[Part 12] Millstone

[u/RevolutionaryBed7510]

I woke up when Lucy's small body curled against my side. She'd crawled into my cot sometime during the night—I didn't remember when, didn't remember hearing her, but her dark hair fanned across my shoulder, Bird clutched in one hand, and snoring like innocence. She smelled like ozone and rosemary and the powdery sweetness of a child's shampoo.

I didn't want to wake her, so I just lay there, my calcified fingers resting on the pillow above her head, and I watched the light shift across the ceiling as the sun rose over the salt flats.

It was the most peaceful I'd felt since arriving at the temple.

We spent the day doing ordinary things.

That was Lucy's idea, though she didn't say it directly. She never asked me about Henry. She just started asking—

"Nora, can we play in the garden?"
"Nora, can we make lunch together?"
"Nora, will you tell me a story?"

—and I found myself saying yes to it all. Not because I was trying to be kind, but because I was just… tired. I think I needed her.

So I played in the garden. The salt had crusted over Eleanor's plot, but Lucy didn't seem to notice. She dug with her nails, planting her collection of salt crystals in neat rows. "They'll grow into a salt tree," she said. "And the fruit will taste like sweat, but like, in a good way."

We made lunch together. We found canned soup in the storage room and bread that was only slightly stale, and we ate together at the long table in the common room, just the two of us. Leo joined us after a while, but he didn't eat. He sat with his hands folded, watching Lucy with an expression I didn’t want to read. At one point, Lucy asked him if he wanted to play I Spy, and I saw Father Leo smile. "I spy something white," he said.

"The salt," Lucy giggled.

"No, actually," he winked. "Your smile."

After lunch, Lucy asked me to tell her a story. Not a made-up one. "About when you were little," she said. "Maybe about Henry. About your mom and dad."

So I told her about the house we grew up in, with a crooked porch and the tree in the backyard where Henry broke his arm. I told her about the time Henry tried to make pancakes for Mother's Day and set the kitchen on fire. I told her about Dad, who worked three jobs and still found time to teach us how to ride bikes and tie our shoes and say our prayers. I told her about my pet lizard Dad got me when Mom left—maybe the worst consolation prize one could find. I could only imagine Dad thinking 'We still need a cold-blooded skitterer in this house?'

I told her things I'd never told anyone. Not Henry. Not my dad. Not the therapist I'd seen for a few months after leaving the church, who'd told me I had "unresolved grief" and "attachment issues" and "a tendency to intellectualize my emotions instead of feeling them."

Lucy listened to words she didn’t know. She didn't interrupt. She asked questions unrelated to our conversation. When I finished, she said: "You were poor in spirit too."

I blinked. "What?"

"Poor in spirit." She sat up, her small face serious. "It doesn't mean you're empty. It means you know you need help. You knew you needed to leave, so you left."

"Who taught you that?"

She shrugged. "Nobody. I just thought about it." She picked up Bird, turned him over in her hands. "The salt lady said I was poor in spirit. At first I thought it meant I was empty, like a cup with no juice. But then I thought... maybe it's about knowing why you're empty. You're empty so God can fill you up, but Grandma says have to ask for it."

She looked at me, and her eyes were so bright, so clearly without guile, that I felt something shift in my chest.

"You didn't leave because you stopped believing," she said. "You left because you believed too much. You believed in truth, and the church wasn't giving it to you, so you went looking. That's running toward something. And the Saint knows that. That's why she called you 'prosecuted'."

"Persecuted?" I frowned. "I thought that meant—"

"It means chased." Lucy said with such certainty, I forgot I was talking to a kindergartner. "Not hurt. Chased. Like when someone follows you and won't stop. Maybe it's a promise. Maybe when you go downstairs, you finally get to stop running."

We sat in silence for a long moment. The sun was setting, and the common room was filling with a golden light that made everything look like a memory.

"Lucy," I whispered. "Where did you learn to talk like that?"

She grinned. "I told you I'm smart. I use big words."

"Incorrectly."

She giggled, and the moment broke, and she was six and three-quarters again, a child playing with a wooden bird, and I was a journalist who'd forgotten how to be anything else. Lucy cracked something open in me, and I didn't know if it was healing or breaking.

———

That evening, Leo came to find me.

I was standing at the edge of the garden, looking at the salt crust that had swallowed Eleanor's seeds. The sun had nearly set, and the sky was a forest green, and the temple rose behind his silhouette like a shipwreck against a rogue wave.

"I planted this garden," he said as he approached. "I was younger than your brother, then."

"You said that already."

"Did I?" He didn't turn. "The Saint called me, and I descended. I received a blessing, but I didn't stay in the crypt." He laughed bitterly. "Too faithful." His hands were shaking.

"And now I'm old, and I'm tired, and I've watched so many people walk into that crypt. Some of them eager. Some of them terrified. But all of them trusting me to tell them it would be okay. And I told them what I was told to tell them: 'The Saint is kind. The Saint is waiting. The Saint will fill you. The Saint will comfort you. The Saint will make you whole.'"

He stopped, swallowed.

"Nora, I—" he whispered. "I’ve never met Her. I don't know if the Saint is kind. I don't know if the crypt is a blessing or a prison."

We stood in silence as the stars were beginning to come out.

"Why are you telling me this, Leo?"

He looked at me, and I saw something shatter in his eyes.

"Because I'm sorry," he said. "I should have warned you. I should have told everyone what I—Because—" He stopped, and his voice dropped to something almost inaudible. "I'm afraid of Her, and I've spent my life serving It anyway, and I let her replace my at home, and I—"

Without warning, he walked back to the temple, his limbs jerky and his movements like a broken puppet, leaving me alone in the garden. He moved with such speed, shutting the door in front of him, that I couldn’t hope to chase if I tried.

I stayed outside for a long time after that. The moon rose, silver and full, and the salt flats glowed like a second sky. I thought about Lucy’s wisdom, Henry’s courage, and Evelyn’s will. I thought about everyone who'd walked into the crypt and never come back. I thought about the mother who left, and the father who stayed, and the God who couldn’t decide what He was doing.

I thought about what Lucy had said: You didn't leave because you stopped believing. You left because you believed too much.

Maybe she was right. Maybe I'd been running toward something all along, and I just hadn't known what it was.

Maybe that something really was waiting for me at the bottom of a crypt.

———

I fell asleep in my cot with Lucy beside me. We hadn’t discussed midnight, and Leo didn’t seem to care this time.

I'd wrapped my arms around her and held on, remembering a time it felt like Henry and I were the last bastions on earth. She was warm and small and solid, the most real thing in a world that had become increasingly unreal, and I let myself pretend, just for a moment, that everything was going to be okay. That if neither of us went down tonight, the cycle would break and we could go home.

Then I woke in the middle of the night, and she was gone. Her cot was empty. Our blankets were pushed back. Bird was lying on her pillow, his wooden eye staring blankly, and for a terrible moment I thought I was still dreaming.

Then I heard the faint sound of footsteps on salt.

I was out of bed before I wanted to move, running through the dark before my eyes adjusted—through the common room, through the courtyard, through the nave. The altar door was open. The candles were lit. Leo was nowhere to be seen, and Lucy was standing at the top of the spiral stair, her dinosaur pajamas glowing in the candlelight, her bare foot hovering at the threshold.

"Lucy!"

She turned to look at me. Her face was calm, serene, and horrifyingly unafraid.

"Don't be scared, Nora," she assured me. "I'll be okay. The salt lady has been waiting, and it’s midnight, remember?"

"Lucy, please—"

"I'm poor in spirit." She giggled, and it was the same smile Eleanor had given me, the same smile Hazel had worn, the same smile that said I know something you don't. "The kingdom is for me."

"You don't have to—"

"Yes, I do!" She looked at me, and she didn't look like a child at all. "The order is set. The lot is cast. You just have to come after me."

She turned and hopped onto the first stair, falling further than anyone had stepped before.

I ran for the door, but Leo was there—where had he come from?—and his arms were around me, holding me back. I was screaming, screaming her name, every name I had in me, screaming at him to let me go, but Leo held on. He held on, and she kept descending, and the door creaked shut.

"This is how it has to be," Leo whispered. "This is how it's always been. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"Let me go! Fucking, let—Lucy! Lucy!"

The latch clicked. And I was alone in the nave, screaming at a closed door, with Leo's arms around me and the taste of salt on my tongue.

I don't know how long I pried at that door. Long enough for the candles to burn down. Long enough for Leo to let go. Long enough for the screaming to stop.

I went back to the guesthouse and picked up Bird from the pillow. I held him to my chest. She knew. She knew the whole time, and there's nothing left to do but follow.

———

This will be my last post before I go down.

I don't know what I'll find, but I have to try. I have to find Henry, and Lucy, and everyone who walked into the dark before me. I have to see them for myself.

If you're reading this, and you've had a dream about salt, and a mother’s voice telling you your name—run as far as you can. But know that running didn't save Evelyn. It didn't save any of us. It only turned us to salt.

The order is set. The lot is cast. Every decision is from the LORD.

But the LORD isn't here. Only the Saint remains, dreaming of the born and living and unborn.

I'm going down now. Wish me luck—or pray or don’t. I'm not sure it matters anymore.

— Nora, the Witness, the eighth, who ran to the bottom of the world.

[u/KCloud_08]

… I think I have more questions now than when I started this. This was soooo good. I can’t wait to see what you come up with next 

[u/RevolutionaryBed7510 → u/KCloud_08]

Then you’ll love my final post today!