The Cerulean Read online

  “Sera?” they called at the same time, as if unsure it was her. Sera realized there might have been many visitors today, not just the High Priestess. Who else had come to call, hoping to see the chosen one? She was glad she had stayed by the hedge.

  “It’s me,” she said as they came rushing into the sitting room.

  “We were so—” her orange mother began, but her purple mother cut her off.

  “We are so happy to see you,” she said.

  Sera realized then, with a sharp twist of guilt, that she was being horribly selfish. Her mothers were losing a child. Leela was losing a friend. Would she hide herself away from the ones who mattered most, when she had so little time left to spend with them?

  “I’m sorry if I worried you,” she said. “I only . . .”

  She didn’t know how to finish her sentence without sounding awful.

  “You needed some time on your own,” her purple mother said.

  “Of course you did,” her orange mother agreed, but Sera could see the panic behind her eyes and wondered with a start if maybe her mothers had thought she was never coming home.

  “Did the High Priestess not tell you where I was?” she asked.

  Her orange mother looked startled. “We have not seen her since she left with you.”

  Sera’s eyes widened. “You did not go to prayers?”

  Her orange mother never missed prayers. Never, not even when she broke an ankle chasing a stray peahen in the Aviary and it took a full day before her blood had healed it.

  “She would not leave this house until you returned,” her purple mother said.

  “We would not have you come home to a house without all of us in it,” her orange mother said.

  “You didn’t fear Mother Sun would be angry with you?” Sera asked.

  Her orange mother strode up and looked her daughter in the eye with such ferocity of love, Sera felt her breath stop in her chest.

  “She is a mother, first and foremost,” her orange mother said. “She understands.”

  Sera blinked. She could feel the tears building, but she was not ready to give in to them yet. “Where is Green Mother?” she asked. Her other two mothers exchanged a look.

  “She is sewing you a new robe,” her purple mother said. “For the feast tonight.”

  “Leela said she would come by, if you wanted to go to the Great Estuary to bathe first,” her orange mother said.

  Sera did not want to go out in the City and be stared at like some spectacle, but she had not bathed yesterday and she would be embarrassed to show up dirty to a feast being held in her honor. So she nodded.

  “I am going to change into simpler clothes,” she said, and then headed to her bedroom without waiting for a response. She chose an old prayer robe that was plain and unadorned, nearly worn through at the elbows. She hung up her cloudspun dress, then collapsed onto her bed and stared at the mobile.

  “I am a Cerulean,” she said aloud. “My blood is magic.”

  The mobile spun slowly and offered her no comfort.

  “Sera?” Her purple mother hovered in the doorway. Sera didn’t say come in, but she didn’t tell her to leave either. Why was it so difficult to talk to her mothers now, especially when she should want to be closer to them?

  Her purple mother curled around her on the bed, resting Sera’s head in the crook of her shoulder. Sera could feel the lavender ribbon around her neck brushing softly against her own forehead, and she breathed in her purple mother’s honeysuckle scent.

  “Your orange mother made that for you the day you were born,” her purple mother said, with a gesture to the floating stars. “Did we ever tell you that story?”

  “Green Mother said that you all went to one of the birthing houses where it was very peaceful, and then a few hours later I was born and you took me home.” Sera repeated the story dully. Her birth held no interest to her anymore.

  Her purple mother laughed, stirring up wisps of Sera’s hair. “Seetha likes to keep things short and sweet, that is certain.”

  “It wasn’t like that?”

  “Well, we did go to the birthing house, but we were there for more than just a few hours and it was anything but peaceful. Childbirth is quite a bloody business. Your green mother had to leave the room for a few moments.”

  “Was Green Mother afraid?”

  “Yes. She was afraid for me. She did not want to see me in pain.”

  Sera sat up straight. “I hurt you?”

  Her purple mother put a hand on Sera’s cheek. “Oh, my darling, it was a pain I would suffer again in a heartbeat. I have you because of it. And when the midwife placed you in my arms, so tiny and warm, I thought I had never seen anything so beautiful.”

  Sera threw herself into her purple mother’s embrace, the tears she’d managed to hold at bay tumbling over her lids and spilling down her cheeks, jagged sobs ripping through her chest.

  Her mother held her and said nothing, and when at last the tears were spent, she raised a glowing fingertip.

  I do not want this, Sera’s heart confessed in agony. She could feel her purple mother’s pain swirling around her own, an older, stronger grief, with wisps and curls of feelings she didn’t quite comprehend. For the first time, her purple mother’s heart had no words for Sera to read. Just pain.

  “Sera!” Leela’s voice rang out cheerfully, and Sera could tell she was trying hard to sound like her normal, upbeat self. “Come, if you stink half as much as I do you must be dying for a bath!”

  Her purple mother’s laugh was cut through with sorrow. “She is a good friend,” she said. Then she kissed Sera’s forehead, got up, and walked toward the doorway. Pausing and turning back, she added, “You will be loved long after the ceremony, Sera. Remember that. As long as the stars burn in the sky, I will love you.”

  The Great Estuary was full of Cerulean bathing before the feast, naked and laughing, splashing about or eyeing each other with curiosity and desire.

  When Sera arrived with Leela in tow, the laughter and shouting vanished as quickly as if she had clapped a hand over all their mouths.

  “Don’t pay them any mind,” Leela said as they stripped off their robes and waded in up to their waists.

  Everyone stared, even the adults. Some bowed to her, others murmured, “Praise her” or “The chosen one.” Plenna, Jaycin, and Heena were closest to them—they were a few years older than Sera and had been a triad for many months now.

  She remembered what Koreen had said yesterday in the cloudspinners’ grove, that the wedding season was coming. The three girls would be getting married soon. And Sera was going to miss it.

  “Good afternoon, Plenna,” Leela said with a wave. Plenna’s mothers lived in the dwelling next to Leela’s. She wished Leela didn’t have to be so friendly to everyone, and then instantly hated herself for thinking it. It was not Leela’s fault that Sera had been chosen, and they would all be staring at her anyway.

  The girl gave a start and nodded at Leela, her eyes flitting back to Sera.

  “Good afternoon, chosen one,” she said.

  Sera tried to laugh, but it sounded as forced as it felt. “Come now, I am still only Sera.”

  Plenna did not seem to know what to say to that. Jaycin slipped her arm around Plenna’s waist and nodded a bit more genially.

  “Good afternoon,” she said, but Sera didn’t fail to notice that she hadn’t used her name either.

  She wanted to dissolve, disappear. She wanted everything to go back to the way it had been, when she was just an odd, curious girl, nothing more. The eyes on her were like needles pricking her skin. So she took a deep breath and dove into the Estuary, kicking with her strong legs, propelling herself through the water. Under here, there was no sound. The sun trout did not care if she was the chosen one. The silence pressed blissfully against her eardrums, the water rippling over her bare skin.

  She swam and swam, surfacing just once for air before she reached the opposite shore.

  She sat on the mudd
y bank, keeping only her head above the water, watching as the playing and laughing and joking resumed now that she’d left. A pall had been lifted. She watched as Plenna washed Heena’s back, then leaned forward to kiss her shoulder. Heena smiled and closed her eyes. Jaycin took advantage of the moment and splashed them both. Heena shrieked and laughed, and she and Jaycin fell kissing into the water while Plenna shook her head and pretended to be exasperated.

  All she wanted, and all she would never have. The agony of losing her world expanded inside Sera’s chest.

  A blue-haired head popped up beside her and she let out a shriek of fright.

  “I may not be as fast a swimmer,” Leela said, settling herself to sit in the mud beside Sera, “but I can hold my breath longer than you.”

  “That’s true,” Sera said. Then she nudged Leela with her shoulder. “You are also much better at convincing Freeda to sneak us an extra plum or two from the orchards.”

  Leela grinned. “Because I am so sweet, no one can resist me.”

  Sera giggled and it felt good. It felt real. She hoped Leela knew how much she needed her; how much her friendship meant, on this day especially, when everything was so scary and strange.

  “But,” Leela continued, “you are better at making Acolyte Imima’s head spin with all your questions about the Moon Daughters.”

  “That’s enough, Sera!” the two girls said together in their best impressions of Acolyte Imima’s whiny, nasal voice, before collapsing into laughter. Sera let her head sink under the water, and when she came back up, her brief moment of good humor vanished.

  “I wish they would not treat me like I am a stranger,” she said, staring across the bank.

  Leela gripped her hand. “You are a Cerulean. You are not a stranger.”

  Sera wanted to smile, but her mouth couldn’t seem to remember the shape. “I am different and this proves it. I wonder if it makes them all feel better, somehow, or relieved. I wonder if they will even miss me when I am gone.”

  The word gone hung between them, swaying back and forth heavily like a pendulum.

  Leela put both her hands on Sera’s shoulders, her blue eyes darkening. “I know that we are meant to trust Mother Sun and the High Priestess. I know this ceremony is necessary. I know it is best for our people. But . . .” She glanced left to right, then held out her finger.

  I hate it. Leela’s heart spoke the word with force, with fire behind it, and Sera gasped and pulled her hand away.

  Hate was worse than being frightened or angry. Hate was not an acceptable word or feeling in the City Above the Sky. The Cerulean did not hate.

  “I hate that they are taking you away from me,” Leela whispered, as if she could sense that Sera needed to hear the word aloud. “I hate that you were chosen. I hate that I will be left alone, to live the rest of my life without you.” A tear fell from Leela’s eye and landed with a tiny plink in the water. “I hate that I cannot do anything to help.”

  Sera felt as though someone with very big hands was clamping them around her throat. She looked at Leela’s warm, open, loving face and held out her glowing finger.

  Their magic shone together, and Sera poured all the love she had for her friend into the connection. Every memory, every moment. She gave Leela her heart, all of it, every last shred.

  Love, love, love.

  There was only one thing she held back, the thing she always did. Even in this bleak time, Sera would not relinquish it.

  She felt Leela’s love fill her up, their hearts beating in unison. They stayed like that, the Estuary breaking in tiny waves against their bodies, until at last Leela looked up and her eyes were dry.

  “Let’s go see the dress your green mother is preparing,” she said. “I’m sure it will be beautiful.”

  Sera nodded and swallowed her fear. She glanced across the water to where their clothes lay out on the bank with so many others.

  “I would prefer to take the long way back, if you don’t mind,” Leela said, standing and wringing the water out of her hair. “We will dry off as we walk.”

  Sera knew she was only saying that to help her—that she had sensed Sera’s reluctance to return to the opposite shore, even if it meant leaving her robe behind. Surely her mothers would not mind. She would not need robes soon anyway.

  Leela helped her to her feet. “We will have to stop at my dwelling first,” she said with a sly grin. “And don’t worry, I have told my mothers that under no circumstances are they to call you the chosen one or any other such thing.”

  “Thank you,” Sera said. “It’s just awful, isn’t it? Everyone gaping at me and saying ‘praise her.’”

  “I wonder if Koreen will suddenly act as if you are best friends now that you are so popular.”

  “I wouldn’t call it popular.”

  “I bet you could get her to do anything you want,” Leela said wistfully, tugging on a lock of her hair.

  “Trying to get the chosen one to abuse her power already?” Sera teased.

  “Oh, it would be fun. Imagine the pranks you could pull. I bet Freeda would give you as many plums as you wanted now if you asked.”

  They arrived at Leela’s house, and she lent Sera a robe but made her wait in the sitting room while she changed in her room. Leela’s mothers were kind to her as they always were, no trace that there was anything different about today, and Sera was grateful for it.

  When they returned to Sera’s dwelling, they found that Sera’s green mother had truly outdone herself.

  The cloudspun dress fell in ripples to the floor, the fabric so light and glittering Sera wondered if she had spun the thread and woven the fabric this very day. It was adorned with new rose blossoms and baby’s breath. On her head, her green mother placed a wreath of bright purple forget-me-nots. When Sera saw herself in the looking glass, she had to admit the overall effect was very becoming. She had never truly liked her reflection. Leela clapped her hands and cried, “Oh, Sera, you are a vision!”

  Her orange mother knelt before her and tied three strings of stargems—one purple, one green, one orange—around Sera’s left wrist.

  “Oh, Mother,” Sera gasped with delight, holding them up. The tiny little lights that shone within each gemstone seemed to wink at her.

  “We had them specially made,” her orange mother said, her voice trembling. “For your birthday this year.”

  Sera was too overcome to speak.

  “I have a gift for you too,” Leela said. “But I . . . I would like to give it to you privately.”

  “Of course,” her purple mother said. “We will wait for you girls in the sitting room.”

  Once they were alone, Leela dropped a fine gold chain into Sera’s palm, and Sera understood why Leela had not let her into her room earlier, and why she had asked Sera’s mothers to leave.

  “Leela, no!” she cried. The moonstone pendant glowed in her hand—Leela had found the stone nearly a year ago when she and Sera had been digging in the banks of the Great Estuary for skipping stones. They’d kept it a secret, hoping it would reveal some of its magic to them, which it never had, much to their disappointment. And then Leela had set it in a classic Cerulean design, the many-pointed star, when she was practicing her hand at jewelry making. She had never worn it, though, as far as Sera knew, and the girls had an unspoken rule that they would not tell anyone of the moonstone’s existence.

  “I could not possibly accept this,” Sera said.

  “You must. For me.”

  “But moonstone is so rare. It should stay in the City, shouldn’t it?”

  “No one knew we had it anyway, so it will not be missed. It’s yours now,” Leela said, taking the chain and fastening it around Sera’s neck. “There is nothing more precious to me than your friendship. I would not have you leave without taking a token of me with you.”

  Her voice cracked on the word leave. The chain was quite long, and Sera tucked the star under her dress so it nestled against her breastbone, keeping it hidden but close to her heart.<
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  We are the Cerulean. Our blood is magic.

  Sera clung to that thought. She was a Cerulean. She loved her City and it did not matter that she was terrified. She would not allow it to matter. All she had ever wanted was adventure, wasn’t it? She should think of this as a journey, something that no other Cerulean had done in nearly a thousand years. She gathered up her courage and wrapped it in careful layers around her heart.

  Maybe if she pretended hard enough, she would not feel afraid at all.

  She and Leela left the bedroom together and headed into the sitting room, where her mothers were waiting.

  “I am ready,” she said.

  5

  THE DAY GARDENS WERE AT THE VERY WESTERN EDGE OF the City Above the Sky, filled with the brightest flowers, purple hydrangeas and yellow tulips, red-gold fireflowers and pale pink ladyslips, and Sera’s favorite, minstrel flowers—they had iridescent petals in a rainbow of colors, and when they opened and closed, it sounded like singing.

  Her reception here could not have been more different than it was at the Estuary. Everyone wanted to talk to her now. Everyone wanted to kiss her hand or the hem of her dress. Perhaps because this feast was for her, because she was meant to be ogled, the Cerulean did not find her presence so uncomfortable. The moonstone was warm against her skin, hidden under her dress, and she felt like she was carrying Leela’s heart as well as her own.

  Koreen came rushing up to her as she entered the Day Gardens, followed by Treena and Daina.

  “Oh, Sera,” she gushed. “I’m so happy for you. Mother Sun has graced you! How does it feel?”

  That seemed to be the question everyone wanted an answer to, but no one wanted the answer Sera had to give. “I am honored, thank you,” she said, because it was easier than explaining the truth.

  “I thought I was going to faint when the High Priestess called your name!” Daina exclaimed. “It was so very exciting, wasn’t it?”

  “It’s the most exciting thing that’s happened in years, that’s what my green mother said,” Treena added. “She never thought she’d live to see the City move again.”