Chapter 5 The Voice #2
It was the same with Trinity Parish Church, with All Pilgrims Christian Church and Christ Our Hope Catholic Church.
I fared no better at Epiphany Parish, Immaculate Conception Church, or the Temple De Hirsch Sinai.
Even the labyrinth at Saint Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral was appallingly empty.
I waited in the center for a cluster of shadowy figures in black hoods to encircle me.
They did not.
So now I sit here in St. James Cathedral, the most spectacular Seattle has to offer as cathedrals go and the last stop on my list. I can scarcely recall the masses I would attend with my dad in San Francisco, the rows of hard pews and the dramatic crucifix hanging over the altar.
It did little to inspire my soul to divine heights.
I asked my mom once why she didn’t come with us, and her answer was deceptively simple, “God doesn’t like competition.
” I didn’t understand then—that would come with the burgeoning of my gifts and the textbooks and coursework in history that would arrive in the mail.
I was essentially responsible for my own education after the age of eight, the last point at which Nina felt competent to help me.
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. It was as clear a message as any, coupled with the dissuasive tales of our family lineage passed down the generations. And my grandfather never would have thought of stepping foot in a church. Like God, he didn’t appreciate competition.
Maybe I should visit the confessional. Pour my soul out to someone forced to listen and keep quiet.
What would I tell them? About the fire, of course.
My greatest sin. But also about the other, less obvious offenses.
My magical rebellions, my stolen goods. Dara …
How I could have protected her if I’d listened, if I’d told someone.
The week before he raped her my grandfather caught me sneaking out of one of the back bedrooms, a pilfered jewelry box in my hand.
He had pressed me up against the wall, his breath hot and sour, and whispered what he wanted to do to me, would do to me soon enough.
“Your mother thinks she can hide you from me in this house,” he said as I turned my face from his.
“But I see everything.” His fingers wound through my yellow hair, clenching.
“She’s half the woman your grandmother was, and you’ll be less than that, but I’m owed.
And until I’m with Aurelia again, I’ll take my debt out of every one of you. ”
He would have likely done it right there had Nina not rounded the corner, dropping the carefully folded stack of bedsheets she was carrying.
Something in her gaze cowed him, and he stepped away from me, ripping the box from my hand.
As he passed Nina, he handed it to her. “Watch her,” he said with disdain. “She steals.”
I can only imagine what a priest would make of our family, of the string of deaths that stain our line.
Of me letting Dara into our house knowing a violent predator was stalking it, and fleeing into the night weeks later, leaving a trail of flames behind.
I wonder if there is absolution for me. I doubt it.
I glance up at the sculpted ceilings and consider what it costs to run this place for a month, and sigh. I’ve combed the cathedral back to front. No better than when I started. It’s the third day, I only have a couple of hours until sundown, and I’m tired.
There have been no more phone calls from the mystifying woman under the bridge, no more clues. I’m on my own, and in mere hours, this will all be over. And unless I find a way to pass this test, I won’t figure out who she is or what she intends to do with what she knows.
I slip the note card out and read it for the hundredth time. When dusk is high and sun is low, the icon shines, and stakes will grow.
The icon shines … The icon shines.
My eyes scan the enormity of the domed space.
A skylight rains day glow over the black-granite dais, illuminating the altar at its center, fair as crushed pearls.
But no envelope lies atop it with my name written in metallic ink.
And once the sun sets, that altar will be cast in shadow, not shining as it is now.
The magnificent stained glass windows, the statuary, even the baptismal font—all are dependent on the sun to show off their finery.
By sunset, they’ll have lost their sparkle. There must be something I’m missing.
I watch a black rat emerge from behind the dais like a disembodied shadow. It picks its way across the floor to the wall where it cowers against a baseboard. A tiny white marking on its back looks like a crescent moon.
“What are you doing here?” I whisper.
Rounded ears twitch in my direction, glassy little eyes gleaming.
“You better hurry along,” I tell it. “They aren’t fans of Mother Nature in God’s house. Far too base and disorderly.”
It rises up on hind feet as if sniffing at my words with a nose full of quivering whiskers, before scurrying toward the entrance doors and slipping impossibly between them.
I watch it disappear, twisting in my seat, feeling more wonder at the antics of a rat than the important buildings I’ve visited today. Turning back, I deflate, alone once more. When I close my eyes, I can feel the sun drifting in the sky, my time running out.
I’m going to fail.
I could stay here until nightfall. But if I’m wrong and this isn’t where I’m supposed to be when that sun sinks below the horizon, I’ll have blown my chance with the Fathom.
And who knows where that will leave me? The information she hinted at knowing—the dark-haired woman under the bridge—in the wrong hands, that information could bury me.
Which I deserve. But call me a coward: I can’t bear to face my crimes publicly.
It’s enough carrying them around inside like cherry pits baked into a summer pie.
And being here makes my skin crawl. Because of who I am, what I can do, I’ll never know comfort before a pulpit, never feel peace within the walls of a chapel or joy from the hard press of a pew.
I haven’t stepped inside a church since I left San Francisco.
This grandeur is nothing like the Ionic columns or shining porticoes of Solidago, where even the peacocks were white, but it repulses me just the same.
The false front of it. And that revulsion feels strangely like home, as if the old me is waking up inside, stretching to her full length, opening her eyes.
I look down at the note card in my hand. I need to focus, to stop revisiting the past even as it seems to visit me. I squeeze my eyes shut. What am I getting wrong?
The word rings through me like a gong, reverberating across my cells in a wave of electricity, striking a single, discordant note—wrong.
My breath hitches. It sounds again, the same tactile noise, the same auditory touch.
Wrong.
My eyes spring open, the altar flashing golden before them, the blur of tears creating prisms of light all around me. It might just be a fucking miracle.
Wrong!
I jump from my seat, scramble back several steps, feel the meaning drip down my bones and seep into the soles of my feet. The sound is untried and hoarse, grating across my consciousness, but unmistakable.
Wrong, wrong, wrong!
One half of me is giddy with rapturous energy as I back swiftly out of the cathedral, the other half grave with dark concern.
Against all odds …
After seventeen long, silent years …
The voice is back.
I follow the rat’s path toward the doors. I’m in the wrong place.
Wherever the Fathom expects me at sunset, this cathedral isn’t it, and I have less than two hours left to figure it out.