Once Was: Book One of the Asylum Trilogy Read Online Free

a hearth and table, numerous shelves for the salves she made, and a hidden door leading to a tunneled entrance to the temple.
    Any who asked Kira were told the distance gave her space to reflect upon her duties to Bas. In retrospective wisdom, I believe her isolation gave Kira the space she needed to be an impartial judge of talent; despite having brought her spare sweets when we had them, there had been no ease to my test. From the moment she heard of my vision, Kira assumed her position as priestess and Fire Bearer.
    It was the same for me as it had been for all women since the start of the first priestess. It was the beginning of a lifetime of difficult encounters.
     
    *
     
    Darkness closed in on me, dirt rubbing off the ceiling when I lifted onto my knees. The tunnel from Kira’s cottage to the temple in the woods was warmer than I anticipated, but darker than I imagined the womb being. Shuffling knees and grasping hands brought back nothing but more darkness. Fear draped me, a cobweb shawl threatening to close its tendrils around my chest. My heart pounded in response, fighting to keep me alive in the face of my fears. I wanted to turn back into the sunlight.
    Turn back.
    Could I have turned around? Was I lost?
    Worms slid beneath my fingers, teasing me with their innate knowledge of up from down and which way to go. Why had Kira abandoned me here? Was I to fail even in this?
    “Please,” I begged.
    I crawled even as roots tangled in my hair, the boy-short waves coming free with a tug where longer tresses would have knotted. “Bas, if it is Your desire for me to—” No, She wanted me. This task was for me to prove my desire.
    Forward. I had to move forward.
    Dirt kicked up from my hands and burned my lungs. Kira had to be just a little further ahead. She told me it would be no longer than the walk from the forge to Fion’s house had been.
    That wound was still sharp in my stomach. With effort, I forced those thoughts to the back of my mind, then focused on the musty earth holding me close. Humble. I was to lose the preconceived notions of who I was in this journey. I was to humble myself before Bas’ eyes and let Her rebirth me as an initiate.
    “I am yours, Lady.” I gave up crawling and rested my head upon my hands in the dirt. Imagining myself beneath Her paws, I gave myself to the dark.
    Power.
    Throbbing power.
    Tree roots reaching down, branches going to the sky. Water soaked dirt bearing nutrients of life.
    “Take me,” I whispered to all of them.
    I choked on earth as it swallowed me. Cold stones and warm earth cocooned me, eating me whole and dragging me with it like the worms within the soil. It spat me out with a thundering shudder of power. “Tree child of the stars,” it cried. “Not a stone-worker.”
    The darkness lifted. It was still black and my sight was of no use, but I knew that She was ahead of me. Velvet brushed my muddied skin, the new coat cracking, stinging, as a hint of fresh air caressed my face.
    Like a babe reaching for its mother, I reached through the parting fabric, and was blind.
    Kira laughed as I fumbled, ground giving way to white wooden flooring. “We are all unseeing until She shows us the right path, Roseen. Follow my voice.”
    Kira cleansed me, running cool water over my face and limbs. I drank sugared water as if it would give me new life. Perhaps it did. I closed my eyes against the blinding white that stung my thoughts, scourging my soul against the black of night, and when again I opened them, I saw all the colors.
    There was black and white, but in between there was . . . everything. Colors I have no name for danced with familiar rainbows. Faded and cracked, white-washed walls were studded with imported glass from a factory in Aristeer. They drew the eye upwards to the spectral blessing that had caught my attention. A brightly tiled ceiling faded from the vivid to the exotic; shimmering deep shades I have never seen were a night-time dream of color. Fion,