Tea Ceremony E-Book

Tami Veldura

• Herausgeber: Tami Veldura
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

When Orla's sister dies in the war, her mother calls for a meeting with the general she blames for the death. There will be retribution.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Tea Ceremony

About The Author

Copyright

Tea Ceremony

By Tami Veldura

From a chair beside the fireplace, Orla watched her mother place a single guest tea cup upside down on the serving tray, then wring her hands again. Merete was nervous, or maybe angry, Orla had seen both emotions in force recently. The impending visit with Seeker Birk wasn't doing any favors.

Merete smoothed her dress over her stomach, then repeated the motion twice more. Orla glanced at the teapot over the fire. It was already steaming, but until Seeker Birk arrived, Merete wouldn't take it off the heat, which meant their little four-room shelter was quickly becoming humid.

Merete sorted through the tea tins on display over the fireplace for a third time. She replaced the gentle white and selected a rough-ground green, then replaced that and considered the fermented black.

Orla would have served the black and given Seeker Birk the first, dusty steeping, just to make sure he understood how insulting his visit was, but Merete dismissed the black and selected the green again. Her anger surpassed Orla's, but Orla had never known her mother to serve the black to any guest in her home. That was reserved for family: children who enjoyed the stronger taste with sugarleaf, and adults who understood the reprimand.

Merete held the tin of white tea, turning it over in her palms to warm it, then seemed to steel herself. Her back straightened and she replaced the white firmly on the shelf. Seeker Birk didn't deserve the finest they had.

Steam throbbed out of the kettle in time to Orla's rising heart and boiled along the woven bows of the greeting room's ceiling. Her twice great grandmother had woven these saplings together by hand rather than casting on magic. The trees had since grown intertwined, encircling the family for generations.

Orla remembered her younger sister begging Merete to allow her to cast on the trees and expand their tight little room, but Merete, like Orla's grandmother and grandmother before, had been firm. These trees were a gift from their ancestors, twisted and formed by hand, there would be no casting on anywhere near them.

Long ago the individual trunks and branches had grown together and each year the bark thickened against the snow. It was a living home in the same tradition as every other home in the golden forest, but most others had been cast on, which left theirs unique in origin.

Orla didn't feel that uniqueness had given their family any advantages. Her mother's stance against casting meant even if Orla had an interest when she was young, she'd never had a chance to explore it. But for her younger sister Rie, there hadn't been any other life.

Rie had been six when she cast on for the first time, entirely by instinct or accident. Then nine when she did it on purpose. For years she cast on in secret--an easy secret to keep when the rest of the community used magic with every breath of their lives. And finally, when the secret got out and their mother discovered Rei's practice, she was released from the golden forest to serve under Seeker Birk. With him, at least, Merete wouldn't have to watch Rei go against her wishes every day.

Rie loved their mother, she'd told Orla a thousand times, but she didn't understand the way the magic burned in Rie's veins. She couldn't grasp that casting on was both a pleasure and pain, for it opened new avenues in a mage to hold larger and more volatile magics.

Magics that Merete had told Orla could and had broken free of a casting and run wild, destroying lives and homes alike.