Acolyte

Chapter Seven

JANUARY

The rest of the day, it's like a dam has been broken open. Solana begins to tell me all sorts of things she'd never mentioned before, that I'd never dared to ask about. We talk until the evening, sipping away at the wine.

"My two best friends at the temple were Ara and Jastira," she says, "We were nearly inseparable. Often, the priestesses of the temple couldn't tell us apart."

"Really?" I ask, trying to imagine two more Solanas. It's difficult.

"Really," she says, "Although that may have been a lie. We were very close, though. I miss them more than anything. We'd walk through the temple grounds together, singing, picking fruit. We even shared a room."

"What about your mother?" I say, "What was she like?" At this point, we've drunk most of the wine, and I'm feeling braver than I have before.

Solana looks a bit sad, but begins to talk, "She's wonderful," she says, "Much nicer than me-"

I interrupt her, "I think you're nice."

She waves her hand dismissively, "Well, she's nicer than me. And actually loves the temple. I always wanted to be like her, to be able to embrace it." I gaze at her, watching her look off into the distance.

"So, why were you sent away?" I ask. I watch her face carefully, making sure she isn't upset.

Solana looks up, the crackling firelight dancing across her features. "It's a long story," she says, "I doubt you'd be interested."

I shake my head. "I'm interested."

She sighs, looking down and turning one of her many beads between her pale fingers.

"You may have guessed already that my father was human," she says.

I nod, "Seamus had said that might be the case."

"Well, he was. His and my mother's relationship was strictly forbidden. When it was discovered that she was pregnant, she was sent away to the temple, not allowed to leave."

"Oh. That's a big punishment," I say.

"Like I said, she took to it well," she says, "Anyways, when I was born, it was decided that I would stay in the temple where it was safe for me. They didn't trust that my father could raise me correctly."

"Why not?" I ask.

"Well, he was a good-for-nothing soldier who got an elf woman pregnant. Who knows what would've happened if I'd come into his care. I never met him."

"I see," I say.

"Anyways, even after I came of age and could've left, it never made sense. To humans, I look like an elf, but to elves, I look human. I would've been an outcast outside of the temple, and I'd never lived in the human world. So despite hating it, I stayed. There was nowhere else to go."

"So what happened?" I ask.

"Well..." says Solana, "To avoid the more boring tasks, like mopping the temple floors, I'd often find secret corridors, rooms, things like that to hide out in. As it turns out, some of them were forbidden. Strictly forbidden."

I frown, "That doesn't seem like grounds to be exiled. Especially not to a human village."

She shakes her head, "It wasn't. But when they caught me, they were going to punish me severely. I was going to be imprisoned, forced to pray to the goddess all day every day for weeks. So I had a bit of an outburst... Everything came out. I talked about how much I hated the temple, swore on the goddess that I wished I'd been raised by my father in the human village."