Be Here Now

Shattered from Within

It's dark. He lies over me, grinning evilly.

Then, the pain.

It splits me apart, searing inside me, and I feel tears slipping down my face.

"Stop that!" he orders. "Women don't cry!"

"I know... just...please...be gentle with me...I'm not used to this...I am pure... this is all so new...and it hurts..."

He slaps me. "Don't you dare tell me what to do!"

Obediently, I lie still and quiet. But I can't help but think...The keepers of the maidenhouse said that when I was married, I would go through Loving Union and bind myself to my husband forevermore, never to be parted from him until the day I went to be a keeper myself. 

This is anything but loving. And union? How can something that's left me shattered from within be called a union?

*******

Suddenly I jerked awake. "Oh, thank Mariya it was just a dream!"

Anne, the elderly keeper who supervised the bedroom, rushed to my side and laid her hands on my brow. I flinched, still on edge from the dream, then relaxed into her touch as she blessed me.

"Lady Mariya," she intoned, "Protectress of Women, Queen of Heaven and Earth, keep your poor child safe, for she has dreamed of dark things, amaih."

Odd as it seemed, her prayer bugged me. I didn't know why.

I curled back under the covers, not caring enough to lie on my back as I should have, but I had barely drifted to sleep when the bells rang.

I stood, stretched, and pulled off my habit, changing quickly into a new one. 

Blue. My favorite color. 

In the maidenhouse, most things were laid out for us. Our days were structured, study, prayer, and walks through the courtyard. Our few choices were precious.

First, there was the ever-present option to go to the altar as sacrifice. Few of us took that route, of course, but it was there. The altar was said to call some people, and others simply couldn't bear the idea of living to serve a husband.

And, of course, there were those who lost themselves in an inner darkness that not all the keepers' prayers could clear away...

A choice exercised far more often than the choice to go to the altar was the freedom to wear whatever color one wished. Our habits were all the same cut, of course, but the wardrobes we're brimming with all manner of brilliant colors, rivaled only by the courtyard's flowers.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, we chose our names.

I'd heard that boys were named at birth, but that had always seemed impossible to me. Here in the maidenhouse, girls changed their names constantly, trying them out to find the right fit.

It got confusing sometimes, but no one minded. "To choose names for yourselves is your one great and fundamental right as women, that no one can ever take away," Keeper Dinah had always told us. "Never forget that."

I'd been changing names myself until quite recently, when I finally settled on one I liked. 

Aria. 

Aria was a perfect name.