THE VERY NEXT MORNING, THE NEWS SPREAD THROUGHOUT the City that a wedding season was about to begin.
It was just as Koreen had predicted days ago in the cloudspinners’ grove. To Leela that felt like another century, a time when Sera was still alive and the High Priestess could be trusted implicitly. Now she could not help but be suspicious. Just as the City was teetering on the brink of uncertainty and confusion, a period of joy and celebration had been announced. It all seemed a rather convenient distraction.
And it was working. Sera’s failure had been explained away, their leader had reassured the Cerulean all would be well, and now a time of love and laughter would begin. Everyone was out and about, harvesting food for the upcoming feasts, spinning fabric in the cloudspinners’ grove for wedding gowns, digging for stargems in the mines, or making garlands of flowers in the Day Gardens. There was a unity to the work and the Cerulean thrived under it.
“Are you not even a little excited?” her green mother said that afternoon as they milked seresheep in the meadow. “To see a wedding season at long last. I know it is something you have always wanted.”
Leela shrugged and focused on filling her pail with milk. A wedding season had been something she and Sera were supposed to experience together. They would decorate their dresses and giggle through the ceremonies and eat until their bellies were stuffed. They would dance the Lunarbelle and stay up past the hour of the dark, whispering of their own futures. That was how the wedding season was supposed to be.
The seresheep she was milking let out a loud bleat and Leela patted its silvery fleece. Her pail was nearly full.
“I will take this to the creamery,” she said. Her green mother reached out and placed a hand on Leela’s arm.
“Talk to me,” she said. “Please. Your mothers and I . . . we are fearful of this pall that has befallen you.”
Leela did not know where to begin. For a moment she considered telling her mother of the conversation she had overheard, but something in her whispered no.
“Everything is changing so fast,” she said instead. “It is as if everyone has simply . . . forgotten her.”
“No, my darling,” her green mother said. “No one has forgotten. But Cerulean do not deal with uncertainty well. We are happier when there is work to focus on, and a unity of purpose. We have that now.”
“Do you think she was unworthy?”
“I do not know. I speak the truth,” her green mother insisted, because Leela was shaking her head. “Sera was always a good friend, a loving, kind girl. Yes, she was loud, and boisterous, and my goodness, she had more questions than Seetha knew what to do with. Do I think her unworthy? No, I do not. But I am not Mother Sun, my dear. I never read the heart of Sera Lighthaven.”
I did, Leela thought fiercely.
“And she will live forever inside you,” her green mother continued. “Your memories and your love will keep her flame burning bright as a candle on the Night of Song.”
But Leela did not want to keep Sera alive in her memory. She wanted her here, now, and the anger that seemed to have become her constant companion over the last two days reared up again. But she did not wish to lash out at another one of her mothers, so she nodded, tight-lipped, and stood, gripping the pail harder than she needed to as she made her way through the grazing seresheep. She felt in a fog, as if her green mother’s words had pulled all her memories of Sera out like dresses from a closet and laid them before her.
“Oh!” She had not been looking where she was going, and some milk slopped over her pail as she bumped into another Cerulean. “I am so—”
But her apology died on her lips. Sera’s purple mother was standing before her with a basket full of feed for the seresheep. Except she was not feeding them. She was staring vacantly at a spot just above Leela’s head. She was the youngest of Sera’s mothers, but she looked older now. Her hair was lank and unkempt, and her silvery skin had a sallow tinge to it.
“Good afternoon, Purple Mother,” Leela said, addressing her formally as all Cerulean children addressed mothers.
“Estelle?” she said, her eyes unfocused.
“No, it’s—I’m Leela.”
Sera’s mother started and seemed to come back to herself.
“Oh,” she said. “Good afternoon, Leela.”
“Are you unwell?” she asked.
Sera’s purple mother looked at the basket in her hands like she had forgotten she was holding it. “I . . .” She seemed at a loss for how to answer.
“May I escort you home?” Leela wondered if she should fetch her green mother to help, but Sera’s purple mother was shaking her head, her face twisting in pain.
“No,” she said. “I cannot go home. She is . . . she is . . . everywhere.”
And without a word of goodbye, she wandered off through the meadows like a woman in a trance. The seresheep parted for her as if they knew this was not a person to nudge with a nose in search of treats. And Leela knew that whatever grief she felt was but a faint echo of the agony burning inside Sera’s mother. She did not know who Estelle was, however—Sera had never mentioned anyone by that name.
Koreen, Daina, and Treena were leaving the creamery as Leela arrived.
“. . . and then there will be a birthing season!” Koreen was saying. “Imagine all those darling little babies.”
“I’ve always longed to see a baby,” Treena said wistfully. “Attending to pregnant seresheep is all well and good, but imagine helping to foster in a new Cerulean generation! Ileen said I could begin to help prepare the birthing houses as soon as tomorrow.”
“And I shall be in the orchards,” Daina said. “And Koreen in the cloudspinners’ grove. How exciting it is to grow up.”
“Indeed!” Koreen exclaimed. “I shall be leaving my mothers’ dwelling soon enough.”
“So shall I,” Treena said.
“Me too,” said Daina. “We should all find a dwelling together!”
“Until we find our own triads,” Koreen qualified. Then she sighed. “What a time to be alive.”
The words left a trail of sharp stings over Leela’s skin. She did not feel as if she understood anything anymore—the High Priestess was a liar, Sera’s joyful purple mother had become a broken shadow of her former self, and her friends had moved on from death faster than you could say will-o-wisp.
“If only the ceremony had worked properly,” Treena said. “We would have a wedding season and be on our way to a new home by now.”
That did it.
“If Sera had died properly, you mean?” Leela said. The girls started. Daina, at least, had the decency to look ashamed.
“Good afternoon, Leela,” Treena stammered. “I did not see you.”
The anger was a comfort to her now, a friend that sharpened her vision and sparked her courage.
“She is dead, and you are speaking as though she did something wrong.”
“We did not mean to be rude,” Daina said.
“But Sera did not break the tether,” Koreen said. “So something did go wrong, didn’t it?”
“Yes, but that does not mean it was Sera’s fault!” Leela was breathing fast. The three girls backed away from her like she was something dangerous. She did feel quite dangerous at the moment. The loneliness, the unfairness of losing her friend, of knowing something she shouldn’t, something she didn’t understand but felt was more important than anything she’d ever known in her life, it was all building up inside her and she wanted to scream.