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“BLESS ME, MOTHER MOON, with pure intentions—” Lady Tawndra’s leather whip snapped across Rea’s back, and she paused to take a shuddering breath. “That I might honor your name with a true tongue and clean heart. Let your light fill my spirit with sacred obedience—” The whip found a raw wound this time, and Rea was reduced to sobs.
“I do this for your sake, child.” Lady Tawndra clicked her tongue. “So you will be a worthy vessel for the duty the Moon bestows upon you.”
Rea’s hands fisted in the bunched material of her robe. The top half had been peeled down to her waist to expose her tender backside. She trained her eyes on the floor, narrowing her focus to the creases between stones as she struggled to catch her breath. Her cries would only rouse the other priestesses, though none who would take pity on her.
The dormitory for the Sisters of the Quill was too far away, and even if Sister Rashal were able to hear Rea, there was little she could do in protest. The merciful sister had already risked enough by begging leniency from the high priestess. Rea could expect no more of her.
Lady Tawndra’s robes hissed as she paced back and forth. The sound was a distraction, but one Rea had become familiar with. She listened carefully for the creak of the whip’s handle and then gritted her teeth, enduring the next blow with a muffled moan.
“Bless me, Mother Moon, with pure intentions,” she began anew as soon as her voice returned.
Lady Tawndra exhaled an annoyed sigh. She seemed to prefer the lashings where she broke her subjects, turning them into blubbering, begging fools that she then took pleasure in shaming for their weaknesses. Her words held extra bite for Rea.
Lyra’s daughter was a pariah among the Moon’s Chosen. Her hair grew a defiant shade of gold, in stark contrast to the midnight tresses of their people. Some of the older sisters had strands of gray woven through their locks, and the high priestess’s hair was pure white. But no one else shared Rea’s coloring.
Her skin, too, was problematic. It only required a few moments in the sun to take on a bronze glow. The rest of the Moon’s Chosen were as pale as the Mother when she hung full and proud in the night sky.
But Rea knew that she was one of them. She had to be. Otherwise, they would have sent her away, down the mountainside to burden them no more. According to the mysterious stories whispered in the dark, the temple itself would have rejected her.
Rea thought of the secret room, of the singing staff, and knew the temple recognized her as one of its own.
It gave Rea the strength to resist cowering before Lady Tawndra when the priestess told her she was unfit to bear the mark of the Moon. That she should take comfort in the labor she was so frequently tasked with as it would soon fill her days once she was assigned to the Sisters of the Hearth.
The Sisters of the Hearth were the undesirables among their people, those considered too lowly or defective for the more prestigious sects or motherhood. Each Moon Calling yielded at least one or two. They were patted on the head and told to be grateful for the task assigned to them by the benevolent Mother, who made room for all daughters at her bosom.
What other choice did they have? Abandon the safety of the mountain? Live among the warmongering heathens that plagued the lowlands of LouMorah?
No. The Moon’s Chosen were better than that. They would stay and live out the sacred lives the Mother had planned for them, no matter the outcome of the Calling. Just as Rea intended to do.
Even so, each weary night as she crawled into bed, Rea closed her eyes tightly and prayed that she would be Called to train as a priestess and join the Sisters of the Moon. She had studied hard. She knew every chant by heart, as well as all the sacred names for and uses of the flora that grew on the mountainside. She had to hope the high priestess would take that into consideration when she summoned the Moon to decide the fate of the daughters present at the Calling.
Lady Tawndra’s whip dug into Rea’s back once more, and Rea sucked in a surprised breath, but she did not cry out. A priestess was expected to be resilient, to harden her body until it was a perfect vessel to hold the Moon’s gifts. Rea tried to convince herself that all the whippings she’d received were meant to prepare her for the highest of Callings.
Blood trickled over her shoulder, curling around her neck before it splashed onto the floor. The droplets ran into the creases between the stones and spread, forming a dark spiderweb beneath Rea.
“Let your light fill my spirit with sacred obedience.” Rea’s breath trembled, but she took comfort in the prayer.
Lady Tawndra stopped pacing. “Finish cleaning this up and go to bed,” the priestess demanded. Then she lumbered off down the passage, her chin held high and her robes swishing spitefully.
Rea sniffled and pushed her arms through the sleeves of her robe, carefully pulling the top up and over her shoulders. She left the back open, unable to fasten it without causing herself more pain, or more work when it came time to wash the garment. But tending to her wounds would have to wait.
Rea reached for her brush again, dragging it through lye and bloodied water until the stones were clean.
***
WHEN REA FINISHED HER task, she gathered her bucket and brush and limped through the corridor. Though her body ached from the fall that had invited Lady Tawndra’s wrath, and her back burned from the fresh lashing, Rea hurried, knowing morning would come too soon.
The other daughters had gone to bed some time ago. Their lessons began early in the morning. Rea supposed that the high priestess assigned her punishments so late in the evening to test her endurance. She had proven herself time and time again, but as the Moon Calling drew closer, the priestesses’ demands only grew more intense.
It is all a test, Rea told herself. The sisters would not show such attention to a daughter unless they wished to make her worthy of them.
Where the corridor to the dining hall ended, another passage ran perpendicular. A right turn led to the priestesses’ quarters and a winding staircase that ended at the mouth of the sky basin above, where the sisters of the temple gathered to honor the Moon and perform rituals and ceremonies.
Rea turned left, taking the path that led toward the kitchen, classrooms, and dormitories. She walked lightly, mindful of every step and breath lest she rouse more unwanted attention. The hanging sconces dimmed, the oil in their dishes waning as the night grew longer. Before the sun rose, a Sister of the Hearth would replenish them. Then she would slip back into the shadowy depths of the temple.
The Sisters of the Hearth worked at all hours, tending to chores when they were least likely to inconvenience the other sisters. They mostly kept to the bathing cavern during the day, or the kitchen, preparing temple meals. Rea had noticed more of them in recent years as she carried out the hearth chores assigned to her for all manner of reasons—if she anointed herself with too much or too little hallowed ash, or if she stumbled over a word mid-chant.
Once, Sister Padal had sent her to the bathing cavern to scrape moss from the walkway for blinking too frequently as she recited a prayer. It was there that Rea had first met Sister Magora.
Magora’s wisps of gray hair were hardly enough to cover her head. Patches of shiny scalp peeked through in places, though there wasn’t much she could do about it. The sister’s milky eyes saw only shapes and shifting shadows, and her knobby old fingers moved at a snail’s pace.
Rea had been terrified of her, but as the pair worked together side by side, a comforting kinship had blossomed.
Magora spoke of her own Calling, many years before most of the current sisters in the temple had been born. The high priestess had been among her peers. They had taken the same classes and even shared a room in the daughters’ dormitory.
Magora also recalled Lyra, though she spoke softly and only briefly of the late priestess who had shown her kindness and respect. The confession warmed Rea’s heart, giving her hope, and despite fearing a fate similar to that of the Sister of the Hearth, Rea vowed to do the same, to offer kindness and respect to all the Moon’s Chosen, no matter their faction or treatment of her.
Rea leaned against the carved mouth of the kitchen and loosed a relieved sigh. She was surprised and grateful to have made it this far without collapsing. The pain and exhaustion were taking a toll, but she pushed herself upright and shuffled inside to replace the brush and bucket under the stone slab that ran the length of the kitchen.
It was dark at this hour, the pendant lamps over the slab all extinguished, and the hearth against the far wall smoldering with the charred remains of a black locust log. Rea took a moment to warm her hands over it and then hurried out of the kitchen and past the empty classrooms, eager to find her bed.
The corridor widened at the far end. Three sets of stairs were carved into the stone—one in the center that led down, and two that curled upward on either side. Rea took the stairs on the right to the daughters’ dormitory. She was quiet as she snuck into the shared nook, but Nyna had waited up for her.
“Great Mother,” Nyna hissed as she threw back her covers. “I thought you only had to clean the floor outside the dining hall. What did you do to earn another lashing?”
“I slipped and fell too loudly.” Rea eased onto the edge of her bed and offered a faint smile. This was the first time Nyna had spoken to her all week. She didn’t blame her. Whenever Tawndra was in one of her moods, none of the other daughters so much as looked at Rea for fear of drawing the priestess’s attention. Not everyone was built for the demands of sisterhood.
“I’ll get the salve,” Nyna said, leaving the comfort of her bed to fetch the healing balm Rea kept in a wooden box at the bottom of her robe basket. Sister Rashal had shown her how to make it from honey and yarrow during her fifth year at the temple. That was after Rea had mastered the sisterhood assessment, and when the lashings became more frequent.
The assessment was the only morsel of control daughters had over their futures. Their first nine years were spent in the flatlands with their mothers. Then their second nine were spent at the temple, a sacred obligation, learning the way of the Moon’s Chosen. Their paths diverged at the Calling.
Most daughters returned to the flatlands to become mothers, after being blessed by the high priestess in the maternity pool hidden in the caves that ran beneath the temple. They would bear the Moon new daughters the following spring. Some returned years later, after their first daughter went to the temple, to be blessed with a second.
The remaining daughters, a rare few from each Calling, were chosen for sisterhood and stayed on at the temple. Those accepted by the Sisters of the Moon would continue training to become priestesses, and those taken by the Sisters of the Quill joined the sect that oversaw the bulk of the daughters’ studies and care. Those neither faction wanted, and who weren’t seeded by the Moon, were taken in by the Sisters of the Hearth—banished to the dank, lower level of the temple where they were tasked with servant duties.
After the sisterhood assessment, halfway through year five at the temple, most daughters had a clear idea of what the Moon had in store for them. Nyna, for instance, was confident that she would return to her mother in the flatlands with a daughter nestled in her womb.
Rea missed her already. The last three years of her first nine in the flatlands had been spent under the care of Nyna’s mother. The girls had shared chores and a bed. And Nyna’s mother, while not exactly warm, had been fair. She worked them hard in the terraced gardens that lined the mountainside, and harder still in her kitchen where they salted and dried their bounty, sending half to the temple and saving the rest for winter.
“You really must be more careful,” Nyna whispered as she peeled away the back of Rea’s robe and examined the damage in the moonlight that filtered through their narrow slit of a window.
“I know,” Rea said, then she sighed as Nyna’s cool fingers probed her wounds, filling the tears in her flesh with salve.
“You smell like that wild goat that got into our onions the year you moved in with us. Do you remember?” Nyna snorted out a quiet laugh, and Rea grinned in spite of herself.
“I do. It was awful,” Rea admitted. “But it’s much too late, and I’m much too tired for a bath.”
“Then at least strip out of this filthy robe,” Nyna said. “I’ll help you into a fresh one.”
“Thank you.” Rea swallowed and blinked away a tear as she stood. Her body protested, but she quickly shucked the bloody, sweat-crusted garment and draped it over a wicker basket in the corner. She hated redressing without bathing first, but it was unavoidable for now. She was spent.
Nyna pulled the last clean robe from another basket beside Rea’s bed. It smelled of lavender and rosemary, though the backside was dingy with faded bloodstains. Rea had done her best to keep her humble wardrobe pristine, but the sisters had not made the feat easy.
Nyna left the new robe open to prevent the rough material from dragging over Rea’s back. This was not the first time she had aided her friend, and she’d suffered through a lashing or two of her own, mostly as a result of associating with Lyra’s daughter.
Once Rea was in a somewhat comfortable position on her stomach, Nyna pulled the cover up to her waist. Then she untangled the braids looped around Rea’s head, carefully unknotting them and combing the hair to one side, away from the ragged flesh. She smoothed the loose strands with the balmy residue on her fingers before retying the braids and fixing them in place at Rea’s crown again.
When Nyna stood to return to her own bed, Rea stirred, having nearly drifted off at her friend’s comforting touch.
“Thank you.”
“Rest now,” Nyna whispered, pressing a hand to Rea’s cheek.
“Thank you,” Rea repeated, a groggy slur to her words.
“Shhhh.”
“You’re going to be the very best mother,” Rea said. Then sleep dragged her eyes closed once more.