Nala encounters a grieving widow and then meets with Liam in this chapter of my serialized dark fantasy, Our Sister’s Mage.
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Our Sister’s Mage – Chapter 4
Nala wiped sleep from her eyes and pushed open the door to the shrine’s kitchen, shivering against the morning cold and squinting in the dim light. She’d barely slept after the events of the day prior and the meeting about the Dark Ones, but she still had work to do before people arrived to pray. Her wool blue robes and hood offered little warmth without her cloak, and it seemed particularly drafty that morning.
The path to the hearth was usually clear, but Nala always slowed to avoid tripping over one of Ulla’s buckets in the morning. A mouse, or some other small creature, skittered away into the corner at the sound of Nala’s steps. She ran her hand along the table and her knee slid against the bench as she moved toward the low fire.
After tending to the fire and adding some logs, Nala lit her candle and took a deep breath, trying to dismiss the cold. It didn’t work, so she turned toward the door out of the kitchen.
The door squeaked on its hinges as it opened. The worship area, lit by starlight through the windows, was not much warmer. Drafts assailed the large space from the main northern doors and the small eastern door to one of the gardens. Nala braced herself and stepped forward, ready to begin the morning’s process of preparing the shrine.
Someone at the front of the area sobbed, suddenly and loudly in the otherwise silent room.
Nala stopped, breath caught in her throat. She shoved the idea of the Dark One out of her mind; they didn’t come to the shrine. And Inkeri had rescued it.
She willed herself forward while watching the shadows covering the benches and most of the floor in darkness. Another sob came from the front half of the room as Nala moved to the right and stood at the edge of the offering platform, which wrapped around the front half of the area.
A lone figure, shoulder slumped, knelt in the center of the area, feet in front of the goddess on the cold stone floor, praying and crying.
It’s just a woman. But which woman? And why was she at the shrine so early? Everyone had come the day before, to thank the Goddess for the Dark One’s rescue. Many had stayed late into the afternoon, and all should be warmly tucked into their beds at home.
Nala lit the oil lamp resting on the platform. The woman continued crying, her sobs trying to reach into Nala’s soul with their pain.
People often came to pray to the Goddess. Sometimes they cried. They did not come before sunrise. They did not sob in unrelenting, unembarrassed, unhindered chokes and gasps. Something terrible must have happened.
Nala sighed and began lighting the the lamps, as was her usual practice. She moved forward in the room, lighting lamps and straightening offerings as she went. People had brought disorganized bundles of flowers and weeds for the Goddess in response to the rescue, a sign of their devotion and prayers.
When she turned at the front of the room, the woman did not look up, but continued to cry, body alternating between rocking and jerking with each convulsive gasp. A hood covered her face from the side, the fine fur the only thing muffling the sobs as they bounced off the dirty stone floor.
What do I do? Nala glanced back at the doorway into the dining room and quarters. Ulla would not wake for at least two more hours. Cleric Kennet would rise after that. Even if Inkeri woke up, what could she offer this woman?
These were the cries the prophets said reached to the Goddess faster than any other prayer. Nala had only ever heard someone cry like this when they’d brought Karel’s husband’s body to her. Cleric Kennet said it was the soul which cried, longing for justice.
Nala looked to the statue of the Goddess. She had duties to perform; then she could worry about this devastated person in the shrine. Nala continued along the offering platform, lighting oil lamps and watching the visitor. An unlit candle lay on the floor in front of the woman.
When she was close enough for her candlelight to illuminate the figure, her features became clearer. It was Rosemary, the lady who’d come only to find her husband dead.
Nala’s stomach dropped. She’d cried like this when her mother died, but not here. Not in public.
Rosemary briefly met Nala’s eyes, sobbed again, and dropped her head. Nala lit the eight candles around the statue of the Goddess. A dirty, dented rose medal on a broken chain necklace lay at the statue’s feet. She continued her route around the offering platform, harboring a hope Rosemary would leave by the time she finished.
That’s a terrible thought. It was a blessing Rosemary had the shrine to come to in her grief. She must be very devout indeed to scale the stairs in the middle of the night, alone and in the dark. Thank the Goddess for her faith. Thank the Goddess for our shrine.
Nala stood next to the doorway to the garden, where she’d argued with Liam, and stared back at Rosemary. Tears threatened at the corner of her eyes, as if the anguish of Rosemary could catch like a cough. Her heart ached for the woman. Nala stood motionless, the draft from under the door chilling her legs even further as she considered what to do.
Rosemary had come to the shrine to pray. She’d not woken Cleric Kennet when she arrived. Perhaps she wanted to pray alone? Nala’s neck and head tensed as she considered what she should do. What an acolyte, a future Cleric of the Goddess should do. What the Goddess would want.
One was never truly alone in a shrine, even if she only prayed to the Goddess. At the very least, others present should ensure she was comfortable. And Nala was the only other person there.
Nala took a big breath of air and ignored the mounting ache in her forehead. She shuffled forward, around the benches, and toward Rosemary.
The acolyte walked right next to the woman. Rosemary did not look up again, though her sobs had slowed. The Goddess’ statue looked down, impassive. Help me know what to do.
Nala knelt on the floor next to Rosemary, tucking as much of her robes as she could under her knees. Cold still crawled through the fabric, into her knees, and up her back into between her shoulders. “The Goddess is with you.”
Rosemary nodded, lurched forward, and began sobbing with renewed urgency. “I know,” she blurted out between gasps. “I know, but it doesn’t feel like it.”
The cold in Nala’s back shot forward to her chest, but it wasn’t cold, it was just pain. It was impossible to sit so near to someone suffering so much and not share in their grief as they cried. Nala wiped her eye and rested on her feet, back stiff as a board. Rosemary’s sobs increased, apparently worsened by Nala’s arrival.
“Would you like me to leave?” Nala tried not to sound hopeful. She wanted to be there with Rosemary, but it was also uncomfortable. The woman’s torment filled the air like smoke and made it hard to breathe, to think, or to pray. Nala would feel better back in her room.
But Rosemary might not.
“Thank you, no.” Rosemary dropped her arm and retrieved a silk handkerchief to dab at her nose, but at the sight of it, she coughed out another sob. She put it back under her cloak and used the sleeve of her expensive cloak to rub at her face. “It is kind of you to sit here with me. I’m sorry if I disturbed you.”
“Not at all.” Nala attempted to sound soothing, even as she glanced back toward the door. Cleric Kennet would be better at this. “I wasn’t doing anything.”
“I just needed to come and sit,” Rosemary’s words came rolling out like a mine cart. “I don’t know why. I couldn’t sleep. I should have stayed at the inn. That Gessa and Nick put me up for the night. I should have stayed there. It just got so bad, sitting there, not sleeping, thinking about him.”
Nala nodded along as if she understood what had happened. Rosemary was correct, though, it was probably better to stay in town. There weren’t many wild animals near Vasti, but they came out at night, and the stairs to the shrine were isolated.
Rosemary curled in on herself once again as she pulled her hands up to her chest. “I don’t know why she let this happen.”
Nala did shiver; the room was cold. Rosemary’s suffering made it colder. “Who?”
“The Goddess.” Rosemary’s voice cracked. “He was a faithful servant. He came here for her.”
Cleric Kennet said people often blamed the Goddess for bad things, but it was best not to argue with them. “What happened?”
“They’re not sure.” Rosemary dropped her arms and looked up again. “I don’t believe them. They said he’d been with some woman from the brothel and then wandered off. They found his body between here and the mine. Animals got him. That’s what they said, anyway.”
“Oh.” Someone must have told her about the brothel.
Rosemary shook her head, and a large tear flopped from her chin to the floor. “But that doesn’t make any sense at all. He would have come here. He would have spoken with Cleric Kennet. He wouldn’t have been with a whore.”
Nala continued nodding, aware there wasn’t anything else she could do but agree with her. Plenty of men visited the brothel so her husband wasn’t any different. This wasn’t the time to point that out though, and had nothing to do with his death. “I’m sorry.”
Rosemary looked up at the statue of the Goddess while tears streamed down her cheeks. “I am too.”
“I was here when Cleric Kennet did the death rites,” Nala offered. “Your husband seemed at peace.”
“Thank you, dear.” Rosemary stared at the floor.
When Rosemary didn’t say anything else or move, Nala also stared at the floor, unsure if she should leave or do something different while the woman mourned in silence. A bird sang outside; the only sign from her position the morning dawned. She slowed her breathing to prevent shivering and tried to pray.
Is this what I want to do with my life?
It was not the prayer she expected. A Cleric’s life would be full of moments like this, facing an unknown person deep in grief or anger, unprepared to fix either. Early mornings and late evenings trying to comfort those impossible to comfort. She could stay in Vasti all of her life as an acolyte and rarely encounter situations such as this one.
But the plan was for her to leave and attend Cleric’s school. She wouldn’t return to Vasti. She’d never see Cleric Kennet again, or Ulla, or Liam. She’d be assigned somewhere in Addi, to a shrine just like this one, only in a larger town. Everywhere was larger than Vasti. She’d meet people like Rosemary every day and they’d expect her to know what to do. And I don’t.
She would never be the confident and highly trained servant of the Goddess like Inkeri. She wasn’t smart enough to be a great Cleric. She started too late, anyway. At twenty, she’d be the oldest in any class. And she didn’t know what she was doing.
Rosemary shifted again beside her, and finally noticed the cold as she shivered. “Look at me,” she wiped her nose again, “I am a mess. Askel wouldn’t have stood for this. Me shaking on a shrine floor, snot dripping onto my clothes and your floor.”
Nala returned her attention to Rosemary. “Was Askel your husband?”
“Yes. He was always traveling, teaching people to read for the Goddess.”
It was odd for Kalderi to travel so much, but if he had a special skill like teaching, he would have been in demand in the smaller communities. “What a blessing he must have been.”
“He was.” Rosemary sniffled again.
“Why don’t you move to a bench?” Nala pulled a foot up to stand, and realized her feet had almost gone to sleep in the kneeling position. She grunted and stood, offering her hand to the older woman. “I’ll go get you a blanket.”
The older woman sniffled, but clambered to her feet as well, much more slowly as she held Nala’s hand. Once she was stable, she took Nala’s hand with both of hers and nodded, holding the acolyte long enough Nala wondered if she would let go.
Rosemary dropped her hands after several seconds and wiped her nose again with her arm, obstinate in not using that handkerchief.
“Pick one near the fire,” Nala offered as she turned for the dining room and kitchen beyond. “I’ll heat some water for tea too. When Ulla wakes up, we’ll get you some warm food.”
“Thank you, dear. You’ve been very kind.” Rosemary nodded at the floor again as she shuffled to a bench near the fire pit. “You’ll make an excellent Cleric some day.”
Nala stiffened at the thought, shut her mouth against an empty response, and strode toward the kitchen. Tea and a blanket she could do, but she doubted everything else.
Nala led the way east on the lane toward the bridge and stream, out of Vasti’s market in the center of town. The afternoon sun beat down on the small town, providing some much needed warmth after a cold and fearful winter.
She longed to hold Liam’s hand, but he never liked that when he was in his uniform, and she didn’t want to annoy him more after yesterday. Nala swapped the loaf of warm bread from one hand to the other instead; a gift from Carsten as they passed the market, “for celebrating the banishment of the Dark One.”
Liam adjusted his belt so it lay correctly across his hips and shoved bits of his tunic into it as they walked. It was one of his older shirts from when he’d first joined the army. It didn’t fit as well on his smaller frame now, but soldiers didn’t get many new clothes, and his family certainly didn’t send him any funds.
Nala shifted to move the bread again and raise her hand to dust a leaf off his shoulder, but thought better of it. He noticed her retreating hand and plucked the leaf off himself, but he did smile at least.
“To the rock?” He asked before the stream.
“To the rock.” She smiled, hopeful yet afraid. It was the only place to go, if they didn’t want to continue around the market. And it was private.
They turned north before reaching the bridge, off the lane and behind two tailoring shops, under empty laundry lines, and past a broken cart left there three years earlier. Liam took her hand and helped her down and then back up a frozen ditch, then walked toward “their rock.”
The land behind the buildings on the western side of the stream was too uneven and rocky to build on. The ground quickly descended to the stream which ran north through town, splitting Vasti almost in half. Large rocks, some the size of Nala, lined the stream’s banks. Cedars as old as the town stood amidst the stones, surrounded by newer growth and tall grasses leading down to the gravel shore.
The eastern side of the stream wasn’t as steep or desolate, but only an empty field lay behind the cedars on its bank. Houses stood behind the field; smoke rising from their hearths against the blue morning sky.
It was the perfect spot to talk in town. She rounded the boulder and leaned against it, facing the gurgling water. The snow and ice upstream had started to melt, and the stream had begun to fill in its bed, limited for many months by the winter. Sounds from Vasti disappeared behind the water’s flow, though Rosy’s bark at something interrupted the peace for a few seconds.
Liam stood next to her and bent over to brush off his pants. “About yesterday,” he started.
“I’m sorry.” Nala pressed down the front of her robe, though there were no wrinkles. Leaves hung at the bottom, but she stared at them instead of kicking them free. “I don’t know why I said that. I was scared and upset.”
“I think we both were.” He leaned against the boulder as well, staring at the creek.
She let out a breath as her anxiety dropped. He wasn’t still angry. She looked out at the creek as well, finding it uncomfortable to make eye contact.
“Are you glad to get out of the shrine?” he asked.
“It feels strange, but yes.” Nala had been stuck with Cleric Kennet most of the time since the Dark One appeared. It was safest at the shrine, and Ulla insisted the young woman remain there.
A robin hopped along a low hanging branch on an oak in front of them. Something plopped in the water to their left, hidden behind weeds. The afternoon seemed too quiet; too safe. It was nice to get out of the shrine, but Vasti still felt wrong to Nala.
He cleared his throat. “I wanted to tell you I’m still going to be busy for a few days.”
Nala had hoped for some time with him after the Dark One’s rescue. “Why?”
“The good Mayor Elizabeth has ordered a party.”
“Of course she has,” Nala said. The mayor had done very little to aid the town during the crisis. She hid in her house most of the time.
Liam snickered. “Well, it should be quite a festival or town party, at least. She wants to do it before Inkeri leaves.”
“Oh, I guess that makes sense.” Another ship would arrive and depart again in two or three weeks, taking their Venandi savior with it.
“We’ll be setting up and helping after. She wants all the shops open on the market, and even asked Daniel to close the mine and send the miners down.”
“Wow.” The mines foreman, Daniel, didn’t shut down production for anything. Even when the Dark One appeared.
“And she asked Lt Hayden to send as many soldiers to celebrate as possible. So most of that squad will attend as well.”
Half of the troops in Vasti were stationed at the mine, and Lt Hayden spent most of his time there even though there was another sergeant like Liam also present. What did they expect to happen at the party? “Security shouldn’t be a concern though?”
“No.” He smiled. “Everyone wants to make sure was many people as possible can attend, and they’ll probably all get drunk. I met with Lt Hayden this morning, and he asked me to coordinate the army’s participation with the Mayor.”
Nala turned to him grinning and tried not to hug him. He’d taken on a lot of responsibility for the squad in Vasti, especially during the Dark One’s appearances, but Lt. Hayden hadn’t seemed to notice. “That’s great news!”
Liam smiled as well, but then ducked his head and lowered his voice. “He said he’s planning to recommend me to officer school.”
“That’s wonderful.” Nala held her smile, though it flattened.
She wanted to be as encouraging as she could, even as her heart fell. She’d known he wanted to go to officer school. He could have gone straight from home, but didn’t want to take his father’s help. But he’d worked so hard for it, even taking this position in Vasti to show his dedication. It wasn’t fair to expect him to do something now, and she should be leaving soon too.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know we hadn’t decided on anything, and we still haven’t. I feel bad and excited at the same time.”
“Don’t feel bad,” she said. “This is what you wanted. I want it, too.”
That’s what love was, she’d read. Willing the best for the other person. Even if it wasn’t what you wanted. I don’t even know what I want, though.
“I wouldn’t leave for awhile; he has to send the letter and we’ll wait for a response.”
“Of course.” More time to avoid deciding what they’d do. She leaned back against the rock, silently thinking.
Maybe it is for the best. If Liam left, there was one less reason for Nala to stay in Vasti. If Cleric Kennet thought her ready, she could leave too. She could go to school, become a Cleric, and learn what she was supposed to do with people like Rosemary. Fear welled up in her chest at the thought; would she ever be ready?
If Liam left, or if she left, or if they both left, they’d never be together. She’d known that was going to happen, but it suddenly felt more final. Nala hadn’t confirmed she would leave for school, but Liam would be regardless. Their relationship would end.
Liam cleared his throat. “Are you alright?”
“I am.” Nala stared out over the stream and field. “Just a little sad. A little tired, too.”
“Maybe we’ll both feel better after some rest,” he said. “The past few months have been crazy.”
It felt like the past few months had been as long as most of her life. “Will you be able to rest, with all the planning?”
“Well, it has to be less tiring than worried a demon might turn up and burn the town down at any moment. Or that the fear of that might make the town burn the town down.”
“True,” Nala said. “Cleric Kennet did such a good job.”
“He really did,” Liam agreed. “He has to be exhausted.”
They both stared into town, not speaking. She thought of Cleric Kennet and his calm leadership during the wait for Inkeri. She thought of Liam’s calm leadership as well. The Goddess had blessed the town with such men.
A middle-aged man strolled across her view. She’d seen him a few times before. Curly brown hair fell down to his shoulders and he carried himself with a confidence she’d only seen among a few of the soldiers. He had a wicked smile. She assumed he was one of the settlers outside of town, but he’d never come to the shrine.
“Looking at other guys now?” Liam jokingly asked.
“No, no,” she dropped her eyes. “Of course not.”
“He’s a little old for you anyway,” he said.
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t even know who he is.”
“He stops by every few weeks for supplies,” Liam said. “And to visit the brothel.”
“You know a lot about him.”
He shrugged. “It is my job. Don’t really know who he is though, only that he hasn’t been a problem.”
She stood and rocked up on her toes, unsure of what to say. “You do your job well well.”
“Well, there aren’t that many people roaming around Vasti to keep track of usually.”
“I mean with all of it. Officer school.” He would do well. He was educated and a good leader. He was a good man.
“Thank you.” He looked around, grinned, and then leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. “I should probably get back to work. We’ll talk more about it later.”
“Okay. I’m excited for you.” She was excited for him. This meant great things for his career and life. It just also meant it was unlikely she’d be a part of it.
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