A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel #1)(80)
If it bothers Auden that Delphine is representing his home for our ritual when she could have had that role in real life if she’d married him, he doesn’t show it. Instead he nods, a little furrow pulling between his brows as he mentally assesses our supplies and then checks his watch.
“It’s nearly nine now,” he says. “I think if we have everything we need, we should head out there while the rain is holding off.”
We all start getting our things, and I walk over to Delphine and squeeze her hand.
“I don’t know what to say to someone I’m about to have sex with,” I whisper, and her giggle fills the room.
“Me neither,” she says back, a little gleefully.
“Is this the fun adventure you wanted?”
She dimples at me. “It is.” And then she squeezes my hand back. “I’ve been thinking, you know, about what everyone said yesterday about virginity and first times and what they mean. And I think if we get to pick, then I’m going to pick this as my first time. I’m going to lose my virginity with you, Poe Markham, and I couldn’t be happier.”
We were too shy for the ritual bathing, but otherwise we’re trying to follow the Consecration’s rubric for the ceremony as closely as we can. So Delphine ventures down to the thorn chapel first—after both Rebecca and Auden make sure her phone is with her and charged and also that she has a small flashlight in case the whole lantern thing doesn’t work out—and then we follow about fifteen minutes later.
At first, I feel very silly as we grab our things, light our lanterns, and make for the south wing. Even after we come out onto the terrace, Becket closing the door behind us and giving the whining Sir James Frazer one last affectionate scratch before locking him in the house, I still feel like we’re about to play a very awkward party game. Like we’re going to get there and no one is going to be feeling it and it’s going to feel so forced and embarrassing and we’ll realize we’re not children anymore and the time for games and play is over. And then we’ll trudge back home, moody and chilled, in a humiliated silence that will stretch beyond tonight and into tomorrow, into the next week and the week after that, until it becomes obvious to all of us that we can’t be friends any longer.
And then I’ll have nothing.
Not better knowledge of myself, not better knowledge of my mother, not even a fun memory to mark the time I spent here. Nothing.
But that’s not what happens.
The farther and farther we get from the house, the more real everything starts to become. The homey light from the windows spills only halfway down the terrace steps, and then, more suddenly than you’d expect, we’re in darkness as we walk across the lawn.
The low rain clouds above push the dark down onto us; the trees on either side press it in. The dark rolls down the moors like fog, settling more deeply in the low places and thickening the air until every breath is a lungful of wet, Dartmoor night. Only our lanterns beat it back, but even then it’s only barely, and every step we take down to the concealed path coming out of the maze is a step away from comfort and the known. A step away from reason and modernity and all the things I hadn’t realized I depended on so much until suddenly I’m in the cold, damp night with only a lantern to light my way.
No music, no podcasts, no blue-glow screen to connect me to anything other than this moment right here. This single line of us moving wordlessly toward the woods and stepping between the trees, this darkness and these dancing flames trapped behind glass as our lanterns sway. The crunch of the occasional leaf or stick as we step, the puffs of exertion as we walk, the rustle of hidden animals under the cover of night as they go about their animal business.
“Can you feel it?” someone whispers, and I realize it’s Becket. He sounds rapturous. “Can you feel it?”
For a moment, I don’t think I can, I think I’m only feeling the usual fascination I have toward the winter landscape, but after a minute or two, I start to sense it. A prickle at the back of my neck. A strange hum in my chest.
Heat at the back of my eyelids, like I’m about to cry, except I’m not sure if they’re happy tears or sad tears or both. It’s more like I’m remembering something I’ve forgotten, and I’ve forgotten so long ago that the remembering of it feels like discovery.
It’s like the memory of my mother calling my name or the feeling of my first library card, plastic and colorful in my hand. It’s like kissing Saint or kneeling before Auden. It’s like having someone trace pain up and down my body until the world makes sense again. It’s like the smell of old books and the sound of thick-leaved trees in a summer storm and the chatter of a clear river over bright stones.
It’s home and it’s not. It’s old and it’s young, and it’s far and it’s near, and it’s in my body and also dancing along my skin, dancing away too fast for me to grab at it.
It’s loving and it’s stern.
It’s generous and it’s cruel.
It’s every feeling I ever associated with God, but instead of a church of stone and glass, it’s here in the woods, suffusing every particle of air and darkness and damp with burning, bright life.
“I feel it,” I murmur, and at the same time I hear Saint say, “Yes, I feel it too.”
Rebecca doesn’t answer, but Auden does pause for a moment. He’s behind me, at the very back of our line, and when I turn to see why he’s stopped, he’s standing there with the lantern by his side and his head bowed, as if he’s praying. But when I lift my own lantern to see his face, I see more than awe and humility there, I see something else. Something wild and new and feral.