His grip tightens to claws in her flesh. “You disobey?”
“I don’t want ...”
He laughs. “No, no, you misunderstand. This has nothing to do with desire. This is sacrament.” He pulls on her arms.
“No.” Aleys yanks herself away.
He looks, for a moment, like a hurt boy. Then anger stiffens his features, and he grabs her shoulders. She feels herself small, a rag doll in the hand of a mad child. He pushes her in front of the door. “Go then,” he commands. “Leave this cell. Ignore his signs, everything you’ve been shown. Just throw it away. The door is open. Try to find him out there.”
She imagines stepping into the church, fleeing down the aisle, pushing open the double doors into the square outside. There would be moon, and revelers. She could run to the bonfire.
He reads her thoughts. “Go to the devil, if you won’t have God.”
One step, just one step, and she could run free.
“Make your choice,” he says.
She feels her heart stop; she can’t breathe. Time shrinks, becomes layered, thick as the six-pointed star—every choice she has ever made, ever will make, collapsed into this moment. The space outside looms like a dark abyss. There’s no salvation for those who leave the hold, who step knowingly from grace. She promised God she would never leave. What would happen if she did? She imagines herself plummeting, falling forever through a cold hell, an angel stripped of wings.
Aleys grips the doorframe and gulps air, her head swimming. The smell of incense engulfs her. Stained windows fleck the cathedral with flashes of ruby and sapphire, citrine and emerald. Into the bejeweled space, she feels her vows, sharp-beaked things, take flight. Enclosure. Chastity. Obedience. They circle her head, pinning her to the precipice. The vows shriek with fury and attack each other with beak and claw, until she cannot tell one from the other, her beautiful intentions at war. Blue and red feathers rain to the floor. She cannot save them if they fight.
“When the Godhead enters us,” he whispers, “we shall be the church, the heaven, the soil, the river. We shall wash ourselves with snow water.” He twists the words of Job, sacred words. From his mouth, they seem crazed, a vein of silver lost in rock.
She glances back at the table. Genesis lies open, her knife pressing flat the pages.
“Aleys, look at me.” He moves to block the door, the church looming behind him. “Have your prayers been answered?” He knows they have not. “Has he not hidden himself, so that we may seek?”
She cannot answer.
“Do you understand all? It is written: His will is as high as heaven and deeper than hell.”
She doesn’t know his will. Not anymore.
“Aleys, I am your advisor, your confessor, your Father. It is no sin.” She feels the weight of the church behind him, pressing. “Deck thyself now with majesty and array thyself with glory!”
The door is still open.
“You consent, then?” He rotates her, places his hands on her shoulders, presses down, as if willing her to root. She flinches. “Obedience,” he says, “is faith. It is trust.”
Trust even in madness? Aleys sees the wild conviction in his eyes, burning and cold.
“He showed me the way. As he once showed you. Did I call you mad when you spoke of waves and stars?”
“No.”
“No, I did not. I called you holy. Do you not want him back?”
Desperately. She remembers her own words, spoken into this cell.I will do anything.
“Kneel,” he says, “while I bless you.”
She shudders as he anoints a cross of oil on her forehead, perhaps blessing, perhaps curse. There’s no doubt in his gesture; his righteous hand does not shake. What if he’s had a real showing? She’s so confused. Down is up and up is down and the devil quotes scripture while God looks on.
Are you watching? Are you even there?
She is angry. At all of them. She is angry when he removes his belt. She is angry when he raises her and guides her to her cot, as if he is being gentle, as if this is a wedding night. As if he is giving her a gift.
“Stop,” she says. “This is wrong.”
