Maresi

by Maria Turtschaninoff

  “If it were up to you you’d only take books,” she snorted and brushed off some dry lavender flowers from her clothes. She was right. Unfortunately I cannot bring many books with me. When I was alone in the dormitory again I opened the bag and was hit by the smell of linen, soap, and lavender. It smelled like home. That smell will be more precious than any books.

  Jai also secretly made me a bloodsnail-red woolen cloak. Toulan dyed the yarn during the last snail harvest and Ranna and Ydda, who are skilled weavers, wove the fabric. Then Jai sewed every stitch herself and would not let anyone help her. She gave me the cloak one evening when we were sitting under the lemon tree and talking as usual. She avoided my eye as she handed it to me.

  “For the cold nights in Rovas,” she said simply, and stared out to sea. She has finally started to admit that snow might actually exist.

  “But Jai,” was all I could say. I took her hand and held it like she used to hold mine during the nights when the darkness frightened me. I knew she was thinking of them, too. I was also thinking that I will have no one to hold my hand at night from now on.

  The cloak is much too valuable for someone like me, but Mother decided that I should have it. “You are still young. The cloak will give you the respect you need. No one will dare defy a woman, however young, who is dressed in a cloak like this.” That is what she said yesterday when she called me to her room in Moon House for a few final words.

  “Rovas is a vassal state,” I answered, and fingered the cloak’s silk lining, which Jai had sewn down with invisibly small stitches. “We cannot enact our own laws. We cannot educate our own children. The ruler of Urundien wants to keep us in ignorance. I do not know how I will go about setting up my school.”

  Mother raised her eyebrows.

  “Did you think your mission would be easy?” She looked at me sternly. “Maresi. You must find your own way now. But I have every faith in you.” Then she smiled one of her rare, roguish smiles, which made her look like a young novice. “Heo, fetch my purse.”

  Heo grinned proudly at me and unlocked one of the near-invisible doors behind Mother’s writing desk. These are doors that conceal secrets. Heo is Mother’s novice now. The youngest novice ever called to Moon House. How did we not see it all along? Heo was the obvious choice for Moon House! We were fooled by her playfulness and her incorrigible joy. But behind that she has enormous integrity. She is totally and utterly herself. It is no coincidence that she was the one who held me on this side of the Crone’s door.

  Heo brought out a fat leather purse and handed it to Mother, who weighed it in her hand before holding it out to me.

  “This will open many doors for you that would otherwise be closed.”

  I opened the purse. It was filled with shiny silver coins; not a single copper. After studying with Mother for several moons I knew that this was as much as the Abbey’s whole annual income. “Mother. This is too much.”

  Mother snorted. “It will not last long. When the silver has run out you will have nothing more than your keen wits to live on. And this.” She held out her hand and Heo placed something in it. It was a large comb of shining copper. “The Rose requested I give you this as a farewell present. She has polished it herself.”

  Ennike is the servant to the Rose now. I am supposed to stop calling her Ennike, but Jai and I have difficulty remembering her new title. Eostre, who was the Rose before Ennike, always corrects us strictly. “How can she fulfill her role if you insist on reminding her of the past!” she says. We always nod solemnly and agree, but as soon as she looks the other way we make funny faces at her baby daughter Geja until she chokes with laughter. She is a happy, chubby little girl. Strong. When I look at her I think of Anner and how weak she was. If we had known better, if we had known about nutrition and healing, we could have given her a better start in life. Then maybe she could have made it through the hunger winter. This is one of the reasons I feel I must go home. The knowledge I have gained at the Abbey can save lives.

  Eostre could not continue as servant to the Rose after she had Geja. This is not on account of the scars from the fingerless man’s knife. Eostre herself has said that she is happy he cut her. It was thanks to him that her blood was on the dagger and mixed with Mother’s and mine, so that the Crone’s door could be opened. The fingerless man had not cut deep; his objective was not to kill but to inflict pain. To disfigure. Eostre is still beautiful; no scars in the world can cover that. Geja is what changed everything. Eostre is now taking part in another of the First Mother’s mysteries. One day she will become servant to Havva, I believe. Those who have had a child of their own are close to Havva. Geja just has to grow a little bigger first. Right now Eostre is Geja’s mother and nothing else, and it suits her well. She looks happy. Happy and tired.

  I looked at the comb in Mother’s hand. I thought about how much Ennike must have polished it to get it so gleaming. I thought about how I was her shadow when I first came here, how she was my first friend. Would I ever see her again? Would I ever see anyone from the Abbey again?

  “The comb is the Abbey’s protection,” I said slowly. “You need it.”

  “Stop protesting against all the gifts,” said Heo and furrowed her brow. “We want to give them to you. You need protection too. You and all the new pupils you will have and love.” She tightened her fists.

  I walked around Mother’s writing desk and laid my arms around Heo. She stood stiff and unhappy, but she let me hug her. “Not as much as I love you, I hope you know that.” I whispered in her hair. It smelled like sun and sea and Heo. “I will write often. As soon as I find someone who can take the letters south. Do you promise you will write to me?”

  “Must you go, Maresi?” asked Heo. Her body went soft and she wrapped her arms hard around my middle. “I am going to miss you so much. I miss you already.” She dried her runny nose on my tunic.

  I had to swallow several times before I could answer. There was so much I wanted to say.

  “I will miss you too. So much. But I must.”

  I held her for a long time. All too short a time. Mother looked at me over Heo’s head.

  “Do not be sad, Maresi. You have to let go of the old to begin something new. But that does not mean it is lost forever.”

  A spark of hope ignited in me. Mother sees things in her trances: things about the future. I opened my mouth to speak but Mother shook her head. “It is never good to know too much about what is going to happen. Your own future is not a gift I can give you. We have given you what we can. Now the rest is up to you.”

  Now the rest is up to me. I have never been so afraid. Not even in the crypt, at the Crone’s door.

  A Vallerian fishing boat is coming to take me tomorrow at dawn. I must sail with it to Muerio, the town where I first saw the sea. Then I will leave the sea behind and continue northward over land. Mother has arranged my transport for the first leg and from there I can find my own way. All the sisters and novices have promised to sing me off. They will stand in the Abbey’s yards and dress the stairs as I step aboard, and their song will gently sway me out to sea. It will be like Moon Dance, but this time I cannot turn around in the middle of the labyrinth and return to them. This time I must keep going forward until I can no longer see or hear my friends. My family.

  This final evening I will let the ink dry on my words and then put my book back in the treasure chamber. Yes, I still call it that. Not even Sister Loeni’s seriousness has been able to dispel my childish wonder at the treasures contained in all the Abbey’s books. Soon I will tear Ennike, I mean the Rose, away from her duties, and help Jai shirk the tasks given to her by Sister Nummel, and then the three of us will sit together in Knowledge Garden and talk one last time. They will always be my sisters, though I will never become a sister here myself. I do not know how I will cope in the outside world without their laughter and friendship. But so it must be.

  A farewell feast will be held in Hearth House tonight. All the sisters and novices are coming, and I can a
lready smell the tempting aroma of nadum bread. Eostre has promised me that Geja will be with us for as long as she stays awake. Geja’s blond hair and curious eyes will be the image I carry with me as a reminder that life goes on. Whatever happens, life finds a way forward.

  It is going to be a party to remember. I can hardly believe it is being held in my honor, when only seven years ago I came here as a little girl who licked doors and did not know how to behave herself. After the meal I will go down to the crypt and make an offering to the Crone and bestow my thanks on the bones of the First Sisters.

  Then, last of all, Sister O and I will sit together in the Temple Yard and watch the sun set over the sea.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you, Travis, for listening; Mia, for reading; and Visby, for reinspiring me. Thank you, Mother, for believing in me from the very beginning and giving me the courage to dare to begin writing. And last but not least, thank you, Sara, for always supporting me, always spotting weaknesses in my texts and always tactfully pointing them out.