Eden

4

CHAPTER FOUR

"'This is not what I intended,' the man said, but Lucifer wasn't listening and he banished the man from the realm of the living. Then, turning to those who were left, the Lord Lucifer said, 'Do not pity the weak, for you too will be weak. Do not help the liars or you will become a liar. Do not be kind to the Impure, as they will trick you into Impurity and taint your Pure heart. For this reason, the Impure are never to be forgiven, and the Pure are never to forgive. This is my advice to you.' Then he vanished."

– The Pure 2:7-14, The Bible of the New World

Religion the next day is a boring affair, although I don't let that show on my face. Unsatisfactory emotions while learning (or re-learning for the hundredth time) about Satanism are noted and recorded in your file – files which are reviewed upon completion of our education. If they were to open up my file when I finish school and see too many notes saying that I was 'bored in class', I'd be spending the rest of my life as an Impure. Even just one note is cause for concern.

So I act interested. Religion is the one subject that everyone expects you to find completely enthralling. Who cares that we've heard the stories of the Purges a billion times before? Or that the reason for our six day weeks and six season years has been explained and re-explained over and over and over, until it's something you just automatically know, like breathing or laughing or crying? It's religion. Any disinterest is taken as aversion to the Lord, Lucifer.

I sit tall in my chair like everyone else and do my best to keep my eyes open while our teacher, Ms Dhara, speaks. Ms Dhara, like every teacher in every school in the city, has the cold, criticising gaze of someone who is only half focused on our learning. The other half of her is spying for Impurities, for the subtle movements: an eye roll, a bored yawn, a frown. She is searching for the grey weeds that sprout in the cracks between pitch-black tiles, and also for the more unspeakable: the white flowers blossoming in crevices – the completely Impure.

"It was around this time," Ms Dhara is saying, "when the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve spread across the world, that the Lord noticed the impurity in their hearts and the sinfulness of their thoughts. He felt sorry that had ever made them, and so he decided to send a flood and clean the planet of its evilness – an event we now call the First Purge. It rained for sixty days and sixty nights, and the water rose and rose until it swallowed even the highest peaks. A hundred and fifty days later, the water started going down, and when it had all drained away, there was nothing left – no insects or birds, no animals or humans. Lucifer had spared no one, and from this we can learn how we must live today.

"Lucifer is not a forgiving God – he is strong and strict and merciless. In order to be considered Pure, you must be completely and truly devout. There cannot be a single drop of blood in your body that is Impure, otherwise you will destroyed like the people in the First Purge. You will be prone to sickness and ageing, and within 120 years, you will die. But if you truly give your heart and mind and soul to the Lord, you will be Pure. You will not grow sick or old, and you will never die."

At this, the class seems to perk up a little. The idea of never dying, of never ageing or getting sick, is blissfully sweet. It's what spurs many of the youth of Eden onwards, helping them push through the fear and the stress and the boredom. But for me, being a Pure has always meant more than just being immortal. I want the respect that comes with the ink-black clothing, the freedom to go where I want and see who I wish. I want Tierney and the other five Nephilim to stop cyclically treating me like I'm either dirt or a toy to be played with. But more than anything else, I want people to stop looking at me like I'm a stain on an otherwise impeccably clean cloth. I want to walk down the school halls without being ignored by the adults because of the shade of my clothing and the impurity of my heart.