Sin.
That was Father Marley's favorite word, preaching to us from his high pedestal up on the stage of the old, resurrected chapel newly dedicated to Saint Gavin—self proclaimed freedom fighter. Sin explained everything that was happening now, everything, and in the late night prayers full of somber chanting, I like any good flock member, whole-heartedly agreed. And, being who I was, I condemned Felicia Stone.
Her Imperial Majesty, Felicia Stone.
I despised a face I'd only glimpsed and hated a voice I'd never heard. She was wrong, in every sense. Her damnation was declared in every corner of the houses, Father Marley's and the Brothers, and us, the Sister's, voices echoing it throughout. Her praises were whispered, by girls with heads bowed, fingering through their beaded prayers while cursing our patron god Kruzch, and Doinae, his holy mother. I never praised, always heard Father Marley's voice ringing in my ears when a tainted thought of 'maybe' or 'perhaps' raised in my heart.
Sinner.
That was his second favorite word, and I was one. Sometimes I skipped through parts of my praise to Kruzch, and sometimes didn't murmur to him all my short-comings and flaws. I figured that if he was such an all-knowing god, omnipotent in everything, that he would already have seen why I was eternally unclean, and had need to rip my ragged clothing and bawl my eyes out on a regular basis. I wasn't the perfect Sister, far outshone by others like Maribelle, or Dathan.
But, I was the one chosen to be the missionary to the godforsaken territories northwest of the border, not them.
Lucky.
That was my favorite word, always headed by an 'un' because something had to be amiss. My mind cluttered with awful scenarios, or of sick twists where it turned out there'd been a mistake and I was less than qualified for the grim undertaking, as I sat in the passenger side of Father Kasef's old, beat down car. My knees bumped against the bottom side of the dashboard as we stumbled down the uneven roads, until we slunk onto a smooth, freshly tarred street.
We were getting closer.
The parish—a large cluster of old buildings housing Sister, Brothers, Mothers and Fathers—was one of the last 'freedom huts' left. It was all I knew, but I never quite knew what freedom was, so I always assumed that freedom meant poverty. It was always my opinion that it meant cold, mushy porridge for breakfast, lunch, and sometimes dinner. That it meant clothes and underwear with holes in them. It meant no indoor plumbing, and water of questionable purity.
Freedom's always smelt bad, like the dung of cows, and filled with the squawking of our unhappy cattle neighbors. I imagine that even to them, we stink of freedom. We were driving to the city, her city, his city—the emperor, her half-brother, but anything but her lover. That was part of why we found fault with her, and not Edmund Stone. At the very least, he didn't partake in acts of—sodomy.
"We're nearly there, Sister Luna."
Luna, I hated that surname. My mother, a traveling actress, changed her name from something reasonable—boring, as she'd put it—like Suzanne Ortiz to Starshine Luna-Bay. I cut off the Bay part—it was idiotic at best—and kept Luna to honor her memory. Out of love for my mother, I stomached the title Ursa Gemini Luna. My mother was very much into astrology, and a devoted citizen under the reign of Lexter Stone, the Stone sibling's father.
"Where, Father Kasef?" I smiled to myself, grimly.
"Well, many things, daughter." He said, straight-faced, and without the hint of a smile on his face, "The end of days, first of all,"
"Oh, well, yes, of course," agreed I.
"And then, there's my forty-seventh birthday."
"Praise the mother,"
"Praise her son," he corrected, taking a sharp turn into a highway. I can't remember the last time I've ever seen one of these before, buzzing with sleek cars, speckled with ones just as demolished as Kasef's. "Then there's your mission."
"My mission?—my banishment," rolling my eyes, I said. "My excommunication from the church and all things holy, pushed into a world of sin and triarchy."
"Triarchy?" He murmured. "Isn't this a diarchy?"
"No, no, nope," I shook my head, "Haven't you heard the news?"
He should've, but it may have been that he hadn't. Rumors had circulated around the parish that most of the Mothers and Fathers had practically been birthed there, never seeing much of the outside world, if any.
"It turns out that their Imperial Majesties have a third party, to even out their arguments. Gossips say that they search for a new one."
"A new one?"
"The old one ran away." I gave an exaggerated shrug so that he saw me in his rear view mirror. "Sick of their arguments,"
"You can't be serious!"
"How couldn't I? You know I'm not creative, my father. All I speak is truth."
"They've reinstituted slavery, you know." He said, eager to rein me back into the dark and him into the self glorifying light.
"No, they haven't." I sighed, "They've reinstituted indentured servitude."
"What's the difference?"
"The name,"
I looked out at the window, passed the cars and at the shimmering iron and concrete ramps swerving around us, the foundations. It was all Felicia's doing. The cities were like cakes for her to put the icing on, dresses for her to sprinkle with ornaments, houses for her to personalize and decorate. It was all hers and she squandered in the materialistic pleasure of it all. Edmund was more obscure about what he did, as far as I knew, he stuck to war and legislature. But then again, I never knew many things.
The city, Capital of the countries and territories belonging to the Stones, was called Nirvana—named by Margaret Stone—and where I was headed. To the core, Father Marley said, was where I had to go to destroy the entire institution. He was an overly ambitious, overly optimistic man, but I wasn't. I was always more of a realist—okay, a pessimist, but I knew it wouldn't work that way. Not even the golden boy or girl could've pulled that off, and I was anything but. I mean, I'd been to the city before, I wasn't one of his shut-ins.
I used to work here. I was a human lie detector—a performer for the police force.
Mother would've been proud.
Always, always, always, I knew who lied, and about what. Sometimes, it was like I was reading their minds. It was invigorating, like one big adrenaline rush, and I did it all solo. No partner for me. I never needed one. I was the one they came to when all else failed, when the best couldn't do it, they came to the best of the best. Me. I felt like some god, bigger than Kruzch.
Maybe that was why he made me fall so hard, so fast.
I bowed my head, moving my lips so that Kasef thought I was reciting a prayer when I was really thinking of a 'sinful' past that should've been long forgotten. I wasn't rebellious, but I was nostalgic. No one was sure what was worse.
I used to chase after rapists, serial killers, murderers, serial rapists, and combinations of a few of them or all of them or some variations. I interrogated madmen—madwomen. Ah, a madwoman, which was what got me. That stupid rapist—how does a woman even rape anyone? She was some kind of Elizabeth Bathory follower. I never understood it—worshipping some dead woman, but I'm digressing. Delores lied to me. She lied to me, and I wasn't the wiser. There were more, what's worse. I could've taken her, just one person, one among a billion, but there were more. A whole group of them, as I remembered, and maybe hundreds more, and I couldn't tell whether they were lying or not. They weren't normal though!
I rested my forehead against the car, closing my eyes and clenching my fists with the infuriation of it all. There'd been something wrong with those women, and effeminate men. Some of them spoke to me in an Old English. I'd only met six of them, but logically speaking, they wouldn't be the only ones. I'd been so sure I lost my touch, and maybe I had, but I could still tell with other people. The little girls and boys, not yet Sisters or Brothers, running around the parish with their ruddy faces, I knew when they'd stole a cookie and how many. It furthered my depression. I went from being the best of the best to the person irritated Sisters and Mothers ran to when they didn't know who'd been pilfering their bonbons.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
"Sister Luna, we're—"
"Here, yes, I know."
