Sisters of the Forsaken Stars (Our Lady of Endless Worlds, #2)

by Lina Rather

The crucifix was not exactly a work of art. Jesus’s legs looked more like a single flipper, and the shaky-handed carver had given Him one larger eye and one smaller. But their original had been destroyed with their old ship, and they could not very well send word to the Church for another.

“Perhaps you are unaware that religious sisters swear a vow of poverty.” Again, he shrugged. “Quite frankly, these prices would be ruinous to the pope himself, and he has a Vatican’s worth of Earth-mined gold.”

Surely she could see that Sister Varvara was wearing a habit, and therefore an unlikely mark for episodes of The Seventeen Loves of Serena Valdez or Escape from the Sentient Sea!

He gestured at her habit. “Why do you keep with that? Surely it’s impractical in zero-g.”

Such a strange phrase for them to have kept from Earth, the world, when so many spread across the sky, as many deeply strange as were familiar.

Not a great deal of organized religion in the fourth system either. Plenty of gods, sure, but no one was quite certain how to deal with the existence of hierarchies and centralization.

Rogue ships—whose whole crew had died from disease or accident or attack, and had been left to wander alone—were rare enough. Liveships were too valuable to just set free outside the most extreme circumstances. The stories about them were mostly legend outside of a few accounts from the end of the war when there’d been so many vessels left derelict. To think some may have found each other and formed a herd?

But Sister Faustina had always been devoted to the idea of a purpose, and Sister Varvara, she quickly realized, was devoted truly to God, and a logical God at that. She was devoted to gospels and parables and papal decrees, and to the careful study and interpretation and implementation of such things.

Bubble-stations like scattered jewels hanging in twos and threes through the yellowish sulfuric clouds, their transparent walls showing glimpses of the famous hanging gardens populated with engineered birds of paradise and beetles that were as pretty alive as they were delicious flash-fried and tossed in sesame oil.

Sister Faustina shook her head. “Far be it from me to imagine that I know the mind of the divine.” “That isn’t very reassuring.”

Sister Varvara searched for the right words. She had always found faith to be a sturdy and useful object. A central beam in the construction of the universe, perhaps, holding up the structure.

“I hope so. We aim for generosity, but after that moon, none of us has the open heart we once did. The whole foundation of our world crumbled. I think there are very few people in this life who understand what it’s like to bind your whole life not to a family, or a career, but a devotion. To be betrayed by the Church, to see it murder and twist the trappings of holiness for mortal ends, it feels almost like being betrayed by—” She could not quite bring herself to say by God.

Other stations might smelt it down and make chess sets or belt buckles; this one had just found that rosaries left the shelves fastest in their small corner of this small system.

“It’s not for any pious reason. I’ve read all the hagiographies you have. You know how they end. I would prefer not to be burned at the stake, or beheaded, or buried alive.”

“How unhealthy a world it would be where we were all dependent on Old Earth for our great art, our grand music, the best education, and cultural exchange? Yes, we would all be much the worse for it. Central Governance wouldn’t need weapons, we would all just bow to them.”

How strange to think there had once been a time when humanity was so compact, and communication so instantaneous, that one could assume another Catholic had nearly the same readings and rites you did. As the spaces between them had grown vast, so had the variations in faith.

Her eyes blazed with awe, the true meaning of awe, something great and terrible and far, far bigger than either of them could ever comprehend in this single moment. She was beautiful.

This was what scared her most, perhaps. To be bound to someone not by purpose or similar devotion or sworn sisterhood, but only a love that could not be bounded by rules or regulations and could be broken at any time.

Young enough to not remember the war themselves, old enough to suffer under the traumas of their parents, old enough to carry forward those old fears and vengeances. She had work to do, but all day she had been trapped in waiting, like God Himself was holding His breath.

“We shall leave, the two of us. Somewhere far beyond their reach. One of the planets in the fourth system that’s never even heard of Earth, where strange creatures run free and the water and the sky are the same color blue.”

If Eris tore a path through the four systems in pursuit of justice, then she would follow mending what was left behind, and there was still a kind of symmetry in that. Not the suicidal decaying orbits of binary stars, but still two bodies that felt the pull of each other’s gravity.

“I didn’t realize nuns were so—hands on.” “What is it you think we do, Eris? Rock babies all day and sing songs? This isn’t Earth, we can’t live in a beautiful garden full of free oxygen and sing hymns behind a screen.”

Mother Lucia felt for the rosary at her side. Was that what they were down to after all this? Prayer?

To give up a duty like mine is no small thing, it has shaped my entire life, my entire self; it took the iron of me and forged it into steel.

A small smile crossed Mother Lucia’s face, like a shadow on a blinding afternoon. “Wherever we go, we’ll help people. It depends how close we want to be to the fire.” “We lit the spark, maybe we should be here for the flames.”

“No. I didn’t. No golden light, no divine words on my tongue. If there was a hand guiding me, it was the gentlest touch.” She cut off, but before Sister Faustina could say I’m sorry, she continued. “But it’s all right. I used to think that faith was this great light in the darkness. A lighthouse to show me the way no matter how stormy the sea. But that’s not it, is it? It’s more like . . . a rope to lead you out of a dark cave. Sometimes you hang on tight. Sometimes you might drop it and have to scramble to find the lead again. Sometimes it feels like a line in the dark isn’t enough. But it’s always there.”