“You seem to have thought long on this matter,” Leela said. She wasn’t quite sure how this all related to Sera, though.
Kandra sighed. “Not me. I had a friend once, curious, like Sera. She was fascinated by our current High Priestess’s long life.”
“Estelle,” Leela said.
Kandra started. “How do you know her name?”
“You said it the other day in the meadow and then again just now.”
“Did I?” She frowned. “I have not thought about her in so long. I have not been able to. . . .” Her hand curved around the dahlia, and for a second Leela thought she would crush it in her fist. “She found it strange that no new High Priestess had been chosen in so many long years.”
“It is because Mother Sun values her very much. That’s what my orange mother said.”
“Ah, but who tells us that?” Kandra said, looking at her gravely. “She does.”
Leela sorted through her words, trying to piece the meaning together. If the High Priestess was in control of choosing her successor . . . “Do you believe that is why Sera was sacrificed? To prevent a new High Priestess from being chosen?”
“I think,” Kandra said carefully, “that it may go deeper than that.”
Leela gasped. “You think Sera was to be the next High Priestess?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps.” When she looked at Leela again, there was a hint of her old warmth in her expression. “She loved you very much. I hope you know that.”
Leela found it hard to swallow. “I loved her, too.”
Kandra cupped Leela’s face in her hands and kissed her forehead. “Thank you,” she whispered. “You have given me a greater gift than you know.”
“What is that?”
“You have given me purpose. And you have shown me that I am not losing my mind, losing myself. No . . . no the memories are real, they are real. . . .” She stood. “You were wise not to share your thoughts with anyone. Meet me by the birthing houses tomorrow after the weddings. I must see . . . I must know, one way or the other. Do not tell anyone, not even your mothers. Can you do that?”
Leela nodded without hesitation. “I will be as silent as the night sky.” Then she paused. “What is at the birthing houses?”
Kandra’s eyes grew distant with some ancient memory. “The High Priestess has many secrets, it would seem,” she said. “And I think I know one of them.”
26
THERE WERE FOUR WEDDINGS THE NEXT DAY, THE LAST one for the City’s oldest unmarried triad, who had found each other late in life.
They sat at the head table, all smiles and clasped hands, as the High Priestess stood, raised a glass of sweetnectar, and declared, “Love at any age is a blessing upon us, but love that has been forged through time and patience is a rare treasure. We look to you three as a beacon of hope in these trying times.”
Leela felt a prickle creep up the back of her neck at those words, a sudden premonition that something was about to happen.
“Caana was gracious enough to allow me to be storyteller for this wedding,” the High Priestess continued. “If you all would permit it.”
“Yes, High Priestess,” the Cerulean called. “Tell us a tale!”
“A tale of love!”
“A tale of courage!”
“I will tell you the story,” the High Priestess said dramatically, “of Wyllin Moonseer and the Forming of this Tether.”
Quiet fell at her words, more complete than the Night Gardens at the hour of the dark. The High Priestess paused for a moment, allowing the silence to permeate the gathering, weaving together an air of expectation, wonder, and unease that filled the spaces between the tables.
“Yes, my children,” she said. “It is a story I have never before told. Wyllin was a Cerulean of great heart and tremendous courage, yet her name has not been said in many, many years. I am at fault for this. She was from a time best not remembered. Who among us would choose to dwell on the Great Sadness and all the loss and pain that came from it? But our City has reached yet another crossroads, where loss and pain weigh on our hearts once more.” The High Priestess’s eyes lighted on Leela, and she felt a pang of unease, as if this story was being told just for her, but to what end she could not tell. “Comfort can be found in the sharing of things past, in the remembrance of the interdependent web of which we are all a part.”
The High Priestess set down her glass and took several steps forward. A knot of fireflies swirled overhead, casting a glittering light over her.
“Wyllin Moonseer was only twenty-one years of age when the Great Sadness occurred, just a year younger than myself. We had been born in the same season and had been friends since childhood; we played along the banks of the Estuary, hunted for eggs in the Aviary, and did all the things that young Cerulean do to occupy their time. As we grew older, I began to spend many of my days in the temple, while she found her purpose in making music—she was exceptionally skilled at the lute. However, the Great Sadness changed her, as it changed so many others.”
The High Priestess paused, and there was no doubt she was seeing into the past as she told this story, unfolding memories from long ago with painstaking care.
“She was not on the planet itself when tragedy struck—only five of us made it back to the City alive, myself among them. Five out of two hundred. Wyllin began coming to the temple more and more, or praying for the lost souls in the Night Gardens. She talked to those who had lost wives and daughters and friends, held them when they wept, and listened to them when they railed against the unfairness of the universe. Some even cursed Mother Sun herself.”
There were several shocked gasps at that, and many Cerulean looked at each other as if they could not conceive of such a thing.
“In the second year of our journey through space, six months before we found this planet, I lost an acolyte—Acolyte Grenda had been aged long before I was ever chosen as High Priestess, and her time to leave her corporeal body and join Mother Sun had come. Shortly after her death I asked Wyllin to be my new acolyte. She accepted, and I found such comfort in her presence at the temple. She was a true friend and confidante, one who I felt could read my heart without need of the blood bond.”
Leela shifted uncomfortably. What the High Priestess was describing sounded very much like her friendship with Sera.
“We talked together late into the evenings, we gathered herbs together from the Moon Gardens, and she would often play the lute for me after meals and I would pour my fears out into her open loving heart. For I was a very young High Priestess, and my ascension to the role had an abrupt and bloody history. I worried I was not worthy enough to lead this City, that I was making mistakes. I was terrified we would not find a new planet in time, before our fields withered and died and our Estuary dried up. Fear became my constant companion, and only Wyllin’s calm reassurance and steadfast friendship kept the terror at bay.
“It was she who first spotted this planet, the shapes of Kaolin and Pelago so unfamiliar then. The bells rang out from the temple for a full day and night, and a choosing ceremony was held the next morning. And my sweet beloved Wyllin was chosen to create the tether.”
The High Priestess paused to wipe a tear from her eye. She seemed so sincere in her grief, but Leela could not allow herself to trust it.