The High Priestess swallowed. “I don’t know how,” she said again. “I don’t know how to let go.”
Wyllin smiled at her. “I do.” She bent and kissed their hands where they joined. “I forgive you,” she said. At that, the High Priestess seemed to shatter, hunching over as tears fell, leaving tiny imprints on the floor of the courtyard. Wyllin rubbed her back and murmured soothing words.
“So will she be the sacrifice to break the tether?” Leela asked.
Wyllin turned and Sera felt a thrill run from the tips of her toes to the ends of her hair. Then, to her surprise, the High Priestess straightened and spoke.
“This tether is not like the others that have been created throughout our history,” she said. “It was not forged by death, and so need not be broken by it. If one has the courage. To fall again.” She looked up at the sky. “But she must live the rest of her days on this planet. She cannot return to the City.”
“What?” Leela cried.
Sera felt a heady sense of relief at odds with a crippling sorrow inside her.
“You can’t,” Leo said, and the pain in his voice was palpable. Sera’s heart swelled. How selfless of him, to insist that she go. She could hardly recall the selfish, shallow person he had once been.
“Sera, you don’t need to do this,” Agnes said. “You should go home.”
But Sera remembered a fleeting bit of Leela’s memory, of the dream she’d had when Mother Sun had visited her as a will-o-the-wisp.
Home is not always what we think it is when our journey begins. And it can change along the way.
The word she’d seen written on the temple doors when she’d returned to the City held new meaning now.
Home.
“Home can be many things.” Sera touched the moonstone hanging around her neck. “I think . . . I think I have found a new one here.”
“As long as you have a moonstone, you will be connected to the City Above the Sky,” Wyllin said. “You will never truly lose your people, your friends, or your mothers.”
Sera’s heart was glad to hear it. Leela’s eyes shone with tears.
“It will be all right,” Sera said, though she wasn’t sure those were the right words. It was all so bittersweet—no matter what choice she made, she would suffer loss.
But the City needed to move. And she had sworn to herself that she would set it right, that she would break the tether even if it meant falling again. And at least this time, falling did not mean dying.
The High Priestess seemed almost like the woman Sera had known all her life, confident and wise and strong. “If the City is to move,” she said, “it will need a new leader.”
She walked up to Leela and held her gaze for a long time. Sera had the sense that there was something akin to a blood bond taking place between them. Leela seemed so much older now, taller even. She stood proud and unafraid, facing down the City’s oldest and most deceitful High Priestess where once she had been scared to sneak out of her house at night. Sera could not have been prouder of her friend.
Then the bond broke. The High Priestess removed her circlet and held it out with trembling hands.
“This belongs to you now,” she said. “The City’s new High Priestess.”
Sera waited for Leela to protest, to insist that she was not meant for such an important role.
But Leela simply reached out and took the circlet, clutching it in her hands, her jaw set. Elorin pressed her palms to her chest.
The High Priestess turned to Sera. “There is something you will need,” she said. She deftly plucked a strand of hair from her head and bent to bury it in the earth. She put her hand over the mound of dirt and a tiny sapling no more than a foot tall sprang up from the ground, winding through her fingers—a miniature Arboreal. And from its slender branches, a golden fruit appeared, growing larger and larger until the tree bent beneath its weight. The High Priestess plucked it and offered it to Sera.
“Eat this before you fall,” she said. Sera took the fruit, its skin soft, its flesh warm in her hand.
Then the High Priestess walked back to Wyllin. “Together?” she said.
Tears leaked from Wyllin’s eyes as the two ancient friends embraced. “Together,” she whispered.
“It is time to go,” Leela said, turning her gaze to the beach. “We have given all we can, I think.”
Sera nodded. Leela touched the moonstone in the circlet and Sera felt it beckoning, rippling through each moonstone on this planet, calling the Cerulean home. She turned to her human friends, looking scared and confused.
“Will you wait for me here?” she asked, and her voice broke.
Agnes was nodding and Leo said, “As long as it takes.”
Sera looked up at the tether, the twinkling chain that had forever altered the course of her life. “I don’t think it will be long.”
Then she called on her moonstone to take her to the City Above the Sky, one last time.
The Night Gardens were quiet as Sera made her way to the dais.
The High Priestess’s final fruit was running hot in her veins. Leela stood at the jutting glass balcony with Elorin beside her, an acolyte now that Klymthe had been stripped of her title. The circlet suited her best friend, Sera thought. It made her as powerful on the outside as she was on the inside. Cerulean bowed to Sera as she passed and the gesture of respect did not inspire insecurity and fear as it had before. This ceremony was so different from the last one.
Leela had returned the siphoned magic back to her people—she told Sera that the moment she had placed the circlet on her head and claimed the moonstone as her own that she could sense the Cerulean magic writhing inside it, begging to be released. She said it felt like turning on a faucet when she at last gave their magic back, a gratifying sense of release. The Cerulean held in the stalactites were healthy and well. Soon the City would move and the Sky Gardens would grow lush and green again and the Cerulean would explore new planets and learn the ways of the universe as they were meant to.
Sera touched the moonstone pendant, no longer hidden beneath her dress but shining proudly for all to see. As long as she had it, she would be connected to them, to Leela and her mothers and her beloved City. She would be able to see them and they her. She would not truly lose them.
Her mothers were standing by the dais, tears in their eyes.
“We love you so much, Sera,” her orange mother said.
“We will miss you,” her green mother echoed.
“I will miss you too,” Sera said. “But you will always be with me.”
“And you with us,” her green mother said.
Her purple mother touched her cheek.
“As long as the stars burn in the sky,” she said, “I will love you.”
Sera’s throat was too swollen to speak. She stepped onto the dais and stood in front of Leela.
“How far we have come,” Sera said, “from climbing the temple spire at night.”
Leela smiled. “That seems a lifetime ago.”
Sera looked out over the sea of faces, staring at her with hope and admiration. “Take care of them,” she said.
“I will,” Leela promised. They held each other tight, their hearts beating in unison, and there was no need to blood bond for them to read each other. Leela pulled away and took out the ancient iron knife. When she cut into Sera’s arms, Sera welcomed the pain. It sharpened her senses. She was not afraid. She was going to a different home, that was all. Home didn’t have to be one thing or another—it didn’t have to be the place where you were born. It could be wherever those you cared about were. Sera suddenly thought herself lucky, to have two homes.