Once Was: Book One of the Asylum Trilogy

by Miya Kressin

  When the burning vision did not end upon opening my eyes, I had tried to escape the burning Grove. Running from the horrific images painted behind my eyes, I smashed into a stately, bedside mirror my father had made for me. The worked silver frame had mocked me in tinkling silence as it shed its broken reflection still displaying my dream.

  I have been escaping it ever since. Nay, that is not quite truth. I revel in the powers She and Aya have granted me in Their names. I have loved the intricate vines etched into my arms by the Oracle’s handmaidens as they marked me as an oneira—a dreamer—and a healer. Most initiates of the Goddess only had one school; She gave me two. Pale spirals of clouds and stars wrapped around trees and stylized hearts, dreams and lives entwined. No priestess had the same tattoos, but mine rivaled even the Oracle’s.

  That distinction made me the source of envy. Women gossiped behind my back, darting looks as Sesha, the Oracle of Bas, summoned me to her chambers for an extra lesson in oneiromancy. I learned to dream walk before my menses had begun. What other priestesses struggled to harness even a rudimentary understanding of, I mastered by the time they could give me the clawed paw mark upon my brow.

  The healer on the island had given me my lines too young, and they faded as I grew; the clawed mark became all but indistinguishable when the summer’s sun tanned my aging skin. The crescent moon—a claw of Bas—still displayed my allegiance to the old religion. The silver circlet was given to each priestess when she was deemed ready to spread Bas’ healing touch throughout the world. It was a sign of my missionary status, a weight to remind me of my devotions, a binding touch to hold me true to my path.

  As if I could ever forget.

  The band would do more for the old couple than it did for me. Pushing in and up, I freed the circlet from the skin it rested on, feeling its smooth warmth glide up my forehead until loose. “Sell it,” I ordered. The woman cried but offered outstretched hands, then snatched it to her chest. She was shrewd enough to realize she could sell it to the soldiers for weeks of food, safe passage past the Wall, and have enough remaining gold to purchase a few months of room and board in a refugee camp.

  “Tell them you came across a woman named Asha if they ask. The priestess was sleeping and you used your husband’s hunting knife to slit her throat. She’s a fire-bearer. Her tattoos are of ships sailing in a sea of flames.” Asha never came this far north or west, but the soldiers and priests of Liand’s faith would not know that. A priestess dead meant a round of drinks around the fire that night.

  I should have been happy Bas held off Her judgment until I left my patient to sleep off the after effects of my magic. She was even gracious in Her allowance of time for me to wash in the communal bath house. Closing Her out of my mind had been a conscious effort for more than eighteen months. Each cycling of the moon had grieved my heart. I could feel Her there, watching, waiting, praying for me to open to Her. She was a Goddess, and likely able to force me to Her will, but She had the patience of a mother. She knew that forcing me would gain my action but not my heart.

  My hair, another of the symbols of my office, was long. It had gone uncut save minor trims for health in my twenty plus years of service. It hung to my knees when unbound, and brushed my waist when plaited in three long braids that I twined together. She waited as I oiled the strands, looking much like a cat feigning disinterest in its prey, Her golden hair shimmering in the fading sunlight. Outside of the too-wide eyes reminiscent of a feline’s, Bas showed me Her human form as She soaked in the steaming water. Any others coming to bathe might see a shadow near the water when She moved, not the form She created for me.

  I dried my hair slowly, the woven cotton wicking the mint-scented water in which I had bathed. I pulled a comb through and replaited the lengths, a feat requiring minutes in what used to take hours. “I am ready, Mother,” I admitted at last as my linen shift settled over my hips.

  “Shoes, Roseen. You will need them.” Bas stepped from the water, sheets of clear droplets running off ample curves a doxy would envy. A white robe of the sheerest silk covered Her already dry body. She watched in amusement as I laced the mid-calf high boots and smoothed the creases from the leather. They were a gift from my father the last time I passed through Bivii.

  Bas did not allow me to stand upright before Her hand settled on my chest, a claw hooking beneath the skin to catch my breastbone. She tugged Her hand free, leaving no visible wound, but I could feel the string connecting Her deadly scythes to my heart.

  “It’s time to come home, Roseen. You’ve been called.”

  Chapter Two

  Learn to love the land, Children. Your service to Bas will lead you outside the mapped boundaries and into the wild. Your feet and heart will be your only companions on days where you believe even the Mother has abandoned you. She is always there, if you reach out to Her. Remember that any forge will shelter you. All smiths belong to Aya and will give you a roof for a night. It is only right that devotees of the Goddess’ Consort protect Her priestesses.

  Letters to the Initiate, Tenth Consort

  Home. Did a nomadic priestess have one?

  Madani, the town that expelled me as if I were a plague-ridden murderer when I was but a child, no longer welcomed me but was still my home. Before my forced education, I had thought Madani was the center of life for the entire world, not a mere harbor community in which I was a girl destined to be ostracized. Madani natives lived the way we always had, thatched roofs and sun-bleached wood walls. We were not poor, but we did lack the wealth of our sister city, Aristeer. Our people were happy and rich of heart if not of gold within our pockets.

  The tides of our lake—what I thought then to be an ocean—brought life to our village in the forms of fish, shells, and trade, but the waters claimed a steep price. They also took our women away.

  There is an island in the center of the lake where the women—and the rare men—who had aislings were taken. The Goddess Bas awakened their abilities, then called them to Sheelin for training in Her ways. Much like the hooking claw still tugging me home, Her paws swept up devoted priestesses and gathered them in Her service.

  It was by some divine choice that Bas marked the women as special to Her, and in return they required education to handle their new abilities. It was to that magic isle of trainers I was sent in my eighth year when Bas’ mark appeared. The fine scars itched when I thought of those first days.

  While my mother abandoned our partially made breakfast to pluck the glass shards from my skin, leaving mirrored red snakes running down my arms, father fetched the healer from her hut. In my darkest memories, those I have hidden along with those Bas makes me remember as punishment, echoes of Kira’s words call to me. “This will sting, Roseen, but less than Sheelin’s first sign must have.”

  The island did not just bring pain; it ripped my family apart from my first dream. Father’s eyes shimmered in the morning light as Kira coaxed the remaining glass from my flesh. His jaw had been clenched as the healer bound my arms with a pungent, yellow paste reminiscent of the golden rod that harkens the start of summer. His face was far less stoic than it should have been.

  I believe he knew this was coming. As a smith, Father was a priest of Aya, even though he worked without the official bands upon his wrists. He would have heard the divine whispers as he stoked the fires and hammered blades. The morning my sister, Sava, was made aware of her initiation into the priesthood, Father had come in with a torq for her. The simple copper braid ended in her favorite sunflowers, the centers of each metal blossom embossed with our family crest.

  Father’s soot covered cheeks were tear-streaked upon his return. The clean tracks showed the pain he tried to hide. When he came in with the healer for my arms, the tears flowed without care. Mother was too busy acting as an apprentice to Kira to show me her fear, or perhaps she too had known that my feet were already upon the Goddess’ path.

  I do not recall crying from the pain in my arms; in that respect I was an exemplary citizen of Ma
dani. Youth there are taught in childhood to accept what comes with grace and move onto the next experience with the gained wisdom of the past. I suppose I must have cried; the scars are still upon my arms, unseen to all but the closest lover. Fion had mapped them out with a soft touch when we were together outside of Aristeer. Liand had traced them with the tip of a dagger, reopening the largest of the lines, when I was forced to be a willing courtesan of his attentions. The priests I had sometimes lain with on Sheelin never worried about the marks, claiming all priestesses bore scars. I was lucky enough to bear mine on the surface.

  Others, like my sister, never survived to receive scars and ink upon their skin. Girls who lacked the ability to master a school were stripped of their magic and sent to another building upon Sheelin. There, they worked from sunrise to sunset on making life easier for those who had passed Bas’ tests. As the Fates would have it, in all my years upon Sheelin’s blessed banks, I was the last put through the trials and ordeals to become a priestess. No others had passed the test to even cross the waters.

  Sheelin had found no others worthy of her secrets. Whether I was Bas’ last Chosen out of necessity to the people who no longer gave their trust to the priesthood, or from a lack of those open to Her numinous presence, I do not know. I am only aware that She chose me, and (despite my determination to be free beneath the stars) that I strive daily to deserve Her divine gift.

  To earn my way onto the boat that would take me to Sheelin, I had been sent with Kira. She was our fire-keeper, the one who lit the ritual blaze that summoned a boat from the sacred isle, as well as Madani’s healer. Her small, earthen hut was deep in the woods far to the south of our small city. Within its warmth, she kept her bed, a hearth and table, numerous shelves for the salves she made, and a hidden door leading to a tunneled entrance to the temple.

  Any who asked Kira were told the distance gave her space to reflect upon her duties to Bas. In retrospective wisdom, I believe her isolation gave Kira the space she needed to be an impartial judge of talent; despite having brought her spare sweets when we had them, there had been no ease to my test. From the moment she heard of my vision, Kira assumed her position as priestess and Fire Bearer.

  It was the same for me as it had been for all women since the start of the first priestess. It was the beginning of a lifetime of difficult encounters.

  *

  Darkness closed in on me, dirt rubbing off the ceiling when I lifted onto my knees. The tunnel from Kira’s cottage to the temple in the woods was warmer than I anticipated, but darker than I imagined the womb being. Shuffling knees and grasping hands brought back nothing but more darkness. Fear draped me, a cobweb shawl threatening to close its tendrils around my chest. My heart pounded in response, fighting to keep me alive in the face of my fears. I wanted to turn back into the sunlight.

  Turn back.

  Could I have turned around? Was I lost?

  Worms slid beneath my fingers, teasing me with their innate knowledge of up from down and which way to go. Why had Kira abandoned me here? Was I to fail even in this?

  “Please,” I begged.

  I crawled even as roots tangled in my hair, the boy-short waves coming free with a tug where longer tresses would have knotted. “Bas, if it is Your desire for me to—” No, She wanted me. This task was for me to prove my desire.

  Forward. I had to move forward.

  Dirt kicked up from my hands and burned my lungs. Kira had to be just a little further ahead. She told me it would be no longer than the walk from the forge to Fion’s house had been.

  That wound was still sharp in my stomach. With effort, I forced those thoughts to the back of my mind, then focused on the musty earth holding me close. Humble. I was to lose the preconceived notions of who I was in this journey. I was to humble myself before Bas’ eyes and let Her rebirth me as an initiate.

  “I am yours, Lady.” I gave up crawling and rested my head upon my hands in the dirt. Imagining myself beneath Her paws, I gave myself to the dark.

  Power.

  Throbbing power.

  Tree roots reaching down, branches going to the sky. Water soaked dirt bearing nutrients of life.

  “Take me,” I whispered to all of them.

  I choked on earth as it swallowed me. Cold stones and warm earth cocooned me, eating me whole and dragging me with it like the worms within the soil. It spat me out with a thundering shudder of power. “Tree child of the stars,” it cried. “Not a stone-worker.”

  The darkness lifted. It was still black and my sight was of no use, but I knew that She was ahead of me. Velvet brushed my muddied skin, the new coat cracking, stinging, as a hint of fresh air caressed my face.

  Like a babe reaching for its mother, I reached through the parting fabric, and was blind.

  Kira laughed as I fumbled, ground giving way to white wooden flooring. “We are all unseeing until She shows us the right path, Roseen. Follow my voice.”

  Kira cleansed me, running cool water over my face and limbs. I drank sugared water as if it would give me new life. Perhaps it did. I closed my eyes against the blinding white that stung my thoughts, scourging my soul against the black of night, and when again I opened them, I saw all the colors.

  There was black and white, but in between there was . . . everything. Colors I have no name for danced with familiar rainbows. Faded and cracked, white-washed walls were studded with imported glass from a factory in Aristeer. They drew the eye upwards to the spectral blessing that had caught my attention. A brightly tiled ceiling faded from the vivid to the exotic; shimmering deep shades I have never seen were a night-time dream of color. Fion, Cade, and I had watched one of the boats come from Sheelin bearing boxes of tiles. The priest who had born the burden of carrying them had smiled fondly at Cade before walking down the path.

  “Lie down, Child.” Kira’s wrinkled face was tanned from a life spent toiling in her garden and traversing the waters between Madani and Sheelin. Despite calluses and scars, the touch of her hands was soothing as she pressed upon my shoulders. It was a grandmother’s touch, one full of fond affection and the promise of sweet fruit breads after.

  The reed mat beneath me scratched through my clothing, and the scarlet pillow supporting my head and neck was too soft and smelled of sour herbs used to put a fussy child to sleep. How she expected me to be comfortable enough to let those visions come, I was unsure.

  Then, I saw Her. In the center of the ceiling were eyes like those of a cat, though these held a celestial glow visible even in the bright light surrounding me. I felt Her staring at me while I reclined upon the floor in the temple. The magic held in that glazed ceramic went beyond my comprehension.

  “Open.” A cloying sweetness filled my nose as Kira held a wine-steeped cloth above my mouth and squeezed. Raining drops of burgundy coated my tongue and ran down to my throat, requiring no action. They knew where they were going, just as the incense she had started burning choked my throat as it swam into my nose and open mouth. “Don’t fight it, daughter of Bas. Let the smoke in; breathe deeply and open your mind.”

  If I had thought of fighting, the possibility vanished. The green eyes above bore the priestess’ words into me, and I let the smoke wash through my body, giving myself over to that needy, loving stare.

  “What do you see, Roseen, if anything?”

  I stared through the smoke, pushing past the images my childish mind latched onto. She had to test whether my visions were powerful truths or fanciful dreams. So, for her and our Goddess, I relived the dreams and blood-filled terrors I wished to forget. Visions of bloodshed had no place in an eight year old’s mind, yet they were there without regard to what should have been.

  Before my eyes, the smoke and mosaic faded, leaving me in a haze upon the ocean’s waves. Beneath me, a small raft woven of green reeds buoyed me atop the water. We dipped down, then crested, becoming part of the ocean’s waves. I turned as if treading water, though I floated above it, and saw a brilliant star—one not larger than a cabbage rose—d
rifting near the shore.

  “I see a star upon the waves. There is ice around it,” I said, though I felt no cold. I simply knew there was ice.

  Kira tried to coax more from me, but I ignored her questions, wanting to get closer and trying to see what it meant. “No, Child. Do not fight it. See what She wills. Let the visions come and go as guests She has sent. You cannot force them or they will fade.” The scratch of her quill upon the parchment told me she was recording what I saw. “Tell me more, Bas willing.”

  Drifting back into the coalescing fog, I spun around, feeling thousands of faces longing to tell me their hidden stories. In one corner I saw my father carving a memorial stone and turned away, not wanting to see the name he etched. In another, I saw Carek taking off his shoe, and with it his foot. “The butcher is taking off his shoes repeatedly. One foot is coming with it, Kira,” I said, incredulous to the sight before me. It just was not possible. I turned around in the mists, waving it away with my arms, trying to see more. “He’s sitting along the shore in his winter garb; the snow dunes are as high as his shoulders.” I stood up on my rolling raft, trying to find Carek as he danced away.

  “That’s enough, Child.” A breeze tickled my senses, clearing the fog as Kira fanned it away with giant feathers from some far away land.

  I mourned the loss of palpable magic. My chest ached with grief, tears burned my eyes, and my hands pulsed in an attempt to pull the smoke back to me.

  Bas wasn’t finished with me yet.

  The fog vanished, and with its loss came rushing waters that pulled me down even as they lifted me up and absorbed me. I gurgled in the banks, feeling sluggish, frigid water bubble below me, the sun warming my upper flows. Tree roots taller than the sky had clear spaces, and I was hungry for them. They fell to the power of my current, but I was so ravenous I continued to swallow them all, as if I hadn’t eaten since last spring. Small twigs fought against me, splashing and flailing before succumbing to my strength, air bubbles popping on my surface as they sank.