‘The entire process is an immense learning opportunity,’ I say, not hiding my enthusiasm. ‘I find creating the tools and equipment as satisfying as cataloguing.’
‘You do like to see things from start to finish, don’t you? Yes, your efforts in the workshop have not gone unnoticed.’
We walk again and Mother Joca clears her throat. ‘Do you have any questions on any of that work?’
I hold my tongue as my mind turns over her question. This is the quandary, the test. I desperately desire to know more about the strange symbols I’ve transcribed. I know I’m scratching the surfaceon something powerful, but there’s danger in this kind of knowledge. I don’t know how Mother Joca will react and I can’t let the Bastion out of my reach when it’s so close. I let my true question sit on the tip of my tongue, tasting it for a moment, before I swallow it back down.
‘I’ve noticed Mother Lin frequenting the mainland,’ I begin. ‘I’ve gathered she is trading with parties there, and I imagine they are books or written materials.’ Mother Joca nods and I breathe more deeply. ‘With whom does she trade and for what purpose?’
Mother Joca hums thoughtfully and beckons us to make our way back to the shelter of the temple.
‘Your observations are astute. The temple helps the flow of information. It’s our duty to know when gifted children should come to study with us, for example.’
She makes another thoughtful noise, this time deeper in her throat. ‘I am always glad when my instincts are proven correct.’ Then she adds, shrewdly, ‘You cannot be so naive as to not understand my meaning in seeking you out like this.’
‘Your attentions are gratefully received, Mother. The Temple of Aistra has given me so much.’
Mother Joca places a gloved hand on the top of my head, and I bow accordingly, looking down at her sturdy shoes and cloak hem flecked with snow.
‘You were nothing when you came to us, Sister Hanan.’
I think about crafting my remedy and the memory of being full encircled by warm arms. The blurry edges of the hands sparking stones. The deep laugh. When I opened up myself, I was granted access to those memories, almost lost to time like feathers on a sea breeze. I had a history before they took me here and made me what I am. My life before the temple is a shadow, but it’s not nothing.
chapter fifteen
ris
Given enough time,objects become sacred. Generations were born and died on this farmstead and the house is full of things they crafted with their hands and touched daily: the wooden highchair carved by my great-grandparents, where Biba sat years ago, rubbing the paste of her food into the grain.
Packing up the entirety of almost forty years is one of the saddest tasks in life. I’m a sentimental sop, and amongst the history is a hoard of useless trinkets that leave me wondering why I do it to myself. But I’ve always found clean, uncluttered spaces frightening. My father Jon used to call it empty horror, the fear of that yawning space; the echo of a hollow or an abyss. Some people fear being enclosed, but I think of it as being ensconced.
I didn’t used to feel this way.
I can pinpoint the moment the hoarding began: the morning I discovered he’d left. The shirt he’d worn the day before was draped over the bed frame. It smelled of him: musky and spicy. I slept with that shirt until it disintegrated to rags. His absence compelled me to keep every fragment of him and our lives together, to remind myself I hadn’t imagined our time together; that the promises, now broken, had meant something.
‘Why must we leave?’ Biba asks, lifting her head from the box where she is organising her things. She is treating the task with great solemnity, as she has for the past week.
‘I told you, we must go on a journey.’
‘Why us?’ she asks, half-churlish.
I exhale sharply. ‘I told you to hide this.’ I take her small hands in my own and she pulls away, flexing her fingers. Her look is accusatory.
‘I’ve been careful,’ she says petulantly. ‘I’m doing my best.’
‘Not careful enough. Do you want them to take you away to Aistra?’
She shrugs and huffs to the window. ‘At least there are people like me at the temple.’
‘You might think things will be better there, but you don’t know that. I’m just trying to keep you safe.’
‘Home is safe.’
I follow her to the window and look out at the farm. ‘Not anymore,’ I sigh.
I worry the talisman around my neck with my thumb and forefinger. The edge of the crescent moon is thinner, paler, from the years of this habit.
‘Why do you rub that?’ Biba asks, turning to me.
