thoughts rising from him were sincere ones. “What do you mean?” I asked. “You helped me locate Verity when she needed me. Well. Not you, exactly, but the splinter colony she had with her in New York. You were totally fair to me.”
“Please.” The priest bowed until his whiskers brushed the floor, easing some of the crackles of pain from his spine. “Please. We seek Forgiveness and Absolution. Allow us to petition you for these things, for only then may we be Properly Made Clean.”
Sometimes the Aeslin ability to make any letter into a capital one was enough to make my head spin. “All right,” I said. “What do you need from me?”
The priest straightened and turned, looking at another, younger mouse. This one was wearing glasses, twists of wire around magnifying lenses that made its tiny oildrop eyes look absolutely enormous. The rest of its livery was nothing I recognized, beads and bits of bone counting out complicated patterns across its back. They almost looked like a Fibonacci sequence. I smiled at the thought.
The younger mouse cleared its—her—throat, forced her whiskers forward, and said, “I am come to petition you, O Heartless One, called Sarah Zellaby, called Cousin Sarah, to Forgive us our trespasses against you, to Forget our refusal to clearly see what was before us, and to Formally Allow us to sanctify the clergy which has been assembled in your Name.”
I blinked. “Um, what?”
“We understand now that we were unwilling to set aside our prejudices and our fears for your species of Birth, and to acknowledge that what matters is not Blood, but Belonging,” said the younger mouse. “You are a daughter of this line, as truly as any who have been Born to it. You carry in your motions the Grace of Beth, the Forgiveness of Caroline, the Canniness of Enid, the Viciousness of Frances, the Determination of Alice, and the Persistence of Evelyn. You are a Priestess, and have always been, and we are sorry not to have seen it before now.”
I gaped at her, unable to figure out how I was supposed to respond to that, or whether there was a good response.
The mouse sat back on her haunches, whiskers still pushed forward as she focused her full attention on me. “We have assembled as much as we can of your catechisms, for you have never been a stranger here. Will you allow me to lead your temple, to learn your mysteries, and to reveal them to the acolytes who come before us with time, ready to pledge themselves unto your divinity?”
I stood there in silence for a long moment—long enough that the mice began to mutter nervously amongst themselves, their thoughts radiating concern and fear of rejection. Me? They wanted me?
If I didn’t say something soon, this was going to get ugly. I swallowed my fear and confusion and asked, “Are you sure? I’m not—I mean, all the other priestesses are—”
“The Polychromatic Priestess is not human, nor ever aspires to be,” said the younger mouse, sounding relieved. “Her veins carry the blood of the Lilu, and still she stands beside her family, and still she cares for them as well as any other of her kin or kind. Nor was the Violent Priestess fully human, for all that none has ever Learned precisely what else she drew from, and that inhumanity has kept her bloodline safe from the crueler of the Heartless, for their claws find little purchase on family minds. You will not be the First. You will not be the Last. Will you permit us to worship you as well as you deserve, and to be held in the regard we have always owed to you?”
The mice looked at me, whiskers vibrating, radiating hope, and I gave them the only answer I could:
“Yes.”
Their cheers could have woken the dead.
* * *
I’m not sure how long I spent on the stairs with the rejoicing mice. Eventually, Annie poked her head around the corner, called, “Celebratory cheese and cake in the kitchen!” and withdrew, leaving me to stand fast against the sudden rodent tide. I wasn’t sure she knew what the mice were celebrating, just that they were, and I couldn’t get past them.
A priestess. Me. A Priestess, as the mice would put it, slapping on that all-important capital letter. They didn’t have priestesses among their clergy, only priests, regardless of sex, showing how confusing they found human gender roles. Everything they did, they did because it was tradition, and this colony’s traditions