The girl led me through a forest unlike any I had ever seen. Bright golden fruit peered out between leaves of deepest emerald green, and birds with cerulean feathers called out to each other from the tops of tall trees. A scarlet lizard, a tiny cousin of the fire-breathing salamander I had fought in the arena of Phyreios, skittered across the narrow footpath.
I asked the girl her name, and between bites of the pastry with which the captain had bribed her, she told me it was Kala. She was handmaiden to the grandmothers—a position of great honor, I inferred, especially for one so young.
Our path sloped upward, toward the mountain at the island’s center. The only clouds on that bright blue morning ringed the black peak like a crown. Though the earth did not tremble and the mountain was still, it was a volcano, no less mighty than the ones that sprang forth in fire and steam from the sea in my homeland.
Continue reading “Journey to the Water Chapter VI: The Isle of the Priestesses”
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