Page 59 of A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel 1)
Why am I so messy? So eager? I feel like an overgrown garden, lush and crowded, rioted and jumbled, except instead of leaves and roots and petals, I’m jealousy and hunger and pain and thrill.
All the bitter and all the sweet, all mixed together.
I keep walking and I force my mind back into reality. Or whatever counts as reality here at Thornchapel, where six educated adults have decided to act out an ancient winter ritual for six entirely different reasons. And the reality is that the bride is going to be Delphine.
Even so, everyone will need to consent to taking part, even as a witness. If it was necessary for us all to consent to being present for a short spanking, then it would definitely be necessary for a ritualistic deflowering, and oh my God, never mind about reality, this can’t be reality, why am I even thinking through this?
For a moment, I almost consider not telling the others. I could pretend I never found the book, and we could move forward with the ceremony as we’d planned. Just some lanterns and some cakes, with a few stilted phrases read aloud in between.
Just the game we thought it was going to be.
But the librarian in me feels firmly that they deserve to know. Information is information, after all, and we can decide as a group whether we want to do anything with that information or not. Probably not, considering exactly how lurid and impossible that information is, but still. I won’t make that choice for anyone else. I can’t.
Anyway, I’m already halfway to the chapel ruins, and I don’t want to have taken this long, muddy walk for nothing.
When I get to the clearing, the others are there, standing next to the stone row that leads to the chapel and arguing about something. Sir James Frazer is circling around the clearing, shoving his nose into every clump of grass he can find.
“. . . just because it’s there doesn’t mean we have to use it,” Auden is saying.
“It’s there to be used,” Rebecca argues. “It’s been there to be used for close to four thousand years.”
“And why wouldn’t we use it?” Delphine demands. “What a s
illy thing to say, Auden, really.”
Auden looks up at the sky for patience. “I’m the one being silly?” he mutters to himself. The others ignore him.
They’d all come up from London first thing this morning, and so they’ve already changed into their “let’s go hunting with the dogs” clothes—even Becket. Saint’s the only exception, in his usual boots and jeans. He stands apart from the group, not wearing a coat, and scowling. Even Sir James Frazer gives him a wide berth.
“Ah, Poe,” Becket says as I approach. “Did you have a nice walk up here?”
“I had a muddy walk,” I grouse. “My boots are about five pounds heavier than when I started. Saint, aren’t you cold?”
“No,” is the short reply.
“It’s supposed to rain tomorrow night,” Rebecca says to me, “so I think the mud is here to stay.”
“We should add umbrellas to the list,” Delphine says.
Auden makes an apologetic face. “Delph, it’s going to be hard enough walking with lanterns and our supplies, we can’t add umbrellas too.”
“Rain ponchos then,” she counters.
“God help us all when you start planning the wedding,” Saint remarks, and it’s an innocent enough—if sarcastic—joke, but Delphine stiffens at it, her full lips pursing together in a frown.
“They haven’t even set a date yet, so there’s nothing to plan,” Rebecca cuts in, and it’s hard to tell from her tone of voice whether she’s defending Delphine, accusing Delphine, or just annoyed we’ve gotten off topic.
Delphine frowns even more.
Auden is frowning too, not at Saint or Rebecca, but at his fiancée and her troubled expression.
I decide to change the subject. “Did you guys figure it all out?” I say, gesturing to the stone row and the church. They came out here about an hour ago to assess the ruins and plan out the physical part of the ceremony, and it looks like they’ve also carried in a few bundles of firewood and a tarp.
I assess it all myself, taking in the wet, bare trees and trodden, brownish grass. Mist sparkles in between the branches and in a faint haze around the chapel walls, and the air seems curiously muffled. No wind, no woodland noises. Even our own voices seem to come from a great distance.
Everything is wet and cold and quiet.
It’s so far away from the Thornchapel of my dreams, from my memories of a vivid, whispering place, that disappointment tugs hard in my chest. A little embarrassment too, because I’ve been so excited for our Imbolc ceremony, and I’d been picturing something magical and evocative, like in the painting of Estamond. But right now it just looks like a place. Lovely with its mist and its quiet, but still just a place, still just an ordinary clearing with an equally ordinary historical site. Not the kind of place a smart girl should have spent twelve years dreaming about and making the locus of her every fantasy and desire.
