The Convert's Daughter by Anelynda E Mielke

Author:Anelynda E Mielke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: WRITING WRABBIT

20

The Sentinel and the Silver Book

As Ena spends more time in the forest, getting caught becomes more likely. The thought disturbs her: her parents disappointed, the Luminaries shocked, the Spexidren presiding over the whole thing with their uncontestable, burning gaze of righteous judgment. Not to mention Har would completely lose his mind. Actually, the image of Har’s flabbergasted expression brings her the tiniest bit of pleasure. The rest of it is downright terrifying.

Rya’s world begins to disconnect from her own even more as she makes new friends in The Civ. Ami and Pia are a year older than Rya. It seems like almost every day that Ami or Pia or both of them are coming over to hang out with Rya, or she’s getting a ride to one of their houses. Rya clearly adores the two of them. When Ena watches them together, jealousy wells up inside. She feels herself being replaced; she and Rya increasingly occupy distinct parallel worlds. They once had bridges to each other, but those are slowly dissolving. Ena knows she could elbow her way back in. She doesn’t, though. Doesn’t even really consider it.

Instead, Ena seeks solitude, a place to be alone all by herself. The Grey house has an old attic, where Grandma Uma used to live, with a stairway leading up to it that’s really just a creaky old ladder. The ladder once collapsed up and hid in the ceiling, but the Greys stopped bothering with it after Grandma Uma passed. It’s become a sort of rack for clothes waiting to be taken to CivStore for resale and bags filled with forgotten things. Every once in a while, Mea will enforce a purge of the ladder’s forgotten items, but really none of the Greys think much about where that old synthetic metal ladder leads to anymore. It just sits there at the end of the second-floor hallway beyond Ena’s bedroom door, right below the big square trapdoor cut out of the ceiling above it. Ena inspects that square door in the ceiling from time to time, thinks of Grandma Uma hoisting herself up into the hole with a great, stubborn effort.

In the attic, Ena would be guaranteed solitude.

The dead aren’t a real matter of interest in The Civ, apart from cases where their unclarified auras can serve as colourful threats. A Descendant who dies with an unclear aura becomes a minor anti-celebrity in The Civ, a glittering example of just what can go wrong if the living give up the fight against Darkness for even an instant. It’s proven very effective to use the dead this way because they can’t defend themselves. There’s nothing more exciting than an oration focused on a disgraced deceased whom most Descendants can still remember. The wailing of the Tongues becomes particularly passionate when the Gatherings focus on such an example.

But Grandma Uma is not disgraced. She is unremarkable.

Ena mounts the attic ladder easily. It’s nothing compared to climbing the apple tree in Jean’s yard, which Ena did a couple of days ago to toss down all the ripe apples into a basket Jean held open for her.

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