Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
The ceiling above my bed could have had an invisible hole burnt into it from my stare.
There were nights I tried to pray and failed.
Some nights where I imagined other worlds than this one.
Images of me as a knight, living freely, rescuing a princess and living happily ever after, playing out in shadows over musty tile.
Sometimes, I’d replay my prayer sessions with Reverend Mother.
In my most embarrassing moments, I’d pretend they were something real.
That we were born into a life where we just met somewhere, free from vows, free from the paths we’d chosen, and we’d gone home together and done those things without a single thought of god or priests or holy things.
Those wanderings of my mind weren’t because I felt something for Reverend Mother, rather because I didn’t.
Because I wished I learned them with someone who loved me… not someone who was managing me.
However, that night, and each night she wasn’t in my room, the thoughts keeping me awake were of Lilith.
Sister Lilith, rather. Sister Lilith who wanted nothing more to do with me.
Just like with Sister Grace before she’d pushed me into the prayer candles because I tried to kiss her…
I wondered if I’d misjudged Lilith just as profoundly.
No one would want me here. Who would want a nun, vowed to god, with no other place to go for all her days?
My heart was spoken for by christ, wasn’t it?
At least technically, that was so. I’d chosen it to be.
Though, I’d never known I’d long for more.
All I could think of when I became a nun was what I didn’t want.
I didn’t want the stares of men.
I didn’t want to be a wife.
I didn’t want my days to be filled with serving a husband, preparing his food, doing his laundry, and raising his children.
What would him and I speak of? The pot roast on the stove?
His hard days at work? Those weren’t the conversations I longed for.
When I went to Mass, priests spoke of heaven and hell, of destiny and destruction.
They told stories of castles that reached the stars and women who looked backwards and were turned to stone.
The bible gave me riddles to solve, characters to dissect, and a few verses so lovely they sang through my thoughts long after closing the book. As a little girl, I saw nuns in my community helping people, healing the sick, tending to the needs of everyone equally.
Then I learned there was a way I could do that, too. You mean I could avoid men, marriage, and spend my time with grander ideas, all while serving those who truly needed it?
Not a man, not a husband, but a god.
Not a house, not children, but heaven and hell.
No talks of dinner and menial tasks, but discussions on free will or predestination?
The choice was simple. The vows were too good to be true. Becoming a nun, a holy woman, felt like freedom. It was soon after, however, I learned that any measure of freedom where you exist inferior to someone else, always comes with chains.
Instead of a husband telling me what to do, I had priests. I’d traded the skeptical gaze of matrimony for the watchful eye of a reverend mother. Instead of friends, I had sisters, who may or may not have even liked me as a person, or maybe just accepted me because god told them to.
Rather than pursuing a life of thought of my own self, my desires, the kind of love that I wanted, my vows had swallowed me whole in black and white garb and black and white thinking.
I was a nun. The same as my sisters. Black and white, hollow halls, dripping wax, whispered prayers, and thoughts thought for me.
These thoughts were blasphemy. Lilith was right.
My want for her was lust of the greatest measure.
If god did not want this for me, then why didn’t he come and stop me?
Why did he change nothing? Did god even notice a little nun in the moors of nowhere?
If god did notice or care for me, if he even spoke back when I prayed, I wouldn’t ask after myself.
I’d ask him to go tend to Iris Maison and her bruises.
If god replied, I’d usher him towards the hurting, the needy, the broken.
Where was he for them? Because all I saw were women and good human folks helping those people. These were my thoughts of god.
These thoughts were blasphemy.
Like Lilith noticed so clearly—I was a bad nun.
Like Father Benedict had suspected—my heart and my brain didn’t connect. The spirit of god and the knowledge of him did not intersect in the way it seemed it should in order to be a good nun. A good nun like Lilith.
Plagued sufficiently, I sat up in bed in the midnight hours, the moon a spotlight on my inability to settle my restlessness. Sliding my feet into my slippers, I shrugged on my dressing robe and grabbed my lantern. A walk through the church would be better than tossing in an ill attempt to sleep.
Lost Souls was large and its layout nonsensical.
I’d not explored much of it since I’d came.
My days were spent in duty and prayer. On Saturdays, our free day, I spent most of it in the woods seeking moths, greenery, or the lake.
This night, I meandered down halls I didn’t know, stopping to gaze at paintings of saints I’d never heard of before continuing my stroll.
In a hall I’d never traveled, I stopped by a splintered door ajar I’d never seen.
Poking my head inside the darkness beyond, my orange lantern flame revealed a spiral set of stairs, winding up several stories.
This must have been the stairway to the steeple.
I’d always wanted to see the view of Howl Moor from the top of the church.
The door groaned as I crept inside and began my ascent up the cold steps.
Winding round and round, with only slivers of moonlight from windows high above my head and the orange glow of my little lantern, I reached another half-open door.
Something bumped on the other side of it.
I froze in my steps.
Alone, high above the sleeping church, no one would hear me if I screamed.
Heck, no one would find me for days if I didn’t go back to bed.
The church was big, the town a wasteland of moors.
Rocks, mountains, lakes, and random cliffs…
we’d still been looking for Archie Maison to no avail.
Not even a hint of his whereabouts had appeared.
If I were to go missing, even within the walls of Altar Church, there’d be no quick route to discovering me. That was a humbling thought as I edged toward the open door. Maybe I’d imagined the noise, I thought, until—
Something louder crashed on the other side of the wall.
A hiss.
A swoosh of air.
My heart stuttered in my chest as I peeked inside, afraid of what I might find, but more frightened still of leaving it here and returning knowing that noises lurked right above me with a source I was too cowardly to identify. Like I’d always said, everything had a logical explanation… right?
Working up my nerve, I swung open the door and stepped inside.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, with only the hushed light from the outline of the steeple and the cracks in the stone filtering through like slashes on the uneven, dusty wood floor. I held up my lantern. “Hello?”
A deep voice answered, shocking my senses. “Hello.”
I almost dropped the light as I gasped and jumped backwards… until a familiar giggle lulled me out of my panic. “I told you not to do that,” another familiar voice scolded.
“Oh, let me have some fun,” Delilyx answered Lilith.
I wobbled forward, my heart still racing, to find the two women in their nightgowns and braids, kneeling under the steeple. “What are you two doing? If Reverend Mother or Father Benedict found—”
“Shhh,” Delilyx scolded. “He’s right there, and if you scare him away, I will simply die. I will, Jezebella, I’ll fall over right here.”
I rolled my eyes, “Dramatic as always, Delilyx.” Though my gaze fell to Lilith, who was staring at me. She quickly looked away and focused her attention back on whatever her and my sister nun were staring at.
Lilith pointed. “I see him. He’s got it, all right.”
“Who has what?”
Delilyx waved me forward. “Come see.”
“It’s cold,” I complained, rubbing my arms. “How long have you been up here? Does Pandorian know?”
“She doesn’t believe me,” Delilyx answered, her gaze still trained on whatever this mystery object in the steeple was. “But she will believe me now. You all will.”
“Fine,” I said, scooting in to kneel next to them, my shoulder pressing up against Lilith’s.
She stiffened a bit, but didn’t shove me off.
The dumb butterflies in my stomach fluttered to life at just the tiniest bit of contact with her.
I guessed the butterflies hadn’t gotten the memo that Sister Lilith had told me to get lost.
“What is it I’m supposed to be looking at?” I asked, squinting into the dark.
Delilyx pointed. “He’s right there.”
“I don’t see anything.”
“Here,” Sister Lilith said, taking my chin between her thumb and forefinger and turning my face in the right direction. Her blonde hair was in a messy braid, flowing over her shoulder and tied by a green ribbon… and she was touching my face.
“You’re still out of breath from the stairs,” Delilyx accused. “Aren’t you? Well, if you don’t control your loud breathing, and you scare him away, I will—”
“Die, I got it.” I swallowed, embarrassed that it wasn’t the stairs that had my heart beating rapidly. No, it was just her. It was just being close to Lilith. The angel who didn’t want me.