The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams

Author:Carol Lynch Williams [Williams, Carol Lynch]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Published: 2011-08-25T18:22:24+00:00

“ARE YOU READY, Kyra?” Mother Claire stands looking into my room with Mariah on her hip. “We’ve got a long way to go.”

I’ve washed my face, changed my clothes. I feel like Laura in a Little House on the Prairie book. The way they got dressed up before heading to town so they would be respectable.

My Laura and I have braided each other’s hair. We’ve made sure our dresses are ironed, that our white tights have no holes. I’ve polished our black shoes.

Neither one of us speaks. There’s nothing I can do to change this. Nothing. I grab Laura’s hand.

Outside, it is a lie of a morning. Everything is beautiful: The air fresh. The sky so blue it hurts my eyes. A breeze moves my Russian Olive trees. It’s like they are waving me a good-bye. All is quiet except for the cry of a baby from someone’s trailer.

Mother Victoria jangles the keys. “Let’s go,” she says, grinning. She seems anxious to get away. To travel out of here and into the real world.

We head to the family van, a sixteen-passenger that we outgrew years ago.

Mother Sarah sits shotgun. Mother Victoria starts the engine while Mother Claire fastens Mariah into her car seat.

I slide in on the middle bench and pull Laura with me.

We drive forward, moving slow through the black-topped streets, past the trailers, the Temple, the store, the Fellowship Hall. We’re headed to the gates of The Chosen Ones.

When people go to town, they go in groups of three or four families. “There is safety in numbers,” Prophet Childs always tells us.

But not us. Not today. It’s just my three mothers and Laura and baby Mariah, because she’s so young.

I glance at Laura sitting there beside me, quiet.

Could I live without any of my sisters? Without Laura? Even for Joshua?

Laura squeezes my hand but doesn’t look at me.

Even in my imagination, could I leave her?

But I am going to leave her.

In one month, I’m gone.

The fabric, this morning.

The date, tonight.

All the days will fly past.

And then I’ll leave these women and my sisters and brothers and my father and go to live with my uncle. The thought causes real pain right in the center of my chest.

Mother Victoria turns left toward town—fifty minutes away—the opposite direction I go when I walk to the Ironton County Mobile Library on Wheels.

My mothers, all of them, once we are free from the Compound, start to talk. They laugh with each other. They tease. They tell stories about “before,” when they traveled to town anytime anyone wanted.

Down the rutted road toward civilization we all go, me listening to their laughter, headed to the things that will help me start a new life I do not want.

I will be a seventh wife.

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