Candlemaiden: The Stranger Shore

Fifth Chapter: Banishment

Yet despite the city's defeated malaise, people had still begun preparing for the Hallowed Moon festival. Purple ribbons dangled from door frames, red roses real or hand-made stood vigil in windows with small yellow candles, and on almost every street carved pumpkins peppered doorsteps. Some pumpkins had wicked faces with snarling fangs, the better to scare off evil spirits. Others were painted with the traditional wheat and sickle as a token of gratitude for the harvest. A few remarkable pumpkins had stained glass insets, whose dancing colors made Iris smile.

One pumpkin had an odd symbol carved into it that Iris stopped to peer down at. It was familiar, yet she couldn't quite place it.

"It's not a symbol Mother Hall taught me," Iris said softly to the three mice as they sniffed at the pumpkin, "nor something from the foreign alphabet we learned at school." She stared at it a bit longer as the ghostly mice began to tease a cat in the nearby alley, whose swiping paws passed right through her intended prey. Iris felt much the same, sifting through her memory for the answer but unable to pin it down. She stood there, head tilted in thought, until the cold air biting at her ankles became unbearable. With a disgruntled sigh, she set off to walking again. A snap of her fingers brought the mice back to her, and they crawled onto her shoulders to rest as she headed to the Red Sand Inn.

Erin had invited the girls traveling through the city to stay at her family's inn, and though Iris had been surprised at her inclusion, she knew better than to refuse. The school had given them each five of Kaerentia's queer copper pennies for their travels, which, even if people accepted them, would hardly be enough.

But people did accept the foreign currency. While the other girls had settled at in the inn, Iris had set off to roving around Ramos. She had left with no particular intent, perhaps only to escape the continued stifling amiability, but she was returning weighted and distracted by what she had learned. Not only did the oblong coppers and starred silvers of Kaerentia change hands as easily as Erinlin's own pennies, but Iris was just as likely to hear the guttural clattering of the Kaerent tongue as the rattle of their coins.

And people dressed strangely, in weird cuts and colors, sometimes subtly off and others egregiously wrong. As many women wore dresses as tunics, and Iris had been self-conscious of her outfit, not because it marked her as a Candlemaiden, but because she was afraid that people would not know that it did. They might look at her bare feet and think her careless or penniless for not wearing shoes. They would look with disdain at the clumsy pockets Iris had sewn on, not knowing they were an integral part of a true robe's pattern. Iris had always been an outsider, eliciting stares and whispers as a member of an ancient and sacred order. But now she would be victim to judgements without the protection of context, her sacred observances given vulgar meaning by unknowing eyes.

It was a sad and lonely truth, and Iris grieved for the days she had never known, when Candlemaidens traveled freely and were welcome wherever they passed. When spiritcraft wasn't regarded with suspicion, nor its priestesses with disdain-tinted fear. As she walked the streets of a city burying its history, she grieved for the Erinlin of old.

The Red Sand Inn, at least, spoke of days gone by. From where Iris had settled at one of the only empty tables, she could see a sea-glass mural depicting a traditional spring festival, with animals made of hay and willow waiting for the blue-flamed brands to kiss them. Lovely carved river barks amidst reeds and herons adorned Iris's tabletop, and she ran finger over a river spirit peeking up at a boat. The Hallowed Moon decorations met Iris's approval too; the ribbons draping the door frame were stained a rich purple, the roses and candles in the windowsill were artfully arranged, and scenes from The Moon and the Rose were carved on the pumpkins that sat squat on the mantel.

Iris idly fed the mice bits of turnip from her stew as she ruminated on Ramos and how far-reaching the Kaerent presence could actually be. Her spoon splashed as it slipped from her fingers. The odd symbol on that pumpkin, the one she couldn't place earlier, was the Kaerent Navy insignia. Deeply troubled, Iris licked the stew off the handle of her spoon. Was it a benediction, a curse, or warning? Had a child simply liked the design he saw in the harbor, or was its origin something deeper, something darker? Perhaps it was nothing more than an earnest attempt at a local tradition by a stationed officer. Iris still felt sick.