However, I have one advantage. I was raised here. I was given one of their names, and Cardinal seems to have a soft spot for me. Well, she doesn’t punish me when my name is stirred into the pot—another valid reason I continue to have a target on my back.
I keep my head down as I move silently on the tiled floors, and I soon find myself in front of Cardinal’s door. It is an elaborately decorated piece of solid oak inlaid with an abundance of bird species. I can name most of them, except for a couple that still elude me, even though I’ve spent hours at night scouring the library archives for clues.
My eyes fall on a familiar spot where a small bird is in flight. My namesake, a dove, inching its way towards the receding sky. It is ironic, really. This dove has direction, possibly a purpose to fulfil, and full freedom to explore it. On the other hand, my freedom is entombed within these temple and garden walls. It is hard not to question why the priestesses aren’t allowed to leave—except the high priestess—but in the end, the only thing that greets me beyond these walls is fear.
It is so palpable that I wonder if it all belongs to me. If I leave, agony will follow. I am safe in my sanctuary. That is enough. It must be enough.
Pushing the heavy door open, the smell of patchouli wafts towards me, lingering in the back of my throat. I gulp it down begrudgingly and make quick work of the job that was unceremoniously dumped on my shoulders. Trying my best to forget about the old bat, I remember who I am doing this for—Cardinal, the high priestess.
Her study is all warm colours, rich reds and browns with golden accents. It is a jarring contrast to what presents us outside during the light now visible through stained glass balcony doors.
A heavy gloom sits ominously above the Kingdom of Haven. It is rare to have a bright sunny turn here. Instead, a thick mist hangs high in the sky that has no problem forming frequent rain showers, producing an unfavourable environment for our vegetable gardens outside.
With our outdoor gardens now mini pools, we have moved all our new seedlings to the greenhouse, which is not big enough to produce enough food for all the temple residents. It is one of my growing concerns for this coming winter season. But we are told the Goddess will provide and to trust in her.
Heaving a large sigh, I move away from the balcony doors and finish up one quick pass of the room before leaving.
Just before stepping out the door, my eyes find their way to a painting of a wheat-haired gentleman with piercing blue eyes, the same shade as his mother’s. A face I’ve seen every turn in my mind since I arrived at this temple, falling at his mercy and his feet. A memory of an arresting touch slices through me as I remember basking in the soft skin of his hand as it reached to take mine and pull me up. Thoseice-blue eyes pierced mine for the first and last time at eleven rotations old.
A broken girl latching onto her first dream. An unrealistic reality.
Scoffing to myself, I hurry out of the room.Stop that! He is not yours and never will be. You are a servant. Nothing more.
When the stars arrive, I dream of ice-blue eyes that gradually turn a shade of onyx so dark I cannot see where they end, and I begin.
After completing my morning chores, it is time to check in on the garden before the evening to see what vegetables and fruits need more care before the chill of the night takes over.
Walking through the temple’s quiet, grey stone halls, I hear the unsettled chirps and squarks of the aviary, a large, open-air atrium housing the Goddess’s most prized creatures.
The priestesses say that each bird, with their wings of flight, is created in the image of the Goddess—a representation that only our winged creatures can truly ever come close enough to the stars, to her.
Servants are not allowed in the aviary, one of the few places off-limits to us within the temple. Only the priestesses have the affinity to care for the winged creatures within. Well, that’s what we are told anyway. I know differently.
Unlike the rest of the people in this temple, I let my curiosity get the better of me, and I seek answers, making it my business to find them.
“Dove,” the hissed sound sweeps past me in a flourish of dusty pink robes. “You should not linger.”
Kestrel is right. However, I cannot take my eyes off the drooping branches of the tree, dropping half-lifeless leaves, a reminder of our growing turmoil within Haven, my only home.
“If the priestesses see you, they will see fit to punish you, and Cardinal won’t be here to save you.” With those last words, I increase my speed towards our destination just beyond the atrium, the last room surrounded by glass walls.
I don’t understand the priestesses need to protect the aviary, which can be easily viewed through its large arched windows. But as I am told, such things aren’t for me to understand. I am here to serve the priestesses who serve the Goddess. Nothing more, nothing less.
The priestess beside me understands better than anyone how strict the rules are within the temple. Most of them are unwritten to the naked eye but on full display if you know what you are looking for. It is a type of warfare I have lived with my whole life, even before the temple entombed me at the age of eleven.
Kestrel opens the glass door into my own slice of heaven, a slight warmth and hint of soil in the air, greeting us.
I nod in thanks, and a soft smile encases her wide face, her hair hiding behind the pink hood that sits on her head, pooling down her back in an almost cape-like fashion. I do not envy the garb the priestesses wear in modesty.
Stepping inside the space that holds six large garden beds and an array of potted fruit trees I’ve somehow managed to save from theunpredictable weather, peace and calm wash over me. I have few places I can call my own, and this is one of them.
The greenhouse is surrounded by large glass panes that allow the paltry light to filter in from the suns outside. Rotation after Rotation, the weather and soil grow more unpredictable.
My mother once told me stories of a cycle when this land flourished. But then the villagers started to notice a natural decline. She taught me ways to work with the land that respect its bounty in a reciprocal exchange of energy. I carried her practices into this small greenhouse, and for a time, it was working. Until I noticed it wasn’t.
Even bees I once kept towards the far windows in hives, opened to the outside elements, took their leave. On that turn, I shed tears for what I knew was coming. Mother taught me to look to nature for clues, and our smallest creatures never failed us.
Worms in the soil meant it was ripe for growing. Caterpillars kept the smaller diseased insects at bay. And bees supported our pollination process throughout the kingdom. Without them, the delicate dance between birth and death tilted too far in one direction.
