Then Leela’s memories took over and the visions changed and she shared with their people everything she had seen and learned over the past weeks, since she had first overheard the High Priestess speaking to Acolyte Klymthe in the Moon Gardens. The doors, the fruit, the Sky Gardens . . . Finding the circlet. Releasing Estelle from the stalactite. The dream. The cache of moonstone. The High Priestess threatening her. And then Leela jumping through the pool, down to the planet as Cerulean had done in days of old.
As they were meant to do.
When at last the memories were spent, Sera and Leela came back to themselves. The temple was as silent and somber as the Night Gardens. Many Cerulean were rubbing their eyes or the backs of their necks, or blinking around as if unsure anything they were seeing was real. Some were crying or holding each other. Some were shaking their heads, dazed. Sera felt a faint crackle in her chest, as if her moonstone was saying, “Well done.”
“Was that real?” Sera looked up at the sound of Acolyte Endaria’s voice. She was gazing down at Leela. “I felt . . .” She pressed her fingertips to her temples. “I felt so much. It had to be real.” She turned on Acolyte Klymthe. “How could you have been part of this?”
“Sh-she made me,” Acolyte Klymthe stammered. “She said it was the only way. She showed me with her circlet, showed me what could happen if we didn’t . . . I was afraid, I only wanted to help.”
“Silence,” the High Priestess snapped, then looked to Acolyte Endaria with a smile that might have once contained warmth but now was sharp and brittle. “Endaria, I can explain—”
Acolyte Endaria stepped backward. “You have lied to us,” she said, tears filling her eyes. “You have lied all this time. How could you?”
“Why?” It was timid Daina who spoke up, to Sera’s surprise. “Why would you do this?”
The High Priestess looked trapped. She glanced behind her, as if searching for a way to escape, but then Acolyte Imima stepped up, blocking her way.
“Where do you think you could go, Elysse?” Imima said. “There is nowhere to hide in this City. You must answer for these . . . these memories, these images we have seen. You have told us Leela Starcatcher is false, that she is dangerous. You have said Sera Lighthaven was unworthy. But we have felt their feelings and have lived the truth of them, and the only danger here is you.”
“All I have done I did for my people,” the High Priestess protested. “Do you want another Great Sadness? You speak of the memories—you saw what Sera went through down there. They locked her up! They tried to steal her blood! Is that the future you want for this City, for our people? To be at the mercy of humans who do not understand us?”
“Do not use my life to justify your falseness,” Sera said, and every head in the sanctum swiveled toward her. “If I had known . . . if you had not stolen our magic and our knowledge and our history, I could have communicated with the humans from the very beginning. Yes, there are those who are greedy and arrogant and cruel, but there are also humans who are kind and loving, who risked their own lives and futures to return me to this City. We are meant to explore, we are meant to learn, we are meant to give back what we take from the planet. We are meant to be so many things we have been denied. I always thought I was the only one in this whole City who was different. But I know now that is not true. You have made us think we are all supposed to be the same. But that is not what Mother Sun intended. You kept us in one place for so long, we forgot ourselves. But we remember now.”
“What would you have done?” the High Priestess demanded. “If you were in my place. You think you know so much, Sera Lighthaven, because you have been to one planet. Well, I have been to many! I have seen things you could never dream of. You think you know so much about our purpose? We are safe here! How is that not better for our City? Why should we risk the journey through space, the dangers of planet after planet, when we can stay right where we are!”
“Because life is risk,” Leela said as if she was hardly able to believe she had to explain this to a centuries-old woman. “Life is uncertainty and danger. You have dulled our minds and our hearts. You have kept us so still and sedentary that Mother Sun could not find us any longer. That is not the way to be a Cerulean.”
Sera felt her throat swell as all eyes turned back to Leela. Their people were looking at her with unabashed admiration.
“I must admit,” Freeda said. “I have always thought about visiting the planet. But I never wished to acknowledge this, not even to myself.” She turned to Sera. “I am sorry that I called you a nuisance. Perhaps I was envious. It seemed so easy for you to express your wishes out loud.”
“I always wondered about the tether, too,” Daina said. “If there were ever people who tended to it. I am sorry, Sera, that I made it seem as if you were strange for thinking so. I simply did not want to be seen as strange myself.”
Sera’s eyes were brimming with tears once more and her mothers were gazing at her, their faces alight with pride. Her purple mother took her hand and squeezed it gently.
“You were happier that way!” the High Priestess shrieked. “I kept you safe here, I kept you healthy and whole, I—”
“You stole from us,” Leela said. “You took our friends and our family and our purpose, but most of all you took our magic. So that you could stay young and strong.”
“This City needs a leader,” the High Priestess insisted. “Only I can protect it.”
“Like you protected them?” Elorin’s voice rang from the doorway.
She strode into the sanctum, and once again the air was filled with gasps and cries, as the hundred-odd Cerulean who had once been imprisoned beneath the City filed in after her.
35
Leela
LEELA’S HEART WAS BURSTING AS ELORIN LED IN ALL THE Cerulean who were now free.
“Plenna!” Heena shrieked as she saw her wife, and then she and Jaycin were falling into Plenna’s arms.
“Estelle?” Sera’s green mother gasped as Estelle rushed to embrace Kandra.
“Iona?”
“Beleen! But . . . but you died, you . . .”
“Kirtha, is that you? Can it be?”
The group of Cerulean from the stalactites were swarmed, even the ones who were so ancient they no longer had family alive to welcome them. For a time, the High Priestess was forgotten as the Cerulean hugged and cried and rejoiced, gazing at each other with wonder and amazement. It was like they were all waking up from a very long sleep. Sera and Elorin joined Leela at the front of the temple.
“You did it,” Leela said to Elorin.
She beamed. “I did.” She turned to take in the room, the change that was happening, chains finally being broken. “We’ve shown them who they were meant to be, Leela. We’ve healed them.”
“Not yet,” Leela said, feeling crestfallen. “The City must move. There must be another sacrifice.”
Elorin glanced at the chancel, where the High Priestess was boxed in by her acolytes. “Perhaps it should be the High Priestess,” she whispered. “After all she has done. Perhaps it is for her to right this wrong.”
Leela looked to Sera to see what she thought, but her friend did not appear to be listening. She was clutching the necklace, her eyes distant.