It took some time for the broken window to be repaired, and until then the open space remained covered by thick wooden boards. First, a carpenter had to replace the frame, which had split along one side, and then they had to wait for the glazier, who ended up taking two days to finish his work. Occasionally over the two days of his labor, Joy would stop by the office – its furniture pushed to the side – to watch the grey-haired man carefully measure and cut the panes of glass, then fit them into the grid.

It was hard for her not to think of the whole process as a metaphor. “Some things can be fixed,” Father Seer had told her. But some things, maybe not – Therese, he said, might never be the same, despite the healing to her body. The frame of her life had been irretrievably bent. And what of Daned and Maeva? For reasons Joy could not understand, both had simply disappeared. When pressed, Father Seer had told her, regretfully, that there were secrets he could not share.

And it was hard not to think, I could know if I were more. More than just the merchant’s daughter who lights devotional lamps, and fetches refreshments for the small number of Hamal’s congregants, and sweeps the floors. Father Seer, she knew, would never see her as less. But gazing in her reflection in one of the panes of glass, Joy saw herself that way. Whenever she thought of that moment, when Athron Dolmen had cried out, “To arms!”, the shame was almost unbearable.

If I were more …

The day after the attack, she had asked Athron Dolmen to teacher her how to at least use a knife. It was a way to anchor herself, keep her thoughts away from what had happened, what might have happened to make things much worse. After he and the others left, for wherever it was they went (what adventures might they be having?, Joy wondered), she was left adrift. Father Seer, try as he might, could not help, for he knew little more than she about how to fight. “That is not what my congregation requires,” he told her with a note of regret in his voice. “Not here in Halveet.”

And she understood that, understood that the ones who were drawn to Hamal in this wealthy city, with its Guard, was not the protection of sword-wielding warriors. Most, like Daned Thand, who had joined the Temple elsewhere, often already knew how to protect themselves or others. They came to this chapterhouse for the community, recognizing one another as refugees from another place (often bearing the marks of the debt-bonded), who had not yet found, or did not want to find, a place among the worshippers of Otori. They needed a pastor who had come with them, who understood the what they left behind and why.

A few others (an ever-increasing number, as the Temple took hold) were drawn to Hamal because, for one reason or another, they simply did not prosper – the unskilled, the sick, the poor, who had no place in the gilded halls of Otori.

And then there were those, like Joy herself, this merchant’s daughter, who had been drawn to the Temple from an unnameable need for something more. Something more than a goddess whose ministry was trade, under whose aegis the sanctity of the commercial deal was pre-eminent, for whom everything could be bought or sold. When she had told her parents, nearly two years before, that she wanted to study with Father Seer, they had simply looked at her, bemused, utterly unable to understand. Her father had patted her hand and told her that whatever she needed – and wherever she needed to find it – they would not stand in her way, and she loved them fiercely for that.

She had thought it enough to be the one who welcomed the visitors, lit the lamps, fetched the food, swept the floors. Sweeping up the shards of broken glass, she realized it was not.

Joy counted each of the now-perfect panes of the window, traced the framework, before turning back around to take her seat and face Ethan Seer. “It’s not that I am unhappy here, Father. I’ve never been happier than studying with you. But …” She spread her hands, struggling to find the words. “You have learned all you can from me right now.” He said it so simply, and so kindly, she almost interrupted to try to reassure him, but he held up one hand to stop her. “The fable of the trials of Ebril teaches us this, Joy: We must each find the soil that nourishes us, and that is the proper place for us to root ourselves and grow. For a time, you have nurtured yourself here. But like Ebril when he left the tutelage of Arlos, you have reached the point where something more is needed. A different earth, a fresher rain, a hotter sun.”

Joy bit her lower lip, blinking away sudden tears, relieved to hear that he understood, easily and immediately. One hand lifted to briefly touch the symbol of Hamal hanging around her neck. Seer had given to her, the day she had joined the chapterhouse, and she would take it with her on the day she left.

Hamal can help me become more.

DM’s Note: Illustration is detail used under Creative Commons license from this photograph