The order to leave the school came as abruptly as the summons. Gabrielle’s hair had grown long, past her shoulders. The three mice had grown fat and sleek, longer than her hand and lazier by the day. The sun had been sharper than usual that summer, and it was a chilly autumn.
The morning they left was dank and blustery. All the girls but Gabrielle wore leggings under their dresses, but now as they left the suffocating influence of the Kaerent school, some hitched the blue uniforms up into tunics. A few laughed at being able to finally dress as an adult. Most were silent. The wind was cruel to her dew-soaked ankles as Gabrielle trudged to the wagon, a heel of bread weighing down one pocket and two lavender candles rolling in the other. It was too early for her to feel anything but sick from the dregs of curtailed sleep.
Sellie, sitting across from Gabrielle in one of the crowded rickety wagons, offered a shy smile that Gabrielle reflexively returned. The girl, older now but still slight, was in reverent awe of Gabrielle, who had no idea how to respond. The casual camaraderie she had gained in the last year still ruffled her. She was accustomed to wary glances and whispers, not smiles and nods and kind conversations. Always knowing the mice would be company enough, she had never imagined what it would be like to have friends her own age.
And she was still too scared to find out, so she looked away after her smile and watched the old mill and manor house hide behind rows of trees and a final hill. Skantos had given her a package wrapped in oilskin that now sat snugly in her bag, under her old cloak and a book she had won as a math prize that she only kept because the mice loved nibbling the soft pages. He had been subdued ever since the banishment in the infirmary, and Gabrielle wondered at times if he regretted coming to Erinlin or being a part of this cruel endeavor.
It was a day’s travel to Ramos, if they were lucky. Excited chatter, though somewhat muted by the early morning, buzzed in each wagon. More than a few girls were crying, faces glinting in the sun. Gabrielle could, if she tilted her head and opened her senses, feel their spirits bubbling at the surface. Some spoke of home and their families that had grown and fought and laughed without them. One fretted about her needlework skills and laughed nervously when she predicted her mother wouldn’t let her embroider cloaks when she got home. In the next wagon over, two girls were singing a Full Harvest song while the wagon driver whistled along. Amalind and Terry were having a mock fight about whose sweet potato pies were better.
Gabrielle felt detached from it all. She didn’t have a family to wonder about, nor a friend to promise to visit. Already people were reminiscing about their school days, laughing fondly about classes and teachers they had hated at the time, but Gabrielle had no such rose-tinted recollections. She was, in a wagon of girls she had lived with for the past three years, alone.
A faint squeak from inside her bag offered an indignant rebuke and teased a smile to her face. Not alone, then. Never alone.
***
The city was bleaker than she remembered it. The gaily painted houses were sparser, it seemed, and more ragged, worn wood showing through the paint like stains. Perhaps it was that the sky was overcast, but from cloth and from wood and from glass the color seemed drained away. Trash was trapped between the cobblestones and from the alleyways gleamed the hungry eyes of strays.
When Gabrielle had first visited Ramos, the people had been cheerful, chatting to their companions and nodding to passersby. There had been the merry susurrus of conversation, whistling, and horseshoes on cobbles clopping in the air.
Now the people seemed fearful, clutching cloaks around them though it wasn’t too cold, huddling together with silent companions as they scuttered across the streets. Perhaps they could sense what Gabrielle felt deep in her bones: the bitter presence and restless thrumming of uneasy spirits.
Yet despite the city’s defeated malaise, people had still begun preparing for the Hallowed Moon festival. Purple ribbons dangled from door frames, red roses real or hand-made stood vigil in windows with small yellow candles, and on almost every street carved pumpkins peppered doorsteps. Some pumpkins had wicked faces with snarling fangs, the better to scare off evil spirits. Others were painted with the traditional wheat and sickle as a token of gratitude for the harvest. A few remarkable pumpkins had stained glass insets, whose dancing colors made Gabrielle smile.
One pumpkin had an odd symbol carved into it that Gabrielle stopped to peer down at. It was familiar, yet she couldn’t quite place it.
“It’s not a symbol Mother Hall taught me,” Gabrielle said softly to the three mice as they sniffed at the pumpkin, “nor something from the foreign alphabet we learned at school.” She stared at it a bit longer as the ghostly mice began to tease a cat in the nearby alley, whose swiping paws passed right through her intended prey. Gabrielle felt much the same, sifting through her memory for the answer but unable to pin it down. She stood there, head tilted in thought, until the cold air biting at her ankles became unbearable. With a disgruntled sigh, she set off to walking again. A snap of her fingers brought the mice back to her, and they crawled onto her shoulders to rest as she headed to the Red Sand Inn.
Erin had invited the girls traveling through the city to stay at her family’s inn, and though Gabrielle had been surprised at her inclusion, she knew better than to refuse. The school had given them each five of Kaerentia’s queer copper pennies for their travels, which, even if people accepted them, would hardly be enough.
But people did accept the foreign currency. While the other girls had settled at in the inn, Gabrielle had set off to roving around Ramos. She had left with no particular intent, perhaps only to escape the continued stifling amiability, but she was returning weighted and distracted by what she had learned. Not only did the oblong coppers and starred silvers of Kaerentia change hands as easily as Erinlin’s own pennies, but Gabrielle was just as likely to hear the guttural clattering of the Kaerent tongue as the rattle of their coins.
And people dressed strangely, in weird cuts and colors, sometimes subtly off and others egregiously wrong. As many women wore dresses as tunics, and Gabrielle had been self-conscious of her outfit, not because it marked her as a Candlemaiden, but because she was afraid that people would not know that it did. They might look at her bare feet and think her careless or penniless for not wearing shoes. They would look with disdain at the clumsy pockets Gabrielle had sewn on, not knowing they were an integral part of a true robe’s pattern. Gabrielle had always been an outsider, eliciting stares and whispers as a member of an ancient and sacred order. But now she would be victim to judgements without the protection of context, her sacred observances given vulgar meaning by unknowing eyes.
It was a sad and lonely truth, and Gabrielle grieved for the days she had never known, when Candlemaidens traveled freely and were welcome wherever they passed. When spiritcraft wasn’t regarded with suspicion, nor its priestesses with disdain-tinted fear. As she walked the streets of a city burying its history, she grieved for the Erinlin of old.
The Red Sand Inn, at least, spoke of days gone by. From where Gabrielle had settled at one of the only empty tables, she could see a sea-glass mural depicting a traditional spring festival, with animals made of hay and willow waiting for the blue-flamed brands to kiss them. Lovely carved river barks amidst reeds and herons adorned Gabrielle’s tabletop, and she ran finger over a river spirit peeking up at a boat. The Hallowed Moon decorations met Gabrielle’s approval too; the ribbons draping the door frame were stained a rich purple, the roses and candles in the windowsill were artfully arranged, and scenes from The Moon and the Rose were carved on the pumpkins that sat squat on the mantel.
Gabrielle idly fed the mice bits of turnip from her stew as she ruminated on Ramos and how far-reaching the Kaerent presence could actually be. Her spoon splashed as it slipped from her fingers. The odd symbol on that pumpkin, the one she couldn’t place earlier, was the Kaerent Navy insignia. Deeply troubled, Gabrielle licked the stew off the handle of her spoon. Was it a benediction, a curse, or warning? Had a child simply liked the design he saw in the harbor, or was its origin something deeper, something darker? Perhaps it was nothing more than an earnest attempt at a local tradition by a stationed officer. Gabrielle still felt sick.