A Cathedral of Myth and Bone

by Kat Howard

  “It’s natural to feel unworthy of a gift of this nature,” she said.

  “It’s not that I think I’m unworthy,” I said. “It’s that I don’t want it.”

  • • •

  I remember the first time I saw a Saints’ Tide. They’re not common, which is a mercy; it’s not the sort of thing that you’re likely to forget.

  The years it happens, it happens in the late spring—Resurrection Season. That first year, I was ten. I remember the moon was full, and glass had washed ashore, pieces and pieces of it, coating the beach into shining, for three tides. The necessary signs were there: the next low tide would be the Saints’ Tide. There was a crackle of excitement in the air, the same sort of electric feeling that comes in before a hurricane.

  I went to the beach with Rinna. Playing saints had been her favorite game that year, even in the cold of the winter. She’d walk out into the water, then immerse herself, then come back—silent, solemn. Sometimes she’d drape herself in tiny pieces of seaweed, crown herself with driftwood and beach glass.

  I’d thought it would be like that to watch. That it would be like a party almost—people walking out into the waves, then coming back all glass and shine and holiness.

  It wasn’t.

  Most of them turn back, the people who think they are going to walk into the water and walk out saints. It’s a glory to think of—the transformation, the sacredness. But it’s also a death. You walk into the water and then you keep walking. You walk until your lungs fill with salt water. Until your heart stops. Until you die. There is no guarantee that you will return. Most people—even the ones who make it as far as letting the waters close over their head—thrash their way back to the surface, to dry land and a life no holier than any other.

  Most of the people who do walk into the water and hold themselves there beneath its surface drown.

  I didn’t realize it that day—too young, too excited. They disappeared, yes, and it was strange, but so was everything else that happened. So I didn’t count, didn’t think about how many went in and how few came back out. But there is always a second, darker tide that returns.

  Only one saint walked out of the waves that day.

  I admit, it was like seeing a miracle. The shine that began below the surface, the way the waves parted and fell away, the person now glass and pearl and bone. The hush that followed it out of the sea, the only noise the breaking of the waves. The beauty was almost unbearable—I had to turn away.

  We waited after that. Hoping for another saint. After a while, the afternoon shifted. The voices of the remaining watchers were less anticipation, more dread. The first body washed in as the sun set.

  Rinna didn’t play saints anymore after that.

  • • •

  All that day, the heart was a weight on me. Heavy, rewrapped and tucked in my bag as I walked home. Heavy in my thoughts as I tried to go about my day. It pulled at me like the tide. That night, I took the glass heart back to the beach. Not because I was considering tossing it back into the waves. Not seriously, anyway. That wouldn’t solve the problem. But I needed to think about it, and that seemed the best place.

  I had asked Olivia if I could leave it at the convent, to be placed with the other relics. I’d hoped she would say yes—that would make its appearance just a thing that had happened, not a puzzle to be solved. She’d said it was best that I keep it—it was an unanswered question, and even if I didn’t want to hear the answer, she didn’t think it would speak to anyone else.

  I’d refrained from mentioning that the saints never spoke.

  I sat just above the waves, took my shoes off, and let the water wash back and forth over my feet as I held the heart in my lap. The glass was cool to the touch, only just warmer than the seawater. It was an oddly pleasant shape in my hands. Comforting, almost. Almost.

  I wondered if I had known the saint, before they were transformed. I wondered if I would have said they had a good heart.

  No one really knows why the tide chooses some and not others to be saints. The Sisters of the Tide say it’s holiness, that the sea knows the truth of the heart, but everyone has stories of someone whose sainthood was a surprise to everyone who knew them in their life before. The Sisters of Glass say it’s a desire to be better than you were, the willingness to let the water wash everything from you, until you are clear like glass.

  That version makes a little more sense to me, but I don’t know. I’ve lived with them around me my entire life, and almost everything about the saints still seems strange.

  The tide rose up higher, soaking the hems of my jeans. The damp fabric clung uncomfortably to my legs. I stood up and took my tossing thoughts and the glass heart home.

  • • •

  Olivia was standing in front of my door when I got home, her white robes stark against the night sky. She twisted her beads around and around her wrist. “I’m sorry for showing up unannounced, but I can’t get the heart out of my thoughts.”

  “Look, I’m freezing. My clothes are soaking wet and uncomfortable. All I want to do right now is go inside and have the world’s hottest shower, and then a whiskey. So unless this is some sort of an emergency, I’d appreciate it if we could have this discussion some other time.” It was, perhaps, not my most pious moment.

  “It’s not an emergency. It’s just—my husband left me for the tide,” she said. “To become a saint. That’s why I became a nun. Because I didn’t know what else to do to make that okay.”

  “Come in,” I said. “You can have some whiskey, but I’m still taking a shower.”

  “Thank you.”

  She was holding the heart when I came back down. “I wondered if I could tell if it was his. But it just feels like glass to me.”

  “Does that make it better or worse?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Neither, I suppose. He’s still unrecognizable, silent and glass, and I’m still the woman whose husband would rather be that than warm and in bed beside her.” The sea’s own bitterness in her voice.

  “What do you”—I gestured at her robes—“say about people who choose to become saints?”

  “Officially, of course, it’s a sacrifice. A calling. A miracle. On my good days, I truly believe that.” She finished the whiskey in her glass.

  “And on your not-good days?”

  “It feels like cowardice.”

  I nodded. I’d never really known anyone who became a saint, not beyond the casual sort of way you know everyone when you live in a small enough place. To me, going to the waves seemed a way to walk away from a life, and not a way to live it.

  “How can you bear it, then?” I asked. “Living among the relics?”

  “Because I hope that it will help me understand. That if I can sit in the quiet, with the glass, somewhere in that quiet, I will know why he felt called to go to the sea, and that somewhere in that understanding, I’ll find peace.”

  • • •

  It’s easier, I think, to be a saint than to be a human.

  • • •

  The next morning, Rinna came over to tell me that Maris was sick.

  “The doctor says it’s her heart,” Rinna said, red-eyed and splotchy from weeping. “It’s not fair. She’s so small, just such a tiny thing.”

  Maris was sleeping in her carrier at Rinna’s feet. She looked delicate, even more than would be expected of someone so small. Her skin more translucent than before, the colors of the veins showing through, instead of healthy pink.

  “We’re going to go to the Sisters of the Tide. I want them to pray for her.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Plus, you know how the saints like to walk the grounds there. I’m hoping we’ll find one that I can beg for a blessing for her, the poor little love. . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “I’ll go make an offering to the waves,” I said.

  “Thank you.” Rinna’s hand clutched mine, hard, hard. “I trust the doctors, of course I do. I know they’ll help her. But the saint
s can too.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  • • •

  The saints, of course, are miracles. It is impossible to see them and think of them as anything else. They are the numinous given form. We give thanks to the sea for their presence among us. We ask them for blessings, for benedictions.

  They walk through our streets, all hours of the day and night, sacred and silent. Every so often, they will stop, will lay hands on someone. It happens rarely enough to be seen as a blessing.

  It’s a dark thought, I know, but sometimes I think that we look at the wrong thing. The saints are walking miracles, yes, but I wonder if the miracle is that moment of transformation, of walking into the tide as one thing and out of it as another. I wonder if that moment of transformation is the only miracle that belongs to the saints. If everything else we’ve built around them is just our own hope.

  If that occasional laying on of hands isn’t an act of blessing, but one of regret—of reaching out for a humanity they no longer have. Of them wanting connection with warmth, and with life once more.

  We pray to the saints, and I don’t know if they hear us. They have certainly never spoken an answer.

  • • •

  It became clear, soon enough, that no offerings to the tide or prayers to the saints were helping.

  “Glass?” I asked, the word falling dully from my mouth.

  “Look,” Rinna said. Her hand shook as she pushed Maris’ shirt aside. A small spot of glass shone on her chest.

  “A saint,” I whispered.

  “Maybe?” Rinna’s voice cracked. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to do, how to help her.”

  I kissed the soft swirl of Maris’ dark hair. Maybe I did.

  • • •

  It’s always been the sea I’ve believed in—had faith in—more than the saints. I can feel the holiness in the turn of the tide; the crash of the waves is sacred music. It’s the sea, after all, that transforms people into saints. The miracle isn’t in us.

  • • •

  That afternoon, I took the glass heart to Rinna.

  She stared at it, then at me. “You’ve had this how long? And it only now occurred to you that it might help?”

  There was nothing I could say in the face of that—even my fear that it was a bad omen, well, she had a sick daughter, of course it was. But maybe if I had brought it earlier, it would have been a good omen, would have prevented Maris from getting sick. Everything that I hadn’t done was the one thing that would have helped.

  “Take it away,” she said. “I don’t want it here. I don’t want it anywhere near Maris. And I don’t want you near her either.”

  “Rinna?”

  “I mean it. If saints themselves are giving warnings, maybe you’re what’s being warned against. Stay away.” She turned her body, holding Maris as far away from me as she could, and clutched her tightly.

  “I’ll be praying for her,” I said.

  “Like that will help. You barely even believe.”

  “Rinna, I—”

  “I don’t want to hear it. Go. Take that thing and go.”

  I love my sister. I went.

  • • •

  The saints began to follow Maris.

  “They’ve never done anything like this before,” Olivia said.

  I hadn’t seen it yet. Rinna was still furious with me, and so I had been staying away from her, so as not to add to her stress. “Following?”

  Olivia nodded. “Just one at a time at first. Trailing after her in the street, on the convent grounds. There are more now. I saw five this morning, standing outside your sister’s house.”

  “Like a vigil,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “What do you think they’re waiting for?” I asked.

  “I wish I knew.”

  So did I. A vigil ended with change or with death. And Maris was such a small thing.

  • • •

  Glass covered the beach with the next tide. A rough line of it, broken and shining, clear as tears, mixed among the more usual driftwood and detritus cast up by the waves.

  “It’ll be a Saints’ Tide,” Olivia said. She bent, lifted a handful of the glass, then let it rain back through her fingers. Other Sisters of the Glass walked the shore, their robes flapping like wings in the wind. Some bent and gathered the glass—they’d string it together for their holy beads.

  “How can you tell?” I asked.

  “There are signs. The heaviness in the air. The amount of glass that’s washed up, and the way it reaches out from the waves. The saints are restless on the convent grounds, walking in circles. They can feel the pull in the tide.”

  “Will you watch?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “I’m a Sister of Glass. My work will come after.”

  “After?” I thought of the bodies, that second, gruesome tide. There must be someone, I thought, who helped the families when they realized that the sea had taken from them and would not give back. But that wasn’t what she meant.

  “There are always saints who return to the sea then. We see them out, and we collect what returns.”

  What returns. Broken glass hands, reverently displayed in the convent. A glass heart, sitting on my kitchen table. “Can you tell which ones will go?”

  “No,” she said. “But some of them always do. It’s as if there has to be a balance—a tide that goes out for every tide that comes in.”

  I picked up a handful of glass and let it fall back to the sand, and I thought of a heart of glass that had come in on the tide, a heart of glass that beat in my niece’s chest.

  Olivia stood next to me, her hand on my shoulder, as I wept.

  • • •

  The next morning, a second glass tide came in, thicker than the first, turning the beach into a hard, merciless glare. I stood, shivering in the late-spring wind, on Rinna’s porch. There was a ring of saints, silent behind me, watching the house, the sea beyond it.

  The door opened. “What?”

  “How is Maris?” I asked.

  “No worse,” she said, beginning to close the door again.

  “It’ll be a Saints’ Tide,” I said.

  “And why do you care?” she said.

  “I just thought you’d want to know.” The excuse wasn’t quite true—I was sure she did know. I wanted to see her. To see Maris.

  “Well, now that you’ve done what you came for, you can leave again.”

  “Rinna, please,” I said.

  “No.” She closed the door.

  The saints were still silent as I walked past them. I hadn’t expected anything else.

  • • •

  Rinna was there on the beach with the next tide, the third glass tide. Her hands were fisted at her sides, and her eyes hard on the horizon. “I’m going out tomorrow. I’ll offer myself to the tide.”

  My entire body went cold. “You’re doing what?”

  “For Maris. When I’m a saint, I can cure her.” She didn’t look at me, just kept her face turned to the waves.

  “She doesn’t need a saint, she needs a mother.”

  “What would you know about either? You don’t know what it’s like, to sit there and watch her, and watch the doctors not be able to help her, and just have to do nothing. At least this way”—a sob cracked through her voice—“at least this way, I would be doing something. Something that might actually help. Something other than just watching.”

  “And then what is Maris supposed to do? Because it’s not like you’ll be able to come back. Even if you become a saint, you’ll be glass. You’ll be like that.” I jerked my head back, to where a phalanx of saints stood. Silent.

  “Are you saying you won’t take care of her?” Rinna looked at me.

  And there was nothing I could say to that. I’ve never wanted a child, but of course I would.

  “I’m doing this,” Rinna said. “This is how I can help.”

  “And what if you die?” I asked. “You know that’s more likely—y
ou go out into the water and you don’t come back a saint, you come back a corpse. How does that possibly help Maris?”

  “At least I will have tried. I’m her mother. My job is to do everything I possibly can to save her.”

  “No,” I said. “Your job is to raise her.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” Tears poured like glass from her eyes. “Don’t you think I’d rather hold her and laugh with her and watch her take her first steps? Don’t you think I’d die to hear her say ‘Mama’? But my baby’s heart is turning to glass, and she won’t ever say anything if she doesn’t live.

  “My job is to do whatever it takes to help her. If I have to die for her, I will.”

  • • •

  I don’t pray, not to the saints, anyway. I know the gestures and the rituals, and I’m happy to follow the forms when asked. I don’t begrudge anyone their beliefs, and I would never turn my back on a blessing when offered. But I can’t bring myself to ask for one, not directly.

  Not even for Maris. For me, asking the saints to help would be mouthing empty words, and why would they listen to that, from me, instead of Rinna, or Olivia, or any of the Sisters, the people who meant what they said?

  But I believe in the power of the sea. My whole life, that’s what I’ve looked to. So I took the glass heart, and I went to the beach, and I sat vigil for Maris, all night and into the dawn. I matched my breath to the waves, in and out, and I hoped that what I was doing was enough like prayer that the sea would hear me.

  • • •

  The Saints’ Tide. The wind whipped the water white. I pulled the blanket tighter around Maris. She was so small in my arms, and I could feel the fluttering thump of her glass heart against my chest. “Rinna, please.”

  “You tell her that I loved her. More than anything. That she was why I did this.” She shook as she spoke.

  “You should stay here and tell her yourself. Please, Rinna.” Salt stung my eyes.

  “She’s not getting better. I have to go.”

  I set Maris down in her carrier, the glass heart next to her, and embraced my sister. “I love you.”