The elaborately carved, gilded, and lacquered cabinet before me had once seemed a gleaming casket of mystery. “It’s just furniture,” I said aloud. “A chest of drawers full of incense blocks. Mother, nothing in here is going to save me. I don’t know what will. If I did, I wouldn’t hesitate to do it. I’d even be willing to offer blood sacrifice to the old gods if I thought it would work. Cecile Poronte’s family does.” It was the first time I’d mentioned that to anyone. In the days since the wedding, I’d felt no inclination to share any conversation at all with my father.

My mother paled at my words. Then she carefully corrected me. “Cecile is a Burvelle now, Nevare. Cecile Burvelle.” She stepped past me and opened the sage drawer of the cabinet. Sage for wisdom. She took out a fist-sized greenish brick of incense and carried it to the worship brazier. With gilded tongs, she held it to the slumbering coals, stooping to blow through pursed lips to wake their ashed red to glowing scarlet. A slender tendril of smoke rose to scent the room, and one corner of the sage brick caught the charcoal’s red kiss. She did not look at me as she bore the sage incense to the alcove for health and tucked it safely inside.

She stood for a moment in silent prayer. Habit urged me to join her there and I suddenly wished I could. But my soul felt dry and bereft of faith. No words of praise or entreaty welled in me, only hopelessness. When my mother turned aside from the mural, I said, “You knew the Porontes worship the old gods, didn’t you? Does Father know?”

She shook her head impatiently. I don’t know if she was answering my question or dismissing it. “Cecile is a Burvelle now,” she insisted. “It no longer matters what she did in the past. She will worship the good god alongside us every Sixday, and her children will be raised to do the same.”

“Did you see the dead birds?” I asked her abruptly. “Did you see that ghastly little carousel in their garden?”

She pursed her lips as she came to take a seat on the bench. She patted a space beside her and I sat down reluctantly. She spoke softly. “They invited me to witness it. Cecile’s mother sent an invitation to your sisters and me. The words were cloaked but I understood what it was about. We arrived too late. Deliberately.” She paused for a moment and then advised me sincerely, “Nevare, let this go. I don’t think that they truly worship the old gods. It is more a tradition, a form to be observed, rather than any true belief. The women of their family have always made such offerings.

Cecile made the Bride’s Gift to Orandula, the old god of balances. The slain birds are a gift to the carrion bird incarnation of Orandula. His own creatures are killed and then offered back to him to feed his own. It’s a balance. The hope is that the woman offering the sacrifice will not lose any children to stillbirth or cradle death.”