The room dissolved in a flash of blinding light.
A flow of molten metal from the icon rushed towards him. He shouted, scrambling backwards. Every movement felt laborious, as though he was underwater. The strange thrum pulsed at the back of his skull, behind his lids. An unholy hymn of bells and rising voices.
Suddenly, a veil of darkness fell, consuming the gold in a corrosive wave of black.
The ringing intensified. He smelled something pungent and sweet like flesh set alight. Unable to bear the onslaught, Jude banded one hand over his mouth and the other over his eyes, curling down until his brow hit the floor. The bells clanged louder, louder.
He couldn’t take it. It wastoo much, far too much.
He was no longer sure the floor was beneath his knees. It was only darkness and pain and endless ringing. Something wet trickled down his neck from his ears as the singing grew swollen with an emotion he didn’t yet have a name for.
As quickly as it started, the attack ended.
He awoke on his back, staring up at the ceiling. Silence coated him. He reached up and touched his ears. Nothing; no blood tracing down his neck. He flexed his fingers and wiggled his toes. His body felt like the sea had spat it out.
The sea.
For the first time in eight years, Jude remembered the feel of sand against bare skin. He could recall his glee, childlike and free, as he leapt into the waves. Two boys were beside him in this unfinished memory. He felt their presence, heard their laughter.
His breath hitched.
Some of his memories were there. Some, but not all. Slices of his former life half-returned. A man standing atop an altar, surrounded by cloaked figures, their hands desperate and reaching. Light cutting a slice through the basilica. Tears streaking down his face – from what,from what?
The need to close his eyes and examine what was returned nearly consumed him, but the acrid scent of smoke hit his nostrils before he could.
Burning.
He sat up. The smell scratched at a hidden door in his memory, somewhere long forgotten.
Across the room, Maeve was slapping her discarded cardigan against the ground.
Maeve.He hadn’t forgotten her. She was here, and he knew her.
The relief faded quickly, replaced with confusion as Maeve stamped on the crumpled mass with one booted foot. The floorboards were blackened underneath. The smoke smelled metallic, like blood or festering seawater.
As she stepped back, Jude remembered what had been burning.
His icon.
She turned to face him. Her eyes were wide, lips parted. They stared at each other for a tense heartbeat as Jude remained on the floor. Flames flickered every time he blinked. A thread of memory tugged insistently, still too far to grasp.
There was something there, something on the tip of his tongue—
‘You… you weren’t well,’ Maeve said thickly. ‘I burned the icon and you started screaming. Looking all around like you could see something I couldn’t. Your hands…’ she searched around, mimicking what she’d seen him do only minutes ago. ‘Like you were trying to find something. What did you see?’
He tilted his head up towards the ceiling as he processed her words. The bare plaster between the rafters was stained grey with smoke. Whathadhe seen?
‘Did you hear the bells? The singing?’ he asked.
‘I could only hear you screaming.’ She rocked forward on her toes like she wanted to go to him but decided against it. ‘Did it… work? Did you get your memories back?’
‘Some,’ he replied. ‘But not all. But I feel… better. My mind. It’s much clearer than it was when you were painting. Like a weight has been pulled off me, or a film scraped off my brain.’ He tipped his head back and forth. ‘It feels like my own again. Or closer to it, at least.’ He focused on her. ‘What made you burn the icon?’
Maeve knelt down beside him. ‘After you prayed, you collapsed. You started…’ her voice hitched. ‘Started convulsing. You looked at me like I wasn’t there. It was horrible.Awful, Jude.’ She shook her head, gaze falling on the burnt remains of the icon. ‘I’d burned Siobhan’s icon to try and destroy it. We didn’t know if it worked then but I – I had to try. I had to trysomething.’
Wax puddled on the floor next to the icon in a milky-whitecrust. The room reeked of smoke, but he didn’t care. Not with what he’d just realized.
Jude stood, pacing in a tight circle, thinking. ‘This is good. It’s very good.’
