Page 4 of Caelum

A visitor?

Unheard of, but still, I’d have recognized anyone who spoke this way.

The cabin was small, constructed out of the same roughly hewn logs that every other cabin was built of. The trees in the forest that surrounded our home not only sheltered us from the outside world, the inclement heat of summer, but were also our source of fire in winter and the material with which we made our homes. Three planed planks were forged together with wrought iron hinges, and beside it there was a window that peered out onto the arterial gravel path. It had a roof that leaked no matter how hard my father worked to stop it. There were four rooms—a washroom and three sleeping rooms. One for my parents, one for my sister and me before she’d wed, and the latter for my brother before he’d moved to his own as well.

When Father Bryan and I eventually married, my parents would move to a smaller cabin to give a larger family in need of the space this home. That was another reason they were eager for the nuptials. If they could have forced me to wed our leader now, I was under no doubt that they would have because the roof was my father’s nemesis—one that always beat him.

“Eve is a special child, is she not?”

Though I was too far away to be able to hear the words, I still caught them. It was like the wind brought them to me. Like whoever was speakingwantedme to hear.

“A very special child. We’re very proud of her.” That was my father. Hedid sound proud, ironically enough, but there was something strange about his tone.

Did he sound dazed? My brow puckered, even as I hurried my pace, scurrying closer to catch every word. I didn’t want to miss anything this person had to say, not when my whole body responded to the visitor’s voice like a physical caress.

“I have an opportunity for Eve. A chance for you to be even prouder of her. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

With every step I took, I heard the nuances in the voice. I already knew it was a woman, but more than that, I heard the lilt to the words. The cadence. A melody. She made her conversation a song, a song that I could dissect.

Understand.

“Pride is a sin,” my mother whispered, also sounding strange.

Normally, she’d have barked the words, but this time it was soft. Gentle. Like when she was falling asleep while she knitted on the settle and mumbled something under her breath.

My mother was the antithesis of gentle. She was harsh, quick to anger. She’d slap me if I mentioned pride, but here she was, the comment sleepily tripping from her lips as though…

It hit me then that the voice was lulling them to sleep.

How was that even possible?

You couldn’t talk someone to sleep, even if Father Bryan tried to every day from his pulpit. I couldn’t be the only one fighting boredom throughout his sermons, could I?

“There are so many delicious ways to sin, though, aren’t there?” purred the woman. The stranger. My body responded to her remark like she’d hugged me. It sent the tiny hairs upon my body surging upward in reaction.

“The devil will dance on our graves,” my mother muttered.

“Hardly,” came the voice. “There is no need to fear Eve’s sinning. She is a good girl, and I wish to make her a better one. The Academy will teach her things that you’re unable to. She will learn how to take control of herself, how to become the woman she ought to be. Don’t you want that for your daughter?”

“Going…to…be…Father… Bryan’s…wife.”

I flinched at that. My father said it so matter-of-factly, even if he did sound like Brother Matthew had before he’d been punished for drinking the wine we used for sacrament.

I’d known that the New Order’s leader had his eyes on me, but having it reaffirmed made me long for my eighteenth birthday all themore. The time for burying my head under the blankets while I burrowed in bed was long gone. Those who should protect me were willing to sell me to the wolves. I’d heard it with my own ears.

Thus far, no arrangements had been spoken of. But in this place, words weren’t the only language that was understood.

The fact that Father Bryan was allowed to touch me, to speak with me on his own? Those two facts had made me realize what was happening without my parents having to utter a word. Hearing a verbal confirmation had me shuddering in reaction, my body’s visceral response to my disgust, as I faced what he was saying.

My family wanted me to marry a seventy-eight-year-old man all so that our status would improve.

Bottom lip quivering and eyes pricking with tears, I strained to hear the rest of the conversation. This Academy the stranger had mentioned… I had no idea what she was talking about, but it sounded a thousand times better than being Father Bryan’s wife, but more importantly, it promised me a chance to escape before my eighteenth birthday.

“Oh, my dear, no. Why waste her as a wife? She will be far more powerful on her own.” A laugh sounded then. “No, no. You must agree to relinquish her to my care. She will be well looked after; I can assure you. Her safety and her future are guaranteed with me.”

What a bizarre guarantee.

I hovered outside the cabin, unsure whether I wished to go in or not. The woman was doing something to my parents; she was promising something—freedom—that I’d been waiting for since my eleventh birthday when I’d begun to change. But her voice… What she could do with it…

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