Chapter 99: The Beginning of the Festival I

"What’s the bell for?" Sophia asked, because asking felt safer than making a guess. "Is it another attack from the beasts?" She asked.

Brynhild chuckled. "No, it’s nearly time for the main festival," she said softly. "There’s a rite before the main festival starts."

"A rite?" Sophia asked her. "Like a ritual?"

"Yes. It’s a festival after all." Brynhild told her. "We need to head to the square."

Lysander moved Brynhild from the chair she sat on to the wheelchair. She grumbled about how she could make the short distance herself but he didn’t care.

He handed Brynhild her cloak just as Sophia reached for hers.

Within minutes, they began their walk towrds the square with Lysander rolling Brynhild. Around them the compound had already started to move with a solemn intent. Where earlier had been a steady flow of people to and from chores and preparations, now there was a slow, deliberate movement, families falling into quiet lines, aiding children up onto shoulders, hunters drawing their coats around them like shields. Lanterns that had been hanging idly now glowed as if in answer to the bell, their runes catching the dying daylight and throwing small, steady halos onto the snow.

They stepped out into that current. The path toward the square felt different from every other time she’d walked it. People moved with soft feet, as if to disturb the hush would be sacrilege. Even the children were subdued; their playfulness replaced by a serious pride in participation.

Sophia’s throat tightened. She wasn’t sure she had ever known rituals like this; they had always been scripts or stories.

Here though, rituals were lived in places of stone and smoke, in the careful bowing of heads and the offered tokens clutched in gloved hands.

A wide circle of packed earth marked the center of the square, and in its heart a platform had been erected...timber raised high enough to lift the officiant above the crowd. Cloth streamers hung from its edges in deep blues and silver, their ends catching the last light of the day.

Madam Tyler stood at the summit, staff in hand, a carved wand topped with a crescent moon of hammered silver. Her robes billowed in a wind that seemed to move only for her; even the way she stood made the murmuring voices fall into an expectant silence.

She lifted her staff, and the chants increased in volume along with the beating of a drum.

The open air filled with a sound that was not quite singing and not quite speech, a chorus that called the attention of the moon and whatever old things moved in its shadow.

Sophia found herself stepping closer even though her hands felt cold and uncertain. She watched Brynhild as if she would read an answer there, and Brynhild watched Tyler the same way every other person did, with rapt attention. Lysander’s grip on the wheelchair’s handles remained steady, knuckles whitening now and then when a gust touched them.

Madam Tyler’s voice rang out, clear and intimate despite the space between them. She spoke the old words, phrases Sophia recognized only as patterns in the rhythm.

She called to the Moon Goddess, to the ancestors who had first walked these lands, to those lost in the ruins of war and the quiet of time. Her staff grazed the air, painting invisible sigils; blue smoke spooled from small censers placed at each corner of the platform, drifting down in delicate veils. The light from the hanging lanterns seemed to gather in the smoke and form shapes that bent like living things.

Around them, people bowed, hands pressed to their chests, some touching the same runed amulets they wore as if the metal could carry their words. Families who had lost someone there lay wreaths of herbs at the base of the platform. Others set down small offerings, bread crusts, tiny carvings, things meant to be taken by the wind or the earth or the goddess in some way.

Madam Tyler cupped her hands, letting the smoke rise through her fingers, and then she did something Sophia had not expected. She walked down the platform steps, not with haste, but with a measured grace and moved among the crowd, touching foreheads, palms, shoulders.

Where her hand passed, people seemed to close their eyes and breathe deeper, as though some heavy anxiety had been set aside. When she was done, she walked back to the platform.

A sudden quiet descended on the square until Madam Tyler raised her staff high and just like before, the chants resumed along with the drums. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

People around her stood as if rooted to the ground, faces lifted. Some cheeks were streaked with tears under the lamplight. Some mouths moved, lips forming words Sophia could not catch. The air seemed to pulse, an invisible hand pushing at the edges of the world so they might all take place inside one instant of meaning.

Madam Tyler’s voice softened; she began a benediction to the dead and to the living. "For those who fell by the hand of the enclave," she intoned, her eyes lifting to where the moon would hang later that night. "For those saved and those who were lost, for the children and for the old, we hold you. May the Moon Goddess gather the brave’s ghosts and set them gently in the place of memory."

Sophia’s fingers tightened on the edge of her cloak.

When the prayer wound to a close, Tyler lowered her staff and the drums slowed their pulse like a heartbeat finding steadiness. The crowd did not explode into noise. Not did they depart, everyone remained in position like they were waiting for something and she saw it then, Orion walking into the raised dias where Madam Tyler had been.

A sudden silence washed over everybody again and even madam Tyler who was now standing at a corner and wiping her eyes stared at Orion who had a solemn look on his face.

He looked different, unlike the person who had shown Sophia around this morning.