Chapter One
I was born of the dawn and sea. A newborn baby in a basket, gifted from the sea to the shore, via the rising sun. Naked, soaked through and half frozen, I was clutching a hand scrawled note simply with the name ‘Mara.’
And so it was told by the priestesses of the dawn to prospective parents, and they were told in return, time and time again, that it was a bad omen that the sea had spat me out, and thus, I had never been adopted. It was not in their nature to lie of my origins, and if it were, their vows to Ansha, Goddesses of the Dawn prohibited it, and so I never found a mother to love me. Perhaps that is the reason for the following events, or perhaps it is simply my excuse.
Abandoning the dirty plates and crockery in the kitchen, I snuck to the library to read in peace. From beyond the shelved walls, I heard the priestesses singing their hymns to the goddess as they always did after supper.
With the sound drifting under the closed doors, I shut my eyes and tried to pick out Priestess Ahnn’s voice amongst the caterwaul of the other’s. Once my ear was tuned to it, I pressed my shoulders into the leather armchair, sinking deep into the crevice moulded by time into the shape of me, and opened my book.
A brief History of Athovan. I could recite it word for word since I was eight. I flicked to chapter three hundered and twenty five. Running a finger across the illustration of the ship fleet that sank the last pirate ship, I cursed them under my breath. Eleven years since they restored peace on the ocean, and nothing interesting had happened after – and yet the people of Anshallia still feared the sea. I skimmed the chapter, muttering words under my breath. Demarion’s ship was destroyed, his body, never recovered, presumed eaten by sharks or other such creatures. Thirty nine thousand gold coins pilfered from his sinking ship. A mere fraction of his expected wealth. The rest never found. The crew surrendered and were quickly executed.
Snapping it closed, for I was in no mood to read the next chapter of nothingness, I stood to return it to its shelf. Pausing for a moment, I noticed one of the doors was now open. The singing had ceased - early.
As if a predator lurked in the shadows, my skin prickled and my hearing sharpened, for I was its prey – spotted out in the open and now doomed.
“Hello?” I called out.
“Hello, Mara,” a shadowed figure replied from behind the carved statue of Ansha, and I shivered, for I was indeed doomed.
“What do you want?” I asked, sliding the book into its rightful place. Wracking my brain, I tried to remember what I had done wrong this time.
“Manners,” they replied.
“What do you want, please?” I retorted with a smirk, pulling a random book from the shelf.
“Honestly, Mara, I despair at you!” The high priestess stepped into the light. Her white robes filthy at the hem and her crown of golden suns rested crooked on her greying hair. I tried my best not to fixate on it, but it irritated my very soul, causing my left eye to twitch.
“I am a lost cause, High Priestess, I shall never learn,” I slumped back into my chair and opened - The History of Wine. Great.
“There we agree,” rolling her eyes, she came closer, hovering above me like a relentless mosquito in the summer months, waiting to strike, to bite into my flesh and suck the blood from my veins.
I ignored her as best I could, reading about the grapes that grew in Chrisanton, those that made the sweetest wines, but she licked her lips in such a way that I could hear the smack of her tongue, the saliva swish across each crack and crevice in her dry lips, and my shoulders tensed.
“What? What is it?” I lowered the book and glared at her.
“I wish to speak with you,” she said, as if that wasn’t already apparent.
“Then speak,” I said.
“Your rudeness does you no favours, Mara, perhaps if you were a little less – difficult – we wouldn’t be in this mess,” she began to pace.
“And what mess would that be?” I took the bait and cursed myself for it, I could not help myself.
“It is only a week until your sixteenth year with us, the time we mark your birth. You will come of age,” she said.
“I will, yes,” I replied with a hint of trepidation, for that weighed heavy on my mind too.
“You have not been adopted,” she spoke as if this was news to me, some great secret finally coming to light, and not a fact I had lived with my whole life.
“What can I say, high priestess? I am a bad omen, the people fear the sea, they fear me,” I raised my eyebrows, holding her gaze for a moment, before returning to my book.
“Well, the time has now come to make a decision about the path you will take,” I could feel her stare boring a hole in my forehead but I did not flinch. Waiting a while longer for a response, she sighed at my silence and continued on regardless, “the path you choose now will shape your life forever,” she narrowed her eyes as if willing me to take it more seriously.
“I haven’t made any plans yet,” I turned the page, it was full of illustrations of leaf shape, grape size and colour. Riveting.
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“No, I am aware,” she said.
“Priestess Ahnn says I may stay as long as I want. That it was not the sea but the dawn that brought me here, I am a gift, and I am a blessing,” I smiled oh so sweetly because I knew her thoughts on Priestess Ahnn’s theories.
“Priestess Ahnn is – spirited – in her beliefs, we do not know what brought you here, and we never will,” she coughed away the hint of anger in her voice.
“But all life is a blessing, High Priestess,” I said, looking up with a tilt of my head and my best puppy-dog eyes, “so is not mine too?”
“Yes. I suppose,” she forced a smile, causing the wrinkles at her eyes to show more prominently, “but a life without purpose is no life at all, Mara.”
“What would you have me do?” I asked, and instantly regretted it.
“I am glad you asked, for I have put a great a deal of thought into this, I have consulted Goddess Ansha, and I have found there are but two options for you,” she turned her back to me, stepping away and I knew I was not going to like it, “one – you may stay here in the Dawn Palace, take your oath, swear your devotion to our Goddess Ansha and devote your life to her and the service of our people, as I have and, priestess Ahnn, and countless others before us.”
“And the second option?” I asked and I noted her pause before answering.
“There is a farmer on the north side of the island. He has reached out to me, to the palace for guidance. He is old and that has brought frailty, his wife is in the heavens, his daughter married off - he has but one other child – a son of twenty five. The farm, well, it struggles.”
“You wish me to go work on a farm?” I scoffed, because peace for me was always found in reading, not in being outdoors.
“Not quite,” she said, still with her back to me, “he wrote to tell me of his son’s - troubles.”
“What kind of troubles?” I asked.
“Troubles finding a wife,” taking a sharp intake of breath through her nose, she awaited the onslaught.
“You wish me to marry him?” I laughed as if she was joking, but the High Priestess was never much of a jester and my laugh subsided with the silence that greeted it.
Finally she turned and I saw the seriousness in her eyes, my heart stopped and for a brief moment I was sure it would never beat again. But unluckily for me, it did. Ferociously pounding in my chest, it frothed my blood and my cheeks burned.
“I wish only for your happiness, Mara. If you choose that path, then yes, you would be expected to marry him and bare his children, so the family name could continue and there would be more hands for the farm - it is a noble act to grow food for the nation.”
“I’m sure it is, but I’m just sixteen, I am not ready to marry, least of all a man I have never met!” I seethed through gritted teeth.
“You are soon to be seventeen. Many marry at that age, even those with more options than you,” her brows arched.
“So that is it, is it? I am to become a priestess or a wife?!”
“Both are respectable paths.”
“Both will doom me to a loveless life,” I threw the book, and it slid across the flagstone floor, hitting the feet of the statue of Ansha.
“MARA!” The high priestess screamed.
“May Goddess Ansha smite me down,” I raised my hands to the heavens.
“Stop being so dramatic, Mara!” she plucked the book from the floor, whispered an apology to her goddess, and placed it on the desk.
“I would rather die, than never feel real love,” I said.
“You speak of love as if it is everything. Priestess Ahnn has spoiled you with those novels of hers. Purpose is more important, Mara. A sense of purpose will motivate you through the darkest of nights, until the sun rises once more, and the dawn brings you clarity and the pride of a job well done. Love cannot give you that.”
“How would you know? You have never felt it a day in your life,” I stood to leave, but the High priestess grabbed my wrist with a bony hand. My skin whitened beneath her fingertips. I could feel her hot breath on my cheek. It stank of cabbage and regret.
“Do not presume to know my life before you were delivered into it,” she released her grip, “Priestess Ahnn will take you to the farm tomorrow. You can meet the son and make your decision. Who knows, maybe it will be love at first sight.”
Walking away, the High priestess laughed to herself. Her white robes swished over the stone tiles, picking up more dust for its ever growing collection. Pausing in the doorway, she inhaled deeply and looked back over her shoulder.
“And do the dishes!” she said before slamming the door, leaving me alone in the library once more.
I picked up the book from the desk, brushed the dirt from its cover and placed it back amongst the other history books. I skimmed their titles for something more to read, but ended up at the small wooden shelf in the corner of the room instead.
Made of a piece of driftwood, washed up on our shore, likely from a wrecked ship, the beginning of a name – PE – was painted with golden swirls across the remnants of blue paint. It was a wondrous shade, like the sky on a perfect day. Priestess Ahnn had asked a local boy to build it in exchange for some honey from our bees, much to the annoyance of the High Priestess - she always accused her of spoiling me, but mostly she was just a glutton for the sweet golden nectar.
It was not as grand as the golden gilt shelves that housed the rest of the books, but to me it was perfect, for it was mine and no one else’s. I had little possessions in this world and she had promised to fill it with stories, just for me. All the other books in our small library were nonfiction – historical tomes and guides on better gardening. I had read them all, of course, again and again, but my shelf, my perfect, sky blue shelf, was full of novels, and they were my favourite.
I ran my finger over the spines of the six books she had already managed to procure - for free I supposed, for the priestesses were not permitted to earn coin.
One was about a brave knight who slaughtered a dragon in a far off land - oh how I had wished to be her, wearing armour of shimmering silver and wielding a sword with a jewelled hilt. The adventure – the rush as that sword penetrated the dragon’s beating heart, stopping it once and for all, freeing the land from his wrath and ruin. But sometimes on my darker days, I wished the dragon victory. The heat of his fire blistering my skin, the feeling of his teeth ripping apart my flesh as he devoured me, taking me away from the world that called me bad omen.
The second book she brought me for my twelfth birthday. It told the story of a beautiful but cursed mermaid who beckoned sailors to their deaths. I imagined her to be my mother. It was my favourite daydream. She had fallen for a lowly sailor, or sometimes he was a pirate. When I was born with legs and not a tail, she lovingly weaved a basket of driftwood to push me ashore for him to find. But the High Priestess had instead, hiding me away, scared of my parentage, but my father was tirelessly searching for me. Every knock on the door I wished it was him, hurried to see, but it never was. Eventually as I grew, my daydreams relented, and I accepted my fate.
The other four books were love stories. Deep, powerful love shared between two people. The kind that made your heart beat so ferociously you felt as if it would explode into a bloody mess. I longed for it more than anything, but I didn’t even know if it was real or make believe – for how could something so perfect truly exist?
I pulled my favourite from the shelf. A Heart Like Yours. It was about a princess who fell for a simple farm boy. I sank back into my arm chair and opened it to chapter one. I imagined my farm boy, the one who was expecting me in the morning, and I whispered a prayer to Goddess Ansha, that I was his princess.