Chapter 2 Here Is the Void Staring Back at You
II.
Here Is the Void Staring Back at You
After that day, I thought often of Hildegard and the Mother Superior and Rochelle’s words and could not figure out where the truth might lie. I was stuck in the middle of these unanswered questions, my entire existence as some kind of aberration or formless land.
Somehow, trying to be holy and pious only made me seem more ill-spirited.
The convent was littered with spirits—mostly of angry men.
Every day that I woke and saw them was a reminder that I was failing to be delivered of my curse or vindicated of my gifts.
There was one in particular, always petting the Mother Superior’s shoulder, who would grow aroused the harder the Abbess beat me.
Try as I might, I was never able to disguise my disgust, which the Abbess took as my rebellious heart and beat me harder, which made the spirit more aroused and me more disgusted, and on it went, until one night, on the march from my cot to Matins Laud.
Bleary-eyed and cold, I caught sight of a wild, blue moon, wrapped in wisps of fog and hung over the shadowy forest beyond the convent walls.
I remembered myself then, in sudden vivid relief.
The feel of being young and following Valerie on such nights through the forest, with that moon to guide us—to a thicket of violets?
There were so many other herbs she used, lost to my memory, but I remembered most the violets, and my childish delight in watching her make a syrup from them, the rich purple color that shone in the light without surrendering its mystery.
I remembered once belonging wholly to myself.
I remembered the shelter of the trees and the cool, green smell, and the paths the moon cast through the wood.
I remembered when my gift or curse was not a gift or a curse at all, just the world around me, same as the flowers we picked or the moon that shone.
Valerie was gone, but the moon and the forest remained, so free and so beautiful and all their own in a way I never would be again.
I determined, by the time the doors closed on us for service, that I should kill myself and just be done with it.
But I could not bear the idea of being separated from my sister.
At least once a fortnight, I would grow so frustrated with my failures, I’d throw my hands up in some quiet corner, bury my tear-streaked face in my arms, and beg Rochelle to run away.
But she would only listen to me cry, rubbing my back like Valerie used to do, and remind me we had nowhere to go, adding guilt to my misery.
“Just last until I get married,” she would promise. “The nuns think they can find me a good husband. A lord’s second son is visiting soon, to find a wife. When I marry, I will convince my husband to take us both and you’ll be free and wild again. Promise me you’ll be patient.”
I did promise, because I would do anything for Rochelle, and I always rededicated myself to my endeavors to please God and the nuns in the hopes I’d be relieved of my sight.
It was the only thing that gave me hope.
I felt if I did not pursue some kind of freedom, then I did not know what to do with myself except die.
Despite my best efforts, a growing thread of darkness began to arc out from me and rattle the convent as if shaking the bars of my prison.
A new priest arrived at the convent to hear confessions, offer sacraments, and consult with the Abbess on her manuscripts.
The old one, Father Titus, had died that winter from a terrible cough, and then the visits had stopped for a few months, and now the prelate had finally sorted themselves out and sent this new one.
After studying the pages in the Mother Superior’s cramped office, where I was shunted off to the side, working on copies, this new priest had run his hands down the back of my tunic and hooked his fingers up between my legs in a way that made me jump and scream from surprise like a yowling cat.
The Mother Superior came back into the room at just that moment, red-cheeked and eyes shining.
I begged for protection, expecting her piety to result in justice.
But she smacked me with her rod and apologized to the father for my temptations.
Then forced me to get on my knees, right there in her office, and confess again, as she watched my entire humiliation, tears hovering in the corners of my eyes.
The bells rang and I was mercifully released to service.
It was not the first time I’d gone into service angry, but something about a righteous sixteen-year-old’s anger or the way my scalp itched hot and furious under my veil, caused whatever darkness in me I could not root out to ripen and burst, like rotted fruit.
I could not snap or cry out. I could not even move. I only stared at the front of the chapel, thoughtless with a rage that felt like it might turn me inside out. An inexplicable tide rose like an abyss in my throat.
The pillars exploded as if someone had hurled great stones at them.
The nuns cried out. Some ducked. Others leapt back against the wall.
At the front, the Abbess stared at the crumbled stone and dust, frozen in place and eyes wider than dinner plates.
But it was not finished. The chalice with Communion wine rattled and spun on the altar, splashing wine across the mess.
Sister Oberlin ran up with a bucket, as if there were a fire.
“A miracle,” the Mother Superior yelled. “God hears our prayers!” She held her trembling hands outstretched, but not in time to stop Sister Oberlin from throwing the contents of the bucket. Unfortunately, it was not water.
By then, the “miracle” had stopped.
My rage swept out of me, a tide pulling far away and exposing me to a hot and drying sun.
I felt Rochelle’s gaze boring into the back of my neck.
I was terrified to think about what had happened for fear it might happen again, and I studied the floor as the Abbess lectured us on reverence in front of God, her entire body trembling with joy.
In the garden later that day, Rochelle cornered me near the carrots and said, low to my ear, “Was that you?”
I didn’t know what to answer. I was sixteen and terrified. Of being discovered as a witch. Of my anger. I also hoped, maybe, it had been a miracle and not me. Who was I, after all?
What I did know was that I could not talk to Rochelle about it. I could not bear to hear her question when I was so full of doubts myself. So I met her eyes and shook my head quickly. “It must have been a miracle.”
She looked disappointed, but I could not understand why.
After that, I tried to empty myself of all feeling.
When I was overwrought or feeling close to strong emotion, I took myself into the chapel and let the stone cut my knees, praying until I was exhausted and bleeding and all feeling pushed down deep inside.
I prayed for deliverance from this curse.
I prayed for Rochelle to marry so we could be free.
As we came into womanhood, the stress of keeping myself contained made me haggard and exhausted.
While Rochelle became a woman, golden and soft, I resembled a pale spirit of her, my features sharpening like a knife left out in the frost. At night I could still smell the black smoke roiling off Valerie’s shriveled body.
Sometimes, I dreamed it was Rochelle instead and I would wake up drenched in sweat and panting.
In the end, I was so fixated upon controlling the dangers within myself that I did not think of the dangers in the world. I did not realize the darkness in me could be a lure. The nobleman’s second son never came.
But something else did.
I WAS NINETEEN, ROCHELLE TWENTY, AND WE WERE ALONE IN the farthest convent fields.
Bareheaded under the sun, we were working in staggered stretches, hacking at the base of the stalks of grain and throwing the bundles out to dry in the heat.
That afternoon, we’d argued—I’d pulled my tunic up over my thighs, into my belt, to free my legs, and Rochelle had tried to get me to keep my skirt down.
We had laughed—she’d made a clever jab when talking about a handsy merchant who’d come making deliveries.
I always found it funny when she said something bluntly truthful, like a jolt of electricity to remind you she wasn’t quite as good as you’d think.
I thought about that day for years afterward, treasuring, grieving over every single moment.
The rhythmic sound of her cutting the golden stalks just ahead of me.
My sister who I had never been parted from.
The feeling of never being alone in the world.
The sun had begun to drop, but the heat hadn’t broken.
Sweat soaked my back, and the orange and pinks of early evening turned heavy and dense among the edges of the fields, especially where the grain met the forest.
Shhhrrrk, went the sound of my scythe. I don’t remember why I noticed something was different.
I think I felt her absence somehow. Instead of bundling the stalks, I left them where they’d fallen.
Straightening, I let the head of the blade drop into the grain by my bare feet and the curved walnut handle against my bare thigh.
The wind whispered through the uncut field, heads of grain bowing and itching where they brushed my bare skin.
It was unlike Rochelle to simply leave. The buzzing insects in the woods sang at a strange fever pitch, and I shaded my eyes against the setting sun, scanning the field and the smudged shadows of night creeping from the forest. Finally, I spotted her moving through the edge of uncut grain, along the border where a golden sea met the dark wall of the forest. I cupped my hands and yelled for her to return.
Shhhrrrk went the sound of the blade. Confused, I looked down for the scythe still in my hands, but my dirty palms were empty. My head felt strange and loose on my shoulders. The edges of the field began moving even though I stood still.
Shhhrrrk.
The monster came from those moving shadows.
Long-limbed with slender fingers already half curled in the act of taking.
Wide antlers stretched beyond its bony shoulders, but it walked through the grain on two muscled, pale legs.
It was the first time I had seen such a thing.
Not a “silent friend.” Not a spirit. But a nightmare walking into life. Walking toward my sister.
I screamed. My mouth was so dry that the scream cracked, and I screamed again. I was already running. But there was no chance. I never reached her.
The antlered creature slipped into those moving shadows, Rochelle still struggling in his slender fingers.
She fought the whole way, as if she knew I was coming for her.
I tried to follow, but when I ran straight into those slipping shadows, I found nothing but the same scrub trees at the edge of the forest. No birds or small animals.
Just the simmering heat and suffocating silence.
The convent bell rang for evening prayers, and I stood at the edge of the forest, limp and empty.