Saia lay in her bed for a long time, thinking back at the silence after the necklace had fallen to the ground. The crowd had slowly dispersed, leaving her alone with the horrified expressions of Ceila, Lassem and a few locals. She felt like a traitor, and she hadn't even accomplished anything meaningful.

The next day, she glanced at her brother multiple times while they were on the boat. He was ignoring her, but she couldn't sense whether he was angry at her or just too overwhelmed by what had happened. He'd told the family everything, of course, besides Saia's intervention. She had shared their worry for him, keeping silent too on her side of the story.

She didn't use the gestures anymore, knowing that Vizena was paying attention to her. She thought about a possible explanation during her work, that ‘no’ was a gesture only Ceila and her understood, but she didn’t want to bring it up with the goddess without being asked first.

She was slowly starting to become comfortable again, when Vizena talked to her.

“I’ll have some guests at the temple, tomorrow morning,” she said, startling Saia while she was carrying the boat back to the fishing house in the dark of the evening. “I want to offer them some fish-based delicacies that will be prepared by my personal cook. Can you bring me the fish tonight?”

She listed what she needed without waiting for an answer. Saia heard her brother call for her and realized she'd stopped walking, forcing both of them to stand with a boat over their heads.

“And come alone. I don't want your brother here after his insolence.”

Saia knew she'd been a lot more disrespectful than him, but she refrained from expressing it out loud. She prepared the fish and filled a sack, giving a quick explanation to her dad. She left, carrying the wares with two arms, hoping that Vizena wasn't planning to have a conversation about what had happened.

The temple's doors were slightly ajar. Saia stood there, expecting the goddess to open them. When nothing happened, she gritted her teeth and put the sack of fish down, pushed one of the doors completely open and entered with her delivery.

The inside was lit with candles as usual. They were placed mostly behind the statue, a woman of turquoise veined with gray and gold. The center of the temple was dark, an empty space that only the dancers could tread. The assembly was usually aligned along the circular wall and scolded if parts of it dared to stray too far.

Saia stayed near the doors, even if running away from the goddess was as useless as covering her own body in sheets at night to discourage a monster from killing her.

“Here's the fish, goddess.”

The statue smiled. The wavy hair sculpted on her shoulders seemed to dance like tendrils at the light of the candles.

“Leave it there.”

She pointed at one of the benches against the wall. Saia left the bag right next to it. She started her retreat towards the door, but the goddess's voice stopped her.

“It's been a while since the last time you prayed. After what you called me, it would be only polite to indulge me a bit, don't you think?”

Saia pried her eyes away from the door. If praying was the only punishment Vizena would inflict her before forgetting what happened, she could only welcome it.

“No, not that bench, it was polished this morning. That one.”

She pointed to the left side of the room, opposite to where Saia stood and closer to the mountain.

She obeyed, holding in a bitter smile. Of course Vizena couldn't help being as petty as she could.

She sat, hands folded in her lap, back against the wall. She stared back at the goddess and her half-smile.

“I ask forgiveness for my words,” she began, “And for you to protect my family and the village. I'll say the Promise to the Gods in your honor.”

She began the prayer, moving her gaze between the statue and the windows. It was very dark outside, despite the constantly lit stick torches all around the perimeter of the temple.

She finished the prayer, bowed her head and stood, or tried to. Her muscles strained against an invisible barrier, unable to lift her off the bench.

“What are you…”

“You can come out, Vara.”

A human-sized figure stepped forward from behind the statue. Saia strained to see who it was, but she could only see a dark silhouette lit from behind by the candles. The name sounded extremely familiar: Ceila’s mother was called like that, but she couldn’t believe she was pious to the point of spending the night in the temple.

“You can leave now,” the goddess said. “Do you remember my instructions?”

Vara stepped in front of the statue. Saia couldn't see her well because her whole body was covered by clothes: long sleeves, a colorful shawl around the head, leather boots.

“Of course, goddess.”

The voice was Ceila’s mother’s. Saia tried to stand again, but the invisible barriers were still there. The woman stepped forward again, the light dancing on the patterns of the cloth.

“Those are my clothes,” Saia said, loud enough to reverberate in the room.

“No, they're not,” Vizena said. “But I've purchased them from the same merchants.”

She lowered her eyes onto Vara.

“Care to repeat them, dear? I made you stay hidden for quite a long time, I wouldn’t want for you to have forgotten something.”

“Yes, goddess. I'll go to the Turviavin House and stay there a bit, then change back into my own clothes before leaving.”

“Excellent.” The statue’s head turned to look at Saia. “See, Vara didn't like how you tried to ruin her daughter's reputation, so she came to me for help. Now we're going to have a conversation about that.”

Vara nodded and turned to leave. Saia moved her gaze from her to Vizena.

“What's all this for? Nobody would ever think she's me.”

The goddess smiled.

“Oh, she's pretty convincing from afar. But you don't need to think about it, now. Goodnight Vara, and please close the doors.”

The woman bowed before leaving. The doors closed with a low rumble behind her, leaving Saia alone with the goddess.

“Now,” she started, “You already told me what this gesture means.”

She pressed her index down in the way that meant 'no'.

“It's something me and Ceila invented,” Saia interrupted her.

“Oh, really? You weren't that good at hiding it, then. The whole village is using it. Sure, they manage to make it look like they’re just popping their fingers, but when done in combination with other little gestures it becomes a bit suspicious.”

Saia shrugged, determined not to give her any more clues.

“Tell me more about these gestures. What does this mean?”

She pretended to tuck her hair behind her left ear.

“Or if you prefer, you can tell me how to say ‘goddess’?”

“I don’t know,” Saia said, looking at the ground. How ironic that the goddess had used the gesture for 'fool' as an example.

“Oh, you'll know soon enough. The next ceremony is eight days from now, and I have no reason to open the temple before it starts. Do you think you can resist until then with a pile of rotting fish?”

The idea alone made Saia gag. She tried to stand again, straining against the wall of air that enveloped her body.

“Let me know when you finally decide to be useful,” the goddess said, then the statue became still again.

The head was the only part of her body Saia could move. She leaned it back against the wall. She didn't see a way out. The only thing she could do was try to sleep, and maybe that nightmare would be gone by morning.

She opened her eyes, aware that it was much, much later by the rigidity of her muscles even before being aware of the dim light entering from the outside. Her stomach growled painfully.

“Hi, Saia,” the goddess said. “Are you ready to tell me everything yet?”

Saia tried to answer, but her mouth was dry.

“Can I at least have some water?” she asked.

“Not unless you ask for it with the right gesture.”

Saia relaxed against the wall. The gestures were too important. It was the last piece of freedom the village had left before being completely subjugated by Vizena. She knew her duty was to die protecting them.

The light outside became brighter as more time passed, until it was fully morning. She heard voices outside. She couldn't distinguish the words, but by the tone she knew they were looking for her. Someone banged multiple times against the doors.

“Let her out, goddess,” her mom's voice shouted. “Or let us in. Whatever it's happening, whatever you think she did, we can solve it if we discuss it together.”

“Do you want to see them again, Saia?” the goddess asked.

“I’m here,” she shouted, but no sound came out of her mouth.

A head peered through the window on the right, the opposite side from where Saia was sitting.

“It's your brother Heilam,” the goddess commented. “Let him know that you're fine. Wave. Smile.”

Saia did none of that. She stared at the silhouette of her brother's head and hoped he would guess what the situation was.

“Wave,” the goddess said, and Saia felt the wind move her arm and hand as if to greet someone.

“Smile,” she said then, and the corners of Saia's mouth were painfully pushed up until her teeth were showing.

Saia felt tears pooling on her lower eyelids, but they didn’t fall until the head had disappeared from the window.

“She's perfectly fine, as you can see,” Vizena’s voice boomed, covering the whole area. “We were just clarifying some things about her behavior at the market. Please go home and don't interrupt again.”

Saia strained to listen, but nobody was calling her name anymore.

“I don't know what you're trying to obtain with your silence,” Vizena said. “If it won’t be you, I'll ask your siblings, your parents, your friends, then every single person in this village until someone talks. Who do you think will be the first to crack?”

Not me, Saia thought, and willed herself to believe it. It almost worked, for the next two hours.

Then, the fish began to smell.

She glanced at the bag, abandoned two benches away from her. She could see why Vizena had told her to leave it there: the light and heat of the sun pooled over and around it from two of the four windows of the temple. She closed her eyes, breathing through her mouth. It only made it feel drier.

By noon, she was sure she wasn't going to resist long. Her muscles were cramped, her stomach empty, the air painful to breathe.

“I’ll teach you,” she whispered, then coughed.

“Just in time,” Vizena said, cheerfully. “I was following some conversations and this gesture,” she brushed her left shoulder with the tips of the fingers, “Keeps popping up. What does it mean?”

Saia coughed again.

“It means ‘goddess’. Can I have some water?”

Vizena obliged, making a full glass float through the barely opened doors. At the same time, the bag of fish was pushed out by invisible forces.

“It's just outside the entrance,” Vizena warned her while she drank. “Ready to come in at any moment. Now, what's the word for ‘temple’?”

She kept asking questions, either by saying the word or imitating the gesture. Saia answered truthfully to the first ones, then started coming up with random meanings. The goddess seemed to catch onto what she was doing, because after a while she started to ask the same words again.

“This is not what you said last time, dear,” she said. “Do you need the fish for support?”

Saia had to become more careful after that, and having to remember her lies meant that she couldn't tell as many of them. More and more knowledge surrendered, more and more freedom lost, and it was her fault.

“I feel I can infer what people are saying, now,” Vizena said in the end. Her voice had quickly turned from cheerful to cold as the hours passed. “There's a lot of badness to be eradicated from this place. You can go.”

Saia didn't realize what the goddess had said until the doors creaked open. She tried to stand, carefully, without much hope. Her legs flared and popped all the way up.

She staggered outside, in the low afternoon sun. She was surprised to see the village still standing. It felt wrong, as if it should have burned and crumbled a bit more with every gesture the goddess had stolen. Less surprising were the looks people sent her way, down at the village's square.

She scuttled on, head lowered. Vizena had been surprisingly subtle in the way she'd trapped her, but she was never subtle nor patient when interacting with her people: as soon as she saw or heard something she didn't approve of, she made it known, often dragging her intervention for whole days of nagging and asking for uncompensated tasks as a sign of repentance. Surely a lot of people had already been victims of that treatment in the time she'd spent at the temple. Since she was the only one missing and her family had looked for her, they knew there was only one possible culprit.

People got out of her way as soon as they spotted her and stopped talking when she walked past them. She risked a sporadic glance around every once in a while. She could see some conversations happening far away from her, between people who hadn't seen her yet. No sign of a gesture. Once, she saw a woman move a hand casually, clearly not to make a gesture but to fix her dress, and flinch halfway through, her expression suddenly tense.

She went home, because that was the only place she could go, but knew she couldn't handle the disappointment of her family. She slowed down as soon as she spotted her house at the end of the street. She didn't stop only because she knew they were already looking at her through the windows and she didn’t want them to think her not strong enough to face the consequences of her actions.

She approached the wooden fence that ran around the house and the small garden that surrounded it. The curtains of the two windows at the front were swaying a bit.

She fumbled with the keys before she could open the door. She kept her gaze on the floor until the door was closed behind her, even if she sensed all of the eyes that were looking at her.

When she turned, she barely had the time to register all of her family sitting in chairs around the kitchen area when Lassem hugged her. She was startled, not expecting him to be that close, but she hugged him immediately after that, tighter than she'd ever done. She still wasn't ready to look past his shoulders at the rest of the family.

Lassem let her go, revealing their mother immediately behind him. She gently put a hand on Saia's shoulder. She wondered whether to hug her, but she realized from her stance that it wasn't quite the time for that, even if her expression was gentle.

“I’m glad beyond everything to have you back,” she said. “And I'm proud of you for standing up against Vizena.”

If the goddess had commented that last sentence, Lada didn't show it.

“But this is the worst possible outcome for the village. I don't know how we'll ever recover from this.”

Her words hit deep, even if they were more hopeful than what the truth suggested: that they wouldn't have recovered, ever.

“What an understatement,” Heilam said somewhere behind Lada. “Do you have clouds in your head, Saia?”

Her mom turned sharply, allowing Saia to see her brother. He was the only one standing, arm leaning on one of the wooden counters.

“She caught me speaking with my friends and we mentioned her a couple of times. We're forbidden to see each other again until we have shown enough repentance, whatever that means.”

He flinched, the hand on the counter punching the wooden surface. He stormed off, out of the kitchen area and into the living room, then through the door that brought to the rooms. It slammed shut behind him.

Everyone kept silent for a while, Lada still with her hand on Saia's shoulder, Lassem standing nearby.

“What do we do, now?” he asked.

“I suggest you come fishing with us tonight, Saia,” her dad said, leaning back on his chair. “We'll calm our nerves, then we'll think about how to face what expects us.”

Saia remembered the stink. She didn't like the idea at all.

Her sister Misia must have thought the same, because she saw her straightening her back on her spot next to the window, as if to give herself the courage to speak her mind.

“Sorry dad, but I don't think Saia should fish with you anymore, or people will stop buying from us.” She glanced at Saia, then lowered her eyes. “Sorry,” she repeated.

“No, you're right,” Saia said. “You should all pretend to be angry at me, so that everyone will be sure that you didn't have anything to do with all of this.”

Lada tightened her grip a bit to catch her attention.

“If they have any brain at all, they’ll know it was all Vizena’s fault. It had to happen sooner or later, Saia. The only reason the secret was kept for so long was that it allowed people to discuss other secrets they deemed more interesting.”

Saia shook her head, and Lada hugged her. That broke the tension she was holding in, freeing the tears. Lassem joined the hug.

“I’ll cook something,” Silem said, and Misia quickly rose to help him out.

Saia ate and slept and cried some more, never left alone for more than a second. Still, she felt the fracture between her and the rest of the village getting wider and unbearable.

One week later, at dawn, she climbed the stairs of Vizena’s temple. The goddess waited for her to knock before opening the doors. Saia walked forward until she was in the dark center of the room, gripping with both hands the strap of the heavy bag that hung from her shoulder. The statue lowered her head to look at her.

“What do you want, child?”

Saia gritted her teeth and put one knee on the stone pavement.

“You told me that you appreciated my help. That's why I'm here to make my request even if I knew that you usually wouldn't take kindly to it.”

“Speak.”

“I beg you, allow me to leave Suimer.”

She looked at the pedestal, not feeling strong enough to raise her eyes toward Vizena’s face and risk meeting her horrible smile.

“Why this request?”

“People hate me. They avoid me when I leave the house, so I’m staying in my room as much as I can. But I see the looks they give our house and I know that they're doing this to my family too, even if they would never admit it to me. I don't want them to suffer.”

She didn't want to suffer either, but she thought it irrelevant after all she'd done. And yet, she was aware at every word she spoke that going away was the easy solution, a way to avoid punishment. She almost wanted Vizena to tell her ‘no’.

“It seems reasonable. I don't like the air of negativity around you either, it's poisoning the atmosphere of the village.”

Saia sighed, lowering her head further.

“But I have some conditions.”

This time, Saia looked straight into the goddess's eyes.

“You'll leave right now, without telling anything to your family.”

Saia nodded sharply. She had prepared for the eventuality of having to leave right away. She had spent as much time as possible with them in the last few days.

“And you won't ever come back, in any shape or form. Don't write letters either. If I see you here again, there will be consequences.”

Saia nodded again. She could only bear the thought of never entering the village again by focusing on how much she hated Vizena. If there was a way to squash her, to beat and humiliate her until she couldn't hurt anyone, she would have found it.

That moment of strength dissolved when Vizena quickly dismissed her with a movement of the hand painfully similar to the gesture for ‘cobweb’.

“Go, now. Before too many people see you.”

Saia stood and left quickly. She ran down the streets, toward the line or white stones, already savoring the sensation of not having the shadow of Vizena’s presence constantly pressing down onto her mind.

But first, Ceila’s house. She woke her up with a pebble bouncing off the window. It opened slightly, then closed again. Some instants later, the door opened and Ceila ran out to hug her.

“Are you okay?” she asked, so loud that Saia had to shush her before answering.

“I’m leaving. I can't bear this place anymore. Vizena just gave me her permission.”

“Which can be retracted at any moment,” her voice said, “If you don't hurry.”

Ceila looked at her, confused, clearly still piecing together what ‘leaving’ actually meant.

“Please take care of my brother,” Saia continued. “I didn't betray the whole village for you to give up on each other.”

Ceila’s eyes widened with understanding. She hugged Saia again.

“Please be safe. I'll pray to see you again in better circumstances.”

Saia snorted.

“Praying to whom?” she said, speaking over her friend's shoulder. “Vizena?”

“I don't know,” Ceila said, stepping back. “The sea? The mountain? The people you'll meet?”

Saia liked the idea.

“And I'll pray to the sea that you'll be successful.”

Ceila nodded.

“I will. Have... Have a safe journey.”

She smiled with her lips, clearly trying to hold in the tears. Saia did her best to smile back, then started walking along the street, still feeling her gaze on her back. Then the road turned and she was alone, the line of white stones already visible in the distance.