Maeve rubbed her hands up and down her thighs until her chafed skin began to burn. Jude’s face wavered into focus as he held them down, stilling the frantic motion. She was sitting in a chair with him kneeling before her. Books surrounded them. Fine gold powder spun in the sunlight, as vivid as the water gild she used in her paintings. A mark of his magic or of hers?
He was his icon for a heartbeat of a moment – a holy replica, perfect in its distance.
Then, the sun shifted, and Jude returned. The catalyst for every painful moment of deconstruction she’d felt since entering his home. He had been marked as a saint in name, yet Maeve was beginning to believe he was anything but.
Still – she couldn’t look away.
Gold dust coated his hair and the tops of his shoulders. The bow of his lips. She eased free of his hands to brush the top of his cheekbone with her fingertips. He inhaled sharply, something soft and begging in his eyes before he pushed to his feet.
‘I need you to tell me what you remember,’ he said without preamble. ‘Quickly.’
‘Of what?’ Maeve breathed, still staring up at him.
Jude made a frustrated sound deep in his throat. He began pacing around the room, stirring up a cloud of gold as he went. ‘Siobhan, Maeve. The memory she showed you. Was it of the Goddenwood?’
The Goddenwood…
Memories of the fabled town slipped away faster every second. Water from a drain, smoke in the wind. There one second and gone the next, too fluid to grasp and too swift to chase.
‘We went to the pub, she wasn’t – her mind,’ Maeve choked. ‘She didn’t seem okay. At all.’
‘She’s not.’ Jude stopped walking. ‘Not at all.’
Maeve closed her eyes. She used to pray to Siobhan’s icon in the Abbey, didn’t she? She’d liked the colour of her robes – cadmium yellow. ‘She’s a saint,’ Maeve said, her voice cracking.
‘Was,’ Jude corrected. ‘Wasa saint. The Abbey broke her mind when they discovered she had the memory magic. She lived in the Goddenwood for years before she escaped.’
Maeve swiped fretfully at her damp cheeks. ‘How? How did they break her mind?’
Jude studied the sky from the window. The subtle rise and fall of his chest drew her attention. Maeve brought both hands to her sternum, just below her collarbone. Right where the tattoo marking sainthood would go if she were one.
‘The Goddenwood,’ he repeated, turning to face her. ‘What do you remember?’
‘A forest, a river. Cold water. The village was…’ she shut her eyes. ‘Perfect. Clean, silent. No one was around, but it felt– peaceful?’ She gritted her teeth as pain glittered behind her closed lids. She’d been in Siobhan’s memories less than an hour ago. It shouldn’t be this difficult. ‘No. Not peace. Frozen, almost.’
She opened her eyes to Jude holding out a torn page from a book and a stump of charcoal. ‘Sketch it.’
Maeve took the items. The texture of the charcoal was comforting in its familiarity. ‘Sketch the Goddenwood? Why?’
‘I use books to trap memories. Siobhan knits. I think your painting, or drawing, in this case, might be how your magic controls its outbursts,’ Jude said. ‘Memories are fragile things our magic loves to eat, whether that’s by our own hands or the Abbey’s. The books are how I both siphon off the excess and preserve my remaining memories.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Before I skim off the unruly bits, even after, if I’m not careful, my magic has outbursts. Times where I leap into someone else’s memories, when my… emotions become hard to handle. I think painting is your version of that.’
‘Outbursts like when you grabbed my wrists or pulled me from the bog?’ she asked.
‘Something like that.’ Jude considered her. ‘And it can show you the truth of a memory if it’s different from what you might believe. Your painting might be an even greater link between memories and the Abbey than my books or Siobhan’s knitting. There’s a connection there, something I’ve been exploring. I’ve been researching it here—’ he cast his hand across the expanse of the library. ‘Not all of these are my memories. Many of them are books. Abbey books. Your icons might allow the Abbey to control those of us who hold the memory magic and—’ his throat worked. ‘And those of us who are saints.’
Saints—
Despite their similarities – the memory magic they both held, the gold dust, the expulsion from the Abbey – he could answer prayers where she could not. He bore a mark on his chest. The Abbey had chosen him, seen the power in him and veneratedhim because of it, only to send him away when they learned of his ability to influence memories. Had they sent him away so they could use him? And did her icons help in that manipulation?
Suddenly, Jude rounded her wrist with his fingers, pulling her hand into a shaft of sunlight. ‘Will you?’ He skated his thumb over the edge of her forefinger, rough from holding a paintbrush. Maeve fought a shiver. ‘Sketch Siobhan’s memory. Sketch the Goddenwood. See if the theory holds true and your memory magic manifests through your art.’
The weight in his gaze, in his touch, was too much to bear. Maeve pulled away. She moved towards the small desk under the window. ‘I can try.’
She’d done a little sketching since her arrival. Quick, messy studies of the moors, of Olive and blackbirds and turbulent skies. Of anything she could see, save Jude. She’d tried not to think too hard about why she’d avoided pressing him to sit for his icon. She’d told him she wasn’t sure if she would continue reporting on him, that her clawing belief hadn’t decided what to latch onto. But that wasn’t true, not anymore. At least not entirely.
She wasn’t choosing Jude or the Abbey. She was choosing the truth, no matter where that lay.
Maeve set her charcoal firmly to the paper.
