Siobhan’s voice trickled into her ears.
No safe place, daughter of memory.
Maeve’s head tipped slowly forward.
21
Maeve
The dark of the forest gave way to the black of mud, the crisp edges of the buildings and the golden gleam of the clock tower falling into ruin as a soulless rot crept across the Goddenwood. From the outskirts of the memory, Maeve watched as Siobhan wandered through the town. She looked to be around twenty years younger. Tears tracked messy lines down her face. She was alone.
Suddenly, she stopped. Turned her head towards the sky.
In a macabre transformation Maeve wished she could look away from, Siobhan shifted from middle-aged to her current state, black hair into white, her back stooping, skin sagging around her face and neck. Her loose dress drooped to the side with her sudden frailty, displaying the sharp edge of her shoulder and the flash of a black-ink tattoo on her skin. Blankness settled behind her eyes as both hands rose to wrap around the icon swinging from her neck. She tore at it so hard that a line of vivid red opened up on the sides of her throat.
‘You took it from me!’ Siobhan screamed. ‘Everything.Everything.’ She dropped the necklace to slap both palms over her ears. ‘Stop it. Stop speaking. Stop asking. Stop it!’
She froze, staring forward. Her eyes had lost all lucidity. ‘They’ll find the old girl,’ she muttered as she slowly lowered to her knees. ‘She hears their prayers. No safe place.’
She drew something from inside her cloak, holding it aloft. Arugged wooden frame surrounded a scrap of canvas, small enough to fit in her palm. Maeve’s heart skipped a beat as her gaze caught on the distinctive shine of a painted gold halo. The icon’s cadmium-yellow paint was faded, the features blurred and clumsy, but Siobhan’s likeness was unmistakable.
Then, Siobhan did something Maeve wasn’t expecting – she bent over her own icon and began to pray. Her words were too soft for Maeve to make out, but she recognised the lilting tone, the tightly clamped eyes and bowed head.
The town seemed to flicker as, just for a moment, it returned to its former illustrious state before falling back into ruin. Siobhan looked up as prayers continued to tumble from her lips. The jumbled words became clear: she was asking for clarity, for her mind back, to be released from the Abbey once and for all.
For a moment, itworked.
Siobhan’s eyes were clear, fully alert as they pierced Maeve’s. It was impossible to tell, but Maeve knew her memories were there, fully there in a way they perhaps hadn’t been in years. As long as Siobhan’s lips were moving, as long as she continued praying to her own icon, her mind was her own.
The saint got slowly to her feet. Her arm lifted, pointing directly at Maeve as her voice changed to something low and guttural. ‘Turn. Turn around, daughter of memory. Open your eyes.’
Unable to do anything but obey, Maeve turned.
Suddenly, she was back at the Abbey. The vision lasted less than a minute, but it was enough for Maeve to see what Siobhan wanted to show her. An iconographer Maeve didn’t recognize was bent over a painting, her hand moving in careful strokes across the canvas. On it was Siobhan’s face, almost perfectly formed.
A wash of cadmium yellow.
A dust of gold.
Across from the iconographer sat Siobhan. She looked arounda decade younger than she was currently, her body fragile and skin liver-spotted. She was propped up against the wall. Her eyes had rolled back in her head, displaying a strip of white beneath her lashes.
The iconographer stood, staring at her painting. Her young face was screwed up in pain. Slowly, she reached out and dusted the gold from the canvas, the suddenlydrypaint. She pulled back to examine her fingers, flipping her hand around to gaze at the back of her wrist. Vivid yellow paint stained her dark brown skin beneath the layer of gold. She rubbed them together on her wrist, mixing the gold dust in with the paint.
Then, she left.
An elder entered a moment later, jostling Siobhan awake. She came back to herself with a gasp, looking around wildly. ‘Where… where am I? What happened?’ Her unsteady gaze swung to her icon. ‘No!No– not another. Please, no more, no more. Don’t let them pray. Please, no more prayers. I can’t take it—’
Abruptly, the scene cleared, the Abbey was replaced by Siobhan. Her head was bowed, hands folded in prayer. Her icon rested next to her bent knees. No words left her lips.
A horrifying picture snapped into place. Siobhan’s begging forno more prayersechoed in the sudden silence, and Maeve wondered… were the prayers sent up to the icons, to the saints themselves, damaging their minds?
If so… then why was Siobhan praying to herself so fervently?
The Goddenwood was a haven left to rot, just like Siobhan: drained until nothing was left. The Abbey had taken and taken and taken – her mind, her safety, her youth. She’d been left in the Goddenwood to die until she’d escaped to Oakmoor. The Abbey had shoved her far from home and hung an icon in her place.
Jude was right.
The link between the Abbey and memory lay somehow in her icons. Somewhere in the prayers connecting them with the intercessors, with the elders, with the very Abbey itself.
