I need to find Sera, she thought, and then her whole body was wrenched back and flung forward and she was falling fast, too fast, everything blurred, the wind howling in her ears, and just when she thought she couldn’t take it anymore, her feet hit solid ground and a cloud of dust engulfed her.
And there was Sera. Real, true, living, breathing Sera.
“Leela!” she cried. Then they were running, colliding into each other.
“You’re here,” Leela said breathlessly.
Sera pulled away, tears sparkling in her eyes. “You are here!” she cried. “How . . . how?”
Leela held up her wrist with the moonstone cuff. “I was right,” she said. “It’s the moonstone, Sera. It saved you. It brought me here. Moonstone allows us to travel between the planet and the City. It does so much that we never knew.”
Sera was examining the bracelet with awe. “Where did you find this?”
“In the temple spire. There is a secret place beneath it. The High Priestess has been hiding all the moonstone inside it.”
“Of course. She is so afraid.”
Leela whirled at the sound of an unfamiliar voice and stared in shock at the ancient Cerulean woman standing before them. “Who are you?”
“This is Wyllin,” Sera explained. “She did not die. She has been here on the planet all along.”
“Wyllin?” Leela more mouthed the word than spoke it. “But . . . how can you be alive and also have formed the tether?”
“Because there is a way,” Wyllin said. “A way to create the tether without death, though it leads to death in the end, anyway. Just a longer, slower one.” Her words seemed to carry a weight that grew heavier as she spoke, and she leaned against the fountain. “The circlet Elysse wears is the first moonstone Mother Sun ever gifted the City, passed down from each High Priestess. It contains all the power and knowledge of every single High Priestess who has ever lived. That was how she learned about the fruit, about how to make Cerulean magic into another tangible form, one that could be consumed instead of one that was merely connective. It was done centuries before we were born, by a High Priestess named Elbeth, she told me. As a precaution against a long voyage through space. She wished to see if she could preserve Cerulean magic and use it to boost the magic within her people during the journey—it was she who first put a Cerulean in a stalactite. But it was done willingly and not for very long.”
“It is not being done willingly anymore,” Leela said sharply.
Wyllin’s eyes turned sad. “No,” she said. “I imagine not.”
“But why has the High Priestess left you here all alone?” Sera asked. Wyllin gazed up at the tether with tenderness, almost the way a mother looks at a child.
“I am the tether and the tether is me,” she said. “After the Great Sadness, Elysse changed. We all did. She wanted to protect the City. She was so afraid, so . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“Sorry, the Great what?”
Leela had hardly noticed the humans, she had been so focused on Sera.
“The Great Sadness was the biggest tragedy in Cerulean history,” Sera explained. “When two hundred Cerulean were massacred on the last planet the City was tethered to.”
“How horrible,” the human girl said as Sera made hasty introductions.
“Leela, this is Leo and his sister, Agnes,” she said. “They are the ones I told you about.”
“Thank you for helping my friend,” Leela said.
“You’re—wait a second, we can understand you,” Leo said, looking confused.
“Cerulean can always speak the language of the planets,” Wyllin said.
“I could not, when I first fell,” Sera said. “It was not until I arrived in Pelago that I was able to speak the human languages.”
Wyllin frowned. “Perhaps such a long attachment with no contact with the planet had crippled this ability.”
“No,” Leela said, her face darkening. “It is because the High Priestess has been siphoning magic from her people. To keep herself young and strong. She has somehow bent the circlet to her will, twisted its purpose to steal from us.”
Wyllin slumped against the fountain. “Moonstone is connective. It links our City to the planets and the Cerulean to each other. In days past, the stone was used by Cerulean to communicate, whether between City and planet or while on the planet itself. Like an external blood bond. We can read each other’s hearts, speak to each other by calling on our moonstone.”
“Like how I called on it to let me speak to you in the Sky Gardens,” Leela said to Sera.
“And how I could see my purple mother at the birthing houses,” Sera said.
“But the moonstone in the circlet is even more powerful,” Wyllin said. “It connects to all Cerulean. Imagine a blood bond so strong it can actually pull magic to it, absorb the power that lives within our blood. Instead of sharing, it only takes. That moonstone must be thrumming with Cerulean magic.” She looked at Sera. “But you were out of her grasp. Your magic must have replenished, grown strong like it is supposed to be while you were here on the planet.”
Sera looked down at her hands. “Errol was first because he was the easiest,” she said to herself. “And then Boris. And the humans last. When I was at my strongest. When I arrived in Pelago.”
“I beg your pardon, Ms. . . . Ms. Wyllin,” Agnes said timidly. “But what exactly is this place? The, um, the humans all seem to think it contains wealth or powers.”
Wyllin looked startled, but she spoke to Agnes with kindness.
“It is called the Alcazar,” she said. “Wherever the tether plants itself, it creates an Alcazar to protect it, to enclose it. Each one looks different, depending on the planet. This one was very large and very beautiful at first. But it has crumbled into ruin.” Wyllin’s eyes grew sad and distant. “There is power here, yes, but not the way humans expect. The tether cannot be claimed by anyone, not even a Cerulean. But it has the power of connection and the wealth of life. Are there no more important things than that?” She looked again at the fine chain. “How I would love to return to the City Above the Sky. To walk the shores of the Great Estuary, to wander the moonflower fields and eat honeycombs fresh from the Apiary.” Her expression turned so mournful Leela felt her own heart ache. “And yet I cannot go back. Everything I have to give I have given to this planet and to the tether. I am the tether and the tether is me.”
“But—sorry,” Agnes said, “if the moonstone is connective and it was the way Cerulean used to travel between the city and the planet, then why hasn’t Sera just been able to go home already?”
“She was not strong enough,” Wyllin said. “Not if her magic had been weakened.” She half smiled. “It is easier to fall than to fly.” She and Sera exchanged a look, then Wyllin turned back to Agnes. “It takes great intention to travel. And who is to say Sera was not meant to come here to learn this? That there was not some deeper meaning to your journey?”
Leela felt a tingle run up her spine as Wyllin addressed her and Sera. “I must show you the truth before you go, before I die. For I feel my death coming now, as certain as sunrise.”