The faceless thing we ad.., p.12
The Faceless Thing We Adore, page 12
What fragments of Aoife remain can’t understand the sheer breadth of this. They shift to something closer, something they can hold.
The panic and wonder and horror that seize the bodies on the shore as Jonah cries, “It is time! It leads us! We follow!” The newly formed knowledge that until today the sea was a threat and bitter lesson, but now it’s become a test and a promise.
The screams of those who dare to leap and are enveloped by nightmares.
I feel Pietro grasp his courage and fling himself in. I feel others follow, I don’t want to but just trust. I feel others freeze, paralyzed by the shouts of people thrashing in the water.
I feel Jonah’s sickness at what he needs to do. “We must all be brave!”
I feel the shame Larissa crushes as she approaches the jump, I can’t fear, trust trust trust. I feel Teresa’s remorse as she moves through the crowd, drawing people to the edge.
I feel Oscar hesitate.
I feel the thorns in Kai’s and Darya’s feet as they run, and the guilt that makes them turn back.
I feel shock rip through Kiera as Oscar shoves her off the rock.
As more and more people enter the water, a richer, stranger, deeper pain rises.
A pain woven through matter and spirit, felt in something other than nerves; the pain of atoms and energy, the fabric of the universe reeling and screeching.
What is in the ocean is nightmares. The concentrated pain of a reality.
Something is dreaming these dreams. That something is in me, and I am in it. And as the last people tumble into the water, the nightmares surge and our senses crumble—
The nightmares fall quiet. I am somewhere else.
They say that to look on a god is to plunge headfirst into madness.
But even madness is a response. There are things minds can’t respond to.
The last scrap of my consciousness remembers: We face incomprehensible things all the time. The scale of the universe, the endlessness of death. We boil them down to things we can hold, write them in numbers and stories, because understanding them would break us.
I comprehend this being less than a bacteria comprehends the body it blooms in. Understanding it cannot break me, because I cannot start to understand.
There is no point trying to name sensations that weren’t made for human senses. I just float in awe in an expanse that echoes with screams. It’s pumps and pulses; light and dark that mutate; tastes I hear and chimes I feel and colors that wriggle under skin; it’s galaxies in cells and momentum with no direction and so much desperate energy trapped in a dormant, dreaming state.
I understand one thing, though. The being I encountered is caged. Trapped in the cave, snared in the nightmares it seeps out into the world.
It asks me, in more and less than words, What would you do?
I am not me; I am just a snap in its intangible nerves, but there’s something of Aoife in the answer, and it shocks me with its vehemence.
Tear my way out.
And it shows me how beautiful it will be when the nightmares end.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
UNSEEN
I WAKE TO A HAND RUNNING THROUGH MY CROPPED HAIR. A SOFT VOICE SINGS in an unknown language. The light’s pale and strange.
I’m Aoife. This mind is mine. This body is mine. I can’t remember what was real and what I dreamed.
I’m on a sofa in the farmhouse, dawn filtering through the curtains, and I’m shaking and shaking and grinning like a child.
“Shhh,” Teresa coos. “Be still.”
I can’t know what I’ve seen. It’s like describing a new color. Memory quits, leaving me with echoing terror and euphoria.
It’s part of me now. I’m part of it. I know that much.
The word gift resounds, translating into the word that was never spoken: sacrifice. I don’t understand how I’m still here.
I don’t understand how to sit up, either. Teresa’s hands are soothing, her lap soft, easing the panic. My voice is slow. “What did you do to me?”
“Feel the sun,” Teresa whispers. “Feel your body. What comes next will be hard. Take this moment.”
The leather of the sofa is strange under my fingers, the realest thing I’ve ever felt. Teresa sings, holding me somewhere warm and quiet where I don’t need to be afraid.
I force myself up. I won’t be lulled. Whatever’s coming, I won’t go into it numb.
Teresa strokes my cheek. “You’re ready, aren’t you? Come.”
Stumbling, I follow. It’s tough, remembering how to tug the puppet strings of my body. I’m blinking like a newborn, learning everything all over again. I can’t run, but it doesn’t matter; whatever’s happening is too far along to stop.
I don’t know if that fills me with fear or joy.
The garden buzzes with bees, poisons and drugs nodding with the breeze. Lavender and rosemary perfume the air; the sky’s golden. I sink onto the swing hanging from the apple tree. It bounces. The beauty tips the balance, and terror overtakes bliss.
This is too much. My breath goes rapid. I want Craig.
I need Craig. Then I’d relax. His arms, when he was sleepy and happy, were the only place I could. Sacrifice, next missing girl, lost to something uncanny; I could be it all, unbowed, if he could tell me I’d been brave.
“Aoife?”
My toes curl into the grass. Jonah emerges from the house, bathed in golden light, gaze softened but still captivating. Teresa stands by, hands clasped.
“Hi,” I say stupidly. I stand, like I’m standing to attention. I try to feel ready. I’m not.
Jonah follows the path between flower beds, stirring up dust and tiny insects. “Aoife, I understand you’re confused, and afraid. Last night—”
I didn’t think I could speak, let alone interrupt Jonah. I surprise myself. “I died, didn’t I?”
I felt it. I felt my heart seize, my organs and bones melt, my cells unravel, my soul or self crumble, I stopped being—
I’d been trying to write it off as a dream. But I died and I’m back and my body feels transitory as smoke.
I must be shaking, maybe my eyes are wild, because Jonah draws me to his chest, surprisingly tender and tentative. It startles me, the intimacy of being in the arms of the man who tugged at my strings as I walked to my death.
I should be angry. I should fight. Nothing in me wants to. I just want to understand.
“You died.” Jonah strokes my shoulder. “And here you are. Every second you walk in the world now will be a miracle of miracles.”
His heartbeat’s steady; his shirt smells like lavender, saltwater, incense; he’s warm. It feels nice. My muscles loosen, and I begin to cry. Dying was strange and lonely and the hideous scale of that presence makes me sickly with my smallness. I walked too far into the dark and the things there found me. I am theirs now.
Jonah rocks me gently as I sob into his shirt. I can cry in front of him. He will comfort me. At least I get to know what that feels like.
“I don’t understand,” I whisper.
“Then let us explain.” I look up. Teresa’s smile makes me cozy, even now. “You were a sacrifice. You know. But we can explain what comes next—”
“Because,” Jonah picks her thread up with the confidence of a decades-long double act, eyes actually twinkling as I pull back and look at him. “We were sacrifices, too.”
Jonah and Teresa wait until my sobs simmer down. I try to make that quick; I need answers, and I’m aware how embarrassing my snivels are.
“I died in that place, too,” Jonah says, when I’m quiet. “We all did.”
I stare. Is that what placed that clashing solemnity and glitter in his eyes?
“Seven years ago,” Jonah locks his hands behind his back, “my family was here, visiting Teresa’s family’s land. There was a tragedy, and a miracle. The being we call the Unseen revealed itself.
“We did not know what it was, but we understood the depth of our debt. I offered myself. It dissolved me in its hidden heart, then returned me to the world, and took me into its service.”
Its service. It occurs to me, with a tingling rush, that I might live.
“We’re a community of offerings,” Teresa concludes. “We give our flesh and souls to the Unseen, and it preserves us to do its work and find and offer others. Those who”—she beams at me, and I blink—“have shown courage and curiosity.”
Pieces spin and rattle; something falls into place. “Everything was—”
“A test,” Jonah confirms. “You passed. You entered the cave when you could have run. You showed yourself more than worthy.”
His approving glow empties my mind. I bask, until my brain catches up. A voice from behind a door, a clink of keys behind a cabinet of butterflies, a sliver of cave in pearly cliffs, a trail of breadcrumbs scattered, spiraling me closer to the figure it always circled around.
“Myri—”
“Myri was never in danger,” Teresa confirms. “She’s extraordinary, and extraordinarily loved. She became what you needed, to guide you to your union with the Unseen.”
“Stand up,” Jonah instructs.
He takes my hand. Softness from someone so alien disorients me even more.
“It’s in you now. In all of us. We’re siblings carrying something unknowable in our marrow.” His fingers move on my skin. “Breathe. Can you feel it?”
I feel my heartbeat. I feel another heartbeat, pulsing through the cool morning air, the herbs, the glitter of the sun. Already there in the passageways and caverns of my body. The same presence, a call and a hunger, so much more palpable now.
It suffuses me, and everything, and connects me to Jonah, the garden, the mountain and the sky and the beating hearts of my new family. It’s wider than I ever imagined, wider than the world. It says, Anything is possible, and once again, that’s freedom.
I let out a slow breath that shudders with wonder.
Teresa takes my other hand, runs her fingers over it lovingly, tracing my bones and tendons, exploring the uncanny new pulse. “There it is. You’ll feel it more and more.”
“What is it? Kiera said …” It’s fuzzy. “… a god?”
The light in Jonah’s eyes moves, the facets of his hazel irises shifting. “The truth is, none of us know.”
I sit abruptly, the motion of the swing redoubling my dizziness. My mouth is dry; the words come out thick. “You … offered me, and yourselves, to it, and you …”
“Don’t have the slightest idea what it is?” Jonah chuckles. “As if you’re a stranger to flinging yourself into the unknown.”
He has a point. I’m no less stunned.
“After offering myself.” Jonah’s hand comes to my shoulder, soothing, appraising the presence in me. Like he might read it through my skin. “I set out to offer others, and to learn its nature and intentions. Until last night, I had succeeded in only one of those tasks.”
The power and brilliance swirls. It’s sickly, honey clotted in my throat. So unknowable I choke on it.
“We’ve been working on it,” Teresa adds drily. “Kiera’s researching the prehistory and mythology of this area. Myri, our oracle, spends much time in communion. All we knew was that it was an entity or phenomenon, filled with desire. That it called to us. And that if we gave ourselves, we were richly rewarded. That was all we had.”
I twist my fingers around the ropes of the swing. The fear’s ebbing and flowing; below it, elation thrums.
“The closest I have to a definition,” Jonah says, “comes from our butterfly friends. You remember, I said that a caterpillar contains the design for what it will grow into?”
I nod, remembering that jade-green chrysalis. In my memory, it’s between my fingers, and I squeeze. I know that didn’t happen.
“Imagine our reality is a grub, nosing through the void, carrying the blueprint for what it can become. That is the Unseen. That is what we give ourselves to.”
This tingling isn’t fear, it’s excitement. I kick off and swing, and the rush of rising and falling joins the rush of adrenaline.
Jonah and Teresa give me that moment, swinging under a sky I feel I could fling myself into. Why not? If everything evolves, perhaps I will leap into the clouds. The strange energy chimes, ripples like harp strings at that thought, that existence hangs at the edge of a vast transformation.
I slow, digging my toes into the earth. Jonah’s smile doesn’t match mine. Teresa’s is strained. She’s stepped back, giving me and Jonah space to shoulder this together.
Jonah lowers himself onto a rock. His amusement has dropped as suddenly as the passing of a storm, a new weight to him. “You’ve heard of the biblical Jonah?”
“Swallowed by a whale, right?” I make what might be an attempt at a cute shrug. The rest of me watches, nonplussed. What is he bringing out in me?
“A large fish, actually.” Jonah scratches his neck, his shoulders hunched. “As a test, or punishment, because he fled instead of sharing the prophecy he was given. Perhaps it was too much for him. But what he saw was bathed in light. I walk in darkness.” Dry amusement flashes. “Trapped in my own whale belly.”
“Fish,” I correct, then stare at myself internally because why would I say that.
Jonah surprises me with a rueful laugh. “I see, Myri has seen … something seismic coming. And last night, I understood what that is. What we are here for. And that …” He straightens and reaches for me, then falls back, an awkward gesture that stuns me almost as much as what he says next. “… is because of you, my dear.”
The harp-string ripples redouble. I’m gawping; my brain’s soup. Even if my mind can’t grasp this, my bones do.
“Two days ago,” Jonah says, “Kiera discovered a rite in a book from the monastery that stood here. We knew it was crucial, but we did not understand fully what the rite aimed to achieve. It was only when you walked into the ocean—the first initiate to do so on waking—and we followed you, that the Unseen showed us the final piece.”
I try to fit this into my mind. Like what I saw last night, I cannot—I can’t hold it.
“It’s trapped.” I manage. “Dreaming—”
“And we understand now”—Jonah’s voice trembles with reverence—“that we are here to wake it. Free it. Return it to the world. Midwives of a cosmic birth. That is what the rite will do. That is our great task.”
What is it that’s so overwhelming? The possibilities of a world infused with something awake, divine, and strange? Or that I played a part in this, that it’s because of me?
I have to realize it again, over and over.
I try to remember what I glimpsed in the ocean, what it promised would follow its waking. I can grasp nothing but a heady rush of release.
Teresa steps up, running her hands down my arms and squeezing my hands like the proud mother of a bride. “Look at you. Our precious gift. Do you feel how delighted with you it is?” She pinches my cheek; the pain is sharp and sweet.
“Are you willing?” Jonah asks. “You’ve been the spark. Will you join our work?”
I pause. It’s too beautiful to trust, isn’t it? Maybe they tell everybody things like this, tell them they’re special. I don’t dare to take this into my hands. It’ll shatter in my grip.
But I remember. A late night, a drunk guy whose grabby hands left me sick and shaky. Texting Craig to say I’d forgotten my keys, and getting a laughing emoji, classic Aoife. Waiting for hours on the doorstep in the autumn chill, watching rain, watching traffic, watching an advertising billboard. A big fake smile shining down, all teeth. A delirious feeling that the world was eating me, bite by bite.
I deserve more. I deserve a new world to bloom in.
Last night, I thought these people were my kidnappers. Now I understand: They’re my liberators.
When I say, “Yes,” the herbs and clouds breathe my answer and pulse with joy.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
NOT ALONE
EVERYTHING’S BIGGER. THE SKY’S WIDER, HONEY SWEETER. SOMETHING pulses erratically in me. I want to cry with emotions I can’t pin down.
Still, breakfast’s reassuring; the urge to stuff myself with pancakes suggests that this is still my body, all misshapen angles and colorful tattoos and sugar cravings, all new tan and hair starting to grow out spiky.
Everyone’s gathered in the garden and kitchen, still smeared with body paint or clay, hair stiff with sea salt, wrapped in blankets, tired, wild-eyed, feral. They hug me, ruffle my hair, kiss my cheeks, pull my reborn body into theirs, making me part of it, my limbs their limbs, fingers lifting food to my mouth.
They look at me with wonder. Something of—I don’t dare trust it, but I see it—how they look at Jonah.
The thrill isn’t just about me, though. Everyone’s eager to share their visions from the ocean. I hear Pietro insisting that after the nightmares ended, everything became doors, possibilities open and waiting. Giulia’s leaning on his shoulder, trying to explain to Ana what she saw, endless adventures without fear, constant change without pain. Kiera’s got both hands on Kai’s shoulders and is yelling something about neutrons being totally different. Teresa’s serving cocoa and keeps saying, “No death, there was no death.”
Impossible realities echo half-overheard around the kitchen. The nightmare ended, and you could remake events, play with history. Matter became music. You could jump between universes like stepping through a curtain.
I try to remember what I saw, but the memories dissolve at a touch. They leave me with an ache I can’t place, an aftertaste of a beautiful cataclysm or an incredible violence.
Larissa slides up beside me at the table, in a neon pashmina in the still-chilly morning, and delivers me a coffee. She knows I take three sugars. I beam at her.
“Hey.” Is that nerves? “I should … apologize for kidnapping you, huh.”
She laughs when I laugh.
“I’m glad it was you,” I admit, then laugh again; that’s a really weird thing to say. “If I’m going to be kidnapped by anyone.”
