The Stone by the Stream (Part 11)

“But I don’t have an aunt,” Cynthia said, already knowing what would come.

“You had one though,” Lydia said between sobs. “My sister. Sofia. Gone… gone before you were even born. I miss her so much, every day. And you’re so much like her, Cynthia, you’re so very much like her. Always dreaming, always looking off to the horizon, always a mind full of questions. Don’t you know all your life I’ve feared you’d turn out like her? And every day, every day to see you become more like her… the way you pitch your voice, the way you tilt your head, the way you hold yourself when you walk. And every year, your face becomes more like hers…”

Lydia could speak no more, burying her head in Ariston’s chest, trembling.

“But why did you never tell me about her?”

“Because we didn’t want you to end up like her!” Lydia shouted.

“Your mother and I decided it would be better if you didn’t know about her,” Ariston said. “Which may have been a mistake.”

“So what happened to her?” Cynthia asked.

“It started out with that stone in the clearing,” Ariston said. “Sofia was curious about it. Always was. She’d spend hours a day around it when the weather was fine. She told your mother — ”

“She told me the closer she got to the stone, the more real this world felt to her. She was mad, don’t you see? Sofia thought this world wasn’t real — that the real world was something she could only get to through the stone. Insane! My sister was totally insane.”

“Or touched by the gods…” Cynthia said.

Lydia snorted. “You sound more like her every second. So of course eventually that precious Temple decided she was crazy enough to suit their purposes — told her she had the potential to become an oracle and everything. And there was a whole argument in the family — our mother didn’t want her to go anywhere near the Temple. Something about a cousin of hers who had gone insane, I can’t quite remember, it’s been such a long time. And she was two years younger than me. I know it’s not a lot, but when you’re young it means everything… so she trusted me, looked up to me, and one stormy night she asked me what she should do. And I told her…”

Again Lydia broke out in sobs. She leaned into Ariston’s chest and made it wet with her tears. Cynthia felt an aching pang in her chest to see her mother in such anguish.

But she had to know. So she asked, “What did you tell her, mother?”

“I told her,” Lydia began, but broke off in another wave of sobs. “I told her to go to the Temple, if that’s what she thought the Goddess was calling her to do. I believed in her visions at the time, you know — she talked about them with such passion. All about making contact with the spirits and gods, and prophecies — prophecies! How was I to know I was indulging a poor insane girl’s desire to destroy herself? She’d speak so beautifully about the dam being broken and the river returning to cleanse the land… so I told her to go to the Temple.”

“… and then what happened?”

“I don’t know, Cynthia. I don’t know what they did to my darling little sister in there! We mostly just heard from the Temple, always with glowing reports about her progress and what an obedient little Initiate she was. I’d only see her at Temple services or festivals — once or twice a week, at most, and always someone else watching over her. An acolyte or a priestess… always smiling, always polite, but always there.

“And something was different about her. She seemed empty somehow. Drained. Standing next to her, smiling with her, hugging her… somehow it felt like she was on the other side of a pane of glass. And I couldn’t ask her about it, not with them watching us, not inside the Temple itself!

“I happened across her one day, though, maybe a year and a half after she’d gone to the Temple. I was out getting water from the well, and she was off running some simple errand they trusted her enough to let her take care of on her own. And my Sofia… my sweet beautiful Sofia… she could only rave about how the Temple was trying to kill the gods and trap us all in this nightmare world — that’s what she called it, I remember her exact words, ‘This nightmare world.’ Only from the way she said it… she meant it literally, you see? She believed this world was literally a nightmare we had to wake up from to get back to what’s real.

“Soon enough some temple functionary showed up and they went off together. But the last thing she said… the last words I ever heard from my dear, sweet Sofia. She hugged me close — and how was I supposed to know it was for the last time? — and whispered, ‘Help me get out, sister. Please help me get out, Lydia.’”

“Out of the Temple?” Cynthia asked. “Or out of this world?”

Lydia shrugged. “I don’t know how many hundreds of nights I’ve lain awake asking myself that question. I’m not even sure she knew — but no, I’m lying. I say she was insane, because she said such crazy things. But she seemed so lucid. She knew exactly what she meant. But I didn’t, and still don’t. And it doesn’t matter, anyway. Less than a month later, Sofia was dead.”

“What happened to her?”

“The Temple told us she threw herself onto the flames as they were burning a sacrificial offering in the Chamber of Initiation. They tried to save her, they said, but couldn’t. Burned to death. Burned to death…” Lydia’s exhausted face wore a look of resignation. “It could be the truth. All I know is that I never saw my little sister again.”