Chapter Eleven
I wake before the light has fully broken, the air still blue and thin with morning. For a moment I do not remember where I am. Then the ache in my cheek returns, and the memory of yesterday settles over me, my body feeling heavier than sleep should allow.
I climb down from the loft without waking Elena. The air is cold near the floor. The embers in the hearth are faint but alive, breathing red beneath ash. I kneel before the cross nailed between the beams, fold my hands, and begin.
"Lord Almighty, cleanse me of pride. Cleanse me of deceit."
I speak of obedience. Of cleansing. Of guarding the tongue from falsehood and the heart from pride. I ask forgiveness for speaking out of turn. I ask that no harm fall upon this house because of me.
The sounds leave my mouth. They do not settle anywhere.
I search for the weight that usually follows—the press of guilt easing, the small warmth that comes when I believe I have been heard. Instead, I find only the crackle of cooling embers and the faint draft along the floor. The words hover and dissolve, like breath against glass.
"Strip me of desire," I try again, slower this time.
Behind me, I hear movement. The soft rustle of wool. The creak of boards. Mama rises. Elena soon after. Neither speaks to me.
I continue my prayers, my voice low and steady, as though I do not notice.
Water is poured into a cup. Cloth moves.
The quiet morning sounds unfold around me while I remain kneeling, repeating the final lines of repentance.
When I finish, I remain kneeling for a moment longer than necessary, waiting for something to answer me.
Nothing comes.
Mama is seated at the table, her back straight, her hands folded around a cup Elena has just filled. Elena stands beside her, leaning slightly as she adjusts the pitcher back onto its hook. The light from the doorway touches her hair.
She has tied it back. With one of my ribbons.
I recognize the frayed edge I mended last winter, the particular shade of yellow that never quite matched my other ribbons. It loops neatly at the nape of her neck, holding the strands in place as if it has always belonged there.
For a moment, I simply stare. Mama reaches for the cup Elena has given her. Their hands brush lightly. They do not notice me watching.
The room feels strangely distant, as though I am standing just outside it, observing from a place slightly removed from my own skin. The morning light grows stronger, filling the space between them, illuminating the table, the cup, the ribbon as the day begins without me.
I cross the room and take my place at the table without a word.
The sound of chewing, of clay cups set down too carefully, fills the space where speech should be.
Mama eats slowly, as though nothing in the world has shifted.
Elena passes the bread without meeting my eyes, the ribbon gleaming faintly each time she tilts her head while I chew and swallow without tasting.
When the bread is gone and the cups are emptied, Mama folds her hands on the table.
"We will go to church." Her voice is almost eager. "We must give thanks. We must remain steadfast." Elena nods, and I do too.
We dress quickly, wrapping shawls tight against the morning chill, against the low mist which lies over the ground.
We walk in silence, Mama ahead, Elena at her side.
I keep my eyes lowered, watching the path beneath my feet, the damp earth dark against my hem.
My mind feels distant, muffled, as if wrapped in wool.
A sound cuts through it.
A gasp. Then another.
I lift my head.
A small gathering stands before the church, not pressing forward, but held back, as though by an invisible line. Their heads are tilted upward. No one speaks. No one moves.
The doors.
Something is wrong with the doors.
A shape rises against them. Pale.
For a heartbeat my mind refuses it. It rearranges the lines into something else—a cloak, perhaps, or a bundle of cloth hung carelessly.
Then I see the blood.
It runs down the wood in thick, dark streams, soaking into the grain, gathering at the threshold in sluggish pools. The morning mist catches the scent of it and carries it faintly outward, sweet, wrong.
My breath stops as the shape resolves. Skin, arms stretched wide. Nailed.
Popa Vasile’s body is fastened to the church doors as though they themselves have claimed him.
His body is naked, stripped of every layer that once marked him as holy.
His skin is waxen in the grey light, stretched taut over bone.
Iron spikes pierce through his wrists, dark halos of torn flesh blooming around them.
The wood around them is split and splintered where the force drove through.
His head lolls slightly to one side, and where his eyes should be—
Empty sockets gape open, raw and red, torn completely. Blood has tracked down his cheeks in twin rivulets, dried at the corners of his mouth. His mouth hangs slightly open, as though the last breath was caught there and never released.
The mist coils around his feet. The great doors of the church stand closed behind him, as though barred from within, his body the final seal.
Mama’s breath leaves her in a broken cry.
She collapses to her knees on the damp earth, hands flying to her chest before clasping together, fingers digging into one another as though she can anchor herself to prayer alone.
"Doamne, miluie?te," she gasps. "Doamne, miluie?te…
Doamne, miluie?te-ne…[26]" The words tumble over one another, barely formed, her voice shaking as if it might tear itself apart.
Elena does not move, and neither do I.
We stand among the villagers, rooted where we are, our breath shallow, our eyes unable to look away.
The morning light grows stronger, revealing more than it should, illuminating every bruise, every wound, every obscene detail of the priest's humiliation.
A thin line has been drawn down his torso, not deep enough to open him fully, but enough to mark him.
The cut glistens faintly, the wood behind him splattered, as if the church itself has been baptized in red.
A man near the front swallows loudly. "This is no man’s doing," he mutters. "No widow’s revenge."
Another whispers, hoarse, "This is the devil himself."
The word hangs in the mist like rot.
For a long moment, no one dares step closer. No one dares look away.
Then Radu's father steps forward.
"We cannot leave him like this," he says, his voice rough with outrage and fear. "He is a priest of God."
No one answers. They shrink back instead, eyes wide, as though the body might stir if touched.
"Are you all struck dumb? Help me," he insists.
"Wait," someone hisses. "We do not know what touched him."
"What if it is cursed?"
Radu’s father rounds on them. "He cannot hang there like slaughtered cattle," he snaps. "Have you no shame?"
He strides toward the steps. For a breath, it seems he will go alone, until a few men finally step forward, though their feet drag against the stone as if pulled by reluctance. Their faces are pale, mouths set hard as though approaching a wild beast rather than a body.
Just as he reaches for the priest’s arm, the young assistant bursts from the church’s side entrance, face drained of all colour. He carries folded cloth in trembling hands.
"Wrap them," he says urgently. "Do not touch him bare."
The men hesitate, then take the strips and bind them clumsily around their palms. The fabric soaks red almost immediately when it brushes against the blood.
The first man—Mihai, the miller, grips the nail through the priest’s left wrist, testing it.
The iron is thick, hammered deep into wood and bone alike.
He pulls, but it does not budge. He braces one foot against the door and tugs harder, teeth bared with effort.
The wood creaks. The metal shrieks faintly against bone.
"Pull it out straight!" Radu’s father urges.
Mihai grits his teeth and yanks with all his strength, until we hear a sickening, wet sound.
The nail remains lodged deep in the wood.
The hand does not.
It tears free.
The body slumps to one side as the wrist gives way, flesh parting with a grotesque softness. What remains of the priest’s hand stays pinned to the door, torn and limp around the iron spike, fingers slightly curled as though in mid-blessing.
A scream erupts from somewhere in the crowd as the men stagger back, horror plain on their faces. The body hangs grotesquely by the remaining nails, arm jagged and ruined, skin split and raw where bone shows pale beneath.
The church doors are no longer merely stained. They are dressed in him.
Mihai stumbles back, the severed arm hanging grotesquely from the body by skin and sinew before the rest of it gives way and the priest’s weight collapses downward, his hollow sockets tilting toward the sky. Radu's father catches him awkwardly, slipping in blood that has smeared across the stone.
The weight of the body gives way all at once, collapsing into the arms of the men beneath.
They stagger under it, boots scraping against earth.
The church doors, no longer held shut by the nailed limbs, groan inward with a long, hollow creak that seems to rise from the throat of the building itself.
The priest’s assistant rushes forward, snatching a length of linen from his bundle and throwing it over the priest’s torso, then another over the ruined face. The cloth darkens instantly where it touches the sockets. "Cover him," his voice urges. "Cover him—bring him inside."
The men hesitate.
Their feet do not move, not even Radu's father's. Their eyes flick toward the dark interior of the church, where the altar waits in shadow. For a moment, the open doorway feels less like sanctuary and more like a mouth.
"What are you doing?" the assistant snaps, desperation roughening his tone. "Do you think whatever did this stands within the house of God?" His voice trembles, but he forces strength into it. "The doors were closed. It left him here. It did not enter. It cannot enter."
He gestures toward the open threshold as though it is proof enough. "Carry him to the altar."
Reluctantly, the men adjust their grips. The priest’s body shifts under the linen, one arm hanging wrong, the severed wrist wrapped clumsily in cloth that is already soaking through. A dark line trails from the edge of the sheet and drips to the floor.
They lift him. No one speaks. No one crosses themselves now. The only sounds are the shuffle of boots and the faint, sickening drag of fabric against skin as they carry him across the threshold.
The interior of the church swallows them, cool and dim. The morning mist coils into the doorway but does not cross further, as though uncertain.
My breath comes shallow. The cold has seeped through my shawl, through my dress, into bone. The square feels suspended, as though time itself has thinned.
I watch the linen-covered form disappear toward the altar. I watch the way the men avoid looking directly at what they carry. I watch the door stand open, the wood still stained where his body had been nailed.
The altar stands at the far end of the nave, pale in the dim light. The men lay him there carefully, as though he might wake if jostled too roughly. The linen shifts slightly as his weight settles, and for an instant I glimpse the edge of his mouth beneath it.
Empty.
Bile rises in my throat.
The image fractures against another memory—hands that rested lightly at my waist, fingers that traced my throat with reverence rather than force. A voice that had murmured enchantress against my skin. The warmth of his mouth, the careful pause before he bit.
Those hands. Those same hands—
A shudder moves through me that has nothing to do with the cold.
The mist presses low over the square. The morning feels muffled, as though the world itself is holding its breath. No birds sing. No dogs bark. The horror is no longer a whisper in the woods.
It hangs before us, nailed to wood.