Zodiac City

My name is a foreign stranger to my ears, a song from a far away memory whose melody has long been forgotten. Each syllable carves like a knife to my chest, pressing deeper until crimson blood beads at the place scarred flesh meets the harsh coolness of the blade. 

“Rowan Wilder.”

Chancellor Cage repeats himself into the microphone and this time my feet step forward like a soldier to an order, body moving before my mind can beg to stop it. Around me, the Ecliptic Hall billows with the pellucid stained glasses of colour glinting in honeyed sunlight, the meeting place in which the constellations transverse against our celestial sphere. The dais, curtained with silver embroidery mimicking the stars, looms ahead forebodingly as my feet find the platform.

Our city is known as Zodiac, built amongst the celestial equator and fabricating a society along the heavenly bodies that watch over, guide, and protect us. Here, our home is orchestrated like the constellations we are governed by, with each element having their own sector to regulate, and an elected member to form part of the council.

Air signs are our communicators: scientists, visionaries, investors, journalists, inventors, peacemakers. Logical, intellectual, innovative and adaptive, they excel in the unconventional, but they’re indecisiveness, scattered and detached personalities often lead to tension with the other elements. Then there's Water signs; our healers, our doctors and social workers. They’re known for their emotional sensitivity, empathy and intuition–which is why the other elements call them crybabies. Earth are the organisers, creators, engineers, accountants, writers, gardeners, and contribute to the technological advancement of our city. They are the doers, the thinkers, the analysers. Grounded, nurturing, pragmatic, patient, structured and persistent, their perfectionism builds a temperamental nature often imbued with hypervigilance, rumination and self-imposed stress. Finally, Fire are our leaders. They dominate politics, law enforcement, athletics and marketing, known for their blunt boldness, competitiveness and courage, although their assertiveness often comes off as confrontational and aggressive. 

I have never known my birthday, but today I will find out and be sorted into the element I belong to. The annual Celestial Eclipse Ceremony is the time every teenager in their sixteenth year must leave their family and live amongst their zodiac. My parents are both Earth-born elements and so my brothers and I have been raised with them in Earth until we come of age and merge with our own element. 

The vast Ecliptic Hall is a mosaic of gold windows that allow the celestial eclipse to shine through. They say its touch promises rebirth, and yet I find its heavenly focus an accusing light beam narrowed on my every movement, as though gazing into the Ouroboros and being confronted with the boundlessness of empty space. Each element is seated in their own sectors whilst I stand amongst the array of desolate faces from other initiatives about to learn of their zodiac and, ultimately, their place in society. Three zodiac signs exist within each element; Earth constitutes Virgo, Taurus–my mother–and Capricorn–my father. They dress in the green and brown of the earth, whilst the flaming warmth of red and orange Fire sits on the section to their right, and includes Leo, Ares and Saggitarius. Water signs of Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces are noticeable in their blue and white, with Geminis, Libras and Aquarius of Air wearing purple and yellow.

Staring ahead, transfixed in the silence of the thronged hall, I approach the large bowl placed in the centre of the dais, known as the Stellar Bowl, with its gold and silver detailings of the elements blazing inside a triangle. I imagine the shape’s borders as an armour cage and the elements like burning paper crumpling inside its melting enclosure; hot wax that drips and decays, dissipating with amniotic silence. Inside the bowl, crystals are symbolic of each element; tiger’s eye to represent the courage and leadership of Fire signs, moonstone to embrace the harmony, balance and empowerment of Air, aquamarine for the wisdom of Water, and finally moss agate as an emblem of new beginnings brought by Earth.

The harsh texture of each crystal bites against the untarnished softness of my palm as I reach my hand in and envisage what the rest of my life will constitute. To stay in Earth with my parents would subject me to the familiarity of the home I have grown up in, but limit me to a monotony of organisation and routine. If I was born an Air sign, I could thrive in a life of science and journalism, whereas Water would bring the fluidity of healing, congested with helping others and bettering our world. I’d tried not to imagine my future after today, knowing that my aspirations would soon be confined to my element. To be Fire was to be bold, dangerous, confronting… I was none of those things, unable to imagine myself in a position of leadership, accosted by the unwavering pressure of knowing people’s lives depended on the actions I took. 

My mother’s face swims to me from my memory of this morning - the last time we were all together. My parents and two younger brothers sat around me at the dining table like a menagerie of fumbled letters, wrestling solemnly with the knowledge that after today, I may never share their company again. No rules exist to suggest the prohibition from visiting one’s element after the initiation ceremony, but it remains widely disapproved; to join your element is to walk away from the past and embrace the individual nature of one’s horoscope.

“Blessed goddess,” my mother murmured softly, breathy words slipping gently off her tongue in the same way I imagine a swan’s milky feathers to brush the surface of deep water, murky in its tranquillity, “Demeter of the great heart and furrowed field, bearer of sheaves and sorrow, we worship and pray to you. We thank you each day for all you have given us; for the food you allow us to harvest, dear to you is the deep earth, the seed within the soil, and the heavy-headed grain. Goddess of harvests, you sustain our bodies and ennoble our spirits with your gracious presence. I beseech you for a graceful day today, where our beloved daughter will attend her Celestial Eclipse and become one with her element.”

“Gracious Demeter, we pray for your favour,” each of us finished in unison, entreats rippling like cursive letters across the dim room, fresh with the musky scent of cinnamon and melting wax.

I pray to her now, protectress of the element of Earth, gingerly reaching for the bowl in front of me. Within moments the eclipse outside clears and the crystals coruscate in the sun, once darkened but now free from the shadow of the silver pearlescent moon as they ricochet glisteringly across the hall in an echo of molten light. Eyes watering at their radiance, my hand wanders up to shield myself from its brightness, desperately dreading the Chancellor’s next words and the flash of warm colour erupting from the Stellar Bowl.

 “Born Leo on August twenty. Rowan will today join Fire,” Cage announces firmly to the hall of elements that detonates in an intoxication of applause.

No. The words linger on my tongue like the rotting tinge of acid melting into the cracks of my lips, my sporadic footsteps whimpering through blaring acclamation. The crystals glare back at me as though mocking my own strewed thoughts.

Please no. Anything but Fire.

Everyone in Zodiac City knew what happened to initiatives that didn’t meet the traits of their element. I realised, then, that I would have to do everything to appear a seamless attachment of Leo and my new home in Fire. 

My breaths came in ruptures of hysterical apprehension, feverish with the knowledge that those who did not meet the expectations and standards of their zodiac threatened the society our ancestors had built and the natural order of the gods we worshipped. 

“Welcome to Fire!” their leader–now mine too–praised from where she stood at the side of the dais, voice meant as a clarion to inspire her new initiatives, now but a pyrrhic reminder of the chasm carved between who I was and who I was expected to be. I hadn’t noticed her approach, the unexpected reveal of my element like receiving news of a lethal diagnosis and knowing, overwhelmingly, your death sentence was being declared.

The Chancellor’s proclamation reels around me with the weight of my new fate settling like the locking of chains to limp wrists, suffocatingly claustrophobic in its iron determinants. I had pictured my ceremony ending in every possibility, but Fire–brave, passionate, confident–were all qualities I was utterly disconnected from. Mind spinning like autumn leaves upon a bluster of wind, scattering across the ground in a spillage of playing cards, I grasp for some semblance of a plan whilst the applause around me swells into a cacophony of dissonance at my aligned element. I sense the harsh undercurrent of expectation, demanding my conformity and mould into the fiery nature of my apparent element. 

There had to have been a mistake, a muddle of birthdays declaring mine as someone else's. I am but a phoney masqueraded by false promises of new beginnings. 

After today, my initiation process would begin, proving my compliance and appropriation to Fire. Scrutiny collides with expressions of pride from those seated in the Fire section, each gaze a silent inspection of my suitability and worth amongst them. I feel my inadequacy melting off my skin, pouring out for all to see and exposing the facade I would need to be careful to uphold. The knot of upturned roots in my stomach tightens and writhes, constricting around my airways until my throat squeezes, imprisoned lungs begging for air against the hollow of mangling dread. Whispered tales and hushed warnings resurface in my mind, reminding me of those who failed to meet the requirement of their zodiac and would ultimately atone for their disparity.

Smothering my palpitating thoughts, I step forward, bound by the decree of the Stellar Bowl and the immutable laws of Zodiac City. My jaw tightens, quivering with tension as my fingernails sculpt red crescent moons into my clammy palms, and I cross the threshold into a new life amongst the flames. Survival would mean camouflage, deceit and betrayal solely to uphold a concealed fear of the uncertainty of misalignment. I would be required to don the mask of a true Fire sign, a Leo in all their drive, self-assurance and charm, even if it meant sacrificing the truth of my identity.  

They say Water signs can read people’s emotions like recalling a rehearsed script from memory, and Air the ability to manipulate the reveal of one’s most private confessions. If any of what they tell us is true, I would have to hide from everyone, not merely my own element, in order to present myself as a harmonious reflection of my new life. 

Deviation in a society built upon the foundations of celestial order was not only deplored, but dangerous. Survival in this world would demand nothing less than my absolute compliance.