Her heart in her stomach, she stepped up onto the dais, seeing the glittering blanket of stars as Sera had last seen them. The planet below was so dark she could not discern the shapes of Kaolin and Pelago. She reached out and felt the barrier, pliable beneath her fingertips.
“Sera?”
Leela whirled around, nearly losing her balance. Sera’s purple mother stood before her, her face wild with a hope that faded as soon as she saw who it was.
“Good evening, Purple Mother,” Leela said.
Sera’s mother raised her eyes to the skies above, but they did not reflect the moonlight. “I am not a purple mother anymore,” she said. “You should call me Kandra.”
Leela stepped down off the dais. “You are still her mother,” she said gently.
Kandra cringed. “We are the only two who dare return to this place. No one else will come here.”
“What about Sera’s green and orange mothers?”
“We deal with her loss in different ways,” Kandra said. “Otess will not stop praying. She has become cold and hard as a stargem in her devotion. Seetha tries to be positive, to look to the future, to see a time when we will not be so enshrouded with pain. For me it is like . . . like she took a piece of me with her. And I cannot seem to figure out how to live without that piece.”
Leela was relieved to hear Sera’s mother speaking so clearly, so rationally.
“That is very much how I feel,” she confessed. “I am glad to find you here.”
“I am always here,” Kandra murmured. “I am close to her here. I cannot . . . I cannot bear that dwelling. I can’t set foot in her room. It still smells of her. Seetha wanted to pack her things away, but Otess and I would not allow it. Her hairbrush is right where she left it. I can see it from the hall. In the very same place she left it . . .”
She reached out as if seeing it now, as if she could touch its burnished silver handle.
“And since she has gone I’ve begun to see things, things that cannot possibly be . . .” Her voice trailed off, her gaze shifting out over the gardens.
“What sorts of things?” Leela asked. Kandra did not seem to hear her.
“I am so angry,” she continued, and Leela had the sense that she was confiding something she had told no other soul. “I feel I am a terrible person for this but . . . I am angry with Mother Sun. My heart should be full of love and trust in her endless wisdom, but it is not. It has become jaded and unyielding, and I fear I am losing myself. It is unfair to Otess and Seetha, unfair to our City. But I cannot change it. I can’t bring myself to be at peace with what has happened. And I remember things that cannot be, that cannot be. . . .” She covered her face with one hand. “I am so sorry. You are a child. You do not need to be burdened with my fears.”
This was her chance. Leela took a deep breath and pretended she was brave.
“I am angry too,” she said. “And then I overheard something. Something bad. About . . . Sera.”
“Yes, I have heard things as well,” Kandra said, rubbing her eyes. “They blame her. Unworthy, they call her.” Her breath caught in her throat. “There was never a girl more worthy of light and love than my daughter. Never.”
“I know,” Leela said. “But what I meant was . . . I heard the High Priestess talking about Sera. In the Moon Gardens, not two days ago. She didn’t know I was there.”
Kandra looked up, shock etched across her face. “The High Priestess?”
“Yes.”
“You are certain?”
“I am.” Leela felt this was significant to Kandra in a way she could not yet comprehend.
“What did she say?”
“I . . . it’s . . . I am not sure you will believe me,” she said. “I have been scared to whisper a word of it to anyone.”
There was a sudden flash of color in Kandra’s eyes, a spark of blue that vanished almost as soon as it appeared. “You will tell me what you heard,” she commanded, and Leela took a step backward. Kandra seemed to realize she was being frightening—she softened, her shoulders wilting. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Please.” She crossed the space between them and took Leela’s hands gently in her own. “I swear to you on the light and grace of Mother Sun and her Moon Daughters, on my love for this City and the love I bore my own child. I will believe what you say and I will not repeat to a soul what you reveal to me here.”
Leela took a deep, quavering breath and began to recount the conversation she had overheard between the High Priestess and Acolyte Klymthe. The story came slowly at first, but then the words began to spill out of her, and the relief that came with the sharing of this secret was a rich, heady thing. By the time she finished, Kandra was a different woman from the one Leela had seen at the wedding or in the meadow. The emptiness in her expression was gone, replaced with a fierce determination. Her eyes were still dark, but a fire seemed to glow in their depths.
“This was her doing,” she said. “Not Mother Sun’s. Not Mother Sun’s . . .” She repeated the phrase as if it could alleviate some guilt, as if it could give her strength.
“But why?” Leela asked. “Why would the High Priestess choose Sera? Why didn’t the ceremony work?”
Kandra was silent for so long Leela wondered if she had not heard her. “Estelle,” she murmured at last.
“Who is—”
But Kandra cut her off. “It has always been a curious thing,” she said, “the longevity of our High Priestess.”
“Mother Sun imbues her with long life,” Leela said. “Or so my orange mother told me.”
“Indeed. But she is by far the longest-reigning High Priestess in our history, is she not?”
Leela considered this. To be honest, she did not know much about the High Priestesses who had come before, except Luille, who had died on the previous planet during the Great Sadness.
“I suppose.”
“Nine hundred years. How much she has seen.” Kandra knelt by a crimson dahlia and stroked its petals. “How many Cerulean have lived and died in this City, with never a new High Priestess chosen.”
“That is for Mother Sun to decide, is it not?”
“It is,” Kandra agreed. “But it is up to the High Priestess to read and determine the signs Mother Sun leaves for her. She must identify her own successor. My orange mother told me the signs would be written on the doors of the temple. Otess believes they will be large and bold like a sun flare, for all the City to see. I think they will be more subtle than that.”
“It is not known for certain?”
“It was once, I believe. Or perhaps not—perhaps it has always been a private knowledge passed from one High Priestess to the next. Our current High Priestess was chosen only weeks before the Great Sadness took Luille. There is meant to be time to transfer the knowledge and secrets of the most important post in Cerulean society. But one thing is certain—once a new High Priestess is chosen, the old one will surely die. That is the way of it, the nature and cycle of life.” A will-o-wisp floated past and hung above them, casting an eerie blue light on Kandra’s face. “It is not meant to be a violent death, like Luille’s. But death is part of life. Fear of death is fear of living.”