Chapter Text
I was born into the Garden, so for the first seven years of my life, I didn’t know it was strange.
When you grow up with dirt beneath your fingernails and hymns stitched naturally into the hours of your day, you don’t think to question it. You assume the world always wakes in silence. You assume the air always smells faintly of rosemary and roses and nectar. You assume that every morning, no matter the season, everyone will stand barefoot in the dew and face east, waiting for the Light to return.
The Garden of Light’s Return is a sanctuary.
A stewardship.
A family.
Outsiders might call it a farm, or a religious community, or—if they were unkind—I have heard murmurs of the word cult. But the Garden does not use words like that. The Garden believes language is sacred. Labels given by the outside are just part of the Noise.
They do not understand our purpose.
Here, we are simply the planted.
The waiting.
The tended.
We are the ones who, when our heavenly Father cleanses the earth, will have the resources, the discipline, and the purity to begin again. To replant.
My name is Nicholas.
The name my mother whispered when she first held me in her arms, exhausted and shaking, and still so young.
The Garden believes God calls each soul by name before it is born. We are only to be called by this, and nothing else.
My mother, Sarah, arrived here when she was fourteen.
She was only twelve when the world ended for her.
That’s how she tells it—As though her world shattered and not until she came to the garden did it come back together. Her parents and her little sister Diane were killed in an accident so sudden and terrible that no one ever speaks the details aloud. In the Garden, tragedy is treated like weather: unavoidable, sent for a reason, endured.
She survived.
Survival, the elders say, is evidence of purpose.
After the accident, she was placed into foster care. She lived in homes that hurt her. Two of them were openly abusive. The third, more subtle and sinister, she ran away from before it could swallow her whole.
She was fourteen years old, starving, alone, and frightened in a way the Garden teaches you never to be. Fear is worry. Worry is Noise.
She ended up in a restaurant, begging for food.
That is where Stéphane found her.
My father.
He was twenty-five then. Handsome, broad-shouldered, calm in the way men in the Garden are calm—like they have already decided the world as its most commonly known, is meaningless, and there is comfort in their certainty.
He spoke gently to her.
He told her his father owned a plot of land.
That there was a garden and an orchard and a farm, a place where people lived together as one body, one spirit. A community with children and elders and shared tables. A place where no one went hungry and no one was left alone.
He told her she would be safe. Well taken care of.
The Garden loves a rescue story.
The elders welcomed her like a miracle.
They wrapped her in linen. They fed her broth and honey. They spoke scripture over her with soft reverence. They told her she was chosen, that the Light had guided her steps home.
They taught her the rules slowly, with kindness and patience.
Silence until dawn.
Labor as offering.
Desire as danger.
Confession and fasting as cleansing.
This was love. Communal love.
Soon after, Stéphane took a liking to her.
That is the phrasing my mother uses. As if liking and choosing as a sturdy vessel are the same thing. Truth is, I'm not sure he's ever actually liked her. But that is okay. That is not the point of their union.
It was inevitable.
He told her she was meant to procreate with him.
In the Garden, nothing is framed as force. Force would sound ugly. Everything is phrased as stewardship, as blessing, as sacrifice, as purpose.
Sex is never spoken of plainly. Only in terms of fruitfulness. Joining. Continuity.
Pleasure is not a word that belongs here.
My mother bore my brother David first, and my father was pleased.
Then, three years later, she had me.
My mother had fulfilled her purpose, so she was retired to raise us and, as we grew, to work the kitchens.
Both births were celebrated with hymns and honey toast, and fruit, and mint tea. The elders gathered in the garden chapel and spoke of Eden and purity and the Returning Light. They smiled. They cried. They told my mother she was doing holy work.
She smiled in the pictures. She always smiles in the pictures.
I am eighteen now.
I am strong. That is what they say about me, always.
Strong hands.
Strong back.
Strong bloodline.
I carry crates of produce from the fields. I lift beams for repairs. I work the orchard until my shoulders ache and my palms blister. The Garden values strength that can be easily utilized.
Everyone has strengths, but some are seen as holding more value than others.
The elders nod when they pass me. Their approval settles over me like warmth, though brief and conditional.
Affection in the Garden is like sunlight through clouds.
You learn not to depend on it.
There are other things I am good at. Things the Garden does not praise.
Baking, for one.
When I was small, my mother used to let me help in the kitchen. Quietly, as if it were a small, secret kindness she could still offer. I loved the feel of dough beneath my hands, the way it yielded and resisted, alive with yeast and warmth.
I loved the ovens. The rhythm of it all. The smell of fresh loaves cracking open, steam rising into the air like prayer.
For a few years, I thought that was allowed.
Then I turned thirteen.
In the Garden, thirteen is the age of Shedding. Childhood is something you are meant to burn away. Toys, and comfort items from childhood, are set aflame in a ceremonial gathering around the fire pit. Desire begins to wake in the body, and the Garden is terrified of desire.
After thirteen, I was no longer permitted in the kitchen except for approved tasks, such as delivering large sacks of flour, or fixing a broken pipe. The kitchen is the place for women only, and time around women must be minimized.
The elders said it was time for me to do the work of men.
They said it like it was a privilege, but not one to feel pride over. Never pride. Pride is Noise.
Now I pass the kitchen doors and pretend I don’t listen. Pretend I don’t ache when I hear laughter inside. Pretend the ovens don’t call to me like something holy. Pretend I do not think often about the simplicity of childhood.
The Garden also teaches that hunger is dangerous.
Not only hunger for food.
Hunger for touch.
When you are young, hugs are permitted. After your shedding, such childish comforts are no longer necessary, and you are to be strong.
Anything else is just more Noise.
And Noise is how the Light slips away.
Then, there is Charles.
I remember the day he arrived.
I was seven years old. He was six.
His sister Victoria was seven like me, sharp-eyed and already guarded. Charles stood half behind her, fingers curled into her sleeve like he was afraid the Garden might swallow him whole if he let go.
I liked him instantly.
He was shy and spoke very little, but he was not empty of mind. Far from it. There was kindness and quiet intelligence in him, like he was always listening and taking it all in.
We talked quietly, the way children do when they sense something is forbidden without understanding why.
He told me about television.
About books that were not the Bible.
About playgrounds.
About public schools.
The words sounded like myth.
Our schooling in the Garden consisted of Bible study, writing, copying verses until your hand cramped and your thoughts went still.
Everything else was taught by family, or not taught at all.
Charles had attended a year of kindergarten before his family pulled him away from the outside world and brought them here.
His five years of life fascinated me more than anything else I’d ever heard.
The idea of a classroom full of children. Of making your own art just for… fun? Of learning things that weren’t meant to make you obedient.
It sounded… Well, it gave me Noise.
I had to put an end to the stories. I had to distance myself from Charles after our shedding.
We remained friendly, but the ease of childhood had slipped away.
The Garden is good at distance.
Closeness is regulated here, like everything else. Affection must be shared evenly, the elders say.
No special treatment for the Returned. No favorites. We are all one with God.
As I grew older, people began to look at me differently.
My grandfather was the founder of the Garden, the first Gardener. When he died—quietly, from an illness no one ever named—my father stepped into his place as Head Elder, flanked only by Elder Greene and Elder Hope.
And I stepped into mine, just below David.
People spoke to me and my brother carefully after that. With reverence. With expectation.
I was no longer just Nicholas.
I was lineage.
I was continuity.
Charles still smiled at me the same way, but even that became less, over time. The Garden does not like unguarded closeness.
At dawn, we stand together in silence, facing east.
The bell rings seven times. One for each day needed for creation.
The dew chills my feet. It's grounding. I feel centered.
The Garden breathes as one body.
And sometimes, in the quiet before the hymns begin, I catch a glimpse of Charles nearby. He looks calm. He looks serene.
I wonder what Charles remembers of the world before.
I wonder if he still thinks about playgrounds.
I wonder what he thinks of me now.
Then the Gardener’s voice rises soft as wind through leaves. Guiding our chant.
“We return,” we recite.
“We soften.”
“We listen.”
Charles meets my eye, smiling softly as we repeat the words.
And I remind myself, as I have been taught, that wanting is the beginning of Noise—
and Noise is how the Light slips away.