3 – Lies

Maliah’s first public ritual was over. She’d accepted her role as Priest and had been placed on a pretty high and wobbly pedestal for the public. On top of that, she found out she’d be training under one of the most powerful priests in the Huleay Temple. And yet, as she followed her parents into the Exalted Grand Priests’ dressing room, they had the nerve to act like everything was normal.

“You were right,” Jua said to his wife. “Yacob was the right scribe for the job.”

“I told you,” Meta replied. “You owe me dinner.”

He laughed.

“I call foul. You left out that he’s been doing the Priests’ illuminations every day for the past lunar cycle.”

“Who told you?” Meta asked with — probably feigned — indignance.

“Priest Anteri.”

“It doesn’t matter. A win is a win.”

They were obviously ignoring Maliah’s sour mood, and she almost cared enough to be offended.

As attendants entered to help her parents undress, she marveled at the pillars that stretched up five times her height to the ceilings. The walls held painted murals of people standing at the river, watching a boat go by that held a priest who was blessing them. Underneath the far wall was a large water basin, where an attendant was measuring out oils and minerals to add to the water.

She’d seen this room many times throughout her youth, but its magnificence never ceased to amaze her. It almost distracted her from her anger, but someone bumped into her as he entered the room. The young man apologized.

“I was instructed to assist you from now on,” he said. “I’ll take care of your robes first.”

“Priests don’t get the royal treatment,” Maliah said as she begrudgingly held her arms out.

The boy carefully removed her robe, then moved on to her jewelry. He was smart enough not to respond to her.

“You’re a child of prophecy,” Jua said. “That affords you certain benefits.”

When the boy struggled to remove her armband, she held up her hand to stop him. After removing it herself, she handed it to him.

“But those benefits also come with responsibilities,” Meta added.

Ah, the old with great power comes great responsibility speech, despite a noticeable lack of power on Maliah’s part.

She looked down at her dress, finding a glimmer of happiness there. The seams were straight, and the fit was perfect. It was such a shame the dress had been covered by her robe. Her attendant placed her jewelry and headdress in a tray and closed it under a decorative cover. He left the room, but she had seen her parents’ after-ritual ritual enough times to know that he’d be back to assist with removing her illuminations. 

And she knew her parents well enough to know that next, they’d be asking about her dreams.

“Maliah, my dear daughter,” Meta said with a wry smile, “have you begun to dream?”

So predictable.

“Since you asked last week? No,” Maliah lied.

Her mother shot her a disbelieving look.

“Now, Maliah. I—”

“Your mother and I,” Jua interrupted, “are just concerned for you. We began dreaming of each other when we were children.”

“Concerned for me? You mean concerned for the prophecy,” Maliah replied.

Much to her annoyance, her attendant returned with supplies that smelled just as bad as she remembered. She obediently held out her arms for scrubbing. Meanwhile, her parents continued to disrobe.

“You know that’s not true,” Meta said.

“Well, it’s a little true,” Jua remarked.

Meta shot him a disbelieving glare.

“It is,” he insisted.

Her parents stood and made their way to the bath. The attendants helped them remove their final layer of clothing. They offered their hands to assist the Exalted Grand Priests into the basin. Once seated in the chest-high water, her parents relaxed as their attendants removed the illuminations from their skin.

They were getting the much gentler bath salts version while she was stuck with an attendant scrubbing at her skin. She puckered her lips in a pout, but no one noticed, which she found quite rude.

“Maliah, this is prophecy. It will happen. And we want you to be prepared,” Jua said.

“It’s not an easy path,” Meta added, “but it’s much easier when you don’t do it alone.”

“Maybe we should wait to start my training. I’m sure I just need more time,” Maliah said.

“No, there’s plenty for you to learn. Amun returns to the Huleay Grounds tomorrow, and we’ll speak to zir then.”

Maliah sat in bed, knees to her chest with her arms wrapped around her legs. Unlike most people in her dreamless world, she saw visions at night of another universe. For her people, dreams meant visions, either prophetic or intuitive, and these dreams were the first signs of latent powers. Though she’d had dreams for as long as she could remember, they weren’t prophetic. They were mundane. At least, as mundane as one could expect for a society of energy beings with technology so advanced it might as well be magic. Despite nightly journeys through the gaze of another, she didn’t have powers at all.

She’d never told her parents about her dreams. When she was little, she’d thought of it as a secret little getaway that she feared might be taken away. By the time she was old enough to understand the dreams’ significance, she was bombarded with other people’s expectations of her.

She hated lying to her parents. Although she wanted to tell them about her dreams, about Jarith, she never could bring herself to do so. This whole prophecy thing was too overwhelming for her to talk about, and she was afraid that speaking it would make it manifest. The powerful abilities she was supposed to attain seemed, well, unattainable. She had no control over when Jarith came into her mind, and though she loved the priesthood, she had no say in her daily tasks at the Huleay Temple either.

Not speaking about her dreams allowed her to hold on to at least one small part of her life. Usually, by this time of night, she was unconscious, and instead of the nothingness that everyone else in the world — minus certain Exalted Grand Priests — experienced, she would dream.

The dreams foretold in prophecy seemed fantastical, a way for the mind to process the information that the world feeds into it during the day. Instead, she dreamt of vague people in a vague place doing strange — and, yes, also vague — things. As she’d gotten older, she’d learned through the conversations she’d overheard and rare moments of clarity that often resulted in more questions than answers. Yet she knew her level of understanding barely scratched the surface.

The person she was connected to, Jarith, was kind and courteous to everyone except for one person, zir parent, who Jarith called “parent,” as awkward as that was. They didn’t seem to get along, yet everyone else adored Jarith. Maliah adored Jarith, too.

Some days, she was resentful of zir close knit community, working on what the Highrealmers called the Ascension Project. She didn’t understand what ascension was exactly, although she knew the Huleay Temple’s version where souls drifted into the sky to join the spirits and ancestors.

Most days, Maliah wished she could actually talk to Jarith face to face. As a child, she had tried to have conversations with zir, asking zir questions while hoping ze was watching. Ze had responded on a few occasions, but it still felt distant and cold. So instead, she just talked to no one when she needed to, and sometimes, she caught Jarith doing the same.

She slipped under her blanket. Music drifted down from the Huleay Grounds’ central pavilion, where the Temple was hosting a lively celebration in her honor. She was never one for parties, especially on the evening before an important event, such as meeting her mentor for the first time.

It was important to sleep tonight. The last thing she wanted to do when meeting her new mentor was to give zir the idea that she couldn’t take basic care of herself.

Now if only she could take basic care of herself by getting some sleep.