Chapter 3 The Outside World
III.
The Outside World
I ran from the convent certain of only two things—Rochelle was not dead, and I had to find her.
I hardly knew how to breathe without my sister.
As a waning crescent moon rose, one thought emerged from the terrible agony.
If I could see the creature that had taken Rochelle, then surely I could find a way to follow it into that shimmering world and bring her back.
With my novice’s robes on my back and a stolen loaf of bread, my heart beat so hard it felt as if it bruised my ribs, gripped in the hold of new terror.
The moment that … monster … stepped into the dusky golden light, everything changed.
My visions were no longer simple shadows.
They had the power not just to disturb me, but to reach out, cut, take, and kill.
At the dark crossroads while fleeing the convent, I passed not only spirits, but faceless men, stiff creatures on two legs in cloaks with necks that could turn like an owl, and an old woman with wings from which she kept plucking feathers.
They all peered at me as if they might recognize me, but could not remember where from.
I couldn’t tell which terrified me more—the creatures themselves or that I might be recognized by them as their own kind.
But by the time I reached Riquewihr, a small village cornered between the Vosges Mountains and the wild expanse of the Black Forest, I realized I had other, equally dire problems: I was nineteen, lost, and utterly naive.
Before I left, I imagined myself rather worldly and wise—jaded even.
The nuns had always made it seem like I was a captured predator.
But outside the convent walls, I was quickly disavowed of this belief.
On the outskirts of the village, a sweet-faced girl who reminded me so much of Rochelle tried to rob me, then slapped me with disgust when she found I had no money.
After that, a storm blew in and there was no place to stay dry or warm.
Every place I asked for honest work in exchange for a meal drove me out on account of my vulture looks and questionable purity.
I ended up on the edge of the road, pockets emptied, my veil missing, long black hair dripping down my back, soaked and shivering from the cold spring rain.
I felt myself a weak and miserable creature, already failing Rochelle.
If I couldn’t survive in this world, how would I manage to find my way among any other one?
Horrified, I found my thoughts clutching to even the smallest comforts of the convent—as if I would ever return!
A grandfather passed me in this shivering, anxious state, and he took pity on me and called me from the rain into the tavern.
“Here, girl,” he said, his worn hands sliding beer and bread to me as the water dripped off my muddied robes into small puddles on the floor. I sat beside him at the boards and ate with unthinking relish. Afterward, he took my arm and drew me toward the door. “We can use the stable,” he said.
Maybe a woman who had not been raised in a convent would have anticipated this, but I had not.
Horror dawned on me, and I begged, trying to explain my mistake.
But like Eve, I had eaten, and now the debt must be paid.
He led me into the street. I thought about fighting, but he was, even then, so gentle, I didn’t quite know what to fight about.
It was my mistake to expect mercy in a world I knew, knew, was unforgiving.
I was filled with so much guilt and grief that I did not have it in me to fight for myself.
I let him lead me into the barn, where in the back corner of a stall I gave him all that I had.
It did not bother him that I cried. He waited for me to dry my face and then ushered me to the door of a brothel along the western wall of the village.
THE BLUE MOON, the sign said, creaking in the wind. I thought numbly of that spring moon, of Valerie, of wanting to kill myself.
He rapped his knuckles on the door. Rain sloughed off the wooden sign. “It’s not safe for a young woman like you to be on your own, there are bandits and others,” he explained as the door opened and warm, raucous laughter spilled out. I hastily wiped my face and lifted my chin.
It was the girls, not the men, who leapt up and crowded around me, curious and sharply assessing.
They pulled at my novice’s robes and stringy, wet hair and twittered.
The old man spoke with the brothel owner, and I straightened my shoulders and set things with myself.
A brothel could be no worse than the convent.
It could be simply a stop, a place to be fed and make some money and figure out how to find my way into the arcane secrets I needed to save my sister.
I swallowed my fear and resolved myself to this fate.
And then the crowd parted, and Dacia gathered me into her arms.
At first, I thought she must have been some kind of otherworld creature in disguise, because she attached herself to me like only darkness did.
She was spring sunshine when winter still blustered, a full moon on a dark night, light no matter where she went.
So sincere and effortless did this light emanate from her that it never occurred to me to hate her.
Despite being only a year older than I, she was experienced in all the ways I was not.
The brothel owner, Josef, handed me into her care.
Under Dacia’s guidance, I went from the bride of Christ to a whore of the devil.
She helped me bathe and groom, oiling and brushing my hair until it was soft and as glossy as a raven’s wing.
Like magic, she appeared with an armful of dresses and shifts and hose, making me try them on to see what suited me.
I modeled a blue gown for her, in a Roman style, my arms bared and white in the dim light, looking like a wild-eyed Circé, trying to smile in my most enticing way.
“Don’t smile like that, you look like you eat children,” Dacia said flatly, then cinched a belt tighter under my breasts, causing them to swell up over the edge of the neckline of the draped material.
I burst out giggling. How could I have spent all my life trying to look holy and pure and now needed to look utterly debased and yet I still failed?
And then I was horrified to find tears collecting in my eyes.
I tried to hide them, but she must have seen.
Dacia moved behind me in the polished silver glass, and slid her arm around my waist, holding me firm against her.
I could barely catch my breath—from the dress, so unlike anything I’d worn, from my reflection, from her palm on my stomach and the smell of rain-drenched lilies and the faint musk of sweat on clean skin.
But I followed along as she gently tipped my chin up.
“Come now, there are worse ways to suffer,” she murmured in my ear, her breath stirring my loose hair.
She showed me how to smile in a lazy way that made my sharpness look like a weapon rather than a wound.
In her arms, in that dress, I felt the first sense of power run through my blood that I was not the least bit afraid of.
She held my hand that evening, through my first encounters with the men—she was neither callous nor pitying, just clear-eyed about what it took to survive. And the next morning, she took me to the village healer.
As we walked, Dacia reassured me of the woman’s expertise and her devotion to Christ. I suppose she assumed my time in the convent was what made me shiver at the sight of the old woman’s hut.
But it was because it sat on the edge of the village, so close to the wood, where anything might reach out and pull us in.
Dacia took me to her gate and then paused.
“I’m a Christian. I don’t like to go into the witch’s house,” she said, which felt quite contradictory to her assurances about the woman. “I’ll wait out here.” She crossed herself and stood like a soldier at the gate. A dog was tied in the yard, tail erect and haunches tight as it watched me.
I didn’t argue but walked up the dirt path to the hut by myself.
In some ways I was relieved; alone, I didn’t need to hide the emotions I couldn’t quite contain in my chest, unable to stop the flood of memories of Valerie and Rochelle as the scent of garden herbs surrounded me.
It seemed almost as if they were the memories of someone else.
Inside her hut, the wizened old woman handed me the bundle of leaves, giving me instructions I already knew, in a rasping voice.
She even reminded me of Valerie, though she did not look or act like her at all.
I crushed them between my fingers and felt a wave of longing and sadness.
In the quiet hut, just me and her, I lifted my head and met her gaze.
She stopped talking, her eyes sharp and knowing, though what she knew, I could not tell.
“Do you fear being called a witch?” I asked.
She only gave a throaty laugh and winked at me. “The more you see, the less you fear.”
I thought there was surely a limit to such wisdom. But I said my thanks, tucked the herbs into my black cloak, the kind all prostitutes had to wear in public, and left.
MY DAYS IN THE brOTHEL FOLLOWED THE SAME KIND OF ROUTINE, rigidity, and time on my knees as my days in the convent, which was faintly amusing.
The village sat along the old Roman road on the way to Strasbourg, and all manner of strangers crossed our threshold.
Hours slipped by, turning to weeks and months, and I learned all the things my lack of education had suffered from in the convent.
Lessons of violence and blood and pleasure.
I developed a reputation for catering to the strangest of them.
And so my third name for this curse was whore.
Witch. Sinner. Whore. A threefold cord is not easily broken, woven as an unbreakable constraint that pulls a life short.