The Winter Passing by Sarah Lay

Author:Sarah Lay [Lay, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Reckless Yes
Published: 2018-06-20T22:00:00+00:00

9

Then

“Your mother did the salutation on her own until you came of age, you will have to do it alone now.” My aunt slammed dishes about in the sink, tutted as she splashed water over the edge and it soaked through her jumper and dripped down the cupboard front onto the tiled floor.

I ran my fingernail along the grain in the kitchen table and stared at her tense back. “I can't. You know I can’t."

She turned to me, water and foam running from the patterned dish in her hands. “You have to.”

I lowered my eyes, ran my thumbnail harder along the groove and waited for Terra to turn away. The water sloshed again and the dish clanked noisily against the others as she slammed it onto the draining board. I almost whispered, “The Council will assume I'm trying to take power before my time if I do the salutation alone.”

My aunt dropped a plate into the sink and turned, striding across the kitchen to lean on the other side of the table, soap suds ran down her forearms. Her eyes were fierce and her anger pulsed through the air between us, pushing on my chest with every word she spoke.

“You should. Celeste was unfit and now she has gone.” I pushed my chair back as she smiled at me, enjoying my reaction. “Come on, between us Taury. Tell me there isn't a part of you that thinks it would be the right thing to do? Tell me you don't want the power? It's why you got rid of her.”

I shook my head but there is a flash of something deep inside me that curls around the idea of taking control. “You know I didn't. I didn't get rid of her.” I grasped for the memory of what had happened, where my mother had gone, but it remained beyond a corner of my mind round which I could not turn. I whispered again, uncertain. “We should ask The Council for their help, not defy them.”

Terra sneered, “They would take the power for themselves. We must not let them know our House has fallen”

I stood up, my chair scraped noisily across the tiles making me shudder. “We haven't fallen. My mother is missing.”

“Then you have to take her place and do the salutation. It has to happen.”

“No.”

She scoffed at me but the tension in the air grew. “Are you still clinging to this ridiculous idea that she's coming back? Celeste is gone.”

I shook my head, desperate not to give her the satisfaction of seeing me cry. I picked at the lifting scabs across the back of my hands, the only sign that something had really happened. “You've given up on her quickly.”

She snapped. “I told The Council all I knew.”

The clock in the hall tick-tocked out the moments of silence between us. I knew it was foolish but I couldn't hold the words in. “Pete thinks she will come back for solstice. He says that unless The Council is wrong and she is being held against her will, unless she is dead, she wouldn't abandon her duty to the House.

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