Page 168 of The Cerulean Sister
I squeeze her shoulder when I feel a wind coming up around us, her words stuttering as she feels it too, and she repeats the prayer again with harsher inflection.
"Cloak us. Cloak this temple, this city against those who mean to do great harm to it. Ward up the air, the ground, the water that flows through it so that none who wish it harm can pass!"
My hair whips around wildly, slashing across my face. When I peek through my lids, Thea is crying, tears streaming down her tightly closed eyes.
Calliape continues and the pressure builds but it never spills over.
The banging on the door continues. However, a feeling of warmth and protection never manifests.
She looks so nervous when she opens her eyes to look at me, her expression ashen and desperate.
It's not working.
She violently turns the page. "First Mother, hear us in our hour of need! We come to you at the edge of destruction. I speak into your ear while you slumber to bring you news of the end."
She reads so fast I cannot make sense of what she is saying.
Her eyes dart back and forth across the page, trying to get out the words like she will be caught speaking them.
"Calliape, stop this!" Selene shouts from the temple aisle, and her tone sends a shiver down my spine.
But then I feel it, a great tremor from the conjunction, shaking us and reminding everyone how truly small we are in this world.
"First Mother, hear me, hear your children. We would not come if we did not know we would perish!"
The tremor continues, cracks beginning to form in the stone along the ceiling like we will break apart.
"Repeat my words!" Calliape shouts, looking right at me then Thea. "Mother, see that your children need you, wicked or not."
We repeat.
"Mother, see that we are wicked but we know no other way."
We repeat.
"If you must punish us, thenwakeand show us your path, but protect us in doing so."
Only Thea repeats this time.
I cannot compel myself to speak the words.
"Calliape, you do not know what you do!" Selene screams from the aisle, trying to get closer, but the wind is so great, only spinning around our circle as Calliape reads words that make my skin crawl.
When I try to remove my grasp from her shoulder, I can't.
She flips to another page.
"If Mother does not slumber alone, then those who lie at her side, do my bidding, wake!"
The slow cracking sound fills the temple like something is about to give way.
Crumbling pieces of stone fall from the ornate corbels on the ceiling.
99 ducks and moves Selene out of the way just as another falls and shatters onto the stone floor.
Thea waits for Calliape to finish the passage, watching her obediently, as if she were truly giving a temple service.
But Calliape looks lost, her pupils blown out and lined with water.
