The smell was like nothing I'd ever encountered. It filtered through the hood of my cloak and the silk mask over my nose and mouth, and it filled my lungs the way the sun fills your eyes when you stare at it.
On my shoulders, my parents' hands weighed heavy and warm. My father's trembled.
I was not trembling. I was sixteen today. Full-aged. Full-aged women walked with their heads held high and uncovered. They looked at the world around them, at anything they liked, without worrying they'd see something that would blight a growing mind.
It wasn't gawking to stare around at the gold-plated columns, the silk-draped ceiling, and the obsidian stairs. It was being adult.
We mounted the stairs, my parents a step ahead of me.
At the top, sentinels framed the ivory entrance. Straight whole tusks made up the door, each twice my height and lashed together with silver wire. As we reached the top landing, the sentinels seized silver handles and pulled. They moved like mirrors.
The doors swung wide. A fire smoldered in the entryway, set in a grate lined with silver fish. We walked around it, onto a tiled platform that stretched into the heart of a triangular chamber. Down below, twelve robed men and women sat cross-legged on the floor. White triangles of linen capped their heads.
The Justry.
I took a deep breath. The smell was stronger here. It was a mineral scent, but sweet, almost cloying. I felt a little dizzy.
My parents' hands squeezed my shoulders. Then Father pulled my cloak away. Mother stripped off my mask. For the first time outside of my home, I stood exposed in nothing but my linen camise and baggy calsounds, which belled out all the way down to my slippers. My scalp felt the kiss of fresh air, even with my black hair braided and bound tight to my head. I stood proudly. I wore my best clothes, dyed red with madder and embroidered by Father's hand. I'd even scraped the paint from under my nails.
When my parents returned to my side, smoke choked the air, and the cloak and mask were gone. I would never wear them again. I wanted to skip and jump, but the eyes of the Justry were on me.
The youngest of the Justry rose, a woman no more than seventeen. The justa's skin was the same brown as the powdered cuttlefish ink Mother bought me. A touch lighter than my own.
The woman spoke, but I fixed my eyes on the crimson pillow she held. On the pillow sat a little golden jar.
Mother nudged me. I looked up.
The justa's mouth moved with ritual words Mother had already taught me. "As I have seen revelations, dear one, and been made pure, so will you. The first revelations are always the strongest." She smiled, revealing teeth a shade brighter than her white lip salve. "Are you ready?"
I nodded.
The justa reached down with white-nailed hands and lifted the golden lid. I caught a glimpse of a little cone, which sent up tendrils of glowing green like the essence of life itself. Oracle ore.
Then the smell caught me.
It swept me out of my body and up to the ceiling and through it, like I was no more substantial than a soul. It sparkled and churned and danced in my lungs, and I danced and churned and sparkled in the air above the city, a leaf on the wind. A grain of sand being melted to glass.
I felt as though I could shatter.
Lights burst behind my eyes like lost stars, and they showed me wonders that flashed by so fast I missed half of them. Underground caverns and winding tunnels that burned with their own greenish light. Gold-fronted mansions that lined the curve of a manicured hill. Huge automas, in shapes of animal and human and nothing living, with joints that moved smooth as oil. Their intricate, glowing guts.
A pale-faced woman with a jutting chin and stub nose, her low cheeks framed by mousy brown hair. Her eyes were the green of malachite pigment and old copper and the little cone evanescing on the pillow in front of me.
I fell into them.
I fell into myself.
I knelt between my parents on the platform. I had not moved except to fall. The justas still surrounded us, and the woman with white lip salve had replaced the lid on the golden jar.
Her smile at me was tender. I was too dazed to read her lips, but I could envision in signs what she said; Mother had drilled it into me. "Well? Child, tell us of what you have seen, and be welcome to adulthood."
I let my parents haul me to my feet. My knees felt like pudding. I closed my eyes, and Mother and Father steadied me with their hands.
"It was amazing," I said to the justa. And I laughed. "It was beautiful. More beautiful than anything I've ever seen. And the taste– it was like waterfalls in the mountains, or the way a diamond must taste. I've never seen either, but I've read–"
Mother's hand clamped down on my shoulder. Father's had fallen away. Something was happening. Something was wrong. I opened my eyes.
The justa's mouth was moving. I'd missed the first part of the sentence. But I read the last of it on her lips and guessed the rest. "–She will be cast out."
My hands clenched in dismay. "What? No, you can't! I saw the revelations! I saw!" I needed to taste it again. I needed the justa to lift the cover over that little glowing cone and let me suck its magic into my lungs.
The justa shrouded the golden case with a sleeve and stared at me with narrowed eyes. "Silence your child, perfectas. Her voice saddens this body."
Mother pulled me close. She spoke – her chest reverberated against my back – but I couldn't see, even without my hood. My eyes had frozen on the justa's mouth. I caught every twitch of her lips, as though I had known and read her face for years.
The justa replied, "She is an imperfecta. The law has no leeway." Her eyes turned towards Father. He must have said something. "Take comfort. There are always miracles. Perhaps the Great Unknowns will hear your prayers and cure her."
I set my jaw. "I don't need to be cured. There's nothing wrong with me."
The justa ignored me. "You may have one night with her before she is escorted from the city. With our blessings."
A drop splashed the back of my neck. Mother was crying.
The justa lifted a hand. "Walk in perfection."
My parents led me away.
#
They didn't speak to me until we were home, inside our own entry chamber, which I'd painted myself a year ago. I stopped just over the threshold, brushed by the draft of the door swinging shut behind me. My hands swept the air, agitated, too fast. "They aren't really going to make me leave, are they?"
My parents turned towards me. Tears glistened in the cracks of wrinkles that hadn't been there that morning. "Zisha," Mother said, her hands cupping my face. Was this the last time I'd see my name on her lips?
"They can't throw me out," I signed. "Not just because I talk strangely."
Father and Mother exchanged mournful glances. Father signed, "Little bird, they knew it wasn't only your voice."
"Just because I'm deaf? Because I can't hear?"
Mother stepped back, freeing her hands. Her fingers twitched a subdued answer. "Yes, dear one."
My face felt hot and sticky. Tears ran down my cheeks. "All those years you spent coaching me on how to talk properly, how to read lips. They were for nothing?"
Father signed, "We hoped your training would fool them. But–"
"It didn't."
"You have a beautiful voice, dear one," Mother signed.
"The Justry didn't think so."
Mother bit her lip. "They are all fools."
I signed, "Tell them I'll stay inside. I won't take revelations again. No one needs to see me–"
"They know you are here now," Father signed. "They won't let you hide."
I swallowed. Sniffed. "It isn't fair."
Father shook his head. "I will pack a bag for you, little bird. Go pick your favorite books from the library." He strode away, his back as stiff as the benches lining the entry hall.
I sank into one and signed weakly, "He's thinking of books? Now?"
"You will want them," Mother signed. "You will not find any outside the Plenary Cities. They cannot read, out there."
"Can they even paint?"
"Not like you, love."
I hugged my knees to my chest, pressed my face against them. Tried my voice. "I don't want to go there."
Her hand brushed my back, but I did not look to see her reply. I didn't want to see it.
I wanted to stay.
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