Orion Zoan was the fourth in a generation of farmers. In 1872, the first of Zoan’s Farms was founded by Chester Zoan, who was thirty two years old at the time. The farm and all of its land had been passed down from father to eldest son for many seasons, until it became the possession of Chester’s great-grandson, Orion. He was a farmer, as was his father before him, and his grandfather before his father. The Zoans received animals from far and wide to raise for slaughter, and to sell ingredients for money.
The farm was located on the outskirts of Clyde River, built on fifteen hundred acres of land, which was built by Chester Zoan in 1867, and passed down to the eldest son through the generations. It was made of brown wood, and had been rather rundown upon Orion’s inheritance of it. As a child, Hannah had spent lots of time running around the open fields, lying under the stars with her siblings, and helping her mother prepare the root cellar for the crops. On the farm, there were cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, ducks - whatever Orion could get his hands on.
Everybody knew of the Zoans. They were a family of great status and wealth, leaders in their neighbourhood, and preachers of the truth. Orion Zoan was a man of power in the community, admired by many outside of the home. It was true what they said, though. Nobody ever knew what happened behind closed doors. As it had been in the times of their great-great-grandparents, each of the children had responsibilities, and would be scolded badly for not completing them. The girls cooked, cleaned, fed the animals, tended to the gardens, child-minded, and stored food in wintertime. The boys plowed, fixed machines, produced cash crops, sold the food made by the women, and prepared the animals for slaughter.
Hannah Zoan stood in the long, winding hallway of the farmhouse she grew up in, tightening the clasp of her gold cross necklace. Across the hallway, her twin brother frowned into a mirror, not yet dressed in his Sunday clothes. It was always noisy, the home always filled with children of Orion. "You'd better get a move on," said Hannah to her twin, who was really nothing like her. "If we're late for church again, Dad is gonna lose it."
Asher grimaced, his forehead forming an ugly wrinkle. Of Orion's twenty one children, twelve remained at home, either too young or too incapable to live on their own. "I don't even want to go. I feel kind of anxious today." Asher spoke a lot about feeling anxious. Hannah’s parents said anxiety came from the guilt of acting shamefully. "Can't I stay home just this once?"
Orion, who was known for his non-monogamous lifestyle, paraded down the hall dressed in his Sunday clothes, snapping his fingers at the children. "Time to go! Asher, why aren't you dressed? Do you want us to be late again?" Orion had a wife and two lovers, which helped him have so many children. It was frowned upon within society for a man to have multiple wives. Orion’s father had been this way, too. Despite his controversial opinions and lifestyle, Orion was highly respected within his community, and never would have dared allow his children to tarnish this reputation.
The two youngest children needed help with dressing. There were far too many children, and far too few rooms, though nobody would have said this out loud. Canaan, the youngest of the Zoans, was four years old and slept on a cot in the large living room. Like the other boys, he dressed in a button-down shirt and slacks, but always struggled to get dressed on his own.
Asher shook his head, though it didn't look convincing. Orion was the patriarch of the household, and his word was always final. Hannah glanced at the family photo her mother hung from the wall, a photo from years ago, when all of the children still lived at home. "Brother wants to stay home, Father. He just told me."
You may not call me Dad, Orion loved to remind the children when they were young. You may call me Father, and you may never question my authority. It seemed strange to Hannah's boyfriend, and to some of the Church community. Hannah was willing and ready to do whatever she was told to get to Heaven, and to live a peaceful life everlasting. She had never been to school. When a Zoan child turned five years old, they began homeschooling: forbidden from going out and making friends, and rarely even allowed to leave the home. This was the way it had always been. Hannah had friends she’d made at church, but seldom spent time with otherwise.
Orion turned on his son, who shot Hannah a very rude look. "The Sabbath is a day of worship for all that we've been given. Do you want to disappoint the Lord? Do you want to burn for all of eternity?" There was no saying no, in the childhood home. Hannah didn't mind this. It was a shame, really, that so many young people went against the truth. But punishment would come, and Hannah would be rewarded.
Asher grumbled, straightening his shoulders rather reluctantly. "Okay, okay, I'm going. Just give me a minute." They were always late for Church. If it wasn't Asher grumbling about having to attend, it was Saphira taking her sweet time to get ready, or Nazareth getting distracted by a toy. Hannah was always the first one ready. Next year, she would be free to leave. Next year, she would be eighteen. Most of the children had left on their eighteenth birthdays. Most of them had turned away from the truth when they moved out. Even Hannah's own father strayed from the truth. How could he not, with so many lovers? Orion said he had been given permission by God himself to live such a life, and nobody questioned him.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
The children always argued on the way to town. The family van was crowded, and all of the children had assigned seats. Lillian, Orion’s wife and Hannah’s mother, sat next to her husband in the front passenger seat. Samantha, whose children with Orion were all grown and moved out, sat beside Seraphim in the middle. Hannah always sat in the same spot: next to the back-left window, which she used as an excuse to opt out of family arguments.
“Did you milk the cows this morning?” Orion asked in his booming voice, glancing at his second-youngest son in the car’s rearview mirror. This was the job of the boys, and always had been, whether they enjoyed it or not.
Nazareth was seven years old, and listened to music through a pair of thin earbuds, crammed in the back seat between Canaan and Lazarus. “Yes, Father.”
Orion opened a window, letting the smells of cows and nature seep into the car. “Did you separate it?”
“Yes, Father.”
Hannah's boyfriend, Aaron, was a member of her Church. This had been how they'd met. Children were not allowed to date until their sixteenth birthday, when, if they were ready to date, their parents would choose a partner for them from the congregation. This is how it was for all of Hannah’s older siblings, and this is how it had been for her. Her twin half-sisters were displeased by this rule, and took it upon themselves to attempt a negotiation with their mother. These never ended in their favour.
Ever since she was a little girl, Hannah wore a white dress every Sunday, as was customary for the girls and women in the family. Sariah often argued this, insisting on wearing a button up in place of a dress, but her parents wouldn't have this. Sariah would have been an embarrassment to the community if they had. Years ago, when Hannah was a child, her older brother had told her that religion was a cult. She'd always looked up to him, and unlike many of her other siblings, he was nice to her. What he'd said about religion, though, had angered her. There was a reason her parents no longer spoke to the eldest children. There was a reason most of them moved out before the age of twenty. Hannah wouldn't be like that. She had hopes and dreams: to become a prominent member of the congregation, to graduate high school, and maybe even to become a nun. Asher said this was a stupid dream. It was bold of him to say, as a boy without any dreams at all.
Hannah's father, Orion, met his wife, Lillian, when they were both teenagers. His eldest child, Delilah, was not born to Lillian, but to Bronwen, a woman Hannah never met. In addition to ruling the home, Orion was also responsible for the behaviour of his wife, Lillian, and his lovers, Mara and Samantha. Samantha was often cruel to her, and to the others to whom she hadn't given birth, but nobody would have guessed this. As an upstanding part of her religious community, Samantha was an admirable woman.
The Zoans lived in the countryside, thirty-five minutes out from the nearest town, which was inconvenient a lot of the time. Orion had been given the farmhouse in his thirties, as a place to marry and raise his children. Before Hannah was born, it had apparently had only six bedrooms. Not to be discouraged by a lack of space, Orion built a new bedroom every time a child was born, until he grew tired after reaching ten. Hannah's room was in the basement, and she enjoyed it here. As a young girl, she'd been forced to share with Kezia, but both had outgrown this. As a result, Hannah was given a room all to herself, and Kezia took a much smaller and uglier room. Although the children shared rooms with one another, none would ever have been permitted to share a bedroom with the opposite sex.
When the family arrived at the church, Hannah hissed at Saphira. "Don't sit with me." Her sister hobbled over the uneven brick floor, her heels clicking loudly on the floor. Saphira always wore heels, desperate for attention in any shape, as most of the children were.
Lillian nudged her. "Quit scuffing your feet, Saphira. People are looking at you." White and brunette, Lillian looked like the average neighbourhood mom, nothing really stand-out about her. She was bland and sort of harsh, blaming tough love on her authoritarian-style parenting. While Lillian and Hannah enjoyed socialising with fellow church-goers after the service concluded, Asher and Cyprus preferred to leave quickly, waiting in the van for everyone else to be finished inside. This, to them, always seemed to take much too long.
"Mommy," Canaan tugged Lillian's dress, speaking far too loudly for the setting. "I'm hungry. Do you have a snack?"
Hannah disliked children, although it seemed to be expected of her to become a mother. It's your duty as a woman, her mother had said, to be available to your husband at any time. And if he would like kids, so be it. Perhaps this mindset had been forced upon Lillian by her husband, who'd always expected her to be available to him. It was as if wives were nothing more than property: incubators for men, as easily disposable as a dead battery.
Stifling a sigh, Lillian drew a hand into her purse, thrusting a small bag of Cheerios into the boy’s small hand. Satisfied, Canaan sat back in the pew and nibbled.
They say you'll be forgiven for even the most heinous crimes if you only ask for forgiveness. Hannah knew better than the average person that some people didn't deserve to be forgiven. Like anyone else, Hannah made her mistakes, but this was part of growing up, and she wasn't very good at it. She'd been privy to many more secrets than a teenager should be entitled to: secrets about her parents, secrets that would put her father's entire reputation at stake.
Kezia played clarinet in the Church choir. At twenty two years old, she was far too old to still be living at home - but refused to move out, insisting the youngest children needed someone to look after them. Kezia attempted to be helpful, but she was passive and unconfident, and usually just got in the way instead. She wasn’t an awful clarinet player. She’d gotten the instrument as a gift from an elderly member of the choir, after expressing an interest in learning how to play. This had been years ago, and Kezia had taken time to practice every day since.