the Immoral, for all time, when Galusia, the Chooser of Final Destination, decides that they are too bad to see Paradise.”
Here, the youngsters gasped, fearing such a fate for themselves.
“But don’t you worry, little ones,” the instructor continued, smiling briefly, “for the righteous who accept these ways, our ways, will see Paradise.”
Here, a little girl with brown hair raised her hand. The instructor frowned disapprovingly. This child was one who often questioned her lectures. She shook her head at the girl, who lowered her hand and looked sadly down at her desk. The nail that sticks up will be pounded down. In this community, conformity is encouraged, and individuality and uniqueness is frowned upon.
___________________________
Gabrielle sighed and closed her eyes. That little girl was me, she thought. All of about seven or eight, but because Uncle Azrael had taken control by this time, we had to follow his orders. In today’s culture, they’d be considered cruel and heartless-- children were taken away from their parents at age five and sent to live in boarding homes while attending government-run schools, many of which forced children to believe in Azrael’s religion and taught them that the best way to live is by serving one’s government. We had very little in the way of practical instruction. But… I had a trump card… I had a way of becoming well-rounded.
______________________________
The girl nodded and ran over to a shelf, where she tugged at a largish book. Finally pulling it from its place, she scurried back over to her grandmother. The woman nodded approvingly as she ran her hands over the cover. “Alice in Wonderland. Wonderful selection.” She began reading the book aloud, tilting the book so that the girl could read along silently.
The girl peeked up at her grandmother. Although she knew the woman wasn’t elderly, life had not been kind to her. Her hair was already white, and scars crossed her face and hands. The girl felt a bit guilty, mentally scolding herself for being such a difficult child to raise, especially after her mother had died so young. Still, the young girl knew it best to just keep quiet and enjoy her weekly visit with her grandmother, wife to the first dictator of their land, who passed on his power to his firstborn son, Azrael, as soon as the boy was eighteen. The child knew her family’s history like the back of her hand, for it was not only taught in school, but her grandmother told it to her as well, but with a few additions: that the man Gran was married to was not the child’s grandfather, that her mother Artemis had given birth at a terribly young age-- eighteen, that Gran loved that illegitimate child more than any of her other children-- even more than Charlotte, who had been named for several people who had been important to Gran.
The child did not have much time to think on this. Her grandmother’s husband stormed into the room and ripped the book from the old woman’s hands. “Why are you reading her that rubbish?” he scolded, hurling the book into the nearby fireplace. “You should be filling her mind with useful things, teaching her that her place is in the home or fighting battles, not reading fairy tales.”
Gran rose, glaring. “Now you listen to me. This child doesn’t have a drop of your blood in her, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let you push her around the way you try to push me around. This is my grandchild, not yours, and I will raise her as I see fit,” she snapped.
Her husband grabbed her arm, yanked her close, and slapped her hard across the face. “How dare you be so insolent!” he yelled. “You are forgetting your place. She may not be mine by blood, but by virtue of the law, she is more or less mine, as she was raised in my household. If I ever catch you reading that trash to her again, you’ll be wearing sunglasses for a week to hide the black eyes, you hear?”
The woman shrunk back a bit, fearful. “Yes… sir,” she responded in a tiny voice. Nodding approvingly, the man walked out of the room, shutting the door behind him. Immediately, the woman began to cry.
“Why do you let him hit you?” the girl cried out.
The woman raised her head. “You listen to me,” she gasped out. “Don’t ever… ever let anyone beat you or tell you to stop learning or thinking. Be who you want to be. I want you to be stronger than I was.”
Click Next: Chapter 11, Part 4 to continue...
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