Book 2, Chapter 40: A New Beginning

The comet’s light rippled from the point of impact, its glow spreading beneath the surface of Lake Elowen like a moon kindled underwater.

Even up in the tower, the floorboards rumbled from the crash. A long, seamless arc of energy now connected the lake to Helena, and Clara reminded her feet of the stabili, alternating her focus between the two spells as the power of a Saintess coursed through her.

Down at the lake, radiant waves surged forth in rings, their crests as tall as Mont Sainte-Michelle’s walls.

Clara’s stomach dropped. If those were to hit the village—

But the tide priests sang in response, their wands flaring like stars along the shoreline.

Their melody drifted in the air, dozens of voices woven together, though she couldn’t catch the words from this high up. The waves in front curled back, then turned the other way and slammed into the water behind. Wave met counter-wave in a dangerous dance, flinging shining droplets skyward.

Thank the Goddess, the Pope was right. Clara breathed, and that second of relief was enough for her spell to slip. A portion of energy splintered off the arc and barreled into a nearby tower, sending a chunk of masonry crashing down to the empty courtyard below.

Come on, Casewell, hold it. Don’t you dare let go.

She brought the image back. The flood poured out of the containment sphere, through her, and into the lake, and there seemed to be no end to it. Her arms burned. Her vision blurred at the edges.

But she held.

The blaze inside the sphere began to dim. It softened with each drop of magic that hit the lake, until Clara could make out Helena’s silhouette again, then her hair—which had gone fully white—and finally her pale, tear-streaked cheeks.

The column thinned from a river to a stream.

Clara held, her knees shaking. She held on past the point where the world narrowed to a tunnel, past the point where her limbs begged her to let go. She saw the lake in her mind and let Helena pour everything out.

The whistle fell silent. The column faded from the sky.

The containment sphere dissolved into the ether, and Helena Rosewood fell to the floor.

“Helena!” Clara dropped the chandelier arm and lurched to the girl just in time to stop her head from hitting the wood. “Helena, hey, can you hear me? Hey! Helena!”

Helena didn’t answer, and Clara put a hand on her forehead. She’s burning up. Yet her chest rose and fell, her breathing shallow but steady.

“She’s alive. Thank fuck, she’s alive,” Clara whispered.

Then the room tilted on its side, and she went down beside her friend.

Clara woke up to an unfamiliar ceiling with ornately painted beams. Her first thought was that she was lying somewhere decidedly more comfortable than the small bed in her chambers, and her second thought was that her arms and her back hurt like hell.

“Good morning, neighbor!”

Clara shifted, her eyes still adjusting to the light. Helena Rosewood sat in a chair pulled up beside the bed, her hair white from—

“Lady Helena, you’re okay.” Clara pushed herself up onto her elbows. Someone had wound a cloth around her right palm while she slept, and when she flexed her fingers, the splinter was gone.

Helena smiled. “Of course I am. Because of you.” She raised her bandaged hand. “We match now.”

“So it seems.”

“Her Holiness told me you saved me, Clara. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. How long was I out?”

“Only for the night.” The Pope stood at the foot of the bed, dark circles under her eyes. Fortunately, she looked unharmed. “You put yourself under an excessive amount of strain, and your body shut down to recover from it. The same happened to Lady Helena, and she woke only moments ago.”

That explains why everything feels so sore, then.

A knock on the door. The Cardinal Primate entered, her face even more weary than the Pope’s.

“Your Eminence, I’m glad to see you’re fine as well,” Clara said.

Aemilia smiled ruefully. “There is too much work to be done for me to not be fine, Dame Casewell.”

I know that feeling.

“What about everyone else? The evacuation, the village, was anyone hurt?”

“There were no casualties, save for a part of the west tower and our Cardinal Primate’s office,” answered the Pope.

That’s a relief. I really did it. Everyone’s safe. No, wait, not everyone. “And Mother Cornelia?”

Aemilia sighed, resting her hand on the bed frame. “The healers spent the night fixing her arm. Once she woke this morning, she confessed of her own volition, before Her Holiness and me, to having pushed Mother Radegund down the shaft. She even asked for the Blessing, because she felt ‘crushed by the guilt of her sins.’”

Clara felt queasy, knowing the initial confession was extracted under duress. It was the kind of thing the system she hoped to implement was designed to prevent.

“What’s going to happen to her, Your Eminence?” Helena asked, without meeting Aemilia’s eyes. “She killed Mother Radegund… She should face justice.”

“For now, she will remain under watch. She has been removed from her post, and her conduct will be brought before the Ecumenical Council in due time, as per the ordinances of Mont Sainte-Michelle.” Aemilia watched Helena carefully as she spoke. “There is an irony to it, isn’t there? As custodian, it was Cornelia’s duty to keep others in line, yet she could not keep hold of herself. I never expected such a heinous act from her after all our years together, especially over something as trivial as a seat. I…” For once, the Cardinal Primate looked like the weary old woman that she was.

“The Council will ensure that appropriate sanctions are applied, Lady Helena,” finished the Pope. “Regardless of Cornelia’s past service to the Church, she has taken a soul that was not hers to take, and she must answer for that.”

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Clara spoke up. “Your Holiness, Your Eminence, if I may make a small request.”

“Speak it,” said the Pope.

“After Mother Cornelia has had some time to rest—maybe a week or two—give her a fresh chance to explain herself, and offer her the Blessing again, if she wants it. She—” Clara stopped, glanced at Helena, then continued, “She was under a lot of pressure, so when she clears her head she might have something else to add, or a part of the story that was missing. For the sake of the truth.”

“For the sake of the truth, you say. A noble desire.” The Pope nodded. “You shall see to it, Aemilia.”

“It will be done, Your Holiness,” said the Cardinal Primate. “Cornelia is still in recovery, but I will make sure she’s listened to once she is able.”

The Pope turned to Helena. “Lady Helena. Today, the Church grieves for Mother Radegund, and you most of all. Death is a part of life, but unlike those who depart, those of us left behind cannot take comfort in the Goddess’s embrace. Yet you must not let that hurt fuel sins of your own.”

“I’m sorry,” Helena blurted, rising from her chair to bow to the Pope. “I didn’t mean to do all that, I never meant for anyone to be hurt, and I promised Clara, and it was just… Mother Radegund was gone, and I was so upset, and it kept building and building the whole day, and after a while I didn’t know how to stop it.”

“You will learn, as I did,” said the Pope, amber eyes fixed on Helena. Her presence still radiated the same pressure Clara had felt before, but compared to the column of light from last night, it might as well have been a spring breeze. “The Goddess has granted you great power, and you hold a responsibility to the faithful in how you wield it. From now on, you shall stay by my side until you have learned to govern your magic and your emotions. After Mother Radegund’s funeral this afternoon, you will return with me to Elysia. Dame Casewell can join us, as well.”

“Me?” Clara asked.

“You were meant to depart yesterday. As that schedule has already been broken, you may as well return with us.” The Pope aimed her heavy gaze at Clara. “Consider this an opportunity to converse.”

Right. Of course she wants to talk to me after all that.

“Your Holiness.” Aemilia straightened. “There are ten days until the canonization, and Lady Helena still has a great deal to learn from the Ministry. And beyond that, there are questions I must put to both of them about what transpired with Cornelia, the sequence of events that led to—”

“That matter is resolved,” said the Pope. “Cornelia has confessed under the Blessing, and unless she has more to say at a later date, that is all there is to it. And while it is a break from tradition, there is no reason why what remains of Lady Helena’s education can’t be completed in Elysia.” The Pope approached the Cardinal Primate, the authority in her tone blunted by concern. “Aemilia, you saw what nearly happened last night. Until this child has mastery over herself, it is not safe for her to be anywhere but at my side.”

The Cardinal Primate held the Pope’s gaze for a long moment. Then she lowered her head. “As you command, Your Holiness.”

Clara’s shoulders relaxed. For now, at least, it seemed that the matter of her sneaking into the archives wasn’t going to come out.

Clara stood with Helena on the edge of the main garden, watching villagers cross the causeway into Mont Sainte-Michelle by the dozen. The abbey’s gates had been opened wide by order of the Pope, and the tide priests kept the causeway dry long past the usual schedule.

Sisters with wicker baskets went around, distributing a white lily and a small wand to each mourner. Clara pinned the flower in her hair and tried to twirl the wand between her fingers, but there was still some discomfort in her right hand, so she switched the wand to her left.

It was nothing but a finger-length piece of wood with a rough chip of cloudy quartz set into the tip. It probably cost the Church less than a penny, but it made sense to be economical, considering every single person present had been given one for the funeral rite.

Helena, like some of the more prepared mourners, wore a white veil—though in her case, it was just as much funeral garb as it was a way for the Church to conceal the color of her hair. Clara wanted to bring up the pinky promise, to have a proper conversation with Helena about her actions, but Mother Radegund’s funeral wasn’t the occasion for that. She needs her space to grieve.

The villagers, on the other hand, were not exactly in a solemn mood. They chattered with excitement about the events of last night, and there was rampant speculation that what happened had been a second Miracle of Lake Elowen, a gift from the Goddess and a sign that the rumors of a new Saintess were true. The Church had not confirmed or denied anything, and Clara wasn’t about to advertise her role in it; she’d get a torrent of questions from every magical academic in Arcadia. It was already enough that she’d have to explain herself to the Pope.

Still, even if the people didn’t know what exactly had caused the ‘miracle,’ they were pleased with its large bounty. It turned out that dumping so much raw power into a lake wasn’t gentle on the local wildlife, and many of the villagers were freely handing out grilled fish, and the whole garden smelled of it.

Sorry, fish.

An old man yelled that they should all be thanking him, because he’d been hungry and praying to the Goddess for food, so She must’ve listened to him. Clara glanced at the Saintess-to-be, whose veil was trembling faintly.

“Are you laughing?”

“N-no,” said Helena, laughing.

As the sun started its descent, Mother Radegund was brought out on her bier and placed near an open grave dug into a square of bare earth next to a tree. Then the tide bell rang, and the Pope came forward, standing at the head of the grave.

She spoke plainly, listing Radegund’s years of service, her lifelong devotion, her stubbornness, and even her ‘penchant for numbers.’ It was a more authentic account of her life than Clara had expected, and after the Pope finished, others were invited to speak if they wished to.

The first one to take up the offer was a red-eyed Sister Beth, who shared the story of her first meeting with Radegund. After her, there were a few whom Clara didn’t recognize, then at one point even Inquisitor Roderick wheeled himself before the crowd, lowered his head, and apologized to Radegund.

“Do you want to go up there?” Clara asked Helena.

The girl sniffled. “I… I’ve said all there is to be said to her, really. Do you think I have to? Maybe they expect me to, because we were close…”

Helena’s face was full of hesitation, and Clara knew exactly what it was like.

‘She’s not even crying,’ they had whispered, when Clara stood in a room full of her parents’ colleagues and mechanically read from the paper in front of her. ‘She’s so cold.’

‘Why don’t you care about them?’ they had asked, when she skipped the family gathering on the anniversary of the car crash to focus on her law school studies.

Clara shook her head. “You don’t have to do anything, Helena. Everyone mourns in their own way.”

Helena nodded, wiping the corner of her eye.

When the eulogies finished, the singing started. A single sister’s voice opened it, and the crowd responded, the lyrics known by heart.

“On an ocean of souls,

Lo, the Goddess receives.”

After the first few lines, Clara joined in as well, the hymn coming to her from Stella’s memories.

“And soSummer blooms,

We let the tears Fall.

Our warm memories fade,

Yet still we march tall.”

Memories did fade, Clara had learned with time. It was hard to remember their voices. What their smiles really looked like. It was all so… blurry.

She’d spent so long without them now, it sometimes felt like she didn’t even know them. That what she thought she remembered was just a series of conclusions her brain arrived at based on circumstantial evidence.

The melody ebbed and flowed, minor turning major and back again, sorrow and hope intertwined. Four sisters slowly lowered the body into the earth, as if the descent were part of the song.

“And so Winter comes,

Time claims your name.

But in the same breath,

It dampens the flame.”

Bowls of dark earth traveled through the crowd from hand to hand, then were emptied over Mother Radegund. Clara wondered if this was what Ricardo’s funeral had been like. It had taken place in the days after his death, while she’d been estranged from House von Rhenia.

For his sake, and her parents’, and even Mother Radegund’s, Clara pushed down her cynicism and hoped that, if the Goddess existed, She was watching this, that She cared.

“And so Spring thaws,

The Goddess receives.

When one life is ended,

So another begins.”

When the last bowl was emptied and the grave was a low, bare mound, every hand in the garden lifted a wand. Clara’s sore shoulder protested when she joined the chorus, but she paid it no mind.

“Vita ex terra crescat,” the crowd sang, hundreds of quartz chips glimmering at once.

Let life grow from the earth.

Thin green blades pushed up through the fresh soil until the whole mound was covered in new grass. Clara realized her face was wet—she’d seen a lot of magic by now, but she hadn’t expected a spell to make her cry.

The Pope raised her hands. “Fiat a Dea.”

“Fiat,” answered Mont Sainte-Michelle.

And after eighty-nine years, Mother Radegund left to meet the Goddess.

Amidst that garden of tears and smiles, Clara Casewell let herself grieve for the first time.

Rest well, everyone. I miss you.