Spreading her arms wide, she steps into the open and lets the sun cover her in light. A blanket of sunshine and air and all the vast, unknowable universe beyond. It falls on her softly. The prickle is good. Even this sun and its light have become hers alone.
For this single moment, it all belongs to her. Raising her face to the sun, she hears Tom’s shout, but it’s distant. An annoyance she can push away in favor of the light.
The light has a sound. It touches her ears and travels through her bones like a tuning fork. A tinkling hum. It’s nice, soothing. This is a lullaby gifted from a star to her.
She breathes one final breath and whispers, “Mine.”
Charlotte
The winter passes, but doesn’t drag like the previous one did. Time begins to fly. It’s because they are creating a life, because all the women here are creating and living new lives. The horses have changed everything for Tabitha, and by extension, for Charlotte. It takes almost no time at all before the docket for riding lessons is entirely full. Once the waiting list gets too long, the stables are extended and more horses arrive.
By spring, Tabitha is running a complex operation that includes four instructors, several hands for general work, and an entire pasture management team. She’s so busy that Charlotte manages to collect hundreds of images of the new town, images that she’s sure put the lie to the existence of the town.
She often rides Junior, which is what she calls the horse that reminds her so much of her beloved Scoot. The base surrounding this camp is large, with wide open spaces within the fences. The defunct airstrip and the long grassy areas beyond the paved lanes are a perfect place for her to spend some time gazing at the sky while Scoot browses the tall grasses or rolls around on his back with easy joy.
She’s been bringing her tablet lately, compiling the images into a vast map she’s created. Using simple visual search criteria, she’s matched up parts of different images to places all over the country. That was the key to the puzzle. The images are not whole images. Instead, they are parts of many images. It’s figuring out which parts belong together that’s difficult.
Once she does tease out the coherent bits, the visual searches bring results. She knows now, without any doubt, that there is no town. The updates are always upbeat and cheerful, but each also reiterates that they have no date for completion yet, stressing the complexity of security features and the creation of an entire town, including a commercial district.
Yet, some of the women are soon to leave. The announcement that Phase 1 of the new town has been completed and is ready for a small number of women was greeted with joy. They call it Beta Testing in a half-joking way. Women will live there, find the kinks, provide feedback, and help to make the town better before everyone else moves in.
They are excited. The whole camp is excited.
To Charlotte, it seems as if she’s the only one who’s noticed the ones scheduled to leave are all young. Young women and teens without parents. The ones who aren’t going are those who have more than one adult in the family. There are no women with husbands. No women with older mothers. No mothers with small children that need care. The implications are chilling.
After all, what is it that a young woman could provide that an older one couldn’t? There is only one answer: babies.
Deep inside, Charlotte knows where the women are going and it isn’t a town. No doubt, these years have seen the government building a facility just for women, but not a town. She has a feeling they’ve figured out how to keep a woman alive even if she’s miserable and trapped. She has a feeling they will now do what they must to ensure the human race continues.
She has a feeling that the day she is called to move will be the last day she will ever do anything of her own free will.
“Charlie, can you brush down Willow for me? If you’re done with Junior, that is,” Tabitha calls from the stable office door. She’s a little sweaty after moving hay with the workers, but she looks happy all the same.
Charlotte nods and finds her smile comes more naturally today. The pictures in her head have taken a backseat after an afternoon with Junior. He soothes her in a way not even her mother can.
The muscles in Willow’s back ripple as the brush glides over the right spots. The big horse swivels her head to eye Charlotte and she presses a little closer. “Oh, you like that, huh?” she asks, laughing, pushing the horse’s flank to open up space to work.
After the last of the horses is bedded down in their stalls, food buckets delivered to each horse, and all the stall latches checked one last time, Tabitha drapes an arm over Charlotte’s shoulder as they stroll toward their golf cart. They now have their own cart. There’s no way to keep them clean with all the mucking and other work, and people don’t want to step in horse dung.
Even with the cart’s open sides, it smells horsey. Leaning her head back on the seat while Tabitha drives across the camp, Charlotte watches the sky shift to dark blue as dusk approaches. She doesn’t want to think about the pictures, the Beta Testing women, the mystery of where they will really go.
“Hey Charlie,” Tabitha says as she swerves to give plenty of space to a group of women walking their dogs.
“Yeah?”
“Did you hear they’re going to open a high school and bring in professors to teach college courses at the new town?”
While Charlotte has managed to finish high school using the
