Page 87 of Feast of Sparks (Thornchapel 2)
“The real St. Sebastian knew death intimately,” she said. “When the emperor who loved St. Sebastian chose to bind him to a stake and have him shot with arrows, he was thought dead and left there to rot. But he wasn’t dead—Saint Irene found him and nursed him back to health in her home. It was a miracle that he survived, that he lived! Anyone would have understood if he’d tucked that miracle into his palm and lived the rest of his life thanking God. But that’s not what St. Sebastian did, that’s not who he was. He went back. He went back to the emperor he used to love and he spoke his truth to him, even though it meant a certain fate. The emperor had him beaten, beaten until death, and then thrown into the sewers. So St. Sebastian has the honor of suffering the full pain of martyrdom twice. Twice for the glory of God.”
With his brain bruised and aching, with every breath reminding him of Lee’s deadened gaze and clean trainers, St. Sebastian saw very little honor in suffering at the moment. It didn’t feel glorious, it didn’t feel holy. It didn’t feel anything like having Auden bite his lip or tug on his hair.
It felt shitty and terrible and stupid, and it mauled at him like a tiger, like it had a life of its own.
Jennifer seemed to know what he was thinking. “I didn’t name you St. Sebastian because I wanted you to suffer,” she said softly. “I named you St. Sebastian because St. Sebastian, like Santa Muerte, shows us that death is part of life. Death is meant to be lived with, danced with, talked to. Death is meant to be stared at, and then she should be welcomed when it is time for her scythe to harvest our lives and bring us to our loved ones who’ve gone before.” She pushed his hair from his forehead with warm fingertips. “I wanted you to have death’s protection and friendship. I wanted you to live without the fear of it.”
“I can’t help it,” St. Sebastian whispered. His lips were dry, his voice hoarse. “I’m still afraid.”
He could only admit this with the pain like a cloud over him, with his eyes closed, with the room a little cloister for their folk saints and stories of death.
“I know,” his mother said, gently, in Spanish. “I know you’re afraid, because I’m afraid too. I’m so afraid for my son that when I pray, the only word that comes out is please. And I don’t know if I’m praying to God or the Virgin or Santa Muerte or St. Sebastian himself—I only know that I’d pray to them all day and night if it meant I could keep you from harm. But there is something worse than being afraid, and that is letting fear so far into your life that it stops being a life at all. Do you understand this?”
“I guess,” he said in English. He didn’t guess, he knew. He knew what she meant and what she was trying to convey to him—that one act of evil shouldn’t snuff out the lights in his mind, the candles of fantasy and hope and belief that belonged uniquely to him. But he couldn’t have predicted what she’d say next, which was so Jennifer Martinez that it actually made him smile for the first time since yesterday.
“And I won’t let it. I won’t let the fear in,” she said firmly, as if that was that. His mother wouldn’t let this suppurate into his life, she wouldn’t let him be afraid. Fear and hatred and bigotry had nothing in the face of Jennifer’s blazing love.
And though even then he knew it wouldn’t be that easy, even though he could already sense the years ahead looming back at him with their ashy, grayed-out silence, he still loved her for trying. He still loved her for taking his pain as her own, for lifting the burden of what will happen next, for being safety incarnate so that he could just ache in peace.
Yes, love meant hell to pay sometimes. But love also meant hell had the brightest ribbons and seams of heaven woven in, because could it really be hell if someone who loved you refused to let you hurt alone?
“How did you find out about Auden?” St. Sebastian asked after a minute. “Did the police know?”
When his mother didn’t answer right away, he cracked open his eyes and then immediately regretted it, shutting them again. Jennifer kissed his forehead and stood up.
“I’m going to see about more pain medicine,” she said in English.
“You didn’t answer,” he complained.
Another pause. “No,” she said finally. “I didn’t find out from the police.”
And then he heard her leave the room before he could ask any more questions.
Before he was able to leave the hospital the next day, the doctor looked him over a final time, making him go through some vision and balance tests before reconfirming that the injury had indeed been mild, and after a few weeks of rest and care, he’d be well again.
The doctor frowned though, after pocketing his pen. “That little cut under your lip—it’s not on your report,” he said. “I need to amend that—”
“It’s not from the—um—the thing in the graveyard,” St. Sebastian said. He could feel his cheeks heat, could feel his mother’s head swivel to stare at him. “It was from before.”
“Brilliant,” the doctor said with a smile, visibly relieved at not having to do more paperwork. “Shall we get on with your discharge then?”
The whole way home, St. Sebastian played with the cut and bruise on his lower lip, and he knew his mother was pretending not to watch out of the corner of her eye.
“The doctors asked me about all the drawings on your body,” she said. They were bumping down a hedge-lined road to get to Thorncombe. “I said a friend did it, but it was Auden, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Was it Auden who left that mark on your lip?”
St. Sebastian’s cheeks burned again, along with his chest. “No,” he lied. He didn’t know why he was lying, really, just that he felt suddenly betrayed by her nosiness, betrayed by this question that felt like an accusation. How could she have been so tender at his bedside and then suddenly be so…so…invasive?
“I know it was, St. Sebastian,” she said. “I can tell by how upset you are now.”
“It’s private,” he said mulishly. “It’s none of your business.”
She sighed, turning them through the corner that opened into Thorncombe’s sanctuary of trees and stone and wooden pub signs. “Tell me if you fall in love with him. Please.”
“And then you’ll give me all the reasons why I shouldn’t be in love with him?”
