Page 1 of Caelum

SEVEN WISHES

PROLOGUE

“For thine God is a jealous god…”

Wanting to roll my eyes at the pious statement, which was the precursor to an endless lecture on why one of the six-year-olds, a boy called Elliot, had to stop running down the hallway of the small schoolhouse where I helped out, I controlled the urge and used his perfidy to slip away from Sister Mary. While I wanted nothing more than to run as Elliot had, I managed to contain myself.

As I usually did.

Life in the New Order was surprisingly easy if one contained oneself, but that wasn’t why I did it. Avoiding punishments, lectures, and beatings was enough for most people to toe the line, but not me.

I had more to hide than most.

More sins than anyone could even begin to imagine.

The small schoolhouse was unnaturally dark thanks to the low ceilings, and as my soft-soled leather slippers slid against the worn wooden floor, I felt as though the whitewashed walls were closing in on me. My heart began to pound and my lungs burned as though I weren’t getting enough oxygen inside them as the need to get out of the too-small space overcame me.

Though I tried to contain my panic, some days, it just wasn’t possible. Not when I felt like my mind was about to burst open like an overripe pomegranate.

As I burst through the gable-roofed overhang and out onto the lowveranda, the door slammed closed behind me. I jerked in surprise at the overloud noise, then winced as it had the shutters on the windows on either side of the door fluttering as the force ricocheted their way.

Quickly peering around, I noticed I was alone, and, thanking God for small mercies, I took a second to calm myself down. Now that I was outside with the heavy canopies of the trees sheltering me from the heat of the day, I could breathe a little easier. My lungs stopped burning and I regained the calm I used to control my moods.

I called them that because I didn’t know what else to call them.

If anyone else knew, even my mother and father, they’d call them demons. Would say I was possessed, and perhaps I was. Perhaps that was why I was plagued with these terrors that assailed my body and soul, leaving me with no option other than to hide within the flock of Father Bryan’s sheep.

If I followed each order, stuck to each rule, embracing them more than anyone else ever had, I could control my moods. I could find shelter in a place where I was most in danger.

It was only noon, and I was still needed in the school, but the Sisters knew I was prone to sickness and would forgive me of my need to return home.

Though it was a sin to lie, I used my frail disposition as a means of hiding when the moods overtook me. Unfortunately, it was getting harder and harder to hide them, and I knew the Sisters would tell one of the Brothers soon. I’d be monitored more than ever if that happened.

My illnesses didn’t require medical attention, however, and they knew that, so I doubted I’d be in any danger. Children who needed hospitals and doctors rarely lasted long on the compound. Not because sickness took them either. No, their deaths plagued another’s soul. But in the grand hypocrisy that was life here, that was permitted.

Nothing could endanger the New Order, after all.

Not even a sickly baby.

And as much as the death of an innocent disturbed me, I couldn’t loathe being here any more than I already did.

Every day, I endured; every day, I struggled.

In my case, however, because no medicine was required for my ‘illness,’ and a nap restored my good humor, I was allowed certain freedoms that the Sisters knew and accepted. If I disappeared at lunch, they knew I’d be back before the end of the day to help out and to assist after school too. I prayed, daily, that my willingness to help would be enough to keep me safe.

A shaky breath escaped me the second I saw someone up ahead in thedistance. It was close to the lunch bell so most were busy at work. I didn’t need anyone catching me scurrying home so I swiftly hustled my way along the stretch of gravel path that connected each property on the compound.

Four dozen cabins were contained here, each tiny, consisting of no more than four rooms apiece. They were made of roughly hewn logs, the roofs gabled, with no real adornment. Three new cabins were usually constructed each year, and in the distance, I could hear the men hammering nails into the sheets of the new roofs on the cabins that were under construction.

Thankful I wouldn’t pass that area, I scurried past the communal halls where we cooked, ate, and gathered on an evening. These were clapboard, painted white, with bright green shutters that had little cutouts that reminded me of a flower. These halls clustered around a church with a steeple.

The black pitch of the roof looked like it sucked up all the light it was so dark, so well-tended. I sometimes thought the community bribed the birds not to mess on there, as if that were even possible. Still, I wouldn’t have put it past them. The men who tended the roof were prouder of that than their own children, and the sin of pride was allowed when it came down to the church. Irony of ironies—not that anyone seemed to appreciate it.

As I glanced over the white walls of our house of worship, they gleamed in the low sun, so bright it hurt my eyes, and it was a relief to walk away from them and onward to the back of the compound where my cabin was located.

Moving down the path had chunks of gravel biting at the soft soles of my slippers, and as my pace quickened, the white skirt of my gown flapped against my legs. The wind picked up, forcing my brown cape higher so that it soared behind me. While a nuisance, it made me feel like I was flying, and on some days, that might have been a welcome respite, but today? It was anything but.

The sensation was freeing, but it was exactly what I wasn’t.I wasn’t free.There was no freedom anywhere on the compound.

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