The Cerulean (The Cerulean Duology #1) - Amy Ewing Page 0,3

tonight—now that Leela had mentioned squash blossoms, Sera found herself craving them. Her orange mother loved trying her hand in the kitchen, but she always overcooked everything, and her purple mother would joke that she should content herself with making only salads.

Suddenly, from deep within the City, the clear, rich boom of the temple bells rang out. All the girls in the grove stopped what they were doing, every face turned toward the sound. It was not time for evening prayers. So why would the bells be ringing?

“Perhaps they are announcing the wedding season today!” Daina exclaimed.

There was a rustling sound and Baarha, one of the adult cloudspinners, appeared in the clearing, flushed and out of breath. “Come, girls, come! Leave the spinning wheels; we must get to the temple.”

“What’s happening?” Leela asked.

Baarha’s eyes were so wide Sera could see whites all around her brilliant blue irises, and they sparkled with fear. “Mother Sun has spoken,” she said. “A choosing ceremony is about to begin. The time has come for the City to move.”

2

THE BELLS WERE STILL RINGING WHEN SERA, LEELA, AND the other girls ran, panting, over Faesa’s Bridge to the island in the middle of the Great Estuary, where the temple stood.

They joined the throng of Cerulean pouring over all three of the bridges that connected the island to the rest of the City, and uncertainty hung like a cloud over the crowds, as black as the leaves of the nebula trees. Sera looked for her mothers but saw no sign of them. Perhaps they were already inside.

“Who do you think will be chosen to break the tether?” Koreen whispered.

“Someone strong, I imagine,” Daina whispered back. “Maybe Freeda?”

Freeda ran the orchards and had broad shoulders and muscled arms. But Sera did not think Mother Sun would choose a Cerulean for her physical strength alone.

“No, someone pious,” Elorin said. “Perhaps an acolyte.”

Sera just hoped it wouldn’t be one of her mothers who was chosen. Some traditions may have been lost or forgotten over the hundreds of years attached to this planet, but the ceremony to make the tether and break the tether was not one of them. And what the ceremony required was blood—the sacrifice of a Cerulean.

“Why now, do you think?” Sera said. “What happened to make the City need to move after all these years?”

“Why don’t you ask your green mother? She seems to have all the answers,” Koreen said.

Sera pressed her lips together. The fact was, her green mother’s answers to all of Sera’s most important questions were merely guesses. No one remembered if the Cerulean had actually tended to the tether in the past. No one remembered the name of the planet they had left, or how choosing ceremonies had come about; and no one could satisfactorily explain why Cerulean could not visit the planets anymore when it had been so long since the Great Sadness, and this planet was not the same as that one.

Her green mother had taught her as much as she could about Kaolin and Pelago. Sera learned that parents in those countries consisted of one male and one female, and they could have as many children as they wished. Sera didn’t like the sound of that, to be honest—she enjoyed being her mothers’ only child. Her purple mother would be able to have another daughter only after Sera had left their dwelling to live on her own, and only when a new birthing season was announced. But there were no birthing seasons in Kaolin or Pelago. They could have children any time, in any year. Cerulean birthing seasons lasted anywhere from five to fifteen years—the season Sera had been born in lasted eight. Once the season was over, no children would be born until the next birthing season began, years and years later. Population had to be carefully controlled in the City Above the Sky. It had been eighteen years since the last birthing season.

Sera was curious to see what a male looked like. Cerulean did not need males to procreate; they contained that power within their own bodies. Her purple mother had explained it to Sera when she was twelve, how she carried an egg inside her womb that had split when it was ready and formed Sera. But in Kaolin and Pelago it took one male and one female to make a child, and of course, any information about the planet had unleashed another round of questions, and her green mother did not know nearly enough about the