“Rituals. Rituals are the lifeline by which we are led to the future. In their repetition, we strive ever closer to perfection. In our acceptance of them, we cultivate the humility to accept the greater wisdom of the Holy Tree and its speaker the First Tender into our hearts. Though we be flawed and sinful creatures, through their divine grace are we redeemed and made worthy of the lives they gift us and sustain through all the days we are allotted.”

– from the Children’s Catechism as taught to all young Sylvan as they prepare for their First Confirmation.

I wanted to fight to bring Kam back.

Which.

Wow.

Kam? Really? I mean, he was an annoying brat at the best of times.

And fighting the Tender Acolytes?

I wasn’t just tired. I’d gone insane.

Kam being selected for a special duty? That was an incredible honor! Our lives, our hopes, our every desire, Holy Mazana was due all of that and more. 

I was a daughter of the Garden. I wasn’t a good Sylvan, but rebelling against the Tenders? No. Absolutely not. I was not that lost. I would never be that lost!

“You will be able serve as well, sister,” the Tender Acolyte said.

I froze, a spike of ice spearing my heart as I forced my feature to show none of the panic that gripped me.

The Acolyte had seen my turmoil when they called Kam out from the line and I’d been impossibly lucky that they’d mistaken it for jealousy of Kam’s holy opportunity.

Idiots.

You’re not wrong about that.

I cast my eyes down and gave a solid nod to acknowledge that I had heard and accepted the truth of the Acolytes words.

Well, one of those wasn’t a lie I guess.

I kept my head firmly down and my face alight with the glory of having been spoken to by a Tender Acolyte. I’d been so lucky, to be graced with even a few words from one of them, and a promise at that! That I could be useful!

Those thoughts don’t taste terribly good do they?

They had to. I couldn’t be doing this. Not here. Not now. They were looking for someone and we could not let them find me.

We?

I, I couldn’t let them find me. My demon wasn’t going to help with that.

…

Silence? She wasn’t going to torment me further?

…

I exhaled a long, slow breath.

Of course she wasn’t. If I was found out, she would be too. Or maybe it was just that if I was tossed over the Thicket, she wouldn’t be able to torment me for very long afterwards.

The silence took on the quality of a huff of disapproval, but no words broke the sanctity of my thoughts.

That lasted until we reached the Roothall and found our seats, happily near the center of congregation.

When I was little, being in the center had been both terrible and wonderful. Terrible, because I always wanted to be closer to be able to see what was going on, and, if I was really lucky, be one of the ones selected to take part in whatever ceremony we were celebrating. Wonderful because it was so easy to feel Holy Mazana’s grace when I was surrounded by so many people united in song and prayer.

They promised us that union with the Divine Tree would lift our souls and carry us to the bliss of Mazana’s heavenly embrace, and in those celebrations I caught glimpses of that heaven. Everyone united in joy and purpose. An overflowing of love and clear sense of being part of something so much greater than our own tiny lives. 

Faith’s reward wasn’t immortality, it was to look on the beauty of creation and understand that we are a part of that beauty.

That was then though.

Before I became impure.

Sitting in the mid-section of the congregation was still terrible and wonderful, but the terror came from the pressing mass of people around me, denying me escape, or respite, or time alone to process my thoughts where I didn’t have to control every twitch of every muscle. The wonder, which held far less strength than it used to, came from the fact that the people around me were as much camouflage as peril. Any of them might notice something was wrong with me, but none of them did, or ever would, I believed, because none of them noticed me. 

I’d made myself the epitome of ordinary and in doing so ensured that I’d become something like a walking blindspot. I wasn’t seen because I wasn’t worth seeing.

Instead, at least in the Roothall, all eyes were on the pulpit, all ears tuned for what the Tender Acolyte who stood behind it was about to say.

I couldn’t look to see what my mother and father were doing. I couldn’t look to confirm how anyone was handling Kam’s loss. Were they ecstatic to have one of our own chosen for a special duty? Was mother secretly upset to have lost her favorite son? Was father concerned about the circumstances which required an unofficial draft? I didn’t know and I couldn’t know. I had to be lost in prayer. Just like all the others daughters of the Garden. Our role was always to pray, unless we were given other instructions.

So I prayed, or at least pretended to. It was hard to muster the proper piety when my imagination was tearing off in a hundred different directions though.

Before I could get far on formulating any of the questions which had arisen, the last of the families had gathered, taken their seats, and the Tender Acolyte began to speak.

“Welcome and good morning, Holy Children.”

So, the typical greeting. It relaxed people. Nothing too bad was coming.

“We have been called to attendance this day by the duty and obedience owed to Divine Mazana.”

No extra announcements. Just right to the point. Half the crowd breath a sigh of relief since that meant we’d be able to get back to our breakfasts sometime before lunch rolled around. The other half were put on edge again though since getting right to the point suggested something serious was afoot.

Guess which half I was in?

“A Divine Decree has been issued for a Festival of Purification!”

He sounded excited, so the congregation became excited.

“In one week’s time, all families shall come before the Holy Tree, proffer their love and devotion and receive a special blessing based on their purity and sanctity as a worshipping collective.”

So we were going to be judged by the worst member of each family. Great.

“Only your behaviors during the purification week will just counted for or against you. Already a Special Task Force has been assembled to search for impurities outside of your direct control, and at the end of the Festival they shall be rewarded with a special service held by the First Tender where he will dispense Mazana’s wisdom and allow them to ask the questions closest to their hearts.”

I had to look up at that to see if the Acolyte was being serious.

A service lead by the First Tender? For a simple cleaning duty? And they were allowed to speak to him?

From the congregation a chorus of pleased gasps rose up signaling to the uncertain members that this was a good thing.

Except it wasn’t.

A service with the First Tender was a far greater reward than a group organized to sweep up the unused areas of the Garden deserved.

Which meant they were going to be responsible for something far more important than sweeping.

Like, for example, finding a graceful intruder who’d somehow, impossibly, made it through the Thicket Walls.

Or the people she was with?

I’d been thinking she’d come alone, but how likely was that? Getting through the Thicket was impossible. Flying over it, or digging under it should have been impossible too, but what was impossible for any one person, might be doable if enough other people worked at it.

Images of an invasion flashed past my eyes.

Had my greed for keeping my own life doomed us all? We knew exactly what was outside the walls. Dead things. And broken ones. The residue of a destroyed world. Those who weren’t worthy of the Garden’s safety and the Holy Tree’s sheltering light.

We, the Children of the Garden were stronger and more righteous than anyone outside our walls and they hated us for that. It was why no one survived being thrown over the walls. It was why Holy Mazana had grown the walls in the first place. 

Together we could fight them, but the walls were a big part of that. If the monsters beyond the walls had learned to pass through them, blood, Sylvan blood, would run in the streets and if our faith wavered in the face of such an assault, the Holy Tree would burn.

That was the monsters’ true goal after all. For as much as they hated us, their fanatical devotion to Mazana’s destruction was legendary.

Legendary, of, or relating to a story passed down from the past.

Yes. Because we’d known that for as long as there’d been a Garden.

Or as long as the First Tender has been telling you that was how things were.

Blasphemy. To question the First Tender’s teachings was blasphemy.

So I had to reject her.

I should have rejected the demon’s assertion automatically. She was a demon. Nothing she said could be believed.

And yet?

To truly reject its words though, I had confess. If I truly believed that there was a threat to the Garden, no, worse, a threat to Holy Mazana, I had to confess.

I had to.

I had to.

I started gathering my courage.

It was time. I had to explain what I’d seen. I had to do everything I could to make sure the Holy Tree was safe.

Even if that meant sacrificing myself.

It was what was expected of us.

Our lives were given to us to serve the Holy Tree.

The highest duty we could fulfill was to die in its defense.

Countless Saints had done the same, and even the lowliest of us could rise and become a Saint too.

I wanted to live but I knew the Holy Tree was more important than I was.

Than anyone was.

I waited for my demon to taunt me. To poke at the corners of my argument.

To call me a hypocrite.

But she was waiting. 

Patiently.

Hopefully?

Was she a trial sent to test me? To see if I could find a path back to purity and the Holy Tree’s divine graces?

I am no test.

Wounded pride? I felt like I’d insulted my demon.

What else would be new?

My confession. That would be new.

I looked inside for the courage to do what I knew was right. What I had to do.

The Tender Acolyte was droning on about purity, and the value of the Tree’s blessing, and blah, blah, blah stuff they’d told us a thousand times already.

Why couldn’t he have just given us an hour of mediation? If he would have just shut up I would have been able to work up the nerve to rise and confess what I knew.

Blasphemy?

My demon wasn’t supposed to be the one asking me that.

But I was weak.

Much too weak.

I couldn’t rise.

I couldn’t do what was right.

I was too afraid. 

I didn’t want to die.

I didn’t want my family to be cast down because of me.

I was too weak, and scared, and not a good daughter of the Garden at all.

Or, and I know coming from me this won’t be something you can accept, but consider if you will this question; can you not act because you can’t do the right thing, or because you aren’t sure what the right thing is?

But I knew what the right thing to do was.

I’d been told what was right all my life.

Questioning that was a sin.

So why didn’t it feel like a sin?

I needed to talk to someone.

But it couldn’t be my father or mother.

Or Kam.

And certainly not the Tender Acolytes.

I didn’t want to even think the next words that came to my mind.

The intruder.

She was the one I needed to talk to.

I needed her to confess that she’d come to destroy the Holy Tree.

Then I could act. Then I would know for sure. Then my sacrifice would have meaning.