Chapter One
This was definitely going to hurt. The knife hovers over my arm, glinting in the sunlight from the windows lining the room. Blood pounds in my ears as my heart beats wildly inside my chest.
"Just do it already," Jess says beside me.
I lower the knife to the crook of my elbow, right above the blue line of a vein. The tip presses slowly into my skin and blood wells up around the sliver blade. We sit at the large wooden table in the middle of our classroom, bathed in the midday sun coming through the large windows lining the far wall of the room. Like all the Sisters around the table, we wear the long off-white robes of a novice. Chatter and laughter fills the room. No one else is having a problem with the Blade Bane Cure. I look at Jess out of the corner of my eye. She has blue eyes, a bit of a cowlick, and long blonde hair that's plaited and pinned in a crown circling her head. Mine's the same, except it's brown. She's my best friend.
The pain starts to kick in. "Ow ow ow," I whine, dropping the knife onto the table. Jess sighs dramatically as she reaches for the fallen blade. I extend my uninjured arm towards the wooden bowl in front of me filled with the sticky mess I concocted earlier.
"Maybe that'll be enough for-" I begin to say hopefully.
"Bella," Jess says exasperatedly, "What kind of Mother is scared of seeing blood? Just do it quickly. The worst part is being a wimp and dragging it out." She raises her arm and shakes back one long sleeve as she grips the knife in her other hand. Jess is wrong, though; I'm not afraid of blood, just the pain. A lot of Sisters are scared of blood as kids, but you learn pretty quick that that's just unacceptable in the Sanctuary.
"See?" she says, as she stretches her arm towards me.
"It's more that I don't like pain, actually" I say quietly, leaning my uninjured elbow onto the table and cradling my face in my palm. All too often lately my cures weren't working at all, and I can't figure out why. I follow the instructions perfectly and I even know most of the theory behind them, unlike Jess who just follows direction, but half the time I just end up creating a useless mess. She ignores me and the blade slices through her skin. Blood begins to flow immediately from the long, shallow cut. She doesn't flinch like me. Her arm relaxes onto the table in front of us and she scoops up the poultice she made at the start of class with her other hand. She spreads the sticky mass of leaves and flowers into her cut, staunching the blood. "Your turn," she says smiling, as the cure takes effect. I scrunch my face into a scowl as I pull the wooden bowl holding my cure towards me. I know she'd been encouraging me to cut deeper, but I don't want to chance it and end up suffering while I beg Jess to let me use her cure. The pain from my tiny cut isn't so bad now, but I scoop up a bit of the cool, sticky cure with one finger and spread it on the nick in my arm anyway. Jess rolls her eyes as she wipes the cure off her skin with a cloth.
"Well done, Jessssum," Mother Rose says from over my shoulder. "And how was your Blood's Bane, Sister Bella?" she asks as she bends to gaze at my arm. I blush and mumble that I think it worked as I wipe the cure off my arm, exposing the cut. A small bit of blood rises to the surface, a tangible sign of my failure. I sneak a glance at Jess's arm; not only has the blood stopped flowing but her skin doesn't even show a sign of healing. The cut is simply gone, as if it had never existed. It's extra humiliating in front of Mother Rose, the new favorite with the Sisters because she's young, beautiful, and worked in Home. She's taller than any of the other Mothers and thin, like a bird, with short brown hair, that would look masculine on anyone else but it just manages to make her look more feminine. Most Mothers don't return to the Sanctuary to teach until they're old and grey, but Mother Rose was only working for a few years. She says she missed the Sanctuary too much, but I can't wait to leave.
"Hmmm," she exhales as she picks up the bowl in front of me holding my cure. She sniffs the poultice and rubs a pinch of it between her fingers. "Your composition is correct. Must be your preparation. Did you add the elements in the right order?"
"Yes," I say, blushing furiously as I stare into her face. Her big brown eyes look down at me kindly. At least, I hope that's kindness and not pity.
"I don't think so, Bella. Pay more attention to when you add the horsetail and how much you grind it. This piece is too much large to be efficacious." She returns the bowl to the table and moves past us to check up on the other Sisters. She stops to look at Ash, a small girl with a beaky nose and frizzy brown hair, and smiles encouragingly as she touches her arm.
I grumble and grab the pestle next to my cure and start grinding the contents of my bowl.
"She's too large to be efficacious"
"Bella!" Jess hisses at me as she elbows me in the side. Our friendship has been strained lately, partly due to her refusal to help with any of my cures and mostly due to a black mood I can't seem to climb out of.
In the end, though, she's still my Sister. But I wonder, and I have been wondering this more and more lately, if whether it might be better to just have regular sisters and a normal family. I know I've been blessed to be born into the Mother caste, and that there are girls in the Family who are starving, have uncertain futures, or need to marry to support themselves-all things I will never experience in my life-but sometimes I wish I had one mother instead of a hundred Mothers.
The old bell echoes throughout the grounds signaling the end of our period. The other Sisters and I hurry around the classroom scraping out our cures and washing our tools. I end up sandwiched between Jess and Ash in the line to wash and stack our bowls. Even though we've grown up together, Ash and I have never spent much time as friends. She's a few years younger than me, we've never shared a dormitory together, and we both tend to be shy and stick around the louder Sisters in our year. Ash looks over her shoulder, at my cure that's barely been touched, and gives me a hesitant smile. I guess everyone knows by now that I'm quickly becoming the worst in our year.
"You know, Sister Bella, this is a pretty difficult cure, so if you want help learning it-"
"It's not difficult," I spit out, more to myself than to her. "It's easy and you know it. Don't act dumb for me."
"But," she looks dubiously at my cure. I glance nervously at the front of the line and see Elm cleaning her bowl thoroughly. I wish she would hurry up.
"But maybe I could help with the theory or-"
I'm tired of looking like an idiot. I lash out at her.
"I understand the theory, Ash." I say angrily. "Alright? Just drop it." I stare at the front of the line. Ash stands quietly in front of me, head slightly bowed. Great, now I'm not only failing my lessons but I'm becoming mean too. Ash is pretty small, about a head shorter than me, and I feel like I just yelled at one of the kids. We stand in line awkwardly and I stare miserably ahead until Elm finally wipes her bowl dry and stacks it on a shelf next to the water basin.
The Sisters shuffle out of the class in twos and threes, while I try to resolutely avoid Mother Rose's questioning gaze. However, I can't avoid Jess who slips her arm around mine and hisses in my ear, "What was that?"
"Nothing. Let me go."
"You're in a foul mood today," she says as she releases my arm.
I slip past her and out the door, into the large familiar hallway.
The Sanctuary is my home. I was born here and I've spent every day of my life here. People in the little town down by the sea call it a castle, though I've seen drawings of castles and I don't think it is one. It looks more like a group of stone houses that grew closer and closer to each other until they started to merge together, leaving a courtyard in the middle.
I slip into the mass of Sisters flowing through the hallway and step into a current leading towards the eastern staircase. I pass the diamond paned windows that overlook the courtyard and I can see that it's another beautiful day. Below me, Sisters and Mothers tend to the courtyard garden; their white figures flit from one garden bed to the next. We like to grow our most often used elements there, so that anyone can access them easily. I turn away from the familiar scene and stare down at my feet as I step over the grey stones. My family surrounds me but I feel alone. I hate the fact that my fellow Sisters and Mothers know I'm failing at healing. Sometimes it takes a while for a Sister to memorize a cure, or if they're particularly slow they frequently rely on texts to aid them, though that's frowned upon. Even those Sisters, who fumble with directions and technique, even they can make decent cures. All Sisters become Mothers. No one is left behind. But I think I will be.
I walk down the eastern stairs and continue onto the first floor on my way to the main doors. Today I am due in the greenhouses, which lie to the west. The thought of listening to Mother Precious drone on about the numerous uses for Turmeric is nauseating. What's the point of knowing how I could heal with it if I can't actually heal?
Sisters begin to thin out around me as some duck into classrooms, nip into the courtyard, or file out the main doors. I find myself in the entrance hall. It is the tallest part of the building, with a high vaulted ceiling crossed by dark wooden beams. Parallel to the doors, on each side of the hall, two stone staircases curve up to the second floor and meet in front of the large stained glass window depicting the First Mother. Out of habit, I glance up at the sprawling window that is dominated by red and orange. The First Mother, dressed in white robes and wearing her golden hair in the crown that Sisters replicate, sits in a field surrounded by hearty green plants. Light emanates from the panes surrounding her. She's more than a little intimidating, especially today. I stare at my brown shoes as I rush down the staircase and out the main wooden doors that are over twice my height. The walkway gravel crunches underneath my feet and I keep my chin tucked as I swivel my head and try to see if anyone is watching me. Sisters are still hurrying to chores and classes, so I don't look too suspicious. Though, when I slip out the iron gates and into the forest that surrounds the Sanctuary grounds, a Mother would definitely know I was skipping out on my duties. I don't see any Mothers and I spur myself into a light trot to reach the main path leading into the trees. We're not expressly forbidden from entering the forest; sometimes a Mother will hold a class within it and we always take paths through the forest to reach the little town of Ostrander or the ocean.
I think what really scares them, the thing that we're always warned against, is meeting a man in the forest. In Ostrander the women don't fear the men and live apart from them, so what makes a Mother different? Is it just that we have a higher purpose? Or because we are the descendents of the first Mother?
I'm not an idiot, I've heard of sex, and I think that's what they're afraid of. Mothers are only ever supposed to do that with men from the Brothers caste, and only for the express purpose of creating a future Mother. If any of my Sisters wish they could fall in love or be kissed by a man, they don't talk about it and neither do I. Anyway, we all just accept the fact that the forest is dangerous, but I've been going into it on my own for a few years now and the scariest thing I've ever seen is a deer. I never go too far in, though.
The gravel gives way to dirt. My boots stir up the road as I trot down it, sending dust into the air that clings to the hem of my robes. It can't be helped. I veer to the right and start the winding descent down the hillside traveling a game path. I hike up my robe, revealing my leggings underneath. A very improper act for an elder Sister, but no one can see me here. That's another reason I love coming out here. The Sanctuary is my home and I love my Sisters and Mothers, but sometimes I need to be truly alone. The pines give way to redwoods as the game path deepens. The forest slopes down a hillside, and the path is not an easy one to follow down it. Usually I scramble down and pause at my favorite tree trunk to soak it in, but actually going for a walk through it is near impossible. The giant old trees block out the sun and the world becomes grey and quiet. The only sound is the faint trickle of the river in the distance to my right. I've never gotten close to it, but from a distance it is no more than a thin sheet of water sliding over a few rocks, but I know it becomes deeper the longer you follow it because it twists around the Sanctuary and heads towards the ocean.
A huge fallen redwood, whose trunk is wider than I can spread my arms, has fallen since the last time I was here. It's created a bridge over a gulch in the hill. Now I can get to the other side! I've never tried before, because it looked too hazardous and I didn't want to search for a way around, but this is much too convenient to pass up.
I ungracefully climb the trunk of a fallen tree that has handily become a bridge to the lower bank of the river. I spread out my arms to balance as I step down its rough trunk. I'm completely focused on not falling off the tree to the rocks below when the dark brown bark reminds me of Mother Rose's eyes. Suddenly I'm back on my bench, staring up at her as she tells me I failed yet again. My feet slip and I fall to one knee. The uneven bark cuts through my robe and leggings, leaving me with a scrape as big as my thumb. "That's appropriate," I mutter to no one as I look at the blood welling up from my knee.
I reach the far bank and begin walking along the river. There isn't much of a path, but the river is lined with small ferns and grasses that I easily walk over. Compared to the loud talk and laughter of my classroom, it's practically silent here. The river widens and deepens beside me. I should probably start heading back to the Sanctuary. Though, there's a chance Mother Precious will just assume I'm with the Arche Mother. A few months ago the Arche Mother's former acolyte, Sister Jana, advanced and I became the new acolyte. Mostly I just write correspondences, copy old texts, and complete whatever tasks she assigns me. It's usually an honor bestowed on the most promising Sister, but with my record everyone is sure that it's so she can try and keep a closer eye on me.
The river continues to widen as I follow it into the forest. Its pleasant gurgle has increased to a distant roar. There must be a drop off ahead. The sound grows louder as I walk farther into the forest than I ever have before. Suddenly the water is flowing over sleek black rocks and cascading over the side of a cliff. I go as close to the cliff's edge as I dare, and stare into the pool of water that collects below me. It's like standing in the entrance hall, looking down from the great staircase. The left side of the fall is a steep cliff covered in redwoods and ferns heading up towards the Sanctuary, while the right side slopes downward and is similarly covered in vegetation. Neither offers me an immediate way to the bottom of the waterfall. The water collects into a tiny swimming hole, but I don't trust jumping into it. A fallen redwood has made a bridge of sorts from near the top of the waterfall to the rock below. I edge close, being careful to step in the dry wake a boulder has created by blocking part of the stream. I crane my neck over, peering at the water below me, when I hear a voice in my ear.
A girl cries out and is silenced.
My heart lurches at the piercing sound and the dead silence that follows it. The lurch tugs my whole body forward; my foot slides out from under me and I fall onto the cold, hard rock. The current carries me inescapably over the waterfall and my stomach feels weightless as I plunge into the air. The water gracefully arcs on either side of me, flowing into the pool below, while I fall like a hard stone straight down. I scream as I expect to feel the freezing water engulf me, but I land on hard stone, my ankle twisting beneath me as I collapse onto my side. Hot pain radiates up my leg as I lay huddled underneath the overhang of the waterfall, groaning incoherently. The cold spray wets my face. I can barely breath from the shock. My eyes flutter open to look at the falling water. A man's legs appear before me as he kneels on the ground. I hear a thousand warnings and implications from a hundred Mothers flash through my mind but one cries louder than the rest: men will always hurt you.
Always.