Chapter Six Kian
We don’t exactly run through the forest—after all, we still wear blindfolds—but our pace is much quicker than when we began.
Unfortunately, I feel like I can’t risk dropping more of the red stones to lead Aunt Ujvala out of the forest, but at least they’ll already be past the wards.
They can figure out the rest of the way.
Despite the blindfold, I can tell when we step out of the forest and into a meadow. The light seeping through the edges of my blindfold brightens, the sounds change, a strong breeze ruffles our robes and hair.
I can feel an invisible release of tension from the entire group. Someone beside me sighs with relief. We are nearly there. At last.
We remain jumpy at every rattle of leaves by the wind, at the soft hush of long grasses as our robes sweep behind us, but nothing else attacks, or even approaches, and after a few more long minutes of walking, we stop and wait.
And wait.
And wait.
Beside me, I sense the others fidgeting and shifting, too. When my feet go numb, I begin to jog in place, which I assume will get my shoulders rapped, but the priestesses ignore me.
“Your fellow keepers are late,” Sarai hisses to those who wait with us. Whatever response they mumble in reply, my ears don’t catch.
What they catch instead is the faint screaming of a woman.
It starts out sounding far away but gets quickly closer until everyone in our group is shifting uncomfortably, unsure of where the sound is coming from.
It sounds like it’s above us, and I briefly imagine the horror of a dragon with an entire, still-living person trapped in its teeth.
But there is something distinctly ecstatic laced in with the fear of the scream.
Suddenly there’s a loud thud that reverberates through my feet and the screaming stops.
Then there’s another lesser thud as something much smaller hits the ground.
I hear Sarai’s sharp inhale as I tear off my blindfold.
Sister Roberta scowls at me. “Put that back on.”
I ignore her. Before me a woman with dark shining hair and the silver mask of an assistant matcher lies flat on her back with a massive black-and-silver pegasus hovering above her.
I hurry over alongside the keepers bending down and notice as I get close that she’s crying and laughing and gripping two handfuls of long grasses in her gloved hands as if the ground itself might run away and desert her. The keepers and Sarai are staring dumbstruck.
The pegasus snorts and paws the ground but doesn’t seem to mind my presence by his… rider? Captive?
She begins to shake and laugh uncontrollably, until the keeper John gently pulls her into a sitting position, rubbing her arm and back briskly. She slowly starts to calm.
“What is this?” John asks her. “Why were you riding Lathai?” He says “riding” like it is something shameful, and I take it joyrides on pegasi are not part of growing up a keeper.
“Where’s Adela?” she replies, looking around. She still seems a bit… frantic.
“Who’s Adela?” I ask.
Before she can answer, the quiet breaks with another woman’s raised voice. But whereas the scream from the assistant matcher sounded mostly like terror, this new noise is pure exhilaration. I twist toward the sound, my heart jumping at what I see.
A large, well-curved woman, one white leg totally bare, with large swaths of rich, dark fabrics and disheveled braids streaming out behind her, bounces upon the back of a glowing unicorn.
She looks like something out of a storybook, and I want to rip the gold mask off her face to see the bold ecstasy that’s so clear in her call.
“Adela,” the assistant matcher says, her voice even and strong again. She scoots away slightly from John, and though she doesn’t immediately push up to stand, I know she’s finding her way back to herself.
I want to ask her to tell me more about this Adela, but Sister Roberta grabs my arm, muscles me back into line, and ties my blindfold on so tight I may soon lose feeling in my ears from lack of blood flow.
I almost expect her to give my shins a good kick like my cousins used to during our games, but instead she simply moves away with an annoyed scoff.
If a holy’s opinion has ever mattered before; it certainly never will now. For the first time since I joined the order, I finally understand their burning fervor to bow, scrape, and worship. But whereas their divine is the Huntress, mine is all thick white thighs, bouncing flesh, and primal joy.
I have at last seen the true visage of the goddess, and her name, apparently, is Adela.