“Last day on Orial, Wyllin,” she said. “Are you sad to be leaving?”
“Yes and no,” Wyllin replied. “It will be nice to see a new planet.”
Meranne smiled and patted her moonstone, a brooch fashioned in the shape of a bumblebee. “I have just seen my green wife leaving offerings at Aila’s statue for a safe journey. She is eager for a new planet as well.”
“I will leave an offering myself when we return,” Wyllin said. “Perhaps—”
The rest of her words died on her lips as there was a whizzing sound by her ear, and then the back of Meranne’s head exploded in a burst of bright blue, her body crumpling to the ground.
Wyllin did not make the conscious decision to drop to her knees, but suddenly she was lying in the grass and there was whizzing all around her, and the Cerulean were running and screaming and falling.
Bullets, Wyllin thought, her mind clumsy as another whiz pierced the skull of a Cerulean running for shelter among the trees. Bullets, they are called. From a gun.
Cerulean magic had healing power, but there was no cure for a piece of metal that pierced the brain. Her vision grew black around the edges and Wyllin could feel her lungs shrinking inside her chest; there was not enough air, and she knew she should do something but she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t remember, there were bodies everywhere.
And then she saw him. The male her friend loved so much. With a long, cruel piece of metal in his hand. A rifle, she remembered. That’s what it was called.
“The head or else they’ll heal!” he was shouting. “We need the blood, it’s the blood that has the power!”
She told him, Wyllin thought in a daze. And now he wants it for himself.
“Wyllin!” Elysse was there then, shaking her. “We have to go!”
“It was him,” Wyllin said, stumbling to her feet. “Elysse, it was him!”
Elysse turned and saw the male. Their eyes met, and the flames in his seemed to extinguish for a fraction of a second. Then he raised the gun and pointed it at her head.
“No!” Wyllin screamed, and her mind cleared, the thought of home vibrant within her; she gripped Elysse’s hand, calling on her moonstone to return them to the City. The ring on her finger flared up and then they were spinning, their feet leaving the ground, everything a blur of color, and they burst through the atmosphere into space, but the stars held no comfort. When at last they emerged up through the pool and back into the Sky Gardens, Wyllin still could not find her lungs.
Elysse was shivering on the ground, sobs ripping out of her chest.
“He betrayed me,” she gasped over and over. “I loved him and he betrayed me.” She turned up to Wyllin, her face etched with agony. “He killed them, Wyllin. He killed them, he killed them . . .”
Wyllin held her but had no words to comfort. All she could see was Meranne’s body falling to the ground. All she could hear were the screams of the dying Cerulean they had left behind.
The High Priestess, Wyllin thought with a sudden chill. Had she died on the planet as well?
A Cerulean shot up through one of the other pools, her long wail echoing through the lush gardens.
“Dead,” she moaned, “all dead . . .”
Then a second appeared through a different pool, and then a third. They were crying and hugging each other the same as Wyllin and Elysse. Wyllin waited, holding her friend in her arms. And she waited. And waited.
No other Cerulean returned.
“Elysse,” Wyllin said in a daze. “I think you may be the High Priestess now.”
That was perhaps the only thing in the world that could quiet her friend’s sobs. She sat up, rigid, and looked at the other three survivors, huddled together.
“Don’t tell, Wyllin,” she whispered. “Please. Promise me. I will make this right, I will protect this City with every fiber and spark of magic contained within me. I will never let anything like this happen again, I swear it on Mother Sun and all her Moon Daughters. But please. Do not tell the others of my shame.”
And Wyllin believed her, because she knew Elysse loved the City Above the Sky—had she not forsaken her love on the planet, false as he was, for her devotion to it?
“I promise,” she said.
The scene dissolved again. Time had passed. Elysse looked older, and no longer wore the moonstone ring, but instead bore the circlet, its stone gleaming against her sapphire hair.
“We will have to have a choosing ceremony soon,” she was saying. They were in Wyllin’s kitchen, a pretty room with brightly colored mugs hanging on the wall and a window box of basil giving off a fragrant aroma. Wyllin sat at the table while Elysse paced back and forth.
“But Mother Sun—” Wyllin began.
“She has abandoned us!” Elysse cried. “I told you. I have had no hint, no whisper, no dreams . . . even the doors have stopped speaking to me. We are on our own, Wyllin. We must protect this City ourselves.”
“Why not share your fears with the others?” Wyllin said, as she had said so many times before.
“They would not understand; they are still too frightened, too traumatized . . . I will not hurt them further. They are under my care now. I told you, Wyllin. I told you right after . . .” She cringed, as if she could not bear to recall that horrific day. “It is my duty to protect them. I failed once; I will not fail again. I will do whatever it takes, and if it means I must lie to give them hope, then I will. I will do anything necessary to make this City feel safe. We can never go down onto the planets again. Traveling through space is dangerous, as this journey showed us. They were going to die, the City was beginning to die and it was all my fault, my fault I can’t . . .”
She fell forward, gripping the table as her body trembled, and Wyllin knew she was holding back the tears.
“But the tether cannot survive forever,” Wyllin pointed out.
“It can,” Elysse said, and when she looked up, her eyes had an unnerving glow. “If one Cerulean is willing to make a great sacrifice.”
“Greater than giving up her life?”
“Yes,” Elysse replied. “There is a way. I have seen it in the circlet—it has never been tried before but the idea is there, just waiting to be tested. The chosen one must be brave. She must be braver than any Cerulean in the history of our City.”
Wyllin swallowed. For a long moment, the two women held each other’s gaze.
“What would you have me do?” Wyllin asked.
“I would imbue you with my own strength, my own power,” Elysse said. “And you would keep your moonstone on you. You would survive the fall, though you would lose most of your blood along the way. But my magic can sustain you long enough for you to reach the ground, where your own magic will replenish. You can keep the tether strong. Keep the planet healthy. The planet is always at its strongest when a Cerulean is on it, remember? Keep us in one place, keep us safe. Could you do that, Wyllin? Are you brave enough, and willing? I know what I ask of you, my dearest friend. If I could do it myself, I would. But I cannot abandon my people, not now, not when hope is only just beginning to blossom in this City again. They need me, do you see?”
And Wyllin did see—this City was broken. To suffer the loss of its leader would be a devastating blow, one that it might not recover from.