by Amy Ewing
Leela took a deep, quavering breath and began to recount the conversation she had overheard between the High Priestess and Acolyte Klymthe. The story came slowly at first, but then the words began to spill out of her, and the relief that came with the sharing of this secret was a rich, heady thing. By the time she finished, Kandra was a different woman from the one Leela had seen at the wedding or in the meadow. The emptiness in her expression was gone, replaced with a fierce determination. Her eyes were still dark, but a fire seemed to glow in their depths.
“This was her doing,” she said. “Not Mother Sun’s. Not Mother Sun’s . . .” She repeated the phrase as if it could alleviate some guilt, as if it could give her strength.
“But why?” Leela asked. “Why would the High Priestess choose Sera? Why didn’t the ceremony work?”
Kandra was silent for so long Leela wondered if she had not heard her. “Estelle,” she murmured at last.
“Who is—”
But Kandra cut her off. “It has always been a curious thing,” she said, “the longevity of our High Priestess.”
“Mother Sun imbues her with long life,” Leela said. “Or so my orange mother told me.”
“Indeed. But she is by far the longest-reigning High Priestess in our history, is she not?”
Leela considered this. To be honest, she did not know much about the High Priestesses who had come before, except Luille, who had died on the previous planet during the Great Sadness.
“I suppose.”
“Nine hundred years. How much she has seen.” Kandra knelt by a crimson dahlia and stroked its petals. “How many Cerulean have lived and died in this City, with never a new High Priestess chosen.”
“That is for Mother Sun to decide, is it not?”
“It is,” Kandra agreed. “But it is up to the High Priestess to read and determine the signs Mother Sun leaves for her. She must identify her own successor. My orange mother told me the signs would be written on the doors of the temple. Otess believes they will be large and bold like a sun flare, for all the City to see. I think they will be more subtle than that.”
“It is not known for certain?”
“It was once, I believe. Or perhaps not—perhaps it has always been a private knowledge passed from one High Priestess to the next. Our current High Priestess was chosen only weeks before the Great Sadness took Luille. There is meant to be time to transfer the knowledge and secrets of the most important post in Cerulean society. But one thing is certain—once a new High Priestess is chosen, the old one will surely die. That is the way of it, the nature and cycle of life.” A will-o-wisp floated past and hung above them, casting an eerie blue light on Kandra’s face. “It is not meant to be a violent death, like Luille’s. But death is part of life. Fear of death is fear of living.”
“You seem to have thought long on this matter,” Leela said. She wasn’t quite sure how this all related to Sera, though.
Kandra sighed. “Not me. I had a friend once, curious, like Sera. She was fascinated by our current High Priestess’s long life.”
“Estelle,” Leela said.
Kandra started. “How do you know her name?”
“You said it the other day in the meadow and then again just now.”
“Did I?” She frowned. “I have not thought about her in so long. I have not been able to. . . .” Her hand curved around the dahlia, and for a second Leela thought she would crush it in her fist. “She found it strange that no new High Priestess had been chosen in so many long years.”
“It is because Mother Sun values her very much. That’s what my orange mother said.”
“Ah, but who tells us that?” Kandra said, looking at her gravely. “She does.”
Leela sorted through her words, trying to piece the meaning together. If the High Priestess was in control of choosing her successor . . . “Do you believe that is why Sera was sacrificed? To prevent a new High Priestess from being chosen?”
“I think,” Kandra said carefully, “that it may go deeper than that.”
Leela gasped. “You think Sera was to be the next High Priestess?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps.” When she looked at Leela again, there was a hint of her old warmth in her expression. “She loved you very much. I hope you know that.”
Leela found it hard to swallow. “I loved her, too.”
Kandra cupped Leela’s face in her hands and kissed her forehead. “Thank you,” she whispered. “You have given me a greater gift than you know.”
“What is that?”
“You have given me purpose. And you have shown me that I am not losing my mind, losing myself. No . . . no the memories are real, they are real. . . .” She stood. “You were wise not to share your thoughts with anyone. Meet me by the birthing houses tomorrow after the weddings. I must see . . . I must know, one way or the other. Do not tell anyone, not even your mothers. Can you do that?”
Leela nodded without hesitation. “I will be as silent as the night sky.” Then she paused. “What is at the birthing houses?”
Kandra’s eyes grew distant with some ancient memory. “The High Priestess has many secrets, it would seem,” she said. “And I think I know one of them.”
26
THERE WERE FOUR WEDDINGS THE NEXT DAY, THE LAST one for the City’s oldest unmarried triad, who had found each other late in life.
They sat at the head table, all smiles and clasped hands, as the High Priestess stood, raised a glass of sweetnectar, and declared, “Love at any age is a blessing upon us, but love that has been forged through time and patience is a rare treasure. We look to you three as a beacon of hope in these trying times.”
Leela felt a prickle creep up the back of her neck at those words, a sudden premonition that something was about to happen.
“Caana was gracious enough to allow me to be storyteller for this wedding,” the High Priestess continued. “If you all would permit it.”
“Yes, High Priestess,” the Cerulean called. “Tell us a tale!”
“A tale of love!”
“A tale of courage!”
“I will tell you the story,” the High Priestess said dramatically, “of Wyllin Moonseer and the Forming of this Tether.”
Quiet fell at her words, more complete than the Night Gardens at the hour of the dark. The High Priestess paused for a moment, allowing the silence to permeate the gathering, weaving together an air of expectation, wonder, and unease that filled the spaces between the tables.
“Yes, my children,” she said. “It is a story I have never before told. Wyllin was a Cerulean of great heart and tremendous courage, yet her name has not been said in many, many years. I am at fault for this. She was from a time best not remembered. Who among us would choose to dwell on the Great Sadness and all the loss and pain that came from it? But our City has reached yet another crossroads, where loss and pain weigh on our hearts once more.” The High Priestess’s eyes lighted on Leela, and she felt a pang of unease, as if this story was being told just for her, but to what end she could not tell. “Comfort can be found in the sharing of things past, in the remembrance of the interdependent web of which we are all a part.”
The High Priestess set down her glass and took several steps forward. A knot of fireflies swirled overhead, casting a glittering light over her.
“Wyllin Moonseer was only twenty-one years of age when the Great Sadness occurred, just a year younger than myself. We had been born in the same season and had been friends since childhood; we played along the banks of the Estuary, hunted for eggs in the Aviary, and did all the things that young Cerulean do to occupy their time. As we grew older, I began to spend many of my days in the temple, while she found her purpose in making music—she was exceptionally skilled at the lute. However, the Great Sadness changed her, as it changed so many others.”
The High Priestess paused, and there was no doubt she was seeing into the past as she told this story, unfolding memories from long ago with painstaking care.
“She was not on
the planet itself when tragedy struck—only five of us made it back to the City alive, myself among them. Five out of two hundred. Wyllin began coming to the temple more and more, or praying for the lost souls in the Night Gardens. She talked to those who had lost wives and daughters and friends, held them when they wept, and listened to them when they railed against the unfairness of the universe. Some even cursed Mother Sun herself.”
There were several shocked gasps at that, and many Cerulean looked at each other as if they could not conceive of such a thing.
“In the second year of our journey through space, six months before we found this planet, I lost an acolyte—Acolyte Grenda had been aged long before I was ever chosen as High Priestess, and her time to leave her corporeal body and join Mother Sun had come. Shortly after her death I asked Wyllin to be my new acolyte. She accepted, and I found such comfort in her presence at the temple. She was a true friend and confidante, one who I felt could read my heart without need of the blood bond.”
Leela shifted uncomfortably. What the High Priestess was describing sounded very much like her friendship with Sera.
“We talked together late into the evenings, we gathered herbs together from the Moon Gardens, and she would often play the lute for me after meals and I would pour my fears out into her open loving heart. For I was a very young High Priestess, and my ascension to the role had an abrupt and bloody history. I worried I was not worthy enough to lead this City, that I was making mistakes. I was terrified we would not find a new planet in time, before our fields withered and died and our Estuary dried up. Fear became my constant companion, and only Wyllin’s calm reassurance and steadfast friendship kept the terror at bay.
“It was she who first spotted this planet, the shapes of Kaolin and Pelago so unfamiliar then. The bells rang out from the temple for a full day and night, and a choosing ceremony was held the next morning. And my sweet beloved Wyllin was chosen to create the tether.”
The High Priestess paused to wipe a tear from her eye. She seemed so sincere in her grief, but Leela could not allow herself to trust it.
“I tried to tell myself that it was an honor for her to be chosen,” the High Priestess said. “But in my heart I was angry. I did not wish to lose my friend. As for Wyllin, she did not think herself worthy. I wonder if any chosen one has ever felt worthy—we all think ourselves so ordinary. But Mother Sun knows us, inside and out. And Wyllin had a courage unlike any Cerulean I have ever known.” Something about the way she said it made Leela certain that this, at least, was true. The High Priestess’s words rang with clarity and feeling that Leela did not think could be faked. The watching Cerulean were captivated, enraptured, transported back to a time before their mothers or their mothers’ mothers.
“She stood on the dais in the Night Gardens, and I lifted the barrier so that she could fall. And I tell you my children, it was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. Our City was still raw and grieving—my own heart had only recently been soothed, and Wyllin was a significant source of that comfort. I lost more than a friend that day. I lost a piece of myself.”
Leela felt as if they were finally arriving at the point of this story—her spine stiffened and she leaned forward, hanging on to every word.
“But our City is more important than any one Cerulean, and Mother Sun’s will more important than all. She chose Wyllin Moonseer for a purpose, as she chose Sera Lighthaven for a purpose.” A murmur ran through the crowd at Sera’s name. Leela clenched her hands into fists under the table. She dared not look at Kandra. “We may not see it now, for Mother Sun’s plans do not always reveal themselves right away. But there was a reason for Sera’s sacrifice and a reason for her failure. This I promise you, my children. I am not the young High Priestess I once was, tentative and afraid. I have no fear for the fate of our City, only confidence in Mother Sun. She will not lead us astray. There will be another choosing ceremony in time, and the City will move. We need not worry on that account. And I hope that Sera has found Wyllin in Mother Sun’s everlasting light, and that they are happy together, as all who are chosen deserve to be. Let us raise a glass to Sera and Wyllin.”
She took up her glass of sweetnectar and the Cerulean followed suit.
“Sera and Wyllin,” she called. “Praise them!”
“Praise them!” the Cerulean called back. The High Priestess’s eyes landed on Leela once more, and in that one glance Leela felt a pressure on her back and a heat on her neck. It was a look that seemed to say, There. Your curiosity should be satisfied now.
Except it wasn’t. Far from it. Leela allowed herself a quick glance at Kandra, seated three tables away. Her eyes were chips of onyx, her mouth in a thin line. Sera’s orange mother sat beside her, her head bent in prayer, gently rocking back and forth. Many of the Cerulean were crying, Leela noticed. It had been an impassioned story, and one they’d never heard before. Leela could see its effects working their way through her community, soothing any doubts that remained.
“My goodness,” her own purple mother said, dabbing at her eyes with a napkin. “That was quite a tale, wasn’t it?”
Yes, it was, Leela thought. Whether it was true or not was an entirely different matter.
As the hour of the dark approached, Leela realized she was growing more and more accustomed to wandering the City late at night.
The Forest of Dawn was quite far from her own dwelling—she crossed at the Eastern Bridge and made her way past the cloudspinners’ grove and the stargem mines, and the journey took her longer than she had anticipated. The forest was filled with the sounds of nocturnal life, rodents scurrying and insects chirping and chattering. She passed a small pond where luminescent frogs croaked in harmony, their slippery bodies glowing in bright greens and blues. The trees gave off a variety of scents that mixed together to create a pleasing quilt of pine and magnolia and crabapple.
When she arrived at the birthing houses, they were all dark save one. The houses looked much like any Cerulean dwelling, round and made of sunglass, except they contained only one room. There were twelve of them, set in a circle around a wide patch of grass with an obelisk of moonstone in its center. It made her think of the stone in her star necklace that she had given to Sera. Rosebushes were planted around each birthing house, blooming in pale pink and golden petals. And every house had a copper door.
One of the doors was ajar and a light shone from inside it.
“Kandra?” Leela called softly as she approached. Kandra’s face appeared, lit by the lantern in her hand.
“Come,” she said, and beckoned Leela inside.
Leela had never been in a birthing house before, more for lack of interest or necessity than anything. When she and Sera would come to the forest, it would be to jump from tree to tree like squirrels, or to catch frogs, or hunt for starbeetles. Leela might not have found her purpose in the City yet, but she had always known it would never be as a purple mother or a midwife.
The house’s interior looked very much like her mothers’ bedroom—domed with a large circular bed in the center, piled high with pillows and laid with soft blankets. But some things were different. A bassinet off to one side. A pile of extra sheets and towels on a table. A basin and pitcher. There were no windows.
Kandra set the lantern down and stared at the bed with distant eyes, then moved to the bassinet.
“This is the room where Sera was born,” she said.
Leela hovered by the door. The place felt sacred.
“Did your purple mother teach you about how you were conceived?” Kandra asked.
“Of course.” Every Cerulean child learned about the process of conception in her twelfth year—it was the one official lesson that green mothers would give over to the province of purple mothers. “A birthing season was announced and the High Priestess chose my purple mother among others, and blessed her so that she might become fertile. Every day Orange Mother went to the temple to pray, and Green Mother cooked offerings for Aila and Dendra and Faesa.” The three Moon
Daughters, Aila in particular, must be honored if a birth was to be successful. “And Purple Mother came to the birthing house until she sensed her time was coming and her body was ready for a child. She told me that she carried within her womb an egg and that when the time was right, the egg split and created a new life; that was me. She told me Cerulean are not like the laurel doves in the Aviary, that we do not need one male and one female to make an offspring, but that we have that power within ourselves.”
“We do.” Kandra sat on the bed and brushed her fingertips across the blanket. Then she gripped it in her hand as if she wished to rip it off. “I remember the first time I felt her stir in me,” she whispered. “It was a terrifying and wondrous moment. When the egg inside me split and formed Sera, I felt nothing. I did not believe the midwives at first when they told me I was pregnant. But she grew and grew, my belly swelling up with her.” She relaxed her hold on the blanket. “I’m sorry. This is not the story I brought you here to tell.”
“Then why are we here?”
“Because this is where I saw her.”
“Saw who?” Leela asked, though she thought she already knew the answer.
“Estelle,” Kandra whispered.
Leela waited as the minutes ticked by and the flame in the lantern flickered.
“She was my best friend,” Kandra said at last. “Like you and Sera. Like Wyllin and the High Priestess, if her story is to be believed.” Leela felt a wave of relief at not being the only one to doubt the story’s validity. “We played together as children and shared our first heartaches as we grew older. She was curious, like I said before, but in a more subtle way than my Sera was. None of our other friends thought her strange. She whispered her questions late at night, convinced she would be able to speak to Mother Sun directly.”