She took another breath and then said, with the angry calm of a person standing on a ledge, “He’ll act like a man, he’ll do what a man does, and then—” She sliced her finger across her throat.
I let out the breath I’d been holding. It rushed from me. Last leaned back against the wall, tilting her head up to stare at the dark, carved stone ceiling. A spider crouched in its silk web above her.
The monster scraped at its cage, and I pulled free a swath of knots. Eight more hours at most, and then it would be free.
“Am I heartless?” she asked, her black hair hiding the green glow of her face.
“Do you want to be?”
She reached up, stretching her pointer finger to the silk web. The spider fled, disappearing into a crevice.
“Sometimes,” she whispered.
I stilled, waiting in the suffocating quiet for her to say more.
Finally, she shrugged. “If I were heartless, I wouldn’t want you to like me so much. I hate my husband, but I want him to love me. I’ve never been loved. I want to know how it feels. I want to see what it’s like. And if not him, then who? Nobody. But it’s stupid to hate someone and want their love. If he does end up loving me, I think I’ll hate him even more. I would hate him for loving me even while I groaned in the pleasure of it. Oh well. I won’t love him, but Mari, I’d like it—I would really like it—if he loved me.”
We were quiet while Last contemplated the spider’s abandoned web and I untied another million knots.
78
Sometimes, the wind wondered why humans could not find God, but then it realized it was because they hadn’t looked low enough. God was found in the deep places, in the dark places, in the lonesome depths of suffering and despair. He was found when humans were on their knees, broken, and facing the darkest abyss. It was when a man had given up his hope and fallen into the deepest, most agonizing, most shadowed crevice of his soul that he was able to cry out—“Please!”—and to hear the quiet response—“I’m here.”
Might a human find God by searching the sky? Looking up to the soaring spire of a church? Looking up to a master’s painting on a chapel ceiling? Looking up to the echoing exultations of choirs that climbed cathedrals and carried hearts heavenward?
The wind knew up was the way for some.
Looking up was something humans liked to do. But some never found God when they looked up; they only found him when they fell down.
The wind had seen many men on their knees through the eons. Some struggled to stand, hating that they’d fallen, but others knew kneeling was the only way to receive grace from above.
The solemn one was on his knees. He crouched in the darkened cell, his shoulders shaking, his sobs silently caged by his heart. The wind slid across his bare back, tracing the raised scars and the darkly lined tattoos.
It was cold in the asylum’s cell. The air wove an icy frost over his skin and left the pink scars white-edged. The darkness pressed over him. There was no light—not even a knife of it slid under the thick door. He was in the farthest, deepest reaches of the asylum’s maze, where the Wards had kept those they wanted to break.
The floor was hard-packed dirt and cold, uneven stone. The wind traced across the rock, feeling the trickle of the solemn one’s warm blood leaking into the ground. His jeans were torn, his knees scraped raw.
His blood smelled like a shadowed valley, like a pit of anguish, like the blood of a thousand suffering souls praying for relief. It was tears on the edge of a sharpened blade, and the solemn one was the hand who wielded it.
The wind tasted every depravity that had ever festered in this world. All of them were brewing in the solemn one’s blood.
The wind didn’t need light to see. It trailed up the solemn one’s shuddering chest, patted his throbbing heart, and settled in the wracked, choked, soundless sobs falling from his parted lips.
He was whispering something. The words were soundless. But with each pained, agonized exhale, the solemn one whispered again.
What? the wind asked. What did you say?
The solemn one didn’t answer. He couldn’t hear the wind.
Instead, his chin dropped to his chest, and his hands fell to the ground. His fingers clutched the dirt and the rock. He was hanging onto the bloodied ground as he wept. The wind trailed through the tears falling over his cheeks.
It was strange to taste the salt and the sea and the cosmic waters in this dark, mournful place. But what had the wind always said? A human’s tears were their plea to return to the place from where they’d come, and which they’d forgotten.
The wind rubbed across the solemn one’s salty-wet cheek. It had been certain there was no good left in him. It had been certain there was no sliver of love left. But what was this?
Solemn one, it whispered. Solemn one. Be strong. Take heart.
He looked up, lifted his chin, and peered through the darkness.
