by Lily Miles
“Go now and pray for forgiveness, all of you who may have abetted the criminal who stole from my office. We’ll meet again to discuss what mission you will each take up around the convent. Have a blessed day,” she adds with a faint smirk.
Catherine loops an arm around my back, guiding me hastily out of the office among the group, but neither of us says anything. I keep my head lifted, eyes locked ahead, even as hot tears sting the corners of my eyes. No one asks if I'm alright, unwilling to appear too sympathetic to my pain in case the reverend mother’s vindictive eyes turn in their direction.
Is this truly what God would want? Are we meant to suffer like this? I squash the doubt immediately, biting my lip hard. Mother would know best … wouldn’t she?
“You should go see the doctor, Maggie,” Catherine whispers in my ear under her hushed breath as she drags me out a side door, while the rest of our sisters make their way towards the church.
I sniffle and shake my head. If I were to present these wounds to the doctor, he would ask questions, and I would have to tell him it was the mother superior who’d done it. He’d then question her and I would only end up in deeper trouble, and probably in deeper pain.
“I’ll be fine, Sister Catherine,” I reply in an attempt to be firm, though my voice quavers.
She rolls her eyes and squeezes me into a hug. “It’s so weird when you call me that, Mags. No one can hear us out here.”
“You never know who’s listening,” I murmur back, knowing all too well that Sister Eva has ears like a bat.
Eva takes great pride in hoarding secrets like a dragon does over heaps of treasure, though she’s happy to share that treasure with Mother Antonia when the time is right. She can’t be trusted, that’s for sure, though I don’t know how many of our sisters can be.
Catherine smiles and shrugs, taking my hands gently in hers and inspecting the crisscross of wounds running over the flesh.
“At least they’re not too deep,” she finally sighs with a bite of her lip. “If you’re not going to tell the doctor, wash them and wrap them in clean socks. I’ll see if I can smuggle you some gauze later tonight. Hopefully they won’t take long to heal.”
“Damn. What happened?” a deep voice asks from behind us.
Both Cat and I whirl around, shocked to come eye to eye with a pair of deep green eyes set in a tan, handsome face. A tall, young man stares at us, his head slightly cocked, a potted green plant nestled lightly on his hip. The arm wrapped around the pot is muscled and long, his fingernails dark with fresh earth. With his free hand he nonchalantly rakes the sun-kissed, dirty blond hair off his forehead.
Without waiting for one of us to answer, he sets down the pot and breaks off the tip of a prickled leaf, ambling towards us. He grabs my hand with his large, calloused one, forcing the palm up so he can dab the plant gently over the wounded flesh.
I give a cry and try to yank back, not because of pain—the plant is actually soothing— but because it’s the first time that a man has touched me. I haven’t even let the handsome, young convent doctor give me a full exam, because I'm so horribly shy when it comes to the opposite sex.
He frowns at me and holds my hand tighter. “If you’re not going to see Doctor Cliff, then just let me do this. It’s aloe, it’ll help heal you faster plus keep you from getting infected. I don’t think even prayer will keep that away.”
“You heard us?” Catherine asks idly, much less perturbed by the young man’s presence than I am. She leans back against the castle wall, her eyes drifting over him, taking in the sweat-dampened white tee shirt that clings to his body, and the denim jeans that strain over his sturdy thighs—and crotch.
“I could hear you two chatting up and down the whole hall,” he answers. “I'm Trevor, by the way. A gardener here.”
He grins amiably but doesn’t look at Cat. Instead, he stares intently at me with those haunting green eyes that could be carved from emeralds. I’ve never coveted gems before, but I suddenly understand the desire to possess such things. My breath hitches, my hand limp in his. His big palm is so rough against my soft one, it feels like he could crush me if he wanted.
Why am I noticing this? Why can’t I look away from him?
As soon as he’s finished applying the cooling aloe, I rip my hand away, jerking my head down to look at my feet as I mutter a strained thanks.
My heart throbs a distinctive, single beat in my chest—I tell myself it’s only because of the lingering discomfort in my hand.
“Sister Catherine, we need to get back to our devotions,” I croak as soon as I can remember how to suck in a shallow breath.
I turn around, racing down the hall and leaving Cat to chase after me, but I can feel the gardener’s eyes following me the entire way.
I refuse to look back, keeping my mind solidly on my prayers for the day and how I'm going to have to pray extra hard, since I allowed that strange man to touch my virginal flesh. Where he touched my hands there’s heat and tingling, which is strange considering the aloe plant he’d smothered my palms with had cooled them and eased the pain.
What is this strange sensation that seems to flow from pore to pore? Why can’t I push his lingering green eyes out of my thoughts, no matter how hard I try to recite the Lord’s Prayer?
2
Trevor
All around me, gray spires shoot upwards on a mission to pierce through a blue sky and cotton-white clouds. I tip my head back to admire them, welcoming sunbeams that warm my slightly burnt cheeks.
It’s another beautiful day at the convent.
I still can hardly believe this is the place I ended up. I guess it shouldn’t surprise me all that much, considering what my life was like before arriving here. True, I also didn't have that much of a choice. It was either I come to this place and behave myself and learn to live a decent life, or I get a one-way ticket straight to jail. The decision was obvious.
Anyway, the path my life was taking me on before I wound up working as a convent groundskeeper wasn’t exactly getting it done for me. I’d always wanted to change, I just never knew how. It always seemed like I would take one step forward and two steps back, because I could never seem to put enough distance between trouble and myself—I’d just get pulled right back into it.
Maybe it was because I never knew my parents and I got passed around between countless foster homes, or maybe it was because I never had any real ties to anyone who could set me straight and help me gain a solid footing in life. Either way, I fell in with the “bad crowd”—that’s how everyone always put it when they were discussing my past. But my friends weren’t bad people, no matter how much anyone wanted to label them that. They were just desperate, like me. You need money to survive and when you’re at the bottom of the food chain, you do whatever you can to get by. We were people who made bad decisions, but we weren’t bad people. Not at our core. I mean, I’ve never hurt anyone in my life, except myself.
In court, after one of my buddies got busted trafficking some crystal meth out of the house I shared with him, I sat behind the table, mutely watching lawyers argue in front of the judge over my past and what kind of future I’d ever be able to scrounge. Thing is, I hadn't even been participating in the drug deals. In fact, I’d finally managed to get a job at a local convenience store making just over minimum wage and wanted nothing to do with that kind of trouble anymore. I hadn't even known about him dealing, because my buddy thought if I was ignorant, I’d be safe, but he was wrong. My lawyer drew a flimsy picture of me as a weak-willed boy who was more or less dragged into trouble while resisting all the way. I kept my mouth shut and tried not to roll my eyes too frequently, and for whatever reason, the judge took pity on me.
That’s when I was given my choice: convent or jail.
I thought it was just misbehaving girls who were shipped off to a nunnery, but it turns out they need men around, too. Someone has to look after the grounds and gardens. I’d seen a male doctor only a few years older than myself as well, along with
a few carpenters and contractors who keep the building up and running. There’s also a kitchen staff and a chef, but he keeps mostly to himself. I'm not the only gardener here, but I am the youngest and the one with the least amount of skill.
Still, I like being elbow-deep in earth. And I like the fragrance of the flowers and plants that I'm tending. There’s something powerful about holding seedlings and being the one to protect them and keep them safe. They’re so fragile, but they grow so strong. I like to think with a little hard work and a little sunlight, I’ll be strong like these green stems, too.
It’s only been about three weeks since I arrived here, and I'm starting to adjust to life out in the middle of nowhere. I'm living with some of the other male staff in a dorm-like building on the outskirts of the convent—that way we don’t risk seeing any of the sisters when it’s late and inappropriate.
The convent itself is like something out of a storybook, a Gothic castle where a fairytale could happen. When the taxi rolled up over green hills speckled with a rainbow of wildflowers, I’d pressed my face up against the window in awe. The building is old and looks like it could come tumbling down at any minute, but it’s also huge. It’s surrounded by various orchards that scent the air sweetly with spring blooms; the fields go far until they reach the thick line of a forest.
I’d only taken this job because it was either this or life behind bars, but I’d come to enjoy the quiet and solitude that such a remote, peaceful location offered. Everyone likes to keep to themselves for the most part, and though we eat our meals together, there’s not a lot of awkward small talk or idle chatter. That suits me just fine.
Plus, I'm mostly invisible here. No one seems to see me, and I like that. I like the feeling of disappearing—it means I'm not in trouble. When I was stuck with my various foster parents who had no actual interest in me, I was always content as long as they were ignoring me. With them, you knew you were in trouble when you’d hear your name called out.
“Trevor!” a silky but sprightly voice shouts from behind me. The abrupt call makes me jump.
“Yes?” I gulp, climbing clumsily to my feet. I swipe my palms on my pants, hoping to clear off some of the smeared dirt, but my fingers are still sticky with aloe from when I’d helped the injured nun. How had she managed to get those odd cuts on her palms, anyway? I couldn’t stop thinking about her, worrying that she may still be in pain. But it wasn’t just my concern. In fact, I just couldn’t stop thinking about her. Period.
An old woman stands before me now, her face plump and pleasant like the pink petals of a peony, but her blue eyes are slightly sad.
I recognize this particular woe-eyed nun. Ruby? No. It was something biblical.
“Sister Ruth,” she says as if reading my mind. It makes me gulp again.
She doesn’t extend a hand to shake my own, though I don’t know if that’s because it would be inappropriate, or because my fingernails are filthy with dirt. Either way, I end up doing an awkward half bow in greeting. I still haven’t gotten the knack of how to address the sisters of the convent, nor have I quite understood how the hierarchy falls. It seems obvious enough, however, with the scary, cruel-looking mother superior at the top of the pyramid and the pretty, fresh-faced nuns—only a bit younger than I am—at the bottom. I guess that would put me at the bottom, too.
Sister Ruth was the first one to greet me when I arrived here a few weeks back, and I’d made the mistake of assuming she was the mother superior of the place; in fact, she was the assistant mother superior. I shudder, thinking of the actual reverend mother, and then push her frightening, cold eyes out of my mind. I’d been doing my best to completely avoid running into Mother Antonia, and had for the most part, succeeded.
“How can I help you, ma’am?” I ask, peering down at her and then looking away, as though I wasn’t allowed to have eye contact with her.
She gives a faint laugh and then a sigh. “You can look at me, child. And call me Sister Ruth. I don’t bite. I’ve only come to see you because I think you may know what this is …”
From a pocket inside her black habit, she draws a small brown paper bag, and with it comes a strong and putrid scent. Sister Ruth arches an eyebrow, and a faintly suppressed smile twitches at the corners of her mouth, but it does not reach her eyes.
“I … uh, yes, that is mine. I mean, it isn’t mine but I know what it is,” I stammer, shifting from foot to foot and then dragging a hand through my earth-scented hair. I managed to get soil everywhere: when I showered at the end of my shift, the water would fall off me in brown waves.
“Did one of the young sisters here request this of you?” Sister Ruth presses. “I found it in Mother Antonia’s office this afternoon after a meeting we had together.”
“One of the young ladies did ask me to clip the leaves off one of the plants. She said it was her favorite plant and she wanted to make a tea out of it that would help her with her prayers. I know that they smell bad, but I thought … I don’t know …”
To me it seemed being a nun would be a life of suffering. Why not have terrible tea if you’re going to deprive yourself of all earthly pleasures, to begin with? Still, that didn't seem like something I should say to a nun as old and wise as Sister Ruth, so I just shrug my shoulders instead.
“I can assure you that none of the nuns here use putrid-smelling plants such as this in their prayers. This particular sister is known to be a bit of a mischief-maker. Next time Sister Monica asks you for anything, you would do well to contemplate the task thoroughly before entertaining her ideas.”
“Yes, Sister,” I whisper, chin falling slightly.
I’d come here to make a positive difference in my life, not to cause trouble for more people. How was I supposed to know that nuns could be troublemakers? Weren't they too holy for shenanigans?
Sister Ruth bows her head slightly and then turns and retreats back towards the convent. I step after her, calling her name once.
“Yes, Trevor?” she asks with another pleasant smile.
“I saw one of the younger sisters earlier. She was injured. Do you know if she’s okay?” I ask hesitantly, uncertain if I'm breaking some rule by even mentioning what I saw.
Sister Ruth’s face freezes into a smiling mask, but her eyes have gone even more bleak than normal. “I can assure you that all of our nuns are in peak health.”
Digging my toe into the soft earth, I nod after realizing that I was not going to be getting any more information than this. Again Ruth turns and trundles back towards the convent, her steps labored as she sways back and forth. It must be difficult to be her age and have to live in such modest and grim surroundings. I’d been told that our dorm basically mirrored the female sleeping chambers in the Gothic convent. Our beds were little more than wooden cots with old, hard mattresses that left all of our bodies aching the next day; the sheets were so stiff they seemed to be starched; and the blankets were scratchy, woolen things that somehow managed to be both too heavy and too thin at the same time.
I watch her leave before opening the small bag and dumping out the clipped leaves of the butterfly flower I’d trimmed them from earlier in the morning. Though the pretty purple buds are delicate and sweet, the clipped leaves are a terror on the nose. I try to remember exactly what Sister Monica may have looked like when she approached me earlier, but the only one of the nun’s whose faces I can clearly recall is that of the lovely dark-eyed one with the injured hands.
I know nothing about her, but I’ve seen her from time to time outside of the shadowy halls of the cloistered convent. She’s always with the blue-eyed, strawberry blonde sister, the one who seems even more prone to trouble than Sister Monica. I know that the dark-eyed girl has a lovely voice as well: I can often hear her singing quietly to herself from down in the halls, or out in the courtyard.
Religion is a mystery to me, as are women in general, but even with that nun’s habit enveloping her, I could still see the curves of her body. It’s hard not to stare at something as beau
tiful as she is. It makes no sense to me why she would dedicate her entire self to a higher power in the way that she has. Wouldn’t she have more fun out in the world exploring and going on adventures? Sure, I brought myself to this convent to cloister myself as well, but for me it’s temporary: I can leave and return to the modern world when my sentence is up. Here, the women stay for their entire lives, living in a bubble—the advancement of the world means nothing to them.
Being here is like being on another planet. Everything feels mysterious and secretive, not less so considering the vast property is enclosed in stone walls. Even though we’re only forty-five minutes from the town, the convent sits alone on lush green acres so far from any well-traveled roads that you never hear the rumble of cars. Once you pass through the stone gate with the sign “Convent of the Blessed Virgin,” the old, rutted road that leads to the convent is made of gravel. It’s easy to forget that outside these walls, people are living in high-rises filled with smart devices. The phone network is so random out here, I probably won’t even try to use my cellphone.
Life feels simple here, but I haven’t decided if I like that yet or not. Is living here an homage to the past, or is it a way to escape the future?
From a little bit away, the sound of a breathy giggle drifts over the warm wind.
I glance towards the noise, silently peering up and down the convent walls. I stay out of the convent unless it’s absolutely necessary. Once, I’d only gone one step inside when I accidentally shattered a ceramic pot near an open door, and needed to sweep up the shards before someone stepped on it. I'm terrified of accidentally breaching some sacred oath the nuns have taken, despite being told it would be perfectly fine for me to step in the main doors of the church, but I also fear getting lost in there.
