The stairs leading from the sleeping quarters to the ground floor didn't creak under my feet. No groaning. No give. It surprised me and unnerved me at the same time.
Back home, every board had a voice I knew by heart. I knew where to put my weight to avoid waking Mom, knew which step would answer with a sharp moan.
Here, the silence of the oak under my boots felt like an insult to my memory.
Can I trust these silent stairs? No, I'm just being paranoid.
Ahead of me, Emma's raven-black hair swayed with each step. It was glossy, heavy, ending in those red tips that looked like tiny scarlet dancers moving against the black of her tunic.
She moved with silent grace, almost ghostly, vanishing and reappearing in the shadows of the stairwell.
Emma, you... was it your fault?Are you the girl with red eyes my father heard people talking about? Did Dad and Mom die because of you?
I clenched my fists so tight pain ran through my forearm to my elbow.
Sipar walked behind me instead. I could feel his gray eyes drilling into the back of my neck. He explained the rules of the place in that calm, quiet voice.
I nodded.
Again.
Once more. I didn't listen much but I nodded to every word.
"When found me, I not know second name," he said, still using that uncertain way of speaking, typical of kids still learning the language. "So they give me name Grey. Always give to all those without name, here in city."
Grey.
This word hit my chest, cold and heavy. Just a sound to him. To me it was sawdust, blood, Mom's voice. My surname.
Sipar was thin as a rail, his clothes hanging off him like a scarecrow. From what I'd gathered, he'd been living here only a short time, maybe a Penta-week or two before me and my... before that day when we'd met them.
Still, he already seemed at ease, moving through these spaces like an experienced guide.
I don't even know if I'm staying! A part of me screamed, a spark of rebellion burning among the ruins of my mind.
But as I stared at the cold walls of that corridor, anger snuffed out immediately, replaced by an icy emptiness.
Where would I even go if I leave?
There wasn't a home to return to anymore. There wasn't anyone left to ask permission from, to stay or to leave. I was alone, surrounded by strangers wearing my name like stolen clothes.
I followed Emma to the ground floor. Then she turned.
Her red eyes pierced through me, still and deep as pools of hot blood.
I froze, the breath caught in my throat.
If it was your fault... if you had anything to do with what happened in the workshop, I swear I'll make you pay.
It didn't matter that she was a kid.
My hands ached. Fingers clawed so tight around the edges of the clean tunic Sister Cora had given me that my knuckles were white.
I wondered, with a bitter pang of nostalgia, if I'd ever see my old clothes again, muddy and stained with my parent's blood.
Emma made a sharp gesture with her hand, telling us to keep going, then opened the first door of dark wood.
"Emma is mute," Sipar commented, stating the obvious with a lack of tact that made me grit my teeth.
She didn't seem bothered by the unintentional insult. Turned toward him and flashed a quick smile, almost knowing.
We reached the second door, a large double gate of solid wood. When Emma opened one side, sunlight exploded inside, ferociously white.
She made a grand gesture toward the outside. In front of us spread the plaza with the pentagonal fountain, the same place where everything had started.
"Cora and Emma found you here, two days ago," Sipar continued, ignoring my stiffening. "I sleep. I like sleep. Emma instead sleep little, she always watch outside."
The girl gestured emphatically, moving her hands through the air as if scolding him. Seemed like she was calling him lazy, but Sipar shook his head with a shrug.
Then Emma fixed her gaze on me again. Smiled once more and pointed to an imposing building, too close to the orphanage to be coincidence. She brought her palms together, opening and closing them, leafing through an invisible book.
"Right. I got it. That is a library," I replied mechanically. "I get it, you know?"
Why wouldn't I get it?
She shook her head and raised one finger to the sky, then pointed at me, herself and the other boy.
"Well, not a library, then. The library. Our library."
Emma's gestures were clear. Crystal clear. Like I'd known them forever, but I didn't. I shouldn't have.
A cold shiver ran through me.
Emma winked at me and another shiver climbed up my spine, slower this time, starting from the base of my neck.
Those red eyes weren't human. Couldn't be.
Yes, that is where Father Tyeron teach us," Sipar continued, pointing to the classroom we'd passed. "Writing, reading, counting. One day also magic, he say."
No thanks. Not for me.
The thought made my stomach turn. Magic had promised me power and given back only ash and cold. I wanted nothing to do with it, ever again.
Sipar took a step outside the threshold, into the crisp air of the plaza. "As you see, next to our door there is big gate of church and that of bell tower. We can enter also from inside, I show you."
I went back with them. Sipar opened a small side door, almost invisible in the wall.
I stuck my head through the opening and my breath caught in my throat.
The interior space, an enormous pentagonal prism of white marble, dotted with orderly rows of dark wooden pews. At the exact center of the nave stood a stone altar, also pentagonal obviously, massive and solemn.
Above us, stained glass windows captured the morning light, each one decorated with the symbol of an eye radiating golden rays downward.
"Eteria's light breaks at dawn, gives you courage to carry on," I whispered without meaning to. Words had come out on their own, a conditioned reflex from a life that didn't exist anymore.
"You know the rhyme too, Arek?" Sipar asked, turning with a hint of surprise.
"Mom used to sing it to me… She sang it every time."
I left the sentence hanging while my gaze lost itself in the emptiness of the marble hexagon.
In the back, near the altar, some figures moved in silence. They were carefully arranging yellow five-petaled flowers. Yellow like the light from the Brand that had burned my chest. Yellow like the color of farewell.
This time Sipar seemed to sense something, but his young age didn't offer him the right words. He looked at me for a long moment, hesitation painted on his thin face.
"Here they prepare for... well..." he stammered, trying to avoid my gaze.
"For?" I asked. My voice was flat, icy.
"Uhm... I don't know. Come, I show you best part!" he exclaimed, trying to deflect with forced enthusiasm that almost hurt.
Emma, who until that moment had remained a silent shadow at my side, suddenly grabbed my arm. Her grip was unexpectedly firm, almost authoritative.
She pulled me away decisively, dragging me from those flowers and from that church preparing to celebrate something they didn't bother to tell me.
Of course they don't tell me. I am a stranger to them. We have the same last names but it is not like we are siblings or family.
Emma stepped between me and the church door.
One step. Decisive.
Her red eyes met mine, then flicked pointedly toward the corridor we'd come from. She didn't push me, she didn't need to. The message was clear: there was nothing for me back there. Not yet. I let her guide me away.
We retraced our steps through the stairway door, but didn't go up. We found ourselves in a spacious kitchen, dominated by a long wooden table and a window flooding the room with warm light, overlooking a patch of green.
"Here kitchen. There dining room,"
Emma instead opened the door in front of us, brought two fingers to her red eyes, then pointed outside with a quick gesture.
Look.
I leaned out. A well-kept garden. A wide lawn, with perimeter walls higher than a man stood outside, green with flowers and a sweet-nostalgic smell I couldn't place.
The moment I crossed the threshold, a gust of wind lashed my face, tousling my hair.
I shivered violently. For an instant this cold brought me back and I wasn't there anymore: I was back in the mud, under the freezing rain from two nights ago, lungs begging for air.
At the far end of the lawn stood an old stone well. The outer rim was still wet, a sign that someone had drawn water recently.
The perimeter was surrounded by flowers, but it was that smell that stopped my heart. Not the smell of flowers, but something else, it was oddly familiar…
A flowerbed stretched a few steps from me, with a small tree bearing red fruit at its center. But the scent, that pungent, familiar essence, came from green plants at its base.
My body knew before my mind did and my legs moved on their own, dragging me toward that smell I knew better than my own breath.
I approached like a sleepwalker.
My boots sank into soft, damp earth, making a dull sound. A few steps and I was there, in front of them.
"These are... how...?"
I couldn't finish the sentence. Tears started falling freely, burning on my cheekbone.
A gentle hand rested on my shoulder. I recognized that warmth immediately — Sister Cora. When did she arrive?
"These are the medicinal plants your mother gave us," she whispered. "She taught me how to use them for laundry and to make toothpaste."
She plucked a small leaf, green, teardrop-shaped, and placed it on my palm. It was soft. Droplets of moisture wet me and I brought it to my nose. That scent: home, hanging laundry, safe mornings.
"Mom." I let the name out. Didn't hold it back.
"And these, instead..." Cora extended an arm, rising on her tiptoes to reach one of the red fruits from the small tree. With a decisive pull, she picked a shiny apple, dew-covered. "These are the apples I gave her for you. She always told me how much you liked them in porridge."
She gave me a melancholic smile, studying my reaction through the veil of my tears.
"What do you think, Arek? Shall we go to the kitchen and see if my porridge comes even close to what she made for you?"
I looked at her. At it. Mom's plant.
"Yes," I murmured.
But it'll never be the same.