Matrix

by Lauren Groff

And it was true, the religion she was raised in had always seemed vaguely foolish to her, if rich with mystery and ceremony, for why should babies be born into sin, why should she pray to the invisible forces, why would god be a trinity, why should she, who felt her greatness hot in her blood, be considered lesser because the first woman was molded from a rib and ate a fruit and thus lost lazy Eden? It was senseless.

Aging is a constant loss; all the things considered essential in youth prove with time that they are not.

For this community is precious, there is a place here even for the maddest, for the discarded, for the difficult, in this enclosure there is love enough here even for the most unlovable of women.

True, there had been rumors of witchcraft; but such rumors are irrepressible when it comes to powerful women.