Distance Expressed in Time #2
I debate with myself if I should pray now or find some priestess. “Are we alone here?”
“The matron will be out here soon.”
I take the moment to breathe in the air. The trees here make the place pungent with cedar. My father’s first job always used special red pencils made from their wood; he took more than his fair share just to give to me and Mercurio.
I felt smart with them. They didn’t improve my test scores. They didn’t make me quick to understand fractions. They didn’t even make me a decent amateur artist. But, they made him feel close when he started leaving to sea.
“Vincenza. It’s been so long.”
I open my eyes to a woman in thin, silvery white clothing and a heavy assortment of piercings, all holy in their resemblance of the Ring. Her voice is soft; her face is old.
“Matron Hortensa.” Mistress Vincenza expressionlessly opens her eyes. “This is my apprentice, Catarina de Alioni.”
“H-hello.” I wave.
The matron hazardously puts her hands up to her chest, face tense. “I’ve missed you from our sermons. Even your father’s been asking.”
Something awful spins in Mistress Vincenza’s voice, scratching out, “no talk of him.”
It never came to me that she would have parents. I assumed they were… dead. She encouraged me to be closer with mine—why isn’t she close with hers?
“I wouldn’t think to impose, dear. Are we here to talk about her?” The matron smiles at me.
“You can speak, Catarina,” Mistress Vincenza states.
“I asked to go here. I had questions to ask you. In private? If that’s okay?” I hedge.
“May I take her into the building to speak?”
Mistress Vincenza nods.
“Come on, dear.” The matron gracefully strides until our steps turn onto hard wood.
“The glade is so beautiful,” I say as the door closes. “I want to come here often.”
“You’re free to! No charge for entry. No conditions. The Great Ring wanted you to see its wonders; it’s why it decided for you to exist.”
“Thank you… It sometimes doesn’t feel like that’s true.”
“In what way, child?”
Child. Mistress Vincenza sees me as one, doesn’t she? That must be why the word burns something behind my eyes.
I shrug, pathetically. “The world is made by Ringborn, isn’t it?”
“They are the holiest of us.”
“Sometimes… Doesn’t—Are you a Ringborn?”
“Yes, but I’ve been celibate. The Ring never called me to anyone.”
I was hoping she’d say no. I was hoping for a consort to consort conversation, but this is still my best hope for my questions. “Doesn’t it ever feel like non-Ringborn aren’t open to the Ring’s wonders?”
“In what way do you feel that? The Great Ring doesn’t try to hurt its faithful.”
Was Oliva not faithful enough? Was Nascia?
No. That’s not it. Nascia led Mistress Vincenza in their faith, it was implied.
“I don’t know.” My eye twitches. “This is… I don’t know why I’m asking this. Why can’t everyone access the Ring? Doesn’t it ever feel so awful that so few will ever get to touch it?”
“I’ve never touched it, and I don’t feel awful.”
I stir my tongue, mumbling, “but you had the choice. Why not I?”
The matron pulls me close to a mural: people reaching for, but never touching, the Great Ring. “I want to reiterate that it is holy, and that it is infinite.”
I blink, staring at her. Why does she sound like she’s about to contradict that?
“But, the Ring is fragile. Our magic is privileged to exist because it tears at the Ring.” She traces her fingers along the painted arc of a falling comet, disappearing into the atmosphere as a holy relic.
“The Ring is generous. The Ring loves us. And we love the Ring. But while the Ring’s love is gifting, ours is abusive.
We steal from it—take its luster. The only way we can express our love is with a sacrifice, and the Ring sacrifices.
“The Great Ring spends every moment compromising. We are too immoral to be trusted with unfettered magic; we would destroy the only thing that makes us beautiful with our fetid desires. So, the Ring chooses a few curators, the Ringborn, who ensure only the most productive and sweetest get to access it.”
“It chooses them?”
“It chooses everything.”
Something feels so disconnected.
“But aren’t…” I scratch my shoulder and quietly stammer, “aren’t some Ringborn… rapists? How can the Ring choose w-wrong?”
Her tone turns dark. “It doesn’t choose wrong.”
Okay. It doesn’t choose wrong. It doesn’t choose wrong. I must remind myself that it makes the right choice.
“I—Okay, I have only one last question. Why aren’t all Ringborn equal? Why do some Ringborn have more capacity for consorts? It seems so unconnected to their morality.”
“All the first Ringborn were equal, but the Ring couldn’t blindly let its gift fill the blood of their children. Everyone has some Ringborn ancestors, even you. If its gift didn’t degenerate, then it would just be overexploited once again.”
“And there’s never any new Ringborn?”
“The Great Ring created as many as it knew it would ever need.”
My skin chills before feeling numb. My eyesight gathers into a haze.
For the smallest of moments, I believed I could access the Ring. It was some necromancy adjacent delusion, brought about from my own anxiety and the dead land we walked on. It felt like such a real offer though: blood for the Ring, and the Ring would love me. I could feel chosen.
“Catarina?” The matron’s voice drags me back to where I am. “Are you searching for reasons to doubt? Why do you ask questions that put the Ring into suspicion so harshly?”
“Doubt? I would never! I love the Ring.” I shudder. “Mistress Vincenza had a wife, right? Nascia?”
The matron frowns. “Yes. She was an amazing member of the community. She spoke at sermons here and kept Vincenza returning.”
“I just don’t get why the Ring chose for her to die when Mistress Vincenza made the exact same mistake.”
“...Maybe the Ring knew that Vincenza would correct her mistake. The Great Ring hates our mistakes, but it loves us too much to blindly punish us.” She places a hand on my shoulder.
“I want you, when you leave, to take a minute to sit down and look at the sky. You can turn your gaze, search the world around you. You’ll find that it’s beautiful.
You’ll see so many other people enjoying it.
It’s easy for us to attribute our sorrows to the Ring and selfishly claim the good as our own, but the Ring provided us everything you enjoy.
It must work with who we are, and we will suffer—for we are imperfect—but it works tirelessly for your happiness.
Think about how much she has improved your life, and try to come up with another way for you to have that happiness.
You won’t. Only the Great Ring could make such brilliant plans. ”
It feels so cruel to celebrate how happy a nice woman’s death is making everyone, but that feeling doesn’t make her wrong. She can’t be wrong. My faith in the Great Ring demands faith in her.
Inhale. Exhale. “Sometimes it feels like the Ring’s guiding me to a choice. Should I listen to it?”
“Always.”
That’s not even close to enough for me to understand.
“Catarina, whatever you do, whatever you pursue, it’s exactly what the Great Ring wanted from you. You don’t need to be afraid that you will betray it. It made you knowing the choices you would make, and it was happy with those choices. Don’t doubt yourself.”
That… I can work with.
“Thank you, Matron Hortensa. I’ll pray over everything you said.”
“You’re smiling.” And she smiles back. “Let’s go meet with your mistress.”
The air feels cooler; clouds cover the sky. It’s so much easier to breathe.
I shouldn’t doubt myself, so when I admire how human Mistress Vincenza feels as she tiredly leans against a tree, I don’t tell myself to stop. The Ring wouldn’t give me these feelings if not to have them.
Still, the Ring wouldn’t want me to jump into traffic and await death. Whatever I choose will be what it wanted me to choose, but there’s a reason to what I choose. Because I… chose… I’m reusing that word too much. I think my thought made vague sense, but I can’t make sense of it right now.
“I’m ready to leave, Mistress.”
“As you say.” Mistress Vincenza immediately makes for the exit.
The matron kindly says, “halt. Do you promise to come here again, Vincenza? The congregation has missed you.”
Mistress Vincenza exhales, “maybe.”
She takes me back to the car, getting in the driver’s seat this time after heating up the pilot fuel.
I vocally wonder, “do you… subscribe to Queen’s Orthodox?”
“Truthfully, Catarina, I never cared.” She shuts her eyes. “If any denomination answered questions better than the rest, there wouldn’t be denominations.”
The sounds of the city clear, wind whistling through evergreens in the false glade which tower above its silencing walls.
“Are there faiths other than the Great Ring?”
“No. Not any more.”
I lean closer, closer than I should. “Why not?”
“Because Ringborn are the ones who held power, and so long as the Ring was beautiful, that would never be questioned.” She throws the throttle up. “We’re not fully heated, so we’ll be traveling a bit slow.”
I slip further down the seat, arching my gaze to keep the Great Ring centered. A few stars poke through the clouds and dying daylight. “I don’t mind spending extra time here.”
“No radio?”
“As long as I don’t speak its language.”
She huffs the slightest laugh and starts tuning for a station. “Did you enjoy driving?”
“I-I think I might get a bike.”
“Those are easier to take onto streetcars and trains, aren’t they?”
Low music fills our small space, and I don’t even think to answer. Just close my eyes.