The Cerulean (Untitled Duology, #1)(73)

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.”

Leela’s eyebrows shot up her forehead. “That was rather vain of her.”

“I thought so too at the time, but was it? I am not sure I believe anything I was taught anymore. I feel as if I do not even trust the very air around me.” Kandra stood and brought the lantern with her to the open door. “Estelle had a sharp mind, and her magic was strong. I could feel it when we blood bonded, a heartbeat that was more powerful than mine. Her heart spoke to me of the desire to know more, to be more. Sera was always looking to the planet for escape, but Estelle looked to the stars. She wanted more than just the knowledge of Mother Sun’s existence. She wanted tangible proof; she wanted a voice in her ear or a hand on her shoulder. She felt there was something missing in this City and that she alone could discover the cause and fill the void. She began to frighten me a little. And then I fell in love with Seetha and Otess—I found my missing tokens, that’s how I always put it to Sera. They completed me. My life changed, my purpose became clear, and Estelle and I drifted apart.

“And so I was not by her side when she died of the sleeping sickness.”

Leela gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. The sleeping sickness was the only disease that could kill a Cerulean, the only virus resistant to the healing power in their blood because it fed on their very magic. It came on suddenly, leeching a Cerulean dry until she was nothing but an empty husk. There had been spells of it throughout the years, though none in Leela’s lifetime. It would run through the City like a fever, usually taking several lives before running its course. There was no cure for it.