Original Fic: The Oracle
Title: The Oracle
Author: ladychi
Summary: This is what I remember before the Dreaming took me...
The Oracle
The cool stone floors of the monastery against my bare feet. The sound of the wind, whistling against the windows. The flicker of candlelight in the irises of cat-like eyes. A gentle voice instructing me to drink, drink, drink without rest. The slide of the vile liquid burning down my throat. A smell of incense and wax and perspiration. This is what I remember before the Dreaming took me.
**
When they came to my village, all of them mounted on horses with leather saddles, brass buckles and silver adornments, my mother would not let us cower in fear like the rest of the children. “Comb your hair,” she instructed us. “Wash your face and stand with your back straight. Meet them on the road and look them in the eye. They will find you if they need you, and far better for them to see you unafraid than to find you hiding in a haystack like a rat.”
What the City needed, the City took, and the all-seeing eyes of the Oracle made hiding practically impossible. Since war had been declared, nearly a hundred years ago, the Selectors came to the villages and the City, searching for someone suitable to be the next Oracle when it was clear the last Oracle was declining. For the Oracle saw the future, and without the Oracle, the government could not run.
When the time came, our local friar would remind us that being selected was an honor, that it would mean a life in the cities, where they had running water and baskets that overflowed with food, and no one ever lost limbs in giant machines that tilled Earth, because no one in the City tilled Earth. They walked on concrete and read books during the day and learned figures in school. In the city, the friar would tell us, we could escape the oppression of our lives.
My sister’s eyes would glow, I remember, just listening to the friar weave his tall tale, and at home at night she would ask my older brother questions about the City - if he thought it was really as magical as all that. Tomas would look in my eyes and lie to her, the secret joy of letting her believe in fairy tales shared in the air between us.
But then the machines took Tomas’s leg, and I left school to work in the fields, coaxing fruit from arid land, and Frannie stopped believing, the way all of us had years before. My father was long gone, and my mother held us all together with her hands clenched.
The Selectors for the Temple had not been to my village in years. They had always found who they were looking for, we were told, in the villages far closer to the citadel and its walls. The elders of the village used to whisper, behind closed doors when they were certain they would not be overheard by the spies the Temple was said to have everywhere, that the selection committee was probably afraid to leave so much “civilization” behind, even though they were supposed to care for the whole of the kingdom. In the end, though, it was a good compromise: they slowly forgot about us, we slowly grew to ignore them.
Then came the winter, one-hundred and twelve years since our annexation, and the day that changed my life.
We heard they were coming long before they arrived, just as we did every year. Messages would pass along from town to town. “No Oracle in Rosewood, on to Murdain.” “No Oracle in Murdain, on to Valespatch.” “No Oracle in Valespatch, on to Thicketdown.” And so on, and so on. Inching ever closer on the road towards Haleswort.
Even in the fields, the rows of women and near-women and old men bent over the tired plants, the word got passed around. The Selectors were coming. No Oracle had been found - no one had the natural talent and the proper temperament to become a candidate at the monastery of the Temple, and so they came to Haleswort on their grand horses.
The journey took days, sometimes weeks, and yet the Selectors arrived looking pristine: their clothes were made of white fabric that looked so soft to the touch I wanted to reach around my mother just to get a feel. I’d once touched the silken fur of a rodent whose hide was valuable that my brother had caught, killed, cleaned and cured to sell for three months worth of supplies, but I thought even that might seem coarse compared to the white flowing robe worn by the woman at the head of their party. Her horse didn’t seem tired, either - like they both had some endless source of energy that kept them beautiful and alert at all times. She passed us by - my brother, my sister, my mother and I, and I felt something cold and certain travel down my back. The same feeling I had gotten just hours before my father died.
And then I knew.
The horse stopped, and the woman turned to face me. Her hair had been covered by a scarf, but she let the cloth fall to reveal a long mane. It was the color of the edge of fire, the bright warning edge of a flame, and the hue and brilliance of it caught my breath in my chest. My brother reached for my hands, as though to keep me there through the sheer strength in his arms, but it was too late.
She had Seen me, and I could not escape my fate.
**
My mother begged for hours, that rigid spine crumbling in the face of actually losing a child. I swore I would never forget the way her stoic demeanor was completely sacrificed to debase herself at the feet of the Selectors. The woman was completely silent, moving about my small house like she wasn’t really there, as if her feet didn’t touch the ground. The only one who did speak spoke only to me. He was a man - his hair covered by a turban, he stood with his arms crossed and barked orders at me.
“Pack what you need. Not that, take this. You won’t need that.”
I was not allowed my clothes - only what I had on my back and a thick winter cloak that would protect me from the night’s chill. I was denied the few books I owned, but allowed to take a canteen full of water and a satchel full of my mother’s simple-grain bread. My mother stopped screaming at the Selectors and fell silent, almost catatonic. I gave my brothers hugs, and started towards the door, when her voice stopped me.
“Tailana.”
I turned back around, and saw her lined face clearly for the first time in years. I knew the burden it would be on her to care for the family by herself, and I wanted to beg for my freedom as well, but I knew I would not be allowed to deny my destiny and live. “Mother.”
She crossed the room, and for the first time in years, embraced me, and I inhaled the smell of her. Bread and spices and good earth. Sweat and lye-soap and age. “You are my daughter,” she crooned to me, her voice summoning tears to my eyes. “You must not forget who you are. You must not let them take you.”
“I won’t,” I vowed, my voice soft. The Selectors looked away from me, clearly uncomfortable. All except the woman who’d Seen me. She tilted her head to the side and smiled. Certainly they had all heard such vows before, for everyone vows that they will be stronger than the Dreaming. And no one is.
The burly Selector cleared his throat. “We must leave now.”
**
I remember little of the journey. It seems unimportant now, when there are so many other pictures inside of my head. I remember… fear: the metallic taste of it on my tongue; the overwhelming sense of loneliness, as none of my companions seemed inclined to talk to me, or answer my questions about what was ahead. I remember bone-deep weariness. The Selectors seemed unaffected by the pace, breezing through the villages on the way to the City, no matter how much I begged for a stop. When the roads grew too dark to traverse, they all stepped down from their tireless horses and made camp silently, peeling me from my horse and directing me to a sleeping roll, where I would become unconscious as quickly as possible.
We passed through several villages I’d only heard the names of in songs and tales, and I saw mountains for the first time. There were several river crossings, with water so deep and so clear I could see my reflection destroyed by my horses’ hooves as we forded through. I have pictures in my mind of the sunsets and the sunrises and the eyes of the sympathetic villagers, whose gaze always seemed to land on me. I wondered if they wondered about me, if they thought about my mother, wondered if she would be okay without me.
I know I did.
And then, almost before the journey began, it seemed, we saw the City gates in the distance. They were nothing like the majestic walls my village friar had painted for us in word-pictures, but they were very tall, and made of ancient stone, which seemed, even from a distance, to be crumbling. A few sections reached high into the sky and others next to them would drop in height by several meters. I wished then that Frannie had been with me to see this. She might have been able to find some joy in the sight, some measure of beauty that I was incapable of recognizing.
The Selector who had spoken while I packed was the first to break the days-long silence. “A day’s ride will have us through the gates.”
And then, eerily, all of the Selectors nodded. “So shall it be.”
A chill went right through me and I shook off the memory of my mother’s face, tear-stained and desperate while she pleaded with these unfeeling machines. They were not, I had decided, at some point along the journey, actually people. They were as mechanical and unfeeling as the machine who took my brother’s arm.
“Do not be alarmed,” the woman who had Seen me said quietly, into my ear, “for everything is not always as it appears on the outside.”
I bit back the remark I wanted to make and instead nodded, deciding not to talk in order to avoid attracting unwanted attention. None of the Selectors were cruel, but they were very efficient, and I had found that any behavior I exhibited which was unwanted or inconvenient was swiftly dealt with. I had learned to dodge fists and horse-whips, when I was alert enough to do so effectively.
“It is good to be almost home,” she muttered to herself, and the other Selectors looked at her and nodded in unison. “You’ll see. Soon you’ll feel the exact same way.”
“Ah,” I said, and gripped the reins even tighter. Desperation started knotting in my belly. My mother had always taught me to stand up to my responsibilities and be strong, but I wanted nothing more than to escape.
**
A day’s ride took us into the City. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. Right from the edge of the gates, people crowded into every available corner. Houses were built on top of each other, with no breathing room in between. It took us hours to navigate the traffic up the hill the City was built on, and there was constant noise from every corner, and different smells assaulted me from the stalls of bakers and butchers and leather-makers who shouted at us to stop and sample their wares, but the Selectors were as quiet as they were on the journey into the city, passing through the chaos impervious to what was going on around them. I could hardly keep my attention on my horse for being distracted.
Surely, I thought, I could disappear into the crowd here, if I could only get off my horse and away from the Selectors. It was not to be, because they all seemed to sense my intention to jump and run, and I soon found that my horse’s reins were being held by the burly Selector who seemed to be charged with my personal safety. For the first time, he roughly grabbed my arms and forced my wrists into cuffs.
I was now completely unable to do anything to avoid my fate. And I was left wondering why I hadn’t bothered to try to run before.
**
The Dreaming. Given to us by the gods to guide the nation to prosperity, the priests told us. It is a state beyond consciousness, only practiced by the Oracles. But such a gift, the gods told us, would not come without sacrifice. And the Oracles sacrificed everything.
As a reward, the City built the monastery for the young people that would sacrifice everything. The elders of my village talked about their grandparents sending years of profits, about the heavy tithes that had nearly broken the backs of the farmers of my village. All in the name, they had scoffed, of City privilege.
As we approached from the north, the sight of the building nearly took my breath away. It was made of the whitest stone I’d ever seen - pure and well-taken-care-of, unlike the walls of the City. Great pillars of smoke emerged from several chimneys, drifting away to the mountains that bordered the City. The closer we got, the more I could see - the windows of pure glass, shined and cleaned, were shocking to me. I’d never seen real glass in a window before, especially not colored and stained into beautiful pictures. Our horses run past them so fast I couldn’t make out the details, and I found myself longing, once again, for the presence of Frannie. She would have loved this, I thought - she’d always had an affection for all things beautiful.
We thundered into the gate, arriving at a wide open courtyard, the same white stones of the monastery cobbled together to pave our entrance. One of the large oak doors opened and a sea of red-haired men and women filed out orderly. They parted with military precision, making a pathway to the doors, and a woman who was bent with age, her red hair shot through with grey. She leaned heavily on a cane.
“You have found her,” she said, and though she was obviously elderly, her voice carried over the courtyard as effortlessly as a much younger person’s would. “The journey was much longer than was foreseen.”
The woman who had been, in her own way, kind to me on the journey, stepped forward. “Yes, Oracle E. Her name is Tailana. She comes to us from the far reaches of the realm.”
“And she surrenders willingly?”
I opened my mouth to speak but was removed of the opportunity by Burly Man. “Yes, she does.”
Oracle E nodded serenely. “Then tonight we begin. Show her to her quarters and begin the cleansing.”
**
I was not taken to my quarters first. Oh no. The myriad attendants around me all seemed to agree at once that I must be cleansed before I could sit on any of the furniture. I was taken to a series of rooms with more water than I had ever seen in one place before, and it was all used, apparently, for the daily bathing rituals of those serving the Oracle, and the Oracle herself.
I had bathed before. It wasn’t as though it was an entirely foreign concept, where I had grown up. The dirt had to be washed from skin and underneath of fingernails and from behind ears before one could sit down at my mother’s table. But I had never bathed like this: with water steaming from faucets which could be turned on with a twist of the wrist, with salts that scrubbed away layers of skin and calluses from feet, with rubs and lotions and oils that restored moisture to that same skin. The smells nearly overwhelmed me. I had never smelt so many flowers in my life in so many different perfumes.
My hair was wrestled into submission by skilled hands that dried it with towels, rubbed it through with oils, baked the moisture out of it and then twisted it into an elegant knot. I was given a robe to wear, of the same shocking white that I had seen on the woman passing through my village when I was Chosen. I had been right: the fabric was sinfully soft to the touch, and far too luxurious for my tastes, but it felt good against my abused and restored skin.
My nails, too, were attacked. Filed and clipped and dyed until they resembled those of my attendants’. I became certain that if I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, I would not recognize my own reflection.
Then a woman knocked on the door and stepped inside. “Are you tired?” she asked me.
I waited, certain that someone else would answer in the negative or the affirmative for me, since I hadn’t really been allowed an opinion in days. But shockingly, no one spoke.
“A little,” I admitted, weary of what such a weakness would mean.
“Such a long journey is not good on the unprepared body, but we had no choice, unfortunately. Time was running out. I am to offer you a massage, if you would like one.”
My mind balked at being touched by someone I did not know, but one of the attendants who was doing my nails looked up and gave me an almost-imperceptible nod.
“Okay,” I said.
“Good.” She took my hand from the nail attendant and led me out the door and down a corridor to yet another room, where a raised bed was waiting for me. “Remove your robe and lay down. We will begin in a moment.”
I hesitated, but decided obedience was better than punishment, and so slowly removed my robe and laid down on my belly on the soft mattress. I felt the warm pressure of hands on my shoulder blades not a few moments after.
“If you speak very quietly,” the masseuse whispered in my ear, “I will try to answer what questions you may have.”
I swallowed. This was an unexpected boon. It took me a moment to gather my thoughts, but I went with the most obvious question first. “What will happen to me?”
“You will be taken to the Temple, and made to Dream,” she answered in an even voice, “and if you manage to live, then you will assume the role of Oracle.”
“Most people don’t, then. Survive, I mean.”
She only hesitated a moment, which I give her credit for. “No. Most do not.”
“No one here will tell me their name.”
She chuckled. “They might, if you live. It’s no use giving names to a Candidate anyway. You would forget, after the Dreaming, and if you do not survive, well, then, what good is it to know a name?”
“Comfort,” I said.
“Then I shall make you comfortable. I am Yana.”
“I am Tailana.”
“I know.” She reached a particularly sore spot, and I yelped. “Ah, poor love. They really did run all the way here, didn’t they?”
“Yes,” I hissed.
“Can’t be helped, like I said before. Oracle E is certain she is not long for this world. For
her to die without a replacement….”
I nearly rolled my eyes, but thought such disrespect would earn me no favors here, so I went with a noncommittal “mmm.”
“I do love all of this lovely brown hair you have,” she said. “There’s quite a lot of it, isn’t there?”
“Yes. My, uh… my sister Frannie would never let me cut it. She liked it long so that she could brush it in the evenings and plait it.” I swallowed the tears that threatened whenever I thought of Frannie.
“Ah, so you’ve siblings then?”
“Tomas and Frannie,” I said. “And Mom. Dad died, a while back.”
“I’m an only,” Yana confessed, “but I always wanted siblings.”
“Well, perhaps we shall have more to talk about when I can no longer remember mine,” I said, as mildly as I could. She took the hint and moved on.
“I’ve heard that the Dreaming part of it doesn’t hurt. I’ve been through part of the process myself. You have to, you know, to work here.”
I didn’t know that. “Oh?”
“Yes. I thought for sure I had the gift to be a Selector, and find the next Oracle, but that was not to be. I’m far too sympathetic and chatty, it turns out.”
I bit back a grin. She certainly didn’t fit in with the crowd of Selectors who had removed me from my home. “I don’t think that’s such a bad thing.”
She nodded. “No, I don’t suppose you would think so, would you?”
The massage started to feel just a little too good. I nearly relaxed into a sleep, so I roused myself back to full wakefulness and gestured for her to stop. “I would like to go to my, uh… quarters, now.”
“Okay, sure. Let me just call Nod. He’ll take you there.”
She rang a bell, and the Burly Man appeared again. He nodded at Yana and gestured for me to follow him. We wandered down several halls, turning around and taking secret passageways to disorient me, but finally we arrived at a humble enough door. He pushed it open to reveal a room containing a simple bed, with a desk, and a window. He all but pushed me inside and turned to leave.
“Wait.”
He turned around and raised an eyebrow, as if to say “what?”.
“Did you know you were sending me to my death?”
He shrugged.
I sighed. “It seems like the least you could do is get me a pen and a piece of paper.”
He gestured to the desk, and left. And I began to write.
**
It seemed as though I wrote for hours, the recounting of my story as best as I could recall it. Hours of writing about my mother, the scent of my sister’s hair, the way Tomas couldn’t help but snort when he laughed. I wrote and wrote and wrote, as if the writing of it all would make it somehow permanent, make it impregnable to the fires of the Dreaming. It was probably a futile effort, but I found it as cleansing as the ritual I had been through before, and I cried intermittently in that time, occasionally buoyed by hope, but more and more resigned to my fate.
The sky had grown dark when finally my hand cramped and my fingers and wrists cried for a rest, so I laid the pen on the table and laid my head on the same flat service, and closed my eyes, and succumbed for the last time to the sleep of the Mortal.
**
Hands with skin like paper on my arm awoke me from a deep slumber. Someone had lit the oil lamp in my room, and it cast ominous shadows over everything, including the face of the Oracle E. Her eyes were kind, but her grip was firm.
“Ritual says you are awakened at dawn and marched down the hall to me,” she said, a hint of mischief in her voice, “but I suspect that you would rather not go through such ceremony.”
I found the backbone of steel my mother had always insisted upon. “No.”
“Then come with me.”
I followed her out the door, shutting it as silently as possible, noting with some interest the way the guard stood down when E waved her hand. We walked in silence for a few steps, but then I could not hold back my curiosity.
“Does it hurt?”
“Every minute of every day. But it is a blessedly short life. I have been Oracle for five years, and my time has come to an end. You will find it to be so when it is your turn.”
“Unless I die before my time begins.”
“You won’t. We are the same spirit,” she said firmly. “I recognized you from the first moment in the village.”
“The lady in white,” I said.
“Yes. I like to borrow her body from time to time. It works so much better than mine, you see.”
She smiled a smile without much real mirth in it. “Inside here.”
She pushed open an ornate door, which was encrusted with jewels and laden with gold. It lead to garden full of plants I had never seen before. The sound of running water was everywhere and insects sang noisily into the night. Yet we stayed on the stone path, walking to the center of the garden, where there was a another small building. She waved her hand over a panel, and the door swung open, as if by magic.
There was nothing decorative inside, except a stone floor and simple wood walls, and a table with a pitcher and a bowl of water. In the corners of the room stood candelabras, which were lit to provide soft light, and the smell of incense overwhelmed everything.
“This is how it begins,” she says, “the dreaming of the Oracle.” She took my hands with hers, and they felt not at all like the hands of an old woman anymore, but more like the talons of a great bird, grasping its prey. She looked into my eyes.
“You must drink.”
I shook my head.
“You must drink of the water of the Oracle. This is the water which gives life to us all. You must drink it, Tailana, for your Tomas, and your Frannie, and your mother. Drink it, drink it, drink it, that they all may be saved. This is for the villages, long-ignored. With you as Oracle, they will, perhaps, feel benevolence once again. Drink, Tailana, drink.”
And on and on she went, a soothing prattle, a nonsensical song, and it sunk deep into my brain, until I could smell was the incense. All I could see was the candlelight, and all I could do was drink.
**
The Dreaming. Burns like fire and cuts through everything. Severs all the cords in your brain, sews them back together.
All of the past, and all of the future. All at once, and you are never the same. You are never sane again.
Tailana slid, and ran, and hid… and was destroyed.
**
And I awoke. Oracle E was dead, her body covered by a sheet. My hair was red. I looked, and I Saw. The past, the present, and the future, all at once. Even now, I forget the things of my personal past. How little they matter. How insignificant was my pain in the face of all of the pain of all of the world through all of the ages.
I am the Oracle F. Gods grant me a short reign, for I do so already long to rest.
Author: ladychi
Summary: This is what I remember before the Dreaming took me...
The Oracle
The cool stone floors of the monastery against my bare feet. The sound of the wind, whistling against the windows. The flicker of candlelight in the irises of cat-like eyes. A gentle voice instructing me to drink, drink, drink without rest. The slide of the vile liquid burning down my throat. A smell of incense and wax and perspiration. This is what I remember before the Dreaming took me.
**
When they came to my village, all of them mounted on horses with leather saddles, brass buckles and silver adornments, my mother would not let us cower in fear like the rest of the children. “Comb your hair,” she instructed us. “Wash your face and stand with your back straight. Meet them on the road and look them in the eye. They will find you if they need you, and far better for them to see you unafraid than to find you hiding in a haystack like a rat.”
What the City needed, the City took, and the all-seeing eyes of the Oracle made hiding practically impossible. Since war had been declared, nearly a hundred years ago, the Selectors came to the villages and the City, searching for someone suitable to be the next Oracle when it was clear the last Oracle was declining. For the Oracle saw the future, and without the Oracle, the government could not run.
When the time came, our local friar would remind us that being selected was an honor, that it would mean a life in the cities, where they had running water and baskets that overflowed with food, and no one ever lost limbs in giant machines that tilled Earth, because no one in the City tilled Earth. They walked on concrete and read books during the day and learned figures in school. In the city, the friar would tell us, we could escape the oppression of our lives.
My sister’s eyes would glow, I remember, just listening to the friar weave his tall tale, and at home at night she would ask my older brother questions about the City - if he thought it was really as magical as all that. Tomas would look in my eyes and lie to her, the secret joy of letting her believe in fairy tales shared in the air between us.
But then the machines took Tomas’s leg, and I left school to work in the fields, coaxing fruit from arid land, and Frannie stopped believing, the way all of us had years before. My father was long gone, and my mother held us all together with her hands clenched.
The Selectors for the Temple had not been to my village in years. They had always found who they were looking for, we were told, in the villages far closer to the citadel and its walls. The elders of the village used to whisper, behind closed doors when they were certain they would not be overheard by the spies the Temple was said to have everywhere, that the selection committee was probably afraid to leave so much “civilization” behind, even though they were supposed to care for the whole of the kingdom. In the end, though, it was a good compromise: they slowly forgot about us, we slowly grew to ignore them.
Then came the winter, one-hundred and twelve years since our annexation, and the day that changed my life.
We heard they were coming long before they arrived, just as we did every year. Messages would pass along from town to town. “No Oracle in Rosewood, on to Murdain.” “No Oracle in Murdain, on to Valespatch.” “No Oracle in Valespatch, on to Thicketdown.” And so on, and so on. Inching ever closer on the road towards Haleswort.
Even in the fields, the rows of women and near-women and old men bent over the tired plants, the word got passed around. The Selectors were coming. No Oracle had been found - no one had the natural talent and the proper temperament to become a candidate at the monastery of the Temple, and so they came to Haleswort on their grand horses.
The journey took days, sometimes weeks, and yet the Selectors arrived looking pristine: their clothes were made of white fabric that looked so soft to the touch I wanted to reach around my mother just to get a feel. I’d once touched the silken fur of a rodent whose hide was valuable that my brother had caught, killed, cleaned and cured to sell for three months worth of supplies, but I thought even that might seem coarse compared to the white flowing robe worn by the woman at the head of their party. Her horse didn’t seem tired, either - like they both had some endless source of energy that kept them beautiful and alert at all times. She passed us by - my brother, my sister, my mother and I, and I felt something cold and certain travel down my back. The same feeling I had gotten just hours before my father died.
And then I knew.
The horse stopped, and the woman turned to face me. Her hair had been covered by a scarf, but she let the cloth fall to reveal a long mane. It was the color of the edge of fire, the bright warning edge of a flame, and the hue and brilliance of it caught my breath in my chest. My brother reached for my hands, as though to keep me there through the sheer strength in his arms, but it was too late.
She had Seen me, and I could not escape my fate.
**
My mother begged for hours, that rigid spine crumbling in the face of actually losing a child. I swore I would never forget the way her stoic demeanor was completely sacrificed to debase herself at the feet of the Selectors. The woman was completely silent, moving about my small house like she wasn’t really there, as if her feet didn’t touch the ground. The only one who did speak spoke only to me. He was a man - his hair covered by a turban, he stood with his arms crossed and barked orders at me.
“Pack what you need. Not that, take this. You won’t need that.”
I was not allowed my clothes - only what I had on my back and a thick winter cloak that would protect me from the night’s chill. I was denied the few books I owned, but allowed to take a canteen full of water and a satchel full of my mother’s simple-grain bread. My mother stopped screaming at the Selectors and fell silent, almost catatonic. I gave my brothers hugs, and started towards the door, when her voice stopped me.
“Tailana.”
I turned back around, and saw her lined face clearly for the first time in years. I knew the burden it would be on her to care for the family by herself, and I wanted to beg for my freedom as well, but I knew I would not be allowed to deny my destiny and live. “Mother.”
She crossed the room, and for the first time in years, embraced me, and I inhaled the smell of her. Bread and spices and good earth. Sweat and lye-soap and age. “You are my daughter,” she crooned to me, her voice summoning tears to my eyes. “You must not forget who you are. You must not let them take you.”
“I won’t,” I vowed, my voice soft. The Selectors looked away from me, clearly uncomfortable. All except the woman who’d Seen me. She tilted her head to the side and smiled. Certainly they had all heard such vows before, for everyone vows that they will be stronger than the Dreaming. And no one is.
The burly Selector cleared his throat. “We must leave now.”
**
I remember little of the journey. It seems unimportant now, when there are so many other pictures inside of my head. I remember… fear: the metallic taste of it on my tongue; the overwhelming sense of loneliness, as none of my companions seemed inclined to talk to me, or answer my questions about what was ahead. I remember bone-deep weariness. The Selectors seemed unaffected by the pace, breezing through the villages on the way to the City, no matter how much I begged for a stop. When the roads grew too dark to traverse, they all stepped down from their tireless horses and made camp silently, peeling me from my horse and directing me to a sleeping roll, where I would become unconscious as quickly as possible.
We passed through several villages I’d only heard the names of in songs and tales, and I saw mountains for the first time. There were several river crossings, with water so deep and so clear I could see my reflection destroyed by my horses’ hooves as we forded through. I have pictures in my mind of the sunsets and the sunrises and the eyes of the sympathetic villagers, whose gaze always seemed to land on me. I wondered if they wondered about me, if they thought about my mother, wondered if she would be okay without me.
I know I did.
And then, almost before the journey began, it seemed, we saw the City gates in the distance. They were nothing like the majestic walls my village friar had painted for us in word-pictures, but they were very tall, and made of ancient stone, which seemed, even from a distance, to be crumbling. A few sections reached high into the sky and others next to them would drop in height by several meters. I wished then that Frannie had been with me to see this. She might have been able to find some joy in the sight, some measure of beauty that I was incapable of recognizing.
The Selector who had spoken while I packed was the first to break the days-long silence. “A day’s ride will have us through the gates.”
And then, eerily, all of the Selectors nodded. “So shall it be.”
A chill went right through me and I shook off the memory of my mother’s face, tear-stained and desperate while she pleaded with these unfeeling machines. They were not, I had decided, at some point along the journey, actually people. They were as mechanical and unfeeling as the machine who took my brother’s arm.
“Do not be alarmed,” the woman who had Seen me said quietly, into my ear, “for everything is not always as it appears on the outside.”
I bit back the remark I wanted to make and instead nodded, deciding not to talk in order to avoid attracting unwanted attention. None of the Selectors were cruel, but they were very efficient, and I had found that any behavior I exhibited which was unwanted or inconvenient was swiftly dealt with. I had learned to dodge fists and horse-whips, when I was alert enough to do so effectively.
“It is good to be almost home,” she muttered to herself, and the other Selectors looked at her and nodded in unison. “You’ll see. Soon you’ll feel the exact same way.”
“Ah,” I said, and gripped the reins even tighter. Desperation started knotting in my belly. My mother had always taught me to stand up to my responsibilities and be strong, but I wanted nothing more than to escape.
**
A day’s ride took us into the City. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. Right from the edge of the gates, people crowded into every available corner. Houses were built on top of each other, with no breathing room in between. It took us hours to navigate the traffic up the hill the City was built on, and there was constant noise from every corner, and different smells assaulted me from the stalls of bakers and butchers and leather-makers who shouted at us to stop and sample their wares, but the Selectors were as quiet as they were on the journey into the city, passing through the chaos impervious to what was going on around them. I could hardly keep my attention on my horse for being distracted.
Surely, I thought, I could disappear into the crowd here, if I could only get off my horse and away from the Selectors. It was not to be, because they all seemed to sense my intention to jump and run, and I soon found that my horse’s reins were being held by the burly Selector who seemed to be charged with my personal safety. For the first time, he roughly grabbed my arms and forced my wrists into cuffs.
I was now completely unable to do anything to avoid my fate. And I was left wondering why I hadn’t bothered to try to run before.
**
The Dreaming. Given to us by the gods to guide the nation to prosperity, the priests told us. It is a state beyond consciousness, only practiced by the Oracles. But such a gift, the gods told us, would not come without sacrifice. And the Oracles sacrificed everything.
As a reward, the City built the monastery for the young people that would sacrifice everything. The elders of my village talked about their grandparents sending years of profits, about the heavy tithes that had nearly broken the backs of the farmers of my village. All in the name, they had scoffed, of City privilege.
As we approached from the north, the sight of the building nearly took my breath away. It was made of the whitest stone I’d ever seen - pure and well-taken-care-of, unlike the walls of the City. Great pillars of smoke emerged from several chimneys, drifting away to the mountains that bordered the City. The closer we got, the more I could see - the windows of pure glass, shined and cleaned, were shocking to me. I’d never seen real glass in a window before, especially not colored and stained into beautiful pictures. Our horses run past them so fast I couldn’t make out the details, and I found myself longing, once again, for the presence of Frannie. She would have loved this, I thought - she’d always had an affection for all things beautiful.
We thundered into the gate, arriving at a wide open courtyard, the same white stones of the monastery cobbled together to pave our entrance. One of the large oak doors opened and a sea of red-haired men and women filed out orderly. They parted with military precision, making a pathway to the doors, and a woman who was bent with age, her red hair shot through with grey. She leaned heavily on a cane.
“You have found her,” she said, and though she was obviously elderly, her voice carried over the courtyard as effortlessly as a much younger person’s would. “The journey was much longer than was foreseen.”
The woman who had been, in her own way, kind to me on the journey, stepped forward. “Yes, Oracle E. Her name is Tailana. She comes to us from the far reaches of the realm.”
“And she surrenders willingly?”
I opened my mouth to speak but was removed of the opportunity by Burly Man. “Yes, she does.”
Oracle E nodded serenely. “Then tonight we begin. Show her to her quarters and begin the cleansing.”
**
I was not taken to my quarters first. Oh no. The myriad attendants around me all seemed to agree at once that I must be cleansed before I could sit on any of the furniture. I was taken to a series of rooms with more water than I had ever seen in one place before, and it was all used, apparently, for the daily bathing rituals of those serving the Oracle, and the Oracle herself.
I had bathed before. It wasn’t as though it was an entirely foreign concept, where I had grown up. The dirt had to be washed from skin and underneath of fingernails and from behind ears before one could sit down at my mother’s table. But I had never bathed like this: with water steaming from faucets which could be turned on with a twist of the wrist, with salts that scrubbed away layers of skin and calluses from feet, with rubs and lotions and oils that restored moisture to that same skin. The smells nearly overwhelmed me. I had never smelt so many flowers in my life in so many different perfumes.
My hair was wrestled into submission by skilled hands that dried it with towels, rubbed it through with oils, baked the moisture out of it and then twisted it into an elegant knot. I was given a robe to wear, of the same shocking white that I had seen on the woman passing through my village when I was Chosen. I had been right: the fabric was sinfully soft to the touch, and far too luxurious for my tastes, but it felt good against my abused and restored skin.
My nails, too, were attacked. Filed and clipped and dyed until they resembled those of my attendants’. I became certain that if I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, I would not recognize my own reflection.
Then a woman knocked on the door and stepped inside. “Are you tired?” she asked me.
I waited, certain that someone else would answer in the negative or the affirmative for me, since I hadn’t really been allowed an opinion in days. But shockingly, no one spoke.
“A little,” I admitted, weary of what such a weakness would mean.
“Such a long journey is not good on the unprepared body, but we had no choice, unfortunately. Time was running out. I am to offer you a massage, if you would like one.”
My mind balked at being touched by someone I did not know, but one of the attendants who was doing my nails looked up and gave me an almost-imperceptible nod.
“Okay,” I said.
“Good.” She took my hand from the nail attendant and led me out the door and down a corridor to yet another room, where a raised bed was waiting for me. “Remove your robe and lay down. We will begin in a moment.”
I hesitated, but decided obedience was better than punishment, and so slowly removed my robe and laid down on my belly on the soft mattress. I felt the warm pressure of hands on my shoulder blades not a few moments after.
“If you speak very quietly,” the masseuse whispered in my ear, “I will try to answer what questions you may have.”
I swallowed. This was an unexpected boon. It took me a moment to gather my thoughts, but I went with the most obvious question first. “What will happen to me?”
“You will be taken to the Temple, and made to Dream,” she answered in an even voice, “and if you manage to live, then you will assume the role of Oracle.”
“Most people don’t, then. Survive, I mean.”
She only hesitated a moment, which I give her credit for. “No. Most do not.”
“No one here will tell me their name.”
She chuckled. “They might, if you live. It’s no use giving names to a Candidate anyway. You would forget, after the Dreaming, and if you do not survive, well, then, what good is it to know a name?”
“Comfort,” I said.
“Then I shall make you comfortable. I am Yana.”
“I am Tailana.”
“I know.” She reached a particularly sore spot, and I yelped. “Ah, poor love. They really did run all the way here, didn’t they?”
“Yes,” I hissed.
“Can’t be helped, like I said before. Oracle E is certain she is not long for this world. For
her to die without a replacement….”
I nearly rolled my eyes, but thought such disrespect would earn me no favors here, so I went with a noncommittal “mmm.”
“I do love all of this lovely brown hair you have,” she said. “There’s quite a lot of it, isn’t there?”
“Yes. My, uh… my sister Frannie would never let me cut it. She liked it long so that she could brush it in the evenings and plait it.” I swallowed the tears that threatened whenever I thought of Frannie.
“Ah, so you’ve siblings then?”
“Tomas and Frannie,” I said. “And Mom. Dad died, a while back.”
“I’m an only,” Yana confessed, “but I always wanted siblings.”
“Well, perhaps we shall have more to talk about when I can no longer remember mine,” I said, as mildly as I could. She took the hint and moved on.
“I’ve heard that the Dreaming part of it doesn’t hurt. I’ve been through part of the process myself. You have to, you know, to work here.”
I didn’t know that. “Oh?”
“Yes. I thought for sure I had the gift to be a Selector, and find the next Oracle, but that was not to be. I’m far too sympathetic and chatty, it turns out.”
I bit back a grin. She certainly didn’t fit in with the crowd of Selectors who had removed me from my home. “I don’t think that’s such a bad thing.”
She nodded. “No, I don’t suppose you would think so, would you?”
The massage started to feel just a little too good. I nearly relaxed into a sleep, so I roused myself back to full wakefulness and gestured for her to stop. “I would like to go to my, uh… quarters, now.”
“Okay, sure. Let me just call Nod. He’ll take you there.”
She rang a bell, and the Burly Man appeared again. He nodded at Yana and gestured for me to follow him. We wandered down several halls, turning around and taking secret passageways to disorient me, but finally we arrived at a humble enough door. He pushed it open to reveal a room containing a simple bed, with a desk, and a window. He all but pushed me inside and turned to leave.
“Wait.”
He turned around and raised an eyebrow, as if to say “what?”.
“Did you know you were sending me to my death?”
He shrugged.
I sighed. “It seems like the least you could do is get me a pen and a piece of paper.”
He gestured to the desk, and left. And I began to write.
**
It seemed as though I wrote for hours, the recounting of my story as best as I could recall it. Hours of writing about my mother, the scent of my sister’s hair, the way Tomas couldn’t help but snort when he laughed. I wrote and wrote and wrote, as if the writing of it all would make it somehow permanent, make it impregnable to the fires of the Dreaming. It was probably a futile effort, but I found it as cleansing as the ritual I had been through before, and I cried intermittently in that time, occasionally buoyed by hope, but more and more resigned to my fate.
The sky had grown dark when finally my hand cramped and my fingers and wrists cried for a rest, so I laid the pen on the table and laid my head on the same flat service, and closed my eyes, and succumbed for the last time to the sleep of the Mortal.
**
Hands with skin like paper on my arm awoke me from a deep slumber. Someone had lit the oil lamp in my room, and it cast ominous shadows over everything, including the face of the Oracle E. Her eyes were kind, but her grip was firm.
“Ritual says you are awakened at dawn and marched down the hall to me,” she said, a hint of mischief in her voice, “but I suspect that you would rather not go through such ceremony.”
I found the backbone of steel my mother had always insisted upon. “No.”
“Then come with me.”
I followed her out the door, shutting it as silently as possible, noting with some interest the way the guard stood down when E waved her hand. We walked in silence for a few steps, but then I could not hold back my curiosity.
“Does it hurt?”
“Every minute of every day. But it is a blessedly short life. I have been Oracle for five years, and my time has come to an end. You will find it to be so when it is your turn.”
“Unless I die before my time begins.”
“You won’t. We are the same spirit,” she said firmly. “I recognized you from the first moment in the village.”
“The lady in white,” I said.
“Yes. I like to borrow her body from time to time. It works so much better than mine, you see.”
She smiled a smile without much real mirth in it. “Inside here.”
She pushed open an ornate door, which was encrusted with jewels and laden with gold. It lead to garden full of plants I had never seen before. The sound of running water was everywhere and insects sang noisily into the night. Yet we stayed on the stone path, walking to the center of the garden, where there was a another small building. She waved her hand over a panel, and the door swung open, as if by magic.
There was nothing decorative inside, except a stone floor and simple wood walls, and a table with a pitcher and a bowl of water. In the corners of the room stood candelabras, which were lit to provide soft light, and the smell of incense overwhelmed everything.
“This is how it begins,” she says, “the dreaming of the Oracle.” She took my hands with hers, and they felt not at all like the hands of an old woman anymore, but more like the talons of a great bird, grasping its prey. She looked into my eyes.
“You must drink.”
I shook my head.
“You must drink of the water of the Oracle. This is the water which gives life to us all. You must drink it, Tailana, for your Tomas, and your Frannie, and your mother. Drink it, drink it, drink it, that they all may be saved. This is for the villages, long-ignored. With you as Oracle, they will, perhaps, feel benevolence once again. Drink, Tailana, drink.”
And on and on she went, a soothing prattle, a nonsensical song, and it sunk deep into my brain, until I could smell was the incense. All I could see was the candlelight, and all I could do was drink.
**
The Dreaming. Burns like fire and cuts through everything. Severs all the cords in your brain, sews them back together.
All of the past, and all of the future. All at once, and you are never the same. You are never sane again.
Tailana slid, and ran, and hid… and was destroyed.
**
And I awoke. Oracle E was dead, her body covered by a sheet. My hair was red. I looked, and I Saw. The past, the present, and the future, all at once. Even now, I forget the things of my personal past. How little they matter. How insignificant was my pain in the face of all of the pain of all of the world through all of the ages.
I am the Oracle F. Gods grant me a short reign, for I do so already long to rest.