The Moon Gardens were blissfully silent. Fireflies dotted the rosebushes as Leela and Elorin made their way to Faesa’s statue—Leela making sure to move the statue over the opening to cover their tracks—and down the cold stairs to the City’s underbelly. When they arrived at Estelle’s circle, they both stopped and gazed down at her—the memory of putting her inside this stalactite was crystal clear in Leela’s mind, and she sensed Elorin was thinking of it too.
“Do you think she will be all right if you take her out?” Elorin asked in a hushed voice.
“Yes,” Leela said, trying to sound more confident than she felt. “The High Priestess does not want to kill them. Besides, Estelle escaped once, years ago, and Kandra saw her—the High Priestess simply erased her memory of the meeting.” She looked at the cone of moonstone, and its pulsing red heart seemed dim to her. “The stalactites absorb Cerulean magic,” she said. “Which feeds the pool, which strengthens the tether.” She turned her eyes upward to the boughs of vines. “The moonstone uses the magic of the tether to make the fruit, which she feeds to the Cerulean, replenishing the magic the tether is taking from them. Until it can’t anymore and then she needs to make new stalactites and imprison fresh Cerulean.”
“I wonder how she even thought to do it in the first place,” Elorin said. “What could have caused her to make such a drastic choice?”
Leela felt that if she’d kept the circlet on longer, she might have found out. All she could do now was try to help those imprisoned. She knelt at the edge of Estelle’s stalactite and recalled the movements the High Priestess had made when she’d first trapped her here.
She ran one hand in a clockwise circle over the ice. “For devotion,” she said, her voice trembling. She passed her other hand counterclockwise. “For wisdom.” Then she passed both hands in a long line down the center of the circle. “For love,” she whispered.
Leela waited, hardly daring to even breathe. Suddenly, Elorin gasped and Leela saw cracks appear in the surface of the ice. Liquid began to weep from them, spilling across the ground and soaking the knees of Leela’s robe. And then the ice was gone. Leela reached out and touched the inside of the stalactite—the liquid was clear as water but much more viscous.
“Estelle?” she called, unsure of exactly what to do.
For one agonizingly long moment, nothing happened. Then Estelle’s whole body lurched, limbs flailing through the thick fluid, until she burst from the stalactite, coughing and choking and heaving up water onto the cold ground.
We should have brought an extra robe, Leela thought as she and Elorin helped pull her out. She realized how much she had doubted that this would actually work.
“I’ll get her a robe from the dormitories,” Elorin said, as if reading Leela’s mind.
Leela nodded and Elorin quickly left. It was only after she’d gone that Leela remembered she’d sealed up Faesa’s statue and Elorin would not be able to get out.
But Estelle had stopped coughing and now turned her eyes to Leela. They were flat black, no trace of blue at all.
“Who are you?” she croaked.
“M-my name is Leela Starcatcher,” Leela stammered. “I—”
Estelle grabbed her arm so tight it hurt. “Are you working with her?”
Leela didn’t need to ask who she meant. “No,” she said. “I’m trying to stop her. I only found this place a few weeks ago, no one in the City knows about it.”
“She lies,” Estelle said, her grip tightening. “You could be lying too.”
“Please,” Leela said. “You’re hurting me.”
“How long has it been?” Estelle demanded. “How long have I been . . .” She shuddered and released Leela, slumping over and holding her head in her hands. “Is this real? I have had the freedom dreams before.” She looked up and her black eyes sent a shudder deep into Leela’s heart. “Am I dead?”
Leela knelt before her. “You are not dead,” she said gently. “And this is no dream.”
Estelle looked around, wild and frantic. “What do you want with me? Where are the others?”
“I want to help you. I want to help them too but I don’t know how. I don’t . . .” Leela felt ashamed. She stared at her hands and said, “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“There are so many of us,” Estelle murmured. “Can you hear them? I hear them in my dreams, when I wake, voices that whisper, that beg, that cry . . . some of them are so very old.” She gazed up at Leela. “Does the City know of her treachery? Is the nightmare over?”
“Not yet,” Leela said, and Estelle crumpled. “But I know of her lies and so does my friend Elorin.” She took a breath. “And so does Kandra Sunkeeper.”
“Kandra?” Estelle became at once alert, scrambling to her knees. “Kandra is still alive?”
“Yes,” Leela said, grateful to be able to impart some good news. “She has a daughter. Sera. She is eighteen, like me.”
Tears filled Estelle’s unnervingly black eyes. “A daughter.”
“The High Priestess made her forget about you,” Leela said. “But when Sera was sacrificed, it all came back to her.”
“Sacrificed?” Estelle gripped her head with her hands.
“I’m sorry,” Leela said. “There is so much to tell and I fear I do not know where to begin.”
Suddenly Estelle was pulling at Leela’s robe, her face desperate.
“You must take me to Kandra,” she said. “I need to see her. Please. I don’t have much time.”
23
“KANDRA IS AT THE BIRTHING HOUSES,” LEELA SAID. “IT is a long way from here and dangerous.”
“Please,” Estelle said again. “I can’t—none of this seems real.” She released her hold on Leela and slumped to the ground. “I wish to see my friend again. And the stars. I have not seen the stars in years. I wonder if they look the same as I remember . . .”
Leela’s heart spasmed with pain, at the thought of so many long years in darkness.
Just then, Elorin returned with a robe in her hands. “The moonstone moved for me!” she cried. “I realized as I was climbing the stairs that you had sealed the entrance, but then Faesa’s statue just . . . slid aside.” She caught sight of Estelle’s flat black eyes and fell silent.
“She wants me to take her to Kandra,” Leela said.
Elorin gasped. “Surely you cannot. It is too far, and too dangerous. What if someone sees her?”
Leela grasped Elorin’s shoulders. “She has been in darkness for so long,” she said. “Without light, without hope. How can I deny her the opportunity to see her friend? What if we fail and this was her one chance?”
Elorin looked to Estelle, then back to Leela. “You are right.”
Estelle suddenly fell to her knees, clutching her chest. “The fruit,” she croaked. “Please . . . I need the fruit. . . .”
Without allowing herself a moment to think, Leela stretched out a hand and a fat golden fruit plopped into it, as if she had called it down from the vines. Elorin gave an impressed half gasp half squeak and Leela felt a stirring of pride, but Estelle was already grabbing it, devouring it swiftly and discarding the pit. Then she lurched forward, her palms slapping against the cold ground, her skin beginning to glow, until there was a sudden flash. She rose to her feet slowly, straight and strong.