I take a deep breath as I step forward, out of the shade into a patch of warm sunlight. A breeze ruffles my hair, and I bring my hand up to tame the waves into a semblance of organization lest I make a poor impression. A large man, two people in front of me, turns left as the path changes, and I make sure to keep my feet on the cobblestones.

Not for the first time, I let my eyes and mind wander, gazing at the crystal towers spiraling up around me. On both sides of the cobblestone path are light and airy archways crossing over one another in an intricate dance of architecture.

Whether or not I succeed, it will have been worth it for this alone.

But that thought is a lie. A comforting one, but a lie nonetheless, and I feel the truth of it as my eyes return to the unending line in front of me. I gaze at the men and women, adorned in glittering purples, golds, reds…every color I can imagine and some that I cannot, making the same journey as I. In the distance—the far, far distance—I can just make out the ruby palace of Altarin, the Sanguine Sage.

But what does he want with me? Another step forward. With so many options, so many people here ahead of me… I curse under my breath, then glance about, hoping none of my temporary neighbors can make out the words. I should have gotten here sooner

Three nights ago, four crystal doves had come to me, calling out as I sat underneath the weeping willow in front of my family’s home. Their cooing calls turned to words as I watched them glimmer in the flickering light from our hearth-fire coming from the open door. 

I glance backwards at the distance I’ve already walked. Three days, and already I’ve come so far…and then forward. So much farther to go. 

Another step, and another. My bare feet ache, my stomach grumbles, and my throat weeps for water that hasn’t come. I lean to the side, craning my neck. Has the tower gotten closer? Or is it an illusion, an ephemera that I will falter trying to reach?

The fact that the line is moving means that Altarin is seeing people, judging us. I swallow at that thought, imagining standing before him, in all his glory. What does he look like? Like any young girl, I had played Gild the God with my sisters and friends, describing Altarin as our ideal…an ideal that changed and morphed as we got older, for certain.

I smile, then wince as my cracked lips stretch and sting. The great Sanguine Sage would surely laugh on seeing my parched lips and sunburned skin.

Another step forward. The sun has moved in the sky, but how much? I don’t remember the last time I checked it. My eyes close, and I waver on my feet for a moment before bringing myself back to consciousness. 

No ! I dig my nails into my palms, and I feel the hot pain wake me up again. Can’t fall asleep.

The rules are few, but, at least according to the doves, they are unbreakable, and to falter means to lose your place in line forever: 

1. Do not leave the line.

2. Do not eat or drink in the line.

3. Do not talk to anyone else in the line.

4. Keep the line moving.

How long does he expect us to wait if we can’t eat or drink anything? I glance up at the sky. Or sleep?

And yet I fight against it, don’t turn around, don’t step aside so that someone more worthy can take my place. I can’t. I won’t. The chance to see him, to speak with him, the living God himself…

I have to try.

Another five steps. As we get closer, the line seems to be picking up speed, with the shifts coming more quickly than they had before. The feet of the people in front of me shuffle and scrape across the stone path, and I glance down at my own feet.

Why didn’t I grab shoes? Even as I think the question to myself I know the answer: I had been too excited. The crystal doves made it clear I didn’t have the time to say anything to anyone, or to gather supplies. A call from the Sage, they had said, needed to be answered.

The sky dims, a shadow falling over, and I look up again, my eyebrows crinkling. For the first time since the journey started, clouds more substantial than wispy feathers build and grow, rolling across the sun like a wave from the tower. My nostrils flare at the earthy, wet smell of an oncoming storm, filling the air like the wares in a perfumer’s shop. The first rumble of thunder reaches my ears, followed shortly by the splash of rain.

Water. 

My mouth opens on its own, but I stop myself suddenly. Do not eat or drink in the line. Did they mean rain? Could this really be forbidden?

I turn my head back and forth, trying to see what the others are doing. The large man in front of me glances upward, cupping his palm into the sky…and then returns that hand to his side, letting the rain splash down onto the ground. Behind me, a beautiful lady about my age with blonde curls turns her face into the sky and closes her eyes, letting the rain wash over her, but doesn’t open her mouth to drink it in.

Do they know more than I do? No one I can see is drinking, so I don’t either. Did the doves tell them differently, more specifically? 

There isn’t any evidence of doubt on any of the faces in view. The line keeps moving, even though the drum of rain is strengthening, pounding on my cotton dress and soaking me to the bone. After the sunlight, the coolness of the rain is welcome, but not being able to quench my thirst is torturous and terrible.

Did Altarin send the rain to test us? I can’t make out the tower now; the rain is coming down too hard, forming a screen that makes it difficult to see any more than the young boy in front of me and the girl behind. The heavy sheets pouring into my eyes force my head downward. Maybe that’s it. Weed out the ones who can’t resist.

Harsh testing was never a trait I had imagined in the Sage while playing Gild the God, but it makes a sort of sense, I suppose. Someone sitting in such a high chair, in such a place of judgment, would need to filter through deceit and puffery on a daily basis.

I breathe through my nose, keeping my head low so that water doesn’t get into my mouth, and keep stepping forward whenever the chance presents itself. I can see the water pouring between the stones, pooling and dribbling into the ground to water the trees and flowers growing alongside the path.

Lucky flowers

It takes me a moment to realize when the rain has stopped because the pounding and pressure had become so steady and constant that my mind had tuned them out. A quick glance shows me that the black sky is breaking through the gauzy fabric above, tearing through it like a knife, revealing the glimmer of stars.

Has it been that long? I turn to see behind me again, trying to see how far I’ve come since the last time I checked. Did the rain last all night?

The evidence is vanishing quickly, soaking into the ground to nourish the purple and pink blossoms lining the pathway. I sigh, my feet seeming heavier than they had just a moment before, and it takes me a few moments before I notice that the people in front of me have moved on. I trudge forward, wincing as my feet trip on the path.

Are they the same doves that called me? I peer at the birds, searching for some evidence for or against that idea, but there’s nothing; they’re made of crystal. What was I expecting?

I think I’m starting to lose it. I rub my face and bring my hand away. The water is all gone, even from my hair. There’s no proof that it had rained at all other than the still-lingering smell. Did it even happen? How much of this am I imagining?

A thought begins to creep into my skull, and I close my eyes against it. What if this is all just in my head? What if I’m lying in my bed, in a fever, and the thirst I’m feeling is just because I’m hot and thirsty and dying?

The doves swoop in front of me now, and I look to see them perch on the shoulders of the man in front of me. Two of them tilt their heads, and the other bobs up and down.

“You aren’t helping. Where would crystal birds come from anyway?” I laugh, but the laugh hurts so I stop it quickly. “Am I mad? Is this the folly of madness, creeping upon me in the darkness? Maybe a last gasp of my mind as I move along the bridge?”

Then, horror pulls the laughter from my soul. “I am mad, aren’t I? That’s how I am to meet the Sage.”

The crystal doves glance at one another as if they were parents deciding how to tell their child that the family pet has run away. They shrink as their perch moves up again, and I take three steps to cover the one he took.

“I don’t want to go mad.” My throat is closing and tightening, straining my voice, but I don’t have any tears. I’m so thirsty. “I’m too young. I have so many things I want to do.”

The doves stare at me now, the one on the right nodding. Or maybe it’s just bobbing its head like birds do—it’s hard to tell with my blurring vision. I feel like they’re judging me… Maybe these are the underworld guides, waiting for me to tell them the right thing.

“I’m sorry.” I stumble forward to keep them in reach. “I haven’t been the best daughter, I know. I’ve lied to my parents, kissed boys and hidden it.” The words spill out like the rain from earlier. “I’m not always nice to my brother even though I love him. Sometimes he’s annoying, and I don’t want to have him around, so I send him off to the creek to play while I talk with my friends or read. One time, he fell down and got a bad cut across his face because I wasn’t watching him.”

The birds don’t react to my confessions, but they don’t leave. No one around me seems to notice what I’m saying. The lady behind me isn’t wincing, or laughing, or gasping, and the man bearing the doves doesn’t turn or gesture.

I’m alone.

The realization is stunning. This whole time I’ve been surrounded by others making the same pilgrimage, the same journey, that I am, but either we are each isolated in our own world, where we can only see one another…

Or they’re fake.

Could they be? I reach forward, my hand trembling, and the doves streak toward me, leaping from the man’s shoulders and flying into my face. I stumble backwards, waving my arms to drive them off, and barely manage to keep from falling down. They don’t hit me, just flit around my head several times, but it’s so disorienting that it takes me a few seconds to get my balance.

When I blink my eyes again, the birds have returned to their posts. The line is four steps on, with those behind me patiently waiting for me to move onward. I glance to either side of me. The flowers along the pathway have grown even taller, half as tall as I am now, and the sky to my left is turning rose, matching some of the flowers in hue.

I’m being hemmed in. I reach left, slowly, with my eyes on the birds, and as my fingers start to cross the path’s boundary, the dove on that side flutters its wings until I withdraw. They’re trapping me here. 

If I’m mad, then this makes perfect sense—the pieces of my mind are making sure that I go where I’m supposed to. They don’t want me to wander off, get lost…

But why all the rules? I frown, but I take the five steps that open up as I think. If I can’t talk to anyone, why tell me that I shouldn’t? If I can’t leave, why tell me not to? This is the part that doesn’t make sense. Maybe my brain is just melting down in my skull and I’m rambling to myself, but it seems like these rules would be there to keep me from finding things out, to prevent me from these exact questions that I’m thinking.

“Hey.” It takes me two tries to get the word out so I can hear it in my own ears, addressing my words to the nearby birds. “What’s going on? Are we really going to see the Sage at all, or is this some sort of trick?”

Again, the doves glance at one another in that parental way. The second from the left speaks up, in the same voice I remember from when they called me here in the first place.  “The Sage is waiting for you at the end of the path, Camila, and he will decide if you are worthy.”

“Worthy of what?” I step a little closer to the doves, even though the line hasn’t moved on yet. “What does he want from me?”

The doves coo at one another before the bird on the far right pipes up. “Where were these questions when we summoned you? You seemed eager to take the journey without any concerns.” He (or she. I can’t tell the difference.) fluffs his wings and puffs out his chest. “Isn’t it enough that you have been called? Doesn’t that make you proud, whether he chooses you in the end or not?”

“But there’s no guarantee that he is even at the end of this path.” I cross my arms over my chest as I shake my head. “For all I know, you lied to us, misled us, and are bringing us to an oven for cooking, like the faerie tales say.”

The left-most bird clicks its beak, setting off a symphony of the same from the others, then bows its head. “You are welcome to abandon the trail if you feel it is not worth the journey. You will lose nothing but the time you’ve spent and the discomfort you have suffered.”

That bird’s neighbor coos in response, then picks up the sentence, “You may even have grown, become stronger, for the trials and difficulties behind you. If that is enough and the audience with the Sage is unworthy of your further efforts, then you may step away.”

The idea of all of this having been for nothing chills me to the bone. My teeth clench and my fingers curl into my palms. 

“But if the weight of the voyage finds itself lighter than the possibility of not having done it…” The third dove flutters, and a single crystalline feather drifts toward the ground, shattering the light into rainbows. “Then there is no choice but to continue. You felt that the possibility was worth it when you began. Have you changed your mind?”

I throw my hands up into the air and fight back a frustrated scream. “That was before you left me out in the heat and the rain without any food or water or time limit!” As if to punctuate my point, the dryness in my throat stabs at my words, making me wince. “I didn’t know it would be so hard!”

The line moves forward three steps. “If you had,” begins the fourth bird in the line, the far-right one, “would you have taken the invitation? Or would you have been afraid—too afraid—to even try? Would your feet have taken the path at all and learned what you have so far?”

“What have I learned so far? How much I miss water? How frightened I am, thinking that I might have erred and be on my way to judgment?” Despite the pain in my throat, I can’t help the heights my voice is reaching. “You should have warned me!”

“You have not erred. You are not being judged. And the goal is in reach, should you endure long enough.” The conversation has cycled back to the first dove in line, and I’m starting to feel like they aren’t so much four different creatures as four heads of the same thing. “Like anything worth obtaining, you must make the decision for yourself. We called you, but you answered.”

I open my mouth to retort, to decry and denounce, but then I pause. I wince again (my throat really does hurt), and this gives me the moment I need to consider what they’re saying. “I did. I came for the chance.” I glance upward, toward the end of the path, where it disappears in the woods and hills before leading up to the Tower. “But it’s so much more difficult to take the next step when I don’t know if I’m going to get there at all. Do you understand that?”

“We can offer no more assurances than we already have.” The birds dip their heads, almost sadly, and I can imagine tears welling in their crystal eyes even though I can’t see anything of the sort. “The path leads to the Sage, who is waiting for you in the Tower. When you arrive, you will have your audience and be judged as to your worthiness. This is the greatest honor we can offer to you, but we cannot force it upon you. Only you can decide whether or not it is worth the time and hardships you are enduring.”

My worthiness. Those words again, grating now on my ears, dig into my brain and make me shake my head. “Like a cow? Seeing if I’m worth butchering or milking?”

“Of course not.”

“Then what do you mean? My worthiness of what?” 

“Your worthiness of being a companion. An eternal friend.”

That shocks me, brings me down from the heights of my indignation and upset. “He wants…he wants to make me…immortal, like he is?”

“Perhaps. That depends on whether he finds you worthy.” The third dove, shimmering azure and violet, bobs its head. “His criteria are beyond us for he does not share them. But he is searching, and you have been called.”

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. I’m uncomfortable, I’m tired, and I’m thirsty. My emotions are difficult to manage right now, and I don’t want to say the wrong thing. I finish my breath, exhaling out, then open my eyes.

“Tell him I said to go to Hizam.”

The birds don’t reply, just look at me. Their expressions aren’t changing, I know, but I imagine they’re shocked and surprised.

“I don’t need his approval. I don’t need to be judged. I came because I thought he wanted to see me, not because he wanted to bring out a checklist and see how many of the tallies I met.” Shaking my head, I cut my hand through the air, knife-edged. “Anyway, he’s got plenty of other applicants who are apparently just waiting for his approval. Tell him thanks, but no thanks. I have a life to live and better things to do than wait for a stamp from on High.”

The last words hang in the air between me and the doves, a wire vibrating with unforgivable treason. I’ve blasphemed, told the Living God to walk into the eternal desert. 

That’s not the smartest thing you’ve ever done.

“Your decision is understandable, but regrettable.” The first dove on the right bows its head, and the rest follow suit. “The Sage was looking forward to seeing you, in particular.”

“I bet you say that to everyone.” I turn and step off of the pathway to get around the woman behind me…and my stomach drops out from under me, like I’ve just taken a step off the cliff my house sits on. I close my eyes, clutching at my gut and stumbling to the left, breathing deeply. 

“Camila?”

I stagger, putting a hand out, and feel someone taking it before wrapping me in a hug. The familiar dirt-and-spice aroma hits me, and I force myself to look at my new companion.

“...Mother?” I blink, then turn my head in a swivel, looking around. The sights of home—the willow in my yard, the thatched roof of the barn, the swing hanging from the tree branches—greet me, and the sense of vertigo doubles before fading away. “How did I get here?”

“Where have you been?” She’s crying, her big brown eyes swimming with tears as she backs off and pats me up and down, her voice quavering. “Are you hurt? You were gone so long we thought something had happened, that you had fallen into the river and been swept away!”

“...How long was I gone?” I grab my mother’s hands and look into her eyes. “Ma, I’m fine. I promise.” As I say the words I notice that they are true. My fatigue is gone, my thirst quenched, and my hunger sated. I feel as fresh as if I had just woken from a perfect night’s sleep. 

“Four days. Four days! We’ve had the whole township looking for you and nothing.” She takes a breath and tries to smile, but her lips are trembling and the tears are rolling down her face. “Did you leave? You could have told us.”

“I…” I think about telling her, about laying the whole story out…but then I don’t. I don’t want to be that girl, the one who was either chosen by the living god and turned him down, or the lunatic who thinks that she was chosen by the living god. “I got lost for a while, out in the Briarwood, but I’m fine. I found my way home.”

“I’ve told you ten thousand times that the Briarwood is not a safe place for you to be!” Mother wraps her arms around me again and hugs me close, squeezing tightly before letting me go. “I’ll let your father and brother know you’re safe. Come on.”

“I’m coming.” I don’t even have time to get the words out before she’s taking off, hurrying toward the house and calling for Da to come see that I’m all right. I smile, but then the smile falls off my face as I turn back toward the path I had walked before the doves had taken me on the journey to the Sage.

Was I wrong? Despite my distaste for the idea of being judged by some standard of worthiness, I still feel uneasy about walking away. The Living God, bearer of the Sun, granter of life. And I rejected him.

What was I thinking?