Free Exile (The Oneness Cycle) by Rachel Starr Thomson

rock wall itself to add to the pictures she was painting.
    Teresa reached out and touched one part of the new work, an unfinished sketch of the boy’s face. April had finished the eyes, and they shone in the light as things alive.
    “It’s fine work,” Teresa said. “It reminds me of my own, in some ways, but your attention to detail is better.” She wrinkled her nose. “And your medium rougher.”
    April chuckled. “That is not exactly my fault.”
    In Teresa’s presence, April realized, she was at peace in a way that seemed impossible given the circumstances. She had never met one of the cloud before, but the peace made sense; to own the perspective of heaven was to be perfectly at peace. Apparently the perspective was contagious.
    Teresa turned and looked at her, and the expression in her eyes was unexpectedly solemn. “It can help you. Not only as paint, though you are doing well to use it that way—and I think you should continue. But in other ways.”
    April nodded weakly. It had been several days and nights—though she really didn’t know what time it was—since she’d been taken. Or at least, that’s what she thought.
    Truthfully, she didn’t know how long she’d been unconscious or how long she was sleeping between waking up. For all she really knew it had been just a day, or a week.
    She’d had nothing to eat or drink, and she was beginning to feel the effects of dehydration. “Already thought of that,” she said. “I sucked a handful earlier. Awful.”
    Teresa’s smile was compassionate. “But important that you not give up. You know what they’re trying to do to you—why they put you here. You should fight back.”
    “But why?” April asked. Suddenly she had tears in her eyes. She was tired. “If this is my time, why not just let it come? I’m not afraid to cross over.”
    “No, though the crossing over is not easy,” Teresa said. “It was my time, when they did it to me. But I am not convinced it is yours.”
    April pushed herself up, sitting up against the wall and regarding her visitor more keenly than she had before. “They did this to you? Starved you to death?”
    “Six hundred years ago,” Teresa said. “But I still remember it.”
    “Why? What were you doing to them?”
    Teresa waved her hand at the mural. “Painting. And rescuing children. In my day, in the countryside many children were dying of plague or abandonment. I and others of the Oneness, sisters who came to my side, brought as many as we could into the abbey we shared. We mothered more than two hundred of them. And many became Oneness, and threats to the enemy. There was one we rescued—”
    Teresa’s eyes grew distant as though she could see the child’s face. She came back to the present and lightly brushed her fingers across the sketch of the boy. “A boy like this one. He would grow to be a mighty warrior against the darkness, and I was his trainer, his friend and strength. The paintings were teaching him things and giving him strength. So the enemy chose to take me out of the way.”
    “And you were never rescued,” April said.
    “No. It was my time.”
    “Starving can’t be easy.”
    “It is not. But when I had crossed over, I lived to see the designs of the enemy turned back upon themselves a thousandfold. They think to escape vengeance through their machinations, but they are fools and blinded by their own deceptions.”
    “Are you one of the great saints?” April asked.
    Teresa smiled as she thought over the question. “They call me that,” she said. “But on this side, greatness looks different.”
    “That’s the one thing I don’t understand,” April said. She found that words were hard to get out—her hunger and thirst were taking a greater toll on her than she realized. “I’m not anything they should be afraid to kill.”
    “We don’t know who we are,” Teresa said. “None of us know who we are until we cross over, and even then, much is mystery. I didn’t. You