Garden of Night: Beneath Devouring Eyes #3

Chapter 1 | Part 1

"Many are the holy barges which the gods have cast upon the Black Seas. The first of these was the Daughter of the Generations, she of the Endless Journey."

-- from the Holy Ovidiana

*~*~*~*

I won't mess up this time.

Bru drew a deep breath, trying to ignore the people in the bronze-plated balconies overlooking the feast hall. She just needed to keep it together for a few minutes, and then her nerve-wracking Walk would be over.

Easy.

On the hall's cedarwood stage, Pedagogue Jelileo beamed at the last fourteen-year-old to Walk. "Sejun was a gifted young astrophysicist even before his Legacy of Mind blossomed last month," the old man said, patting the shoulder of the rainbow-maned boy. He bent over a table, where five walking staves rested atop the rose-embroidered gold runner. "And a delight to have in my alchemy circle. A real credit to the Eighty-Eighth Generation."

Bru held her breath as the stout man pressed the staff into Sejun's hands. Soon, it would be her turn to receive her praise and walking staff. The Pedagogues normally didn't gush over her, but now they had to find something nice to say.

Try not to look too eager when you're up there, she lectured herself the way she'd overheard other kids' mothers lecture them. She sipped her rose tea and then folded her sweaty hands in her lap. A green smudge caught her eye, and she glared at her wrist. At her grumbled command, away the charcoal smear went, cleansed by her glittering gilt nanites. And don't drop the staff. Even Naturals manage to keep it together under pressure. You're a Brew. Act like it.

The adults' staves thudded against the walnut floor, and Sejun descended the brass-trimmed stairs, staff held high.

"Bru Unemd," Pedagogue Jelileo's voice rang out through the noise, amplified by the gilt shimmering around him, "please come forward. It's time to leave childhood behind and Walk into Adulthood."

Bru jerked to her feet and grabbed her chair as it threatened to overturn. A nervous giggle squeezed out of her.

Sejun returned to the table where his beaming rainbow-haired Family waited. But no one sat beside Bru at the Unemd table. Until her, no one from her Womb-born Family had sat here for over two hundred years.

She tipped her chair back into place, glad everyone was focused on Sejun. No one paid her empty table much mind as she stepped away.

The crimson carpet stretched before her, flanked by her classmates' Family tables. She sucked in another deep breath, but the gold-embellished rug didn't grow any shorter. Gritting her teeth as everyone turned to look at her, she began her Walk.

One foot in front of the other. One step, then another. Who placed the tables so close together? Her elbow bumped her blue-haired classmate, Tundir, and Bru squeaked out an apology.

Around her, eyes measured her like they had always measured her, as though each step might reveal something. A hidden excellence. The special purpose every Brew possessed. A useful tool.

When had the air grown so hot?

Her toe caught the rug. Already stiff-legged with anxiety, she slammed to the ground with a yelp.

"Oh, my," Pedagogue Jelileo said, hurrying down the steps. "Are you alright?"

Maybe the stained-glass chandelier would fall and put her out of her misery. "I'm fine," she whispered. Her gilt was already at work, a few nanites freeing themselves from the raiment she wore to ease the sting of her scraped elbow. If only the gilt could soothe her bruised pride.