The first time the darkness had fully trapped her beneath its spell—keeping her veins inky black and her mind full of whispers—was the night of Brianne’s coronation. It had come alive to contest the other girl’s very public appointment as the queen and New Maiden. Had taken on an agency of its own so that Sabine would emerge victorious.
“And what do you feel like without it?”
“Empty.” She glanced at the rushing riverbanks, imagining the soil dusty and dry. “Endlessly and impossibly dull.”
“You don’t appear that way to me,” Brianne said, “if that’s any consolation.”
It was, if just barely. Sabine sighed. “I thought that by coming here… I thought I would instantly know what to do.”
“The truth is hardly ever as simple as that.” The young girl was much wiser than Sabine had given her credit for.
But things had been simple for Sabine, once. The darkness had told her what to think, who to trust, how to survive. Without that clear guidance, Sabine was ill-equipped to exist, let alone lead. Worse, she wished desperately for its return, wanted to revel in its familiar, punishing timbre. It was strange, to lose something that had once been such an integral part of her existence. Every morning that she woke to find her mind fully her own felt like reopening an old wound.
“It sounds like something’s missing,” Brianne said softly. Sabine sat up straighter, feeling exposed. “If the Lower Banks are where the New Maiden came into Her power, surely it can be the place where you return to yours. We just need to find a way to replenish you.”
The youngest Warnou got to her feet and began to pace. “You’ve seen the water. That’s the most obvious. Perhaps you need to drink it?” She frowned down at Sabine. “Although you ought to be careful, drinking the Maiden’s tears.” She chuckled darkly.
“I wet my lips last night when I freshened up.”
“And?”
Sabine shook her head. “Nothing.”
“The New Maiden dug her hands into the dirt and became one with the earth,” Brianne said, paraphrasing a verse from Her book. “Do you feel anything move beneath you?”
Sabine held up a fist and let the soil trickle down her wrist. The earth murmured to her softly, but it held none of the force of true magic. “Still nothing.”
Brianne sighed, sinking back down onto the sand. “What else is there? We’ve tried both the salt and the silt. Could there have been a sacred site? A place they gathered to worship?”
Water sloshed against the banks as the two girls sat in silence. According to the New Maiden’s journal, Hera once left offerings on the hearth. But that did not feel sacred. At least not until it sparked the memory of a story Sabine had heard with Elodie, tucked away in a tavern where they ate pie and drank wine. The storyteller had spoken of the miracles Ruti returned to discover: the water running, the crops growing, the fire moved.
“‘Where once there had been a hearth, sat an altar.’”
Brianne looked perplexed. “What are you talking about?”
Sabine leapt to her feet. “Her Favoreds built an altar.” She made her way toward the center of camp, Brianne at her heels. She scanned the land, past tents and smiling attendants, laundry hung out to dry, and strips of meat laid out to smoke. “Surely something remains of it.”
“Remains of what?” Katrynn emerged from their tent, hair mussed artfully, sleep crusting her eyes. She yawned, long and loud.
“The answer,” Sabine said, heart pounding. If she could locate the altar and produce a worthy offering, surely that would be enough to reignite her power. “The way to bring my magic back.”
By the time Genevar emerged from their tent to greet the day, Sabine, Katrynn, and Brianne were knee-deep in the dirt.
“What in Her name are you doing?” The Archivist looked inquisitively at the earth piled up around them.
Brianne leaned on her shovel, using her wrist to wipe a strand of hair out of her eyes. “Searching for the New Maiden’s shrine. The attendants said it once sat in the center of the camp.”
“Ah, yes.” Genevar nodded. “The New Maiden first emerged from flames, and so Her altar would also come from the hearth.” She eyed their haphazard hole. “I don’t know what you expect to find, though. That was centuries ago; the stone and clay long shattered. This is why the written word is superior to any item made by humankind,” she added sagely. “It is far less fragile.”
“But not always as concrete.” Sabine thought of how easy it was to hold an object, to see all sides of it, to test its weight, to know it so fully that its memory remained ingrained regardless of time or distance. Sabine had never been as successful with words.
“I think the New Maiden’s word is rather concrete,” Genevar argued, her eyes on Katrynn, who sifted methodically through the piles of dirt turned over by Brianne. “She was about community, about the betterment of others through equal access to resources. That is where Her power truly lies. Not in the promise of a better world, but in its realization.”
A lump formed in Sabine’s throat. Distilled so simply, the New Maiden’s beliefs were the same as her own. But where Sabine had only longed for change, the New Maiden had done it.
Sabine took a break from digging to join Katrynn in her sifting. It was relaxing work, the rhythm of their hands matching the soft sloshing of water against the banks. Soon they had a small pile of stones, twigs, and shattered clay. As Brianne began to dig deeper, the dirt grew colder, wriggling earthworms sliding out from within the soil.
They paused their search for a meal of hand pies filled with roasted root vegetables and a tangy orange spice. From time to time, one of the attendants would join the search, uncovering a smooth river stone or a petrified rodent skull. They would place their findings in the pile beside Sabine, like some ritual of sacrifice, before wandering away, another white-robed attendant coming to take the previous one’s place.
This was how Sabine came to know the people of the Lower Banks. Most had been here all their lives, born on the small stretch of land made famous by the Maiden’s first miracle. They all had a relative who had been a follower of the New Maiden; one girl was even a descendant of Her Favored Beck. All were kind, quiet folk—kinesthetic thinkers who were quick to smile.
By the time the sun began to set, Brianne had blisters on her palms, the center of the encampment had been overturned twofold, and the pile of unearthed sticks, stones, and bones was the size of a sleeping child. But there was still no sign of an altar.
Sabine wiped the sweat from her brow. Her cheeks were flushed; the skin of her nose was surely burned. But the exhaustion she felt was surface level, in her body, not her soul. A tired that could be repaired with food and rest in preparation to start again.
“Tomorrow, then,” she said, hoping to soothe the beleaguered expressions of Katrynn and Brianne. Genevar had long abandoned them to shy away from the harsh sun. “We’ll resume our work tomorrow.”
Her companions nodded gratefully, stumbling toward the fire where the locals were doling out stew. Sabine stayed behind to survey their work. The hole was precarious, but then she supposed that digging up the past was never tidy. Sabine only hoped that communing with the Lower Banks, getting to know the New Maiden and Her word, would be enough fuel for the storm that was brewing.
She did not move until the sun sank firmly below the shoreline and the air turned cold enough to make her shiver. One of the attendants, a girl about her own age with a long red braid, brought her a steaming bowl of stew. After Sabine had filled her belly and helped the attendant do the washing, she slipped into bed, listening to the sound of the water lapping against the banks.
Sabine slept soundly all the way through the night.
20
