Page 1 of The Garnet Daughter
Chapter
One
SOME TIME BEFORE
The forest no longer murmurs softly—it shrieks. The trees demand an audience, beckoning me to listen to their cries. With every hair on my head, the sacred mountain speaks to me and only me.
The voice is crisp, but the words are a mess of whispers and screams in my ears, of deep baritones calling out to me and pulling me away, or perhaps pushing me forward. They offer no coherent sentences, but the message is always clear.
I must leave Frith.
I hear it even now, the dark sound new to the mountain as the conjunction representatives are escorted to the tree line to exit our village. They came for my world’s sacred stone and the one we kept for the planet Viathan. Now those very stones are to join their sister on another world, reunited in one of Cosima’s temples. They will remain there until the planetary conjunction is complete, when all three of our worlds line up perfectly for a time and then drift away from each other all over again.
“What did you whisper to Priestess Ferren?” I ask, waving to her one last time. It hurts to witness her expression now, but I will see her again, this I and the mountain know.
Selene adjusts her crossed arms as we observe our departing visitors until the forest swallows them up. “Mary was not here to make sure the secrets of this mountain and its people are kept. I reminded her of that importance.”
Selene’s harsh protection is ever present, ever choking. The closer Ferren and I became during her stay here, the pricklier Selene turned. To her, my unexpected friend stands for everything she and my mother had run from, and everything she was trying to save me from.
The Cosima representative, Mary, was a friend of Selene’s, but the last time she visited our village during the previous conjunction, I was young and not permitted close to the visitors. She is well known in our village and often spoken of by those she has helped transport here for a different life. She assists those who wish to leave their current situations and that drew me to her.
When Selene’s gift informed her through the leaves that Mary perished while traveling here, my thought-out exit plan dissolved like the waterlogged branches consumed by the moss layer of the mountain.
I’ve dreamed of a ticket back to my mother’s home planet, before she and Selene left while I was still within the roots of my mother’s womb. She is not here to answer the questions I have of Cosima, she was taken from this world before I knew what to ask, and Selene either refuses me or will only paint a negative picture.
Part of me is missing, or maybe part of a life that could have been was taken from me and I long for the pieces I might find out there, along with a reason for my increased restlessness.
I thought another opportunity to continue my departure plan became available when I met the rest of the representatives, but that was also quickly abandoned when I became close with Ferren during her stay with us. What started as a fascination ofher life within the priestess order, a path that would be mine if I were raised on Cosima, soon turned into a genuine friendship, so asking her for such a favor didn’t seem right.
There is only one option to see the plan that took root in my mind years ago and has been begging to be fulfilled. My last hope is the unconventional Viathan pilot called August, currently guarding their skyship at the base of the mountain.
My interactions with him during his stay in the village were brief, but each one was pleasant, if not a little flirty . . . on his part. I didn’t get to know him well, but Ferren mentioned his kindness many times, how warm his welcome was to her even though they come from opposing worlds.
I will fold the distance to the base of the mountain today and convince him to take me off this world. The party traveling down the mountain will take days, but I must ensure my passage as soon as possible. Even now, my skin is crawling to fold.
The deep shade of the forest blots our visitors’ last silhouette. “I can make mutton stew if you like.” I attempt to confirm Selene’s movements for the rest of the day.
“Make only enough for yourself. Conjunction ceremonies will resume now that our guests have gone, and the elders have requested my attendance.” She gages my expression.
“Oh, well, perhaps I will collect some items that have run low in Ruth’s apothecary and take her family’s company.” I lean in before turning back toward our home. “Save the mutton for another day.”
She follows me into the gathering room. “Where will you forage, Calliape?”
“Not far, on the village edge,” I answer, so naturally that the lie spreads guilt across my insides with sinking discomfort.
“Must you do that today? The forest is not safe, now more than ever.”
“My traps at the tree line need to be checked, and many supplies were used when the representatives were here. They should be replenished.”
She rolls her eyes to the side, agreeing with my feigned statement of the reason for scarcity, then blocks the exit with her form, not willing to come farther inside, perhaps subconsciously. “Has there been anything out of the ordinary in the forest since your last forage? Anything I should know?”
“Nothing the leaves could not have already told you.” I wrap a long strip of linen across my chest and over my head to keep the damp of the moss layer from slowing me down with chill.
Among Selene’s gifts is her ability to convene with the flora on Frith, the leaves themselves tracking the intentions of those who brush against them. The roots send her information through the ground and make privacy impossible as a young woman finding her way here. Years ago, after a horrifying conversation about her approval of my first intimate partner, leaving us both fuming and me especially embarrassed, I demanded reinstating my privacy. A ward she placed and I’ve tested, and later when her protection became smothering in other ways, I constructed my own.
“You know of what I speak.” She gives me a flat look.
She refers to the voice I heard in the darkness.
