Chapter 1 #2
And there it is. What I’m sure she was waiting to deliver all along.
I crinkle my exam schedule in my hand as I try, try not to fall to pieces in this big, quiet, public hall.
“If you’re imagining things like this, maybe this is a bad idea. Dr. Riggs said the pressure of college could?—”
“I’m fine ,” I bite out. And then, because I can’t resist. “I just remember what you said and what you didn’t say. You said?—”
“No,” she interjects sharply. “You’re not fine. Because what you’re doing now is calling me a liar, Gwenna. Do you think that I am a liar?”
I inhale, long and careful, through my nose, and exhale through my mouth—the one actually useful thing Dr. Riggs taught me.
BE NORMAL, my mind screams at me.
Be normal, my memory screams at me. In my mother’s voice .
For Christ’s sake, Gwenna, do you realize what it’s been like dealing with you? With all this? You’re not special, you’re sick. You’re a sick, sick girl who lashes out for attention and leaves everyone else to sweep up the fucking ashes.
Another inhale. My visions of a cozy mother-daughter Target run, where we laugh and riff on stupid things like shower shoes and minifridges, puffs away like the fog that’s now burning off the campus.
Exhale.
“I must be misremembering,” I mumble. “Never mind.”
My mom says something about that’s what she thought and good luck on my placement exams, but I only half-hear it as I slide off my phone.
The air around me is ringing like I’ve just left a rock concert.
The atmosphere feels at once cold and thick, hard to breathe.
The student worker girl at the desk is back at her book, but I can tell she’s only fake reading, her ears almost visibly pricked for whatever the weird girl on the emotional phone call is going to do next.
So I do the only thing I can think of.
I run.
I only make it halfway across the quads before I need to stop and catch my breath.
Crying while running isn’t easy.
Caliburn’s campus is broodingly beautiful, even now with some sunlight fighting through the late-fall humidity and just-turned leaves.
Flagstone paths lead to thick-buttressed buildings crowned with crenellated towers; long golden windows that arch at the top reveal glimpses of lecture halls, seminar rooms, bowed heads and gripped pencils.
It smells like woodsmoke and damp forest, with a waft of strong black coffee coming from somewhere to my left—Stuart Hall, the Divinity School building, home to Holy Grounds, the coffee shop.
That much I remember from the campus tour.
Hard to forget, really—I’m a sucker for a pun.
I’d loved Caliburn since I learned of its existence.
I tacked brochures to my bedroom walls like pin-up posters, enamored of how it was at once so austere and yet so ludicrous (because surely, it’s impractical to maintain a fully Gothic architecture style when steel and fiberglass and certified green building materials exist).
And now…now I am here. Against all odds, against what my mother would argue is sound judgment.
I am here, and I am a mess.
I take a few, slow steps, steadying my breathing, tugging down my sleeves out of habit, scrubbing at my face even as the tears keep flowing.
We must be during an instruction block, because there are only a few people scattered outside—a chatting couple on a bench, a lone figure sprinting down a path, messenger bag flying from its shoulder in the scramble for class.
I have a map—somewhere, I have it, the registrar tucked it in one of these godforsaken packets—but I don’t want to use it.
I want to be a little bit lost right now, to find my way without instruction for once.
To settle somewhere and gather my thoughts.
So my feet move of their own volition, my chunky loafers clumping one step after another as I rearrange the papers and folders in my arms lest I drop anything into the mud, and then I see it.
Caliburn Memorial Chapel.
And oh, but it’s breathtaking.
A high-peaked wooden door three times as tall as I am, set inside a carved arch of stone saints and animals frozen in tableaux of good and evil—St. George and his dragon, St. Catherine and her wheel, St. Lucy with her eyes on a platter, like the architect chose only the grimmest and goriest stories to carve into granite.
Soaring above it, the steeple, gilded in the pale stream of sunlight with a rose window darkly colored in versicolored glass.
My limbs start to hum as my heart ticks up to a rabbit-quick pulse of excitement. The tears stop, the last few trickling down my cheeks as I stare up in wonder.
No. Gwenna, no. It’s a bad idea. It’s the worst idea, to go in there and plunge myself right into the heart of what could trigger me all the way back to a void of delusions, but it’s the only idea that makes sense right now.
The only thing I need: to be in the church and let its calm infuse and overcome me.
And for once, I just want to trust my own judgment.
I push through the doors like I’m claiming sanctuary.
Inside, it’s cold and quiet. Arched windows let in sharp slices of light—some pure blue, some dappled with the candy colors of stained glass—and the air is so still you can see dust motes dancing and spinning like tiny sparks.
And instantly, my whole being settles.
Materially, logically, I know that the air inside this chapel—this cathedral, really—is no different than the hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen swirling just outside the giant wood doors and massive stone blocks.
But somewhere deeper, truer, I know, I feel , even if I can’t prove, that there is something charged and different in here. Something vital. Something holy.
My breathing slows, easing the ache in my chest. I sink into a pew, my eyes fluttering shut, and I welcome the reprieve.
I always struggled to believe in God growing up—a less than ideal condition for a Catholic schoolgirl from a nice family, and deeply ironic considering the way the past few months of my life have transpired.
I had too many questions, too many edge cases I wanted to stress-test before I committed.
Yet I never struggled to be in a church—maybe because they’re the closest you can get to a castle in most of North America.
I inhale. The pine-and-smoke smell of distant incense floods my senses, and my last few pathetic sniffles choke their way from my throat.
But then, just as I breathe out, I hear it.
I’m not alone.
My eyes fly open with a prey animal’s instincts, and I tense my grip on my sheaf of papers, one foot planted protectively outside my suitcase. I dart a glance left, right, left, and yet see nothing, only hear it, sense it, practically, until I look right again.
A few rows up, and behind a pillar, is a corner, a dark shift in the wall revealing some sort of secondary open space: the arm of the cross-shaped church, no doubt.
I should leave. But I’m curious.
Silently as I can, I slip from the pew to the side aisle, taking tiptoe steps in the vastness of the stone space until I can peek around and see.
It’s as I thought: a chapel-within-the-chapel, outfitted with a few rows of chairs and a smaller altar: gold, carved, and set with rows and rows of red-glass tea candles before it, their little flames dancing.
And, sitting in front of it, a man.
No, not sitting, I realize.
Kneeling.
He’s really and truly on his knees before the altar, head bowed, arms planted just forward on the railing and fingers clasped—praying, I suppose. And just in front of him, on the flagstones, something long and thin that flashes in even in the dim light of the chapel.
A blade. A sword.
And just as soon as I take it all in, he moves.
A quick flutter of the eyes and twitch of the lips and he’s on his feet, lightning-quick, too quick, and I’m stumbling backwards over my own stupid feet until my back hits a pillar and a pair of bronze-colored eyes cut into mine.
He’s tall, fearsomely tall, easily a head above my own five- nine, with broad shoulders, a strong jaw, and a serious set to his lips.
Golden hair catches the winking candlelight as it falls just over his forehead, and even in the dark layers of sport coat, sweater, and button-down, he looks powerful.
Yet for all that, he doesn’t menace. Doesn’t encroach on me or try to intimidate. If anything, he stands back, keeps his distance, arms folded at attention behind him—which, combined with his sharp attire, gives him an almost soldierly air.
No, he just…stares.
Stares and takes me in. Drinks me in, practically, with a kind of scrutiny that’s so intense it’s almost disarming.
And before I can realize the sorry state of my being, the rumpled clothes and blotchy face and wide-eyed panic, he moves.
A hand only, slipping into his inner jacket pocket to withdraw something, which he proffers to me, a flash of white in the space between us.
I blink, computing.
When I don’t move, he offers again, gesturing it toward me, stepping only as close as necessary to get within the radius of my reach.
“For your face,” he explains, in a voice deep and rich as coffee at midnight.
All at once, it clicks. A handkerchief. He’s offering me a handkerchief. Dumbfounded, I reach, take it, a smart reply frozen in my throat— I know what a handkerchief’s for —as my fingertips close over the slip of fabric.
I draw my hand back to my chest, still flattened against the stone pillar, and try to conjure something to say.
“I…I’m…”
My gaze flits to the altar behind him, where the sword—because that’s indeed what it is—now lies unobstructed from view, resting on a deep red cushion.
His eyes follow mine. Then surge back to me .
“Don’t go where you’re not invited.”
My jaw falls slightly in surprise, but before I can get a word out, he turns on his heel, strides to the altar, and slips away through some unseen exit, sword and all.
And I stand alone, stupefied, wordless, in the cavern of the chapel, for God knows how many moments longer, until the tears on my face are long dry and my heart has slowed to normal.
His handkerchief still clutched in my hand.