CHAPTER 9: Memories
I PACED the floor that night till my bare feet hurt, and I was forced to sit on the edge of the cot.
But, even then, it was too obvious from the stares of the other Demure around me that not even this corner of the communal bunk room was mine. The room was dark, except for the flickering lantern in the middle of the floor and most of the girls were already in bed, but the stares of the others' cut through the darkness towards me like a jabbing knife.
Filled with blatant scorn.
And questions I couldn't answer.
I was always the fucking outsider—always!
I curled up on the cot, bringing my knees to my chest. I shivered, but I wasn't cold; I was remembering the Temple Matriarch's freezing eyes.
The way her lips had drawn in disgust.
Of me?
She hadn't believed me.
None of them had.
And they'd taken the necklace.
I felt naked without its coldness between my breasts—like they'd robbed me of something far greater than a trinket. ...Like they'd stolen something personal from me. Maybe my soul.
Would I ever be able to get out of this hellhole?
Or was I stuck here forever? Doomed never to fit in? Never to find my place? Stripped of any magic I might have? And destined to bring choas to everything I touched?
My heart hurt.
And, focusing on that pain, I didn't notice my eyelids sliding down, joining the tears...
As the memory enveloped me in a dream...
> My bare feet padded down the marble floor of the town temple, the heat from the candle I held warming my chin and my fingers where the wax was nearly gone. I'd stolen the candle from the discard box they stashed in the back room. The temple went through far too many candles to waste the ends...and I couldn't sleep so...
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> Wandering the halls at night was my favorite.
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> The place was hushed with a reverence that seemed to magnify in the darkness as liquid shadows crept up the enormous walls, filling the space wherever my candlelight didn't touch.
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> But tonight was different.
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> This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
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> I heard the girl's cries echoing in the hall.
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> A small girl.
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> One of the young ones who'd just been brought to temple, by the shrill edge to it.
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> And adult voices.
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> Slipping under the door nearest me which was lit with a wavering light, despite curfew and the late hour.
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> I pressed myself against the freezing, stone wall, daring my lungs to breathe and myself to move closer. If they caught me out in the hall past curfew, I'd be scrubbing the altar and floors for a month...but, if I didn't creep closer, I wouldn't be able to hear what they were saying...
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> "This doesn't feel right—we aren't to use old magic." I recognized the nervous edge of the woman's voice—definitely Madame Ribley who was nearly a mother to us all...
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> "Well, you quiet the child, then. She'll wake the gods with the rate at which she's been screaming all night!" the High Priest huffed in response, "She's asking for her mother, we'll quiet her with her mother."
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> His words were quick and decisive.
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> My breath hitched in my throat.
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> What were they talking about? —Old magic? Surely, they couldn't find the girl's mother at this time of the night...
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> I blew out the flame of my candle and inched closer, staying in the shadow so they wouldn't see.
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> The door was opened just a crack, the light filtering out and making a triangle on the far wall. If I could just—
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> I saw Madame's elbow through the crack in the door.
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> Her worried face as she brushed back the hair of a sobbing little girl clutching at her toga.
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> And the High Priest brushed past both her and the girl, his wide form coming into view as he rummaged in the room's closet.
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> He pulled some sort of life-size, gray-fabric doll out from behind the doors. It looked like it'd been stuffed with straw and had sewn X's for eyes.
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> ...What were they doing?
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> "Are you sure?" Madame's expression constricted anxiously.
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> The High Priest nodded.
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> And he closed his eyes.
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> I watched him summon his magic.
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> Blue smoke filled the floor of the room—
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> And, suddenly—
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> I gasped.
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> Gagged.
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> I slipped a hurried hand over my mouth, but Madame spun towards the door—
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> And I ran.
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> Hair whipping behind me.
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> Feet slapping over the cold floor.
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> Candle dropped and forgotten in the hall.
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> But I couldn't forget what I'd seen.
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> The doll—
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> It'd—
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> I shook my head as I flew back to my bed.
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> And I crawled under the covers, shoving my freezing feet beneath the scratchy wool, but the image wouldn't go away.
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> ...Because the High Priest's magic smoke had covered the doll.
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> ...And, when I'd blinked, it'd become a woman.
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> Who'd reached out towards the little girl. And the little girl blinked up through her sobbing tears, cocking her head, "Mommy?" ...And she ran to her embrace.
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> He'd made the doll her mother.
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> The High Priest had somehow brought that enormous, stuffed corn doll to life.
I woke up in a dead sweat from reliving it all.
My heart thundered in my chest.
My breath ran ragged.
I reached up to find the oily strands of my hair plastered to my slick forehead.
And I wanted to shut my eyes again.
Because today was the day Poseidon decided my fate.
And this was all such a fucking nightmare.