Sacrament in Scarlet

Untitled Part 2

Chapter One

The narrow Path

The first thing Lydia Holloway learned was that obedience came before comfort.

Before breakfast.

Before sleep.

Before questions.

She had been too young to remember who taught her that lesson first. Perhaps it had been her mother Carolyn, gently pressing folded hands together during morning prayer. Perhaps it had been one of the elders with a switch cut fresh from the trees. In The Hollow, lessons blurred together. Kindness and punishment often came wrapped in the same scripture.

By seventeen, obedience had become muscle memory.

She rose before sunrise without an alarm. Gathered vegetables from the fields with calloused hands. Could even survive off the forest alone if the time came for it.

The compound stirred around her as kerosene lanterns flickered to life inside weathered cabins scattered through the trees. Smoke drifted upward from chimneys into a canopy of towering pines and oaks. Somewhere farther down the hill, near their large statue, someone rang the old iron bell three slow times.

Morning assembly.

Lydia was already back on her family's porch, arms full of her daily gathers to can in glass jars later that evening. Prepping for the inevitable was a lesson most of the world didn't care to learn. Inside, she pulled on the same clean but faded denim skirt she'd worn dozens of times before. A plain gray blouse followed, sleeves buttoned at the wrists despite the summer heat. Long brown hair disappeared beneath a freshly pressed white scarf, tied neatly behind her head.

Every woman looked almost identical. That was the point.

Individuality invited vanity.

Vanity invited pride.

Pride, invited the Enemy.

At least, that's what the Elders taught, what The Prophet reminded them. She never got a clear answer as to who the Enemy was.

Outside, the Hollow was already awake.

Children hauled buckets from the well before they were tall enough to carry them without spilling. Men prepared trucks that would leave for the nearby town of Fox Hollow before dawn, carrying carpenters, mechanics, welders, electricians, and laborers whose wages would return to the community before sunset. Gardens stretched between the cabins in disciplined rows. Chickens wandered freely beneath fruit trees. Beyond the fences lay dense forest in every direction with shadows that twisted and hid The Hollow from unwanted eyes.

It looked peaceful. Visitors occasionally called it beautiful. Lydia had never understood why. Beauty was dangerous.

Beautiful things distract people from HIM. From his messages.

The only beauty worth seeking, The Prophet often reminded them, was obedience .

She repeated those words silently while following everyone toward the meeting hall. A large wooden building, tall enough for a second floor, large windows speckled the outside. Rafters inside hung chandeliers with hand made wax candles, occasional cobwebs finding their way across the polished brass.

If she stopped repeating them...

Other thoughts found their way in.

Thoughts she wasn't supposed to have.

—

By noon, Lydia was riding in the back of an aging pickup toward Fox Hollow, wind threatening to remove her headscarf. Hair tugging free from the braid down her spine.