Page 4 of Sightwitch
FOR A LONE SISTER IS LOST.
We call it the Order of Two, and no matter your heritage, the letters shift and melt into whatever language you find easiest to read.
For me, that is Cartorran. My aunt took me from Illrya before I was old enough to learn its written language.
I could not help but wonder, every time I saw these letters,What do those words look like for someone who cannot read?
I shook my head. A useless question, and one that left me running to catch back up to the group.
The rest of my day unfolded in silence.
Tanzi’s half of the bed is cold now, as I write this. Only without her here do I realize how adapted to her presence I am. Her sideways snorts when she thinks something’s funny. The constant cracking of her knuckles while she talks. Or even how she breathes heavy in her sleep, not quite a snore, but a sound I’m so accustomed to.
I don’t want to sleep. I don’t want to wake up alone. And I don’t want to wake up wondering, yet again, why, why,whyI am still without the Sight.
Tanzi Lamanaya
Y10 D234
Today, I received a knife with an amber on the hilt. My mentor, Sister Hilga, told me it is the “key to the past” and that I must not lose it. “Every Sister at the Convent has their own key,” she said. “And they are not to be shared.”
She also gave me a huge book calledA Brief Guide to the Sight-witchesand this diary, in which I’m supposed to record all events of the day. Then, upon waking, I must record all of my dreams.
I hope I can remember my dreams. I’ve never remembered them before.
Today, I learned the hierarchy of the Sightwitch Sisters. I don’t think I’ll forget the three kinds of Sisters, seeing as I live here now and will be seeing them every day, but I also do not want to disobey my mentor. Especially since my roommate, a girl named Ryber Fortiza, has now scolded me twice for not following the rules.
Ryber is from Illrya, and she’s just like Gran-Mi always said the Illryans were: focused and serious.
“Your bed is not made right,” Ryber pointed out earlier. Then just a few moments later, she said, “You will get us into trouble, Tanzi. The lanterns are snuffed at the twenty-first chimes, and lighting a candle after that would be breaking Rule 33.”
Her dark eyes have been narrowed ever since and her brow sloped so low. Gran-Mi would say that she has a face for telling stories, because it is so expressive.
I miss Gran-Mi. I hope I don’t cry tonight. I don’t think Ryber would like that.
Oh, no, Ryber is staring expectantly at me again. I had better write what I remember from my lessons.
First, we were assigned something called the Nine Star Puzzle. “Given the nine stars,” Hilga said, “connect them all with only four lines and without lifting your chalk from the slate.”
The nine stars were laid out like this:
But I still haven’t figured out how to connect the stars with only four lines. And I’ve tried a hundred different ways.
After that, we learned the three kinds of Sisters.
Ryber drew the pictures for me and added the notes. She says it’s better to have pictures in our diaries, but I can’t draw.
“Not yet,” Ryber told me, “but you’ll learn.” Then she read what I’d written about her above, and she laughed. A big sound. The kind Gran-Mi would’ve called “catching.”
“You can call me Ry,” she said next. “And I’m sorry I nagged you earlier. But Rule 8 says, ‘Obedience is holy.’ So you see? Only by following the Rules will Sirmaya know which Sisters are good enough for her to Summon.”
Serving Sisters are acolytes at the Convent. They serve the Sightwitch Sisters by helping to clean, cook, and garden.
Summoned Sisters are acolytes who have been Summoned by Sirmaya to go into the mountain. For up to two days, a Sister is underground meeting the Goddess, but I don’t really know what that means.
Sightwitch Sisters have the Sight, meaning they can look at something once and remember it forever. They also can use their knives (like the knife Sister Hilga gave me) to remove memories from corpses. And, when they pray together, the Sisters can see visions in the scrying pool at the observatory.
“Oh,” I said, thinking back to the massive list of Rules that Hilga had showed me earlier.
