A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel #1)(81)

Something awake.

My mother’s word comes back to me then.

Convivificat.

Something inside Auden is stirring, and as soon as I think it, I perceive that maybe the same is happening for me, that each breath I breathe of this God-filled winter air is a breath that’s changing me. Like the magic of Thornchapel is coming into my lungs and from my lungs to my blood and from my blood to every beating, living part of my body, until my heart and my mind and every curve, corner and plane of my skin is tingling with it.

Our eyes meet through the bright haze of the lantern light and I think I see him swallow.

“Let’s go to the thorn chapel, Proserpina,” he says. “Let’s finish this.”

And he’s not asking, he’s not suggesting. He’s telling, and so I turn and together we walk into the heart of the magic and into the living air of the thorn chapel.





Chapter 24





Delphine is waiting for us by the altar, all faint flickering light and glimpses of long gold hair. And there is something very lordly about her as we approach the two menhirs that guard the entrance to the stone row. Even in her red wool coat and rain boots, she looks regal, and even though she’s been alone in this buzzing, magic night for at least fifteen minutes, she seems nothing short of confident and brave.

Sweet, bubbly Delphine is the lord of the manor for real right now, and somehow that makes perfect sense. Somehow it feels like it couldn’t have happened any other way.

One by one, we enter the stone row, Rebecca first, then Becket, then Saint. I follow them, dreaming on my feet, my skin and lips and breasts tingling with whatever is in the air tonight, nature or God or many gods or even just the manifested energy of enormous, thrilling potential.

And because I’m dreaming, I’m not ready for what I feel as I pass through the guard stones and begin my walk to the altar.

I feel drunk, even though I haven’t had anything to drink, and I’m sure I must be asleep, even though I’m more awake than I’ve ever been. I can sense the weight of this stone-lined path, the sheer gravity of it, as if it gathers everything to itself so that it can run like a river down to the altar at the end. With each step closer I get to the end, I hear impossible things. Music, voices, drums. Sounds from nowhere, sounds from another time.

And then I’m within the ruins of the chapel, and the drums recede ever so slightly, although they don’t entirely go away. They stay just within hearing, just within awareness. They match the pound and pulse of my heart; they match the fall of my feet on sacred ground.

I tell myself I’m dreaming.

I tell myself it can’t be what I think. I’m too fanciful, too ready to believe, too eager.

But even Rebecca—the least eager of us to believe—looks troubled as we meet Delphine at the altar. She keeps glancing around the ruins and into the trees, as if she’s trying to locate the source of a sound, and I notice Saint is too.

Auden has eyes only for the altar. Or rather, a point just beyond it, a point where a door could be if a door existed, which it doesn’t.

But before I can ask him what he sees, Becket starts the ceremony, having memorized the script as if it were one of his normal priestly duties. As if it being about St. Brigid just makes it another arcane Catholic rite, and nothing more.

“Lord, we bring you your bride, St. Brigid,” he says. “What will you have us do?”

I expected this to be awkward too, like when students are forced to read a play aloud in class, but maybe the long walk in the dark woods has pressed all the awkwardness right out of us or maybe those otherworldly drums are encouraging us or maybe it’s that Becket says his part so surely and so seriously it feels impossible not to be sure and serious along with him.

Or maybe it’s because this is all a dream, and in a dream, you can do anything you want without shame.

Delphine already has her paper in her hand and glances down at it once before answering. “Make a circle of light around us and then bring her to me.”

Rustling over the wet grass, we walk a circle around Delphine and set the items we brought down at the altar as we finish. Then we each find a place to set our lantern down, until they’re in a circle around the altar and us and a low wooden platform that must have been built this morning. I wonder who built it until I see Saint watching me examine it. I give him a tentative smile, still upset about what’s between us, but thanking him for his thoughtfulness. Tonight when I share my body with someone else for the very first time, I won’t have to do it in the cold mud and that’s because of him.

My smile seems to surprise a vulnerable near-smile of his own right out of him, but he clamps down on it quickly, returning to his usual closed-off expression.

Becket told us earlier that the circle is one of the most important parts of the ceremony, that it represents protection and the sacred, that it marks the space we’ll move in as holy. And so accordingly, four of us have arranged our lanterns to line up with the four cardinal directions, and as we all set them down, we each said a prayer to St. Brigid, asking her to protect us and protect our circle as we celebrate her feast.

And then we turn back to Delphine, all of us in a circle of faint light. The darkness pools in the corners of the chapel and in the center of our circle, but it’s not ominous, it’s not frightening. It feels like a shadowed library or a dark beach. Awake and inviting. Quiet, except for the low pulse of drums that can’t be seen and the snatches of whispers coming from the woods.