The World Remains

By Brindi Quinn

It wouldn’t be until much later that I’d even come to realize how generic it was to call something ‘Schoolhouse,’ ‘Clinic,’ or ‘Market.’ Within our fairytale, we were children playing house. There was a lack of authenticity to everything we were. But all that would change. It was already on its way.

Blue-eyed, wheat-haired Ashlin was born without a last name, born to replace a woman named Ashia in a society where every life and death is planned and countered. Raised to believe she was one of the last ninety people left in a dying world, Ashlin’s reality comes crashing down when she learns the forbidden truth—that the world beyond her small commune is alive and inhabited by the one true race of humanity—golden, dark-haired people who look nothing like her. In truth, Ashlin’s existence is ruled by a group known as Histo, and her hamlet is one of many created to preserve the races of old.

Knowing her life has been carefully constructed and monitored by those on the outside, Ashlin’s only solace comes in the form of a boy named Olté, the secret ninety-first member of her commune who lives in a cottage on the outskirts of the village, outcast due to a genetic mutation. In a society where anything less than perfection is quickly disposed of, Olté is the only person Ashlin trusts with her most important secret—something that would get her killed if the Governs of her commune ever found out.

But when Olté suddenly disappears leaving only an ominous note behind, Ashlin suffers what it means to be a girl stuck alone in a society where she cannot choose anything for herself, while the Governs prepare for her seventeenth birthday where she’ll be given a husband and a trade. With her engagement quickly approaching, Ashlin clings tightly to the note left behind by her secret person…

A— EVERYTHING IS FOR YOU. EVERYTHING I’VE DONE. EVERYTHING I’LL DO. THERE IS NO GREATER SIN. WAIT FOR ME. —O