"But what do we do about it, Callah?" Ms. Lawton - Miriam - asked.
"I don't know," I admitted.
"Not good enough," she said, turning to give me her full attention. "You had big plans before you were married. Don't tell me that husband of yours has already broken your spirit."
"Tobias?" I shook my head. "No." Then I realized I couldn't say too much about him. "He's manageable. It's just..." I paused, pressing my lips together as my mind spun. "We are not the Righteous anymore. I don't know if we ever were, but we certainly aren't now. This place? It's Hell for all women, and we have to do something about it!"
"But what?" Felicity asked. "A few of us hoped the banishment of your friends might be our chance to escape. That doesn't seem to be working anymore."
"We knew it wouldn't for long," Ms. Lawton said.
"We need to remind them how helpless they are without us!" I said, slapping my hand down into the water. "They don't know how to cook. They can't clean. They certainly don't mend! Without their wives, none of these men would be able to survive, but they use us up and discard us as if we're worthless!"
"No," Ms. Lawton said. "As if we're replaceable."
And my blood ran cold. "No." I didn't know why I hadn't seen it before, but suddenly it all made sense. "The problem is we're not." And I looked between them. "When was the last time a child was born in quarantine?"
"There've been a few," Ms. Lawton said, sounding confused.
And I snarled under my breath, because I knew this answer, but I couldn't figure out how to explain it without exposing too much about Tobias. "But what if those numbers are down? Whatif…" And I let the words trail off, realizing most people didn't know the things I did.
"What?" Juness pressed, watching both of us.
"Tell them," Ms. Lawton encouraged.
"I shouldn't know," I reminded her.
"No, you shouldn't," she agreed, "but you do, and she should too. If the knowledge comes from somewhere other than you, you're less likely to pay for it."
I nodded, giving in. "The women in quarantine weren't born here," I said, looking first at Felicity, then over to Juness. "They were born above, on the surface. Hunters bring them back - or did. They produced children like me. New bloodlines to add to the compound, and there are plenty of women up there."
"No," Juness huffed, waving that away. "That's impossible. We all know the surface is burning and only the Devil's minions survive."
"It's a lie," I said.
"Callah," Felicity chided, "how can you be sure?"
"Because both of my roommates were chained to a tree," I told them, repeating the reason I'd used with Felicity when I'd first tried to tell someone about this. "My husband mentioned it, and other hunters have said similar things when I was healing them. The men aren't always careful about what they say, and if you listen, the pieces start to add up. Treesburnin fire, but they grow in sunlight. I know that because my mother was in quarantine, and she told me stories. I remember the women in there, and they were not like us. My mother's hair was the color of the cooking coils!"
"And," Ms. Lawton said, "I don't remember the mothers' names. I've raised generations of girls, and too many mothers are ones who never attended sermon with us."
"So what do we do?" Felicity said. "If they have other women, then the threat to stone us to death is more likely than we wantto admit. How can we help these girls if they'll just replace us with wild women?"
I laughed once. "But they aren't getting those women anymore," I said. "That's why the age went down. For years, the Wyvern has been fighting us off, but now they have the Phoenix too, andsheis the reason the hunts have been so bad." I paused, choosing my words carefully. "I think she's protecting their women. If she is, they aren't getting more, so they need as many children as we can produce, and none of them care what it does to us in the process. By the time all of these girls are gone, the Phoenix should be too."
"Who?" Juness asked.
"One of the Dragons," Ms. Lawton said before I could mention Ayla's name. "One the men started talking about the same time we started losing so many hunters."
"So what can we do to stop this?" Felicity wanted to know.
"We talk to these girls. We listen to them. We women make our own council, and we do not tell the men about it. If they're going to keep their own secrets, then we keep ours. Most of all, we believe each other, because until we'reallsafe, none of us are."
"We make a sisterhood," Ms. Lawton realized. "Callah, that's a very, very good idea, and I think it's a good place to start."
"But not end," Juness added. "If they will beat those girls on their wedding day, I can't imagine what our husbands will do to us if they even suspect we're pushing back." She glanced at Felicity and cocked her head, acknowledging she was a widow. "You know what I mean."
"I do," Felicity agreed, "but these new rules mean I'll have to marry again much sooner than I'd planned. So I think Callah's right. We have to do something, and a sisterhood is the perfect place to start. Maybe we can even convince these girls that everything is not as we're told."
