Chapter 35 Jude
Jude
Jude kept his eyes shut. His head bowed. ‘It’s not working. Why isn’t it working?’
Maeve’s hands tightened around his. ‘Maybe it’s because you don’t truly believe. In prayer. In the saints. In your own magic.’
His eyes cracked open. ‘I can’t change that. I can’t just suddenly believe—’
His voice cut off as a lash of vertigo crested over him, the effect so sudden, so breathtaking that he dropped towards the floor. His hearing pulsed in an out, carrying with it the strain of a frantic voice, a strange humming that grew louder and louder.
Pain built at the nape of his neck and wrapped around his jaw. He fought for air, locating his voice somewhere beneath the nauseating dizziness. ‘Something’s happening—’ he hissed through his teeth. He forced himself to look up.
The face in front of him was unfamiliar.
Jude blinked.
He knew her, didn’t he?
A thrum started just beneath his breastbone. He placed his hands on his chest, felt the vibration. Deeper than that, a shifting in his marrow. The woman was unknown to his addled brain but familiar in his heart. His fingers glanced off the hem of her dress as she stood.
She cast about the room, gaze darting from one side to the other like she was searching for something. A frenetic energy clung to her limbs. Jude crawled towards her, a name on his lips. He knew her. He couldn’t forget her. He couldn’t. Not her. Not her—
Suddenly, she spun towards the window.
She was moving, running.
Then, she was back, a lit candle in her hand.
Before he could pull himself to his feet, before he could even force his muddled thoughts to remember who she was, she drew the candle to the canvas.
The flame started in the corner. A hole punched through the canvas, the edges slowly peeling back with a ripple of orange embers.
It ate slowly across the icon before his painted face began to crumple.
His eyes, his upraised hand. The halo behind his head.
As though it grew tired of a lazy devouring, the fire suddenly consumed the rest of the canvas in one fell swoop until all that remained was the wooden frame and smouldering edges, tattered and gaping like a hungry maw.
For a long moment, neither of them moved.
Holding his breath, Jude reached one hand towards the burnt icon—
The room dissolved in a flash of blinding light.
A flow of molten metal from the icon rushed towards him. He shouted, scrambling backwards. Every movement felt laborious, as though he was underwater. The strange thrum pulsed at the back of his skull, behind his lids. An unholy hymn of bells and rising voices.
Suddenly, a veil of darkness fell, consuming the gold in a corrosive wave of black.
The ringing intensified. He smelled something pungent and sweet like flesh set alight. Unable to bear the onslaught, Jude banded one hand over his mouth and the other over his eyes, curling down until his brow hit the floor. The bells clanged louder, louder.
He couldn’t take it. It was too much, far too much.
He was no longer sure the floor was beneath his knees. It was only darkness and pain and endless ringing. Something wet trickled down his neck from his ears as the singing grew swollen with an emotion he didn’t yet have a name for.
As quickly as it started, the attack ended.
He awoke on his back, staring up at the ceiling. Silence coated him. He reached up and touched his ears. Nothing; no blood tracing down his neck. He flexed his fingers and wiggled his toes. His body felt like the sea had spat it out.
The sea.
For the first time in eight years, Jude remembered the feel of sand against bare skin. He could recall his glee, childlike and free, as he leapt into the waves. Two boys were beside him in this unfinished memory. He felt their presence, heard their laughter.
His breath hitched.
Some of his memories were there. Some, but not all. Slices of his former life half-returned. A man standing atop an altar, surrounded by cloaked figures, their hands desperate and reaching. Light cutting a slice through the basilica. Tears streaking down his face – from what, from what?
The need to close his eyes and examine what was returned nearly consumed him, but the acrid scent of smoke hit his nostrils before he could.
Burning.
He sat up. The smell scratched at a hidden door in his memory, somewhere long forgotten.
Across the room, Maeve was slapping her discarded cardigan against the ground.
Maeve. He hadn’t forgotten her. She was here, and he knew her.
The relief faded quickly, replaced with confusion as Maeve stamped on the crumpled mass with one booted foot. The floorboards were blackened underneath. The smoke smelled metallic, like blood or festering seawater.
As she stepped back, Jude remembered what had been burning.
His icon.
She turned to face him. Her eyes were wide, lips parted. They stared at each other for a tense heartbeat as Jude remained on the floor. Flames flickered every time he blinked. A thread of memory tugged insistently, still too far to grasp.
There was something there, something on the tip of his tongue—
‘You… you weren’t well,’ Maeve said thickly. ‘I burned the icon and you started screaming. Looking all around like you could see something I couldn’t. Your hands…’ she searched around, mimicking what she’d seen him do only minutes ago. ‘Like you were trying to find something. What did you see?’
He tilted his head up towards the ceiling as he processed her words. The bare plaster between the rafters was stained grey with smoke. What had he seen?
‘Did you hear the bells? The singing?’ he asked.
‘I could only hear you screaming.’ She rocked forward on her toes like she wanted to go to him but decided against it. ‘Did it… work? Did you get your memories back?’
‘Some,’ he replied. ‘But not all. But I feel… better. My mind. It’s much clearer than it was when you were painting.
Like a weight has been pulled off me, or a film scraped off my brain.
’ He tipped his head back and forth. ‘It feels like my own again. Or closer to it, at least.’ He focused on her. ‘What made you burn the icon?’
Maeve knelt down beside him. ‘After you prayed, you collapsed. You started…’ her voice hitched.
‘Started convulsing. You looked at me like I wasn’t there.
It was horrible. Awful, Jude.’ She shook her head, gaze falling on the burnt remains of the icon.
‘I’d burned Siobhan’s icon to try and destroy it.
We didn’t know if it worked then but I – I had to try. I had to try something.’
Wax puddled on the floor next to the icon in a milky-white crust. The room reeked of smoke, but he didn’t care. Not with what he’d just realized.
Jude stood, pacing in a tight circle, thinking. ‘This is good. It’s very good.’
‘It is?’ Maeve asked, voice trailing up at the end as she moved back to her feet.
‘Praying won’t help us return the magic to the saints.
Not even praying to ourselves. Although, I do think it serves a purpose.
If others praying to icons increases the Abbey’s power – if it allows them to steal more magic from us, and therefore more memories – maybe praying to ourselves does something similar. ’
‘Maybe it increases the magic, too,’ Maeve added.
Her face had regained some of its colour as her eyes searched his.
‘Like a catapult. The harder you pull it back, the further it will go. Maybe that’s why praying to your icon affected you like it did.
You had to give more of yourself to get more in return once the icon was destroyed. ’
Jude ran both hands over his head. ‘We should’ve just destroyed the icon straight away.’
‘And ruin all my hard work?’
He caught her eye. ‘Hm. True.’
She shrugged, smile still on her lips. ‘If you hadn’t prayed to your icon first, maybe the effect of burning it wouldn’t have been so intense. Maybe you would have had fewer memories returned to you.’
‘I wish it was more. But burning the icons… I must have learned it worked years ago at the Abbey.’ He planted his hands on his hips and surveyed the burnt icon.
Now that he was focused on it, the smell was all-consuming.
He certainly couldn’t sleep here tonight.
The tang was heavy in his nose, almost like altar incense—
Jude froze. His mouth dropped open. ‘Oh—’
A memory surged to the surface. Fire, burning hot and bright. The sound of his footsteps running down stone floors, his chest burning with exertion. Panic. He was rushing, frantic to accomplish his task before he was noticed. In his hand, burnt matches.
The Abbey. Fire. Icons.
‘Maeve,’ he gasped, realization slamming into him. ‘I tried to burn the Abbey. Tried to burn…’ he shut his eyes. ‘Icons? I think. But I failed. That’s why I was exiled. It wasn’t just the magic. It was a punishment. But why? Why burn the icons?’
He swung around to face her. ‘That’s it – burning icons restores memory.’
She inhaled, short and fast. ‘Is that what we do, then? Return to the Abbey and burn the icons?’
‘Not just the icons. We burn the whole Abbey down.’
‘What?’
‘Is that not what you were thinking?’
‘I – no.’ She laughed breathlessly. ‘Not exactly. I was thinking more along the line of the individual icons. Not… arson.’
‘Oh.’ Jude shrugged. ‘What if we accidentally miss some? It all needs to go. If there’s even the smallest hope it could restore memories to the saints. To everyone that the Abbey has harmed. Elden. To you, too, Maeve.’
She swayed where she stood. ‘If you’ve tried before, why would this time be any different?’
‘We can only make a plan and try again. We have each other, this time. And we know more about how our magic works. How the Abbey works, too,’ he replied. ‘I don’t know what went wrong the first time, but we have to try.’ He pulled in an unsteady breath. ‘We have to return.’
‘Every warning we’ve heard, from Felix, from Bethan… even – even Siobhan’s death. It all was to prevent us from returning.’ Maeve shook her head. Her face had gone ashen. ‘But you’re right. I can’t see another way.’
The Abbey. Jude saw the promise of it reflected in her gaze.
He remembered its facade with near-perfect accuracy now.
Three spires reached towards the heavens, reinforced by flying buttresses embellished with colonnades and carved portraits of saints long passed.
Large windows broke up the face of the main basilica, understated compared to the crown jewel of the Abbey – the rose window.
Even now, he remembered the intricacies of its glass pattern with nostalgic reverence.
He’d spent many mornings kneeling under it, letting its beauty lull him closer to devotion.
Jude was no longer a child. The glory of stained glass wouldn’t sway him. But, as he looked at Maeve, he realized he was not so very far from the boy he had once been. Urged to worship the closest thing to divinity he’d ever seen.
‘Yes,’ he replied hoarsely. ‘We go back. Together.’
Maeve wrapped her arms tightly around herself, shoulders bunched close to her ears. Oh, how he ached to hold her. To fold her into his arms and keep her safe.
‘Together,’ she echoed.
Her eyes met his, and a piece of his armour flaked off to float amongst the rafters.