“I tried to tell myself that it was an honor for her to be chosen,” the High Priestess said. “But in my heart I was angry. I did not wish to lose my friend. As for Wyllin, she did not think herself worthy. I wonder if any chosen one has ever felt worthy—we all think ourselves so ordinary. But Mother Sun knows us, inside and out. And Wyllin had a courage unlike any Cerulean I have ever known.” Something about the way she said it made Leela certain that this, at least, was true. The High Priestess’s words rang with clarity and feeling that Leela did not think could be faked. The watching Cerulean were captivated, enraptured, transported back to a time before their mothers or their mothers’ mothers.
“She stood on the dais in the Night Gardens, and I lifted the barrier so that she could fall. And I tell you my children, it was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. Our City was still raw and grieving—my own heart had only recently been soothed, and Wyllin was a significant source of that comfort. I lost more than a friend that day. I lost a piece of myself.”
Leela felt as if they were finally arriving at the point of this story—her spine stiffened and she leaned forward, hanging on to every word.
“But our City is more important than any one Cerulean, and Mother Sun’s will more important than all. She chose Wyllin Moonseer for a purpose, as she chose Sera Lighthaven for a purpose.” A murmur ran through the crowd at Sera’s name. Leela clenched her hands into fists under the table. She dared not look at Kandra. “We may not see it now, for Mother Sun’s plans do not always reveal themselves right away. But there was a reason for Sera’s sacrifice and a reason for her failure. This I promise you, my children. I am not the young High Priestess I once was, tentative and afraid. I have no fear for the fate of our City, only confidence in Mother Sun. She will not lead us astray. There will be another choosing ceremony in time, and the City will move. We need not worry on that account. And I hope that Sera has found Wyllin in Mother Sun’s everlasting light, and that they are happy together, as all who are chosen deserve to be. Let us raise a glass to Sera and Wyllin.”
She took up her glass of sweetnectar and the Cerulean followed suit.
“Sera and Wyllin,” she called. “Praise them!”
“Praise them!” the Cerulean called back. The High Priestess’s eyes landed on Leela once more, and in that one glance Leela felt a pressure on her back and a heat on her neck. It was a look that seemed to say, There. Your curiosity should be satisfied now.
Except it wasn’t. Far from it. Leela allowed herself a quick glance at Kandra, seated three tables away. Her eyes were chips of onyx, her mouth in a thin line. Sera’s orange mother sat beside her, her head bent in prayer, gently rocking back and forth. Many of the Cerulean were crying, Leela noticed. It had been an impassioned story, and one they’d never heard before. Leela could see its effects working their way through her community, soothing any doubts that remained.
“My goodness,” her own purple mother said, dabbing at her eyes with a napkin. “That was quite a tale, wasn’t it?”
Yes, it was, Leela thought. Whether it was true or not was an entirely different matter.
As the hour of the dark approached, Leela realized she was growing more and more accustomed to wandering the City late at night.
The Forest of Dawn was quite far from her own dwelling—she crossed at the Eastern Bridge and made her way past the cloudspinners’ grove and the stargem mines, and the journey took her longer than she had anticipated. The forest was filled with the sounds of nocturnal life, rodents scurrying and insects chirping and chattering. She passed a small pond where luminescent frogs croaked in harmony, their slippery bodies glowing in bright greens and blues. The trees gave off a variety of scents that mixed together to create a pleasing quilt of pine and magnolia and crabapple.
When she arrived at the birthing houses, they were all dark save one. The houses looked much like any Cerulean dwelling, round and made of sunglass, except they contained only one room. There were twelve of them, set in a circle around a wide patch of grass with an obelisk of moonstone in its center. It made her think of the stone in her star necklace that she had given to Sera. Rosebushes were planted around each birthing house, blooming in pale pink and golden petals. And every house had a copper door.
One of the doors was ajar and a light shone from inside it.
“Kandra?” Leela called softly as she approached. Kandra’s face appeared, lit by the lantern in her hand.
“Come,” she said, and beckoned Leela inside.
Leela had never been in a birthing house before, more for lack of interest or necessity than anything. When she and Sera would come to the forest, it would be to jump from tree to tree like squirrels, or to catch frogs, or hunt for starbeetles. Leela might not have found her purpose in the City yet, but she had always known it would never be as a purple mother or a midwife.
The house’s interior looked very much like her mothers’ bedroom—domed with a large circular bed in the center, piled high with pillows and laid with soft blankets. But some things were different. A bassinet off to one side. A pile of extra sheets and towels on a table. A basin and pitcher. There were no windows.
Kandra set the lantern down and stared at the bed with distant eyes, then moved to the bassinet.
“This is the room where Sera was born,” she said.
Leela hovered by the door. The place felt sacred.
“Did your purple mother teach you about how you were conceived?” Kandra asked.
“Of course.” Every Cerulean child learned about the process of conception in her twelfth year—it was the one official lesson that green mothers would give over to the province of purple mothers. “A birthing season was announced and the High Priestess chose my purple mother among others, and blessed her so that she might become fertile. Every day Orange Mother went to the temple to pray, and Green Mother cooked offerings for Aila and Dendra and Faesa.” The three Moon Daughters, Aila in particular, must be honored if a birth was to be successful. “And Purple Mother came to the birthing house until she sensed her time was coming and her body was ready for a child. She told me that she carried within her womb an egg and that when the time was right, the egg split and created a new life; that was me. She told me Cerulean are not like the laurel doves in the Aviary, that we do not need one male and one female to make an offspring, but that we have that power within ourselves.”
“We do.” Kandra sat on the bed and brushed her fingertips across the blanket. Then she gripped it in her hand as if she wished to rip it off. “I remember the first time I felt her stir in me,” she whispered. “It was a terrifying and wondrous moment. When the egg inside me split and formed Sera, I felt nothing. I did not believe the midwives at first when they told me I was pregnant. But she grew and grew, my belly swelling up with her.” She relaxed her hold on the blanket. “I’m sorry. This is not the story I brought you here to tell.”
“Then why are we here?”
“Because this is where I saw her.”
“Saw who?” Leela asked, though she thought she already knew the answer.
“Estelle,” Kandra whispered.
Leela waited as the minutes ticked by and the flame in the lantern flickered.
“She was my best friend,” Kandra said at last. “Like you and Sera. Like Wyllin and the High Priestess, if her story is to be believed.” Leela felt a wave of relief at not being the only one to doubt the story’s validity. “We played together as children and shared our first heartaches as we grew older. She was curious, like I said before, but in a more subtle way than my Sera was. None of our other friends thought her strange. She whispered her questions late at night, convinced she would be able to speak to Mother Sun directly.”