The Cerulean (Untitled Duology, #1)(69)

“I feel I am going insane,” she whispered. “I remember things that can’t be real. Ever since the Night Gardens.”

“I have brought you some food, Kandra.” Sera’s green mother appeared with a plate piled high. Leela sat up, putting her hands back under the table. “Oh, good evening, Leela.”

“Good evening, Green Mother.”

Sera’s green mother smiled, but her smile was too tight and did not curve upward. “How have you been?” she asked. “We do miss hearing your laugh around our dwelling.”

Sera’s purple mother flinched.

“I have been . . .” Leela trailed off. She could not lie to Sera’s mothers. “I have been very sad.”

Sera’s green mother swallowed. “Yes. It has been difficult for us all. But what a lovely celebration.” She swept out her hand at the crowds eating and drinking and chattering happily. “It is sure to put all grief out of mind.” But her voice cracked on the last word and a tear spilled down her cheek. Sera’s purple mother closed a frail hand around her wrist.

“Stop it, Seetha,” she said. “Stop pretending. Please.”

Sera’s green mother scrubbed the tear away, putting the plate on the table. “You must eat, Kandra. You must.”

Leela opened her mouth, unsure of what to say but devastated at what was happening to Sera’s family. At that moment someone shouted, “The Lunarbelle, the Lunarbelle!” A group of novices began to sing, the minstrel flowers joining them, and several Cerulean musicians took up their harps and lyres and frame drums. Everyone rushed to form circles to begin the dance.

“Leela!” Elorin was at her side, smiling, with a wreath of pink and yellow tulips in her hair. “Come, let us dance!”

Leela allowed herself to be pulled away from the grieving women, joining Elorin as they formed a circle with Baarha, Crailin from the Aviary, and a few of the cheesemongers. They clasped hands and began the complex, intertwining dance, but when the Lunarbelle ended and everyone sat down to eat, Leela saw Sera’s purple mother sitting in the same spot, her plate of food untouched, twisting the same napkin with a lifeless expression.

Later that night, Leela lay awake, her stomach in knots.

She wondered if she would ever have a night of unbroken rest again. But she could not ignore the niggling feeling in her chest that was telling her to go to the Night Gardens. Even though Sera’s purple mother had seemed beyond the reach of reason, something told Leela that she would find her there. Some deeply buried instinct called to her to trust herself.

She threw off her covers and slipped out of the window, her orange mother’s snores fading as she crept through the glass dwellings, past the Apiary, wading through the moonflower fields until she came to the Night Gardens. Silence enveloped her completely as she entered them. No birds sang or crickets chirped. The Night Gardens had always filled Leela with a sort of fearful wonder, but tonight all she could think of was the last time she had been here. Yet she was determined not to let the past frighten her.

She brushed aside a low-hanging cloud on the leaf of a nebula tree and made her way through the gardens, all the scarlets and purples and grays bleached white in the moonlight. A will-o-wisp floated past her, its eerie blue light casting strange shadows on the tree trunks. She knew where she was going without really knowing, her feet carrying her of their own accord, and when she reached the raised dais jutting out over the falling water of the Estuary, she stopped. The memories were painfully clear—she could almost see Sera standing there again, falling into nothingness. Into death.

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 . . .”