The crowd, though, was not as peaceful. They didn’t seem too worried about the local murderous warlord dying, but Koltar’s death was another story. Some citizens of the city fell to their knees. Others clutched at each other in shock. Some gazed furiously upwards, as if wanting to drag the Callanna moon down so she could explain just how her Eye could have gone so astray. But the moons were hidden still. And Koltar was too dead to explain anything to anyone.
“A new Mother’s Eye must be made to see,” Koraba said. She spoke firmly, with authority. As she was the oldest Mother’s Hand, I supposed she was probably the highest-ranking person around without Koltar.
“I nominate you, Koraba! Wisest of the Mother’s Hands!” called someone from the crowd.
“Ha! I am too old for such a position,” Koraba shot back.
“You cannot defy the nomination. The Mother will decide,” Jolakaia said, and Koraba jerked her snout to the right.
“Yes, young one. I know. Fine! But being in the running does not prevent me from choosing my own candidate. I nominate Jolakaia!”
Zev grinned and puffed up with pride at the exact moment that Jolakaia shrank back. The reason for Jolakaia’s awkwardness became clear very quickly when complaints and jeers began to spew like vomit from the gathered citizens.
“She comes from metal!”
“Same foul blood as Joleb!”
“Bah! A stain on the Eye!”
“We are going from one murderer to another!”
“It should be Koraba!”
Koraba raised her hand high then closed it in a fist. Slowly, though unhappily, the others quieted.
“The Mother will decide!” she called out sharply, echoing Jolakaia’s words. “But my nomination stands!”
She raked her eyes mercilessly over the people watching, snout raised high.
“Who among us is more worthy than one who has been on the path of metal and has turned from it? Where is the wisdom in following the path of cotton when you were born on its smooth road and you know no other way? Jolakaia has walked in the world, has tasted the bloody glories of metal, and still, she chooses Callabarra. Still, she chooses cotton. She has been relentless in her service to our city because her true spirit is that of a healer. That is the way of the Mother! Let any citizen who disagrees with me prove that they have cared for more of our sick or injured than Jolakaia has!”
No one spoke.
“It is as I thought. None can make such a claim.” Koraba turned her stern eyes onto Jolakaia, who was still slouching shyly. “Stand tall, young one,” she commanded, and Jolakaia straightened, as if disobeying Koraba was far worse than any of her current feelings of embarrassment. “You are as worthy as any other. The Mother will decide.”
In the end, one other person was nominated, a male named Porat whom I vaguely recognized in his green robes as one of the Mother’s Seeds I’d seen working in the temple gardens.
“Now what happens?” I whispered to Zev as the three candidates assembled in the centre of the crowded courtyard.
“Now, the Mother of Cotton will decide,” Zev said. At that moment, two Mother’s Hands came out of the temple. One carried the medical supplies Jolakaia had sent her for, and she made a beeline to me. The other went towards the candidates carrying what appeared to be a pile of folded cotton rags.
Skalla held me close as the young Mother’s Hand began cleaning my shoulder. It stung badly, but soon she’d applied some kind of numbing cream for the sutures, allowing me to focus on what was happening ahead as she closed up the wound.
The three candidates removed their robes and then lay flat on their backs on the ground. Koraba, old and stiff-jointed, took a while to get down into the position, but she shooed away anyone who offered assistance. Once all three were lying flat, the Mother’s Hand went along the row of them, laying a square cloth of white cotton on each of their bellies.
“They must remain lying there,” Zev explained. “Wind will come and tug at the cotton, but that cotton will hold fast on the body of the Mother’s chosen eye.”
“What if no wind comes?” I asked.
“It is the beginning of the rainy season. There will be wind.”
As if on cue, a breeze whispered through the courtyard, making the cotton on the candidates’ bellies flutter. Porat’s was raised a little higher than the others, and after a moment of butterfly-like hovering, his cotton square drifted onto the ground beside him. He rose and left the row, leaving only Koraba and Jolakaia.
The Mother’s Hand working on my shoulder finished up her neat sutures, applied bandages, then dabbed ointments around my eye and onto my cracked lips. I could sense the tension in Skalla, letting someone else get that close to me when I was injured, but he kept his possessive growls to himself, though I felt the restrained rumble of them in his chest as he held me.
“Thank you,” I whispered, and she nodded at me before heading to join the other Mother’s Hands. I returned my attention to Jolakaia and Koraba lying on the blue river and gold stone ahead. I frowned, noting cracks in the stone beneath their bodies. Had those cracks always been there?
I didn’t have time to dwell on it, because another wind was blowing, now. This one stronger, humid, insistent. It tousled my damp hair, skimming my skin like a physical caress. The crowd was so quiet that the sound of my own heartbeat, and that of Skalla’s, flooded my head. I realized I was holding my breath without even meaning to as the wind reached Koraba and Jolakaia.
It wasn’t an aggressive gust of wind. It wasn’t grabby or greedy or pushy. But it was strong, and like the hand of a firm but fair mother, it did not yield until the job that needed to be done was complete.
The cotton on both women’s bellies fluttered.
I gasped along with the crowd. What did it mean if they both lost their cotton squares? Would they have to repeat the whole process with new candidates? I chewed nervously on my lip, then swore internally when I remembered my injuries there.
Suspense throbbed.
The wind was like breath.
Koraba’s cloth floated away.
At the same moment that Koraba’s cloth hit the ground, Jolakaia’s also lifted right off her scales. I strained to sit up in Skalla’s arms and see better, as if the gravity of my gaze could somehow hold her cloth in place. But it was pointless. The cloth was already lifting higher, skimming away from Jolakaia’s belly towards her chest where it would surely blow away, except...
Except, like someone had pinched it right out of the air from below, it suddenly stopped.
And it stayed.
In that place above Jolakaia’s heart, where her brother had ripped out her scale and shoved in a cruel hunk of metal, the cotton square had snagged.
All at once, like someone stopping breathing, the wind was gone. A shivery, sacred sort of stillness settled in its wake. Oddly, I felt my eyes fill with tears as I stared at the perfect white square caught on that piece of metal pain.
I’d never contemplated destiny in any serious way before; I’d always considered myself too pragmatic for that. But now, it was as if I could see every moment of Jolakaia’s life that had pulled her, magnet-strong, to this exact point in time. I thought about taking it out, she’d said about that metal piece on her chest. But she hadn’t.
Then, I turned my teary gaze up to Skalla’s bloodied face. Fated mates, he’d called us. And suddenly I couldn’t stop thinking about how every single thing that had ever happened to me, every choice I’d ever made, even the ones that had been made for me, had brought me directly to him. A universe apart, he and I had been moving towards each other without even knowing it.