Questioning showed a lack of devotion, and Maeve was nothing if not devout.
She’d spent years bundling up her questions into neat parcels and shoving them into the furthest recesses of her mind, hoping to forget the truth that underneath the surface she presented as an acolyte, as abeliever, she was cracked. Crumbling and drying out.
Soon, her questions would ruin her.
If she attained lead iconographer, it might allow her to pick at the secrets that shrouded the Abbey, like the saints’ ability to answer prayers or why their community needed to remain separate from the outside world. Maybe she could even convince them to loosen their rules around friendships between theacolytes. Unpicking their rigid confines wouldn’t be easy, nor could she do it alone, but as lead iconographer, she could encourage the process.
But not yet.
She couldn’t questionyet.
Maeve shifted off her bed to kneel. She pictured Felix as he’d looked in his icon. Paint and canvas and not flesh and blood. Someone who couldn’t see her in her entirety. Someone safer at a distance. The prayer for forgiveness came easily to her lips.
All too soon, the bells for the morning meal split the air.
Ezra was an early riser. Why hadn’t he come to see her yet? He had said a good night’s sleep might offer clarity, that he’d talk to her tomorrow, nowtoday.
Yet… nothing.
She pushed up to her feet and rubbed the ache in her back as the bells finished their chiming. She kept her space neat and orderly. Jumpers, coats, and dresses in the wardrobe. Shoes under the desk, laces tucked inside. Freshly cleaned brushes in a glass jar she had salvaged from the sea. Coins stacked in a neat pile, one on top of the other.
Sitting in front of the small mirror, she smoothed her pale, thick hair with a boar bristle hairbrush before braiding it down her back. She leaned closer to the mirror, touching her fingertip to where the thin skin under her eyes shifted to a bruised purple. Another mark of a sleepless night and too little sunlight.
She tried the door, finding it unlocked. Maybe she’d imagined the metallic echo of Ezra bolting it shut last night, or maybe he’d told her to meet him in his study and she’d forgotten. Either way, if she didn’t hurry, she was going to miss breakfast. She stepped into the hall, casting a final look at her bedroom. Water beaded on the iron-webbed window like pearls, tracking down the glass in slick rivulets. Sunlight illuminated swirling dust motes.
For a moment, the dust flashed gold.
Her steps faltered. She blinked once, twice, as a shudder coursed through her body. Emptying her thoughts, Maeve kept moving. A cold rush of sea air swept through the corridor as she approached the stairs leading to the courtyard below. Despite the early hour, the courtyard was half-full of acolytes milling about. Though each acolyte kept to a schedule of meals, prayers, and hours designated for study or craft, interaction between each other was minimal in the extreme. Even after over a decade at the Abbey, Maeve wasn’t sure if she could count any of her fellow acolytes as true friends – exactly as the elders wished it to be.
She scanned the courtyard for Ezra, instead spotting Brigid heading towards the open doors of the dining hall. She let out a relieved breath. Just the person she ought to speak to. If there was anyone who might know what strange phenomenon had completed the icon, it was the lead iconographer.
The stairway down the courtyard was crowded this time in the morning with the youngest acolytes leaving the basilica. Maeve gazed over their heads as she reached the ground floor, searching for Ezra’s familiar cap of thick grey hair. Had he taken the early prayers, maybe?
A bright wash of light cut from the gap between the massive doors leading to the basilica, momentarily flooding her vision. She blinked. The sound of the acolytes pattering feet disappeared up the stairs behind her.
Suddenly, a shout cut the air.
Two elders wrestled a young boy from the basilica before throwing him bodily onto the rough flagstone. One knelt, wagging a finger in the boy’s face. Maeve was too far to see what was being said but close enough to see how his face paled as he gazed up. His mess of blond curls flung back from his face. A tear, vivid against the bright blue of his eyes.
She started forward, to intervene or to watch closer, she wasn’t yet sure.
She’d also been thrown from the basilica in her younger yearsfor gossiping, picking at the pews, lagging behind on the prayers. Still – he didn’t deserve the rough treatment. Her heart clenched at the startlingly red blood streaking down his temple.
Maeve froze mid-stride.
Something was strange about the boy’s habit.
His collar flapped in wide points that covered his shoulders, the edges intricate with embroidery. She hadn’t seen that style in years, and maybe only in icons. It had to be at least twenty years old. Perhaps older. They were given new habits each year, some subtle differences marking the year’s style. Always in dark grey for acolytes. As the previous years were taken to be remade… there was no reason for the boy to wear something so markedly old-fashioned.
The boy reached out, clasping his hand on one of the elder’s shoulder. The elder jerked back, his hand flying towards the boy’s face in an open-palmed slap.
‘Maeve!Maeve.’
Maeve whipped around. Her legs were shaking, a stitch in her lungs like she’d been running.
No one was there.
An ink-black raven sprang off the arched cloisters above. Wingbeats filled the air as it ascended towards the pearl-grey sky, disappearing amongst the clouds.
