Hopeless

“I come before You to withdraw,” said Lily, her lips curled into a pleasant smile behind her curtain of blonde curls.

I blinked and fought to keep my eyes fixed ahead - at my queen, my Goddess, the eternal embodiment of our homeland. Every nerve in my body trembled.

The Goddess paused for a moment, then said, “You know that means Ava will become My High Priestess. Is this truly your desire, my daughter?”

“Yes, Goddess. Ava will make a fine High Priestess, and a new calling has found me.”

Silence filled the space: It stretched between me and Lily, covered the altar before us, and hung about our Goddess’ head like a veil. “I see,” She finally said, tearing the tension like a blade through linen. “Your heart belongs to another. I cannot fault you for this.”

My sight flickered to my left, to Lily.

Then I fixed it once again on my Goddess, a cold shiver running up my spine in fear that She would be displeased. In Her sacred space, there should be no one else that I desired to look upon. In Her mercy, She overlooked my failure and gave me Her forgiveness with a feeling of pride.

“Go, Lily, and leave us. It is time to raise the next High Priestess to her rightful place.”

Upon the altar, a bronze chalice of glistening water appeared. The Goddess bid me to drink, and I did. The water was cool and crystalline. It slid down my throat and coiled in my belly, then spread its power of purity through my veins.

“This is my font of power, the infinite multitudes of hope that sustains Me and this power that I give unto you. With it, you have become My high priestess and will enact My will within this temple and to the hopeless ones beyond its walls.”

I’d spent my life in meditation and practice in this very temple, pushing down the fear of the tribes that lived in the wilderness and assaulted our people and home with terrible powers from their wild gods. But with the power of the Goddess I could see them for the first time. They gnashed their teeth as they loaded their firepits with fallen trees, raising their fists and shouting their demands to the sky.

I couldn’t hear their questions, their cries, but I could feel the anger and the pain that propelled their words.

“Now,” said my Goddess in her smooth and beautiful voice, “lead us to peace, High Priestess.”

After that, I revealed myself to the temple where all the acolytes and priests knelt before me to acknowledge my new title and power. Finally, I looked upon Lily, supplicated before me. Our eyes did not meet, but the man kneeling beside her did raise his head; one of the acolytes that tended to the chambers of the High Priestess. Adam.

Adam’s fists followed his gaze, just over my shoulder. He launched himself from where he knelt and shouted, just as a blinding pain lanced my left shoulder. I had only enough time to let out a cry of pain before it all went dark.

I could not hear Her voice, but I felt my Goddess’ presence holding me steady and still in the blackness. When I opened my eyes again, Lily greeted me at my side. Her hands hovered over my shoulder, wrapped in bandages soiled with dry blood. I felt the power radiating from her.

“Ava!” She smiled as she gripped my forearm, then leaned in closer. “Oh, I’m sorry! High Priestess. You’re awake.”

I willed my opposite hand to reach across myself and give her hand a reassuring squeeze, but a weakness prevented me from lifting it more than a bit. I winced.

“Ah, don’t strain yourself. You were attacked. How much do you remember?”

“Attacked?”

“By the enemy,” said another voice, one I vaguely recognized. I turned my head and let it fall to the other side to see Adam all freckles and braids. “An assassin hoped to cut down the High Priestess before she came into her full power, to weaken the Goddess and take this temple.”

“Adam saved your life.”

At last control of my body returned. I shifted to sit forward and Lily put her hand between my shoulderblades. Adam put his hands forward, but did not touch me. At least he knew better. “I’m afraid our friend flatters me too much,” he said. “I merely separated the blade from its wielder, but the poison lacing its edge would have surely taken our beloved, new High Priestess if not for your healing powers, Priestess Hope.”

A faint blush darted under Lily’s cheeks. “What matters is that High Priestess Ava is well. Do you have the energy for a bath? Let me draw you one and bring you to your bedchambers in a silk robe.”

I nodded, then allowed Lily to tend to me and send Adam to the acolyte’s chambers while the priestesses that tended to the inner chambers gathered to draw the bath. Lily helped me out of the soiled clothes and held my hand as I lowered myself into the clear waters with rose-scented steam rolling along its surface. A silver harp played from the other side of the room.

“Rest, now, High Priestess,” Lily said in a calming tone as she poured oil onto her hands from a jug. “You’re still recovering.”

“Lily, I’m still me. It’s just us.”

She massaged her hands and began to wring them. She smiled her beautiful smile. “Forgive me. I’m just so excited for you.”

“I’m not.” The words fell from my lips before I could catch them. “You were supposed to become High Priestess and I...”

“Your Highness, I disagree,” she said after hesitating. Speaking out of turn to the High Priestess was cause for punishment, in other circumstances. “High Priestess suits you. I’ve always thought so.”

A soft, white flower drifted on the water’s surface to my side. Lily reached into the bath and scooped it into her tender palm to tuck it behind my ear. I caught her hand and held it. “The Goddess gave me hope, Lily. I know I can do this, after all the work we did together to get this far in our training. I just... I imagined things differently.”

She pressed her hand and mine against my cheek. She winked at me, playfully. “Say it, High Priestess, and it will be so.”

“I want to do this with you.” As I spoke, hope surrounded me in a warm light that caught the steam in beautiful rainbows and buoyed my heart. “You fill me with a joy only rivalled by the Goddess, Herself. Every day we’ve spent together in meditation, serving the temple, reading the old texts, the best part of it all was spending time with you.”

Lily eased back, leaving the petals in my hair. All pretense of my title fell away. “Ava, I had no idea.” She curled her perfumed hand against her chest and her radiant smile dropped, replaced with trembling lips.

I followed after her hand, stopping short at the edge of the tub. “Lily, I’m in love with you.”

“Ava... High Priestess, you heard the Goddess. My heart belongs to someone else.”

“To Adam?” I scoffed, the warmth of hope simmering into hot flashes. “He’s an acolyte, fit to clean the grounds and wash the priest’s robes and little else.”

“Need I remind you of the attempt on your life, High Priestess?”

“How long?” Steam burst around me, the heat of the water rising through me. “How many times did you leave me after training and fall into his arms? His bedsheets? When did you let him turn you into a lovesick little girl?”

Lily sprung to her feet. Her robes swayed around her legs. “High Priestess, if it is the Goddess’ wish to keep me as your concubine, you know I can not refuse.”

A chill rattled me. Steam parted from my vision like curtains drawn. “No. No, of course not. I should have said something sooner. Forgive me.”

“As you desire. May I be dismissed?”

I nodded, leaving the silence to linger over the surface of the water. Lily’s bare feet made no sound as she walked away, with only tiny tear drops to mark her path and drain through the grooves of the marble tiles.

The water I poured over myself cooled and washed away the light from my soul. I pulled on a robe and brought myself to the High Priestess’ chambers to sleep in the silk bed for the first time.

As I slept, I dreamt. In my dream, the Goddess came to visit me.

“It pleases me that you live, High Priestess.”

“Only through You, my Goddess. Lily saved me with Your healing power.”

“Yet your heart remains clouded from My sight. What troubles you, child?”

“Goddess, I confessed my love to Lily with the hope You gave me, yet she rejected me anyway.”

A long moment passed where the Goddess observed me, peering into the soul She gave me. “High Priestess, the power I give you does not control the hearts of others. You must embolden your own heart to spread the gift of hope to those who will listen. When you wake, you will anoint My priests in oil and spread this message to them. This is my first order to you as High Priestess."

The sunlight of dawn woke me as it filtered through the chamber window. The warmth of it reached down into my bones, washed away when I drank more of the Goddess’ cold water. The satin and feathers around me felt heavy and thick.

With the message from my Goddess in mind, I sent acolytes to gather the anointing oils and summon the priesthood in the courtyard. I set Her words to parchment and took my place at the altar.

I poured the oils from a clay jug into a bowl, then prayed over it in the Goddess’ name to bless it. Adam, the acolyte, lit candles around me along the stone surface of the altar. My first sermon as High Priestess began as the sign climbed to the center of the sky.

“Brothers and sisters,” I said as I unfurled the parchment I’d written, “our Goddess has given me a message to bestow upon you all.”

The priests knelt before me, foreheads raised and eyes shut. Dutifully, Lily waited in the center front of the group, in her place as the highest ranking among them. I stood with the scroll in one hand and one hand on the pot of oil. “The power of the Goddess...”

I looked over the faces of the faithful in a sea of pristine robes and closed eyes, with the towering walls of the temple framing them, keeping them corralled. “... Is a lie.”

I plunged the scroll into the bowl of oil and grabbed a lit candle. I dropped it into the bowl and stood back as the flames leapt upward. A gasp of shock and terror rippled through the priests.

“The Goddess claims Her power comes from our hope, that it empowers us in turn. She lies! I have felt the truth as it burned, like this flame, consuming, in my soul. It is not true hope, but a false hope that She implants within us; the ache of pursuing a fate that will never be, that we cling to in desperation.”

“Blasphemy!” Lily’s voice startled me, cutting through the roaring flame.

“Look around you!” I demanded. “What good has hope done for us? We cower behind these temple walls and hope that the heathens outside will leave us alone. For a hundred years, we have hoped that this war will end. We have hoped that Her power will free us, that it will bring us to the salvation that we crave. We hope for love and for joy, we hope for a better tomorrow that never comes.”

“Doubt has blinded you!” Lily shouted, rising to her feet. “You have strayed from the truth!”

“You say I am the blind one?”

Priests around Lily took to their feet and stood at her side. The wind swept their robes around their legs and feet while it fed into the burning oil. My funeral pyre before a field of mourners. Silence stretched from beyond and carried a song that sounded like shattered hope.

The flame consumed my vision as I stepped forward, and I clenched down on the silence to keep myself from crying out. The last thing I saw before the comfort of darkness settled over me was the bright light of the flame, as far from the icy grip of hope as I could take myself.

I recognized the feeling of Lily’s hand in mine as she led me through a murmuring crowd of disbelieving onlookers. Never before had I heard the sound of the temple gates opening, and never had I seen beyond, yet I knew what faced me on the other side.

Without my sight, I saw clearly. Outside of the Goddess’ temple was light, warmth, and truth that only those who knew true hopelessness could create. It was ours, in a way that no one could take away.