Page 21 of Sightwitch
Once they reached the stone bridge, the old woman pointed toward the island. I couldn’t hear her, but I could guess she said something akin to what they always say: “Wait on the island beside the fountain. Someone will come for you.”
She then knelt and embraced the girl.
I confess, my throat went dry at the sight of it. I hadn’t been hugged … or touched … or spoken to in so long.
Goddess,it had been so long.
Quick. Efficient. The hug was over in a blink before the woman was standing once more and nudging the child onto the bridge.
The girl crossed, her steps cautious but surprisingly unafraid. She carried a small rucksack on her back, presumably filled with some personal belongings. The woman watched her, waiting stiff as a mountain, and I watched her too.
It occurred to me, as the girl took each of her forty-three steps across the bridge (if you have my legs, it takes only thirty-two), that I needed to clean the bridge again. I had scrubbed it fourteen days ago, yet already algae globbed up the south side.
But then Tanzi’s voice niggled at me again.Why bother, Ry? There’s no one around to see.
“I am the last Sightwitch Sister,” I murmured, “and if I don’t follow the Rules, Tanz, then what’s the point of being?” Yet even as I said it, I couldn’t shake the feeling that therewasno here in being here.
And I couldn’t shake the feeling that I should have gone deeper into the Crypts.
When at last the child reached the island, the woman swiveled away and strode off into the pine trees. Not gone forever, I didn’t think. Since supplicants were not always welcomed inside.
Normally, a Sister would scurry out to the island as soon as she’d spotted the supplicant, but sometimes that took hours. The Sorrow was not observed all day; duty in the nest was only a few hours in the afternoon. So oftentimes, supplicants had to wait.
The day slid past.
For almost eight hours, the girl waited on the island for “someone to come for her”—formeto come for her. I, in turn, waited to see what she would do.
Yes, so lonely have I become that the prospect of company set my heart to racing with excitement.
I am pathetic.
But by the Sleeper, it was so much like that day nine years ago when Tanzi had been left by her grandmother. It was the first time Hilga let me go with her to the Sorrow, and I had been there to welcome little Tanzi into our ranks.
Not that I was very nice. She still teases me for how stiff I was …
Teases? Teased?
Teases.Because of course, Tanzi is still alive, and she’ll be back any day now. If I don’t find her first.
Yet I could not greet this new child like I had Tanzi. I couldn’t welcome her into the Convent.
Never.
I might break the Order of Two—and perhaps even Rule 9—but I only risked myself then. To break Rule 12 about accepting new children … That put someone else’s life at stake.
Not an option.
Although that truth didn’t keep me from imagining what it would be like to go to the girl. A hundred times over the course of the day, I dreamed it out in great detail.
She was clearly such a smart child—and fearless too. First, she explored the narrow spit of the island, even dipping her toes in the pond around it. Then she peered into the fountain, but there’s nothing to see. It was drained decades ago, and the carvings of the Twelve that once lined the granite floor have eroded into blank ovals of striated nothing.
The girl dismissed it in a heartbeat and moved to the northern shore where the land slants up into a tiny stone cliff. Rocks rest there, and she quickly set to stacking them. Taller, taller. She spent hours assembling pile after pile, like some miniature architect using strategy and elegance to keep each rock afloat.
I left several times throughout the day. The tomatoes needed picking, and the dill weed had, yet again, overtaken everything.
Yet I never lasted more than an hour at my duties before I would scurry back to the southern forest, my heart pounding as I wondered,Will she still be there?Then I’d shimmy up the ladder and into the lookout’s nest.
Each time, though, I would find the girl exactly as I had left her, with a few more rock piles towering around her.
