A Lesson in Thorns

by Sierra Simone

  Outside, the rain picks up in earnest, coming down with soothing, steady force.

  “Poe, I just need you to know that your mother loved you very much. More than anything. More than the world.”

  “Then why did she leave?”

  This time his silence is almost comforting, and I know if I were there and we were talking face to face, he’d be pulling me into his arms. “I don’t know, sweetheart. I really don’t.”

  “Is that the truth?”

  An exhale. “Yes.”

  “But you do know about her and Ralph,” I push. “You do know if that might have been the reason she came here.”

  “I do. And it might have.”

  “Were they fucking?”

  “Proserpina!” my dad says, shocked.

  “I’m twenty-two, I know what fucking is,” I say irritably. “I know you and Mom did it, I know you probably did with other people before you met her, I know she probably did too. I just want to know what happened, and I guess it’s shitty of me to ask you about Mom being unfaithful, but it’s been twelve years and—”

  “She wasn’t unfaithful,” Dad cuts in. “It wasn’t . . . that. Wasn’t like that.”

  “Then what was it like?”

  “It was like this: we loved each other. Sometimes we also loved other people. We never lied to each other about it, and we never chose a new lover over what we had together. That’s what marriage meant to us, and that’s why your mother wasn’t unfaithful, not in the truest sense of the word. She didn’t betray my trust, and she didn’t sneak around. I knew about Ralph because I was there. I knew about Ralph because I loved Ralph too.”

  I drop down onto the bed, stunned. “You were in love with Ralph Guest?”

  “Was. Past tense. I stopped even before your mom disappeared, because he was greedy. Not even with money, but greedy with people. Greedy with time and sex and feelings. He was jealous and possessive, convinced that your mother belonged to him by some ancient familial right, and it eventually tore us apart, all of us. We were too tangled by then for it to do anything else.”

  “You were all together? All the parents?”

  “Parents are people too,” Dad says in his professor voice, as if pointing out a remedial fact I should have learned long before I ever set foot in his classroom. “We fall in love just like everyone else. Although I wouldn’t say we all were in love with each other, only that some of us were in love with some others. But we all shared time and affection.”

  I’m a very sex-positive girl, but the moment I realize time and affection is a euphemism for all of our parents having sex, I make a face, which thankfully he can’t see.

  “But it all went sour,” he goes on. “Ralph had this idea that your mom being a Kernstow meant something, that your mom was another Estamond come back to life or some fucking nonsense. He wanted her to be his, which was patently ridiculous.”

  “Right, because she was married to you and he was married to Auden’s mother.”

  “It was ridiculous because she would never belong to anyone, not even me. We belonged to her, that was how it worked. That was how it always worked.”

  I think of his words earlier, about obsession. About how he used the words pain and power, words that can mean nothing to some people and everything to me.

  “Dad, were you and Mom kinky?”

  “I can’t talk about this with you,” he chides.

  I want to tell him that I’m kinky too, that I understand, that he won’t have to explain roles and terms to me because I already know them all, but I don’t. I don’t tell him. There are limits to what a daughter wants her father to know about her, after all.

  “I’m taking that as a yes,” I say. “You were kinky and she was your Domme.”

  “I’m not going to answer your questions about this.”

  But I’m fitting together parts of the puzzle now, reaching for the picture I keep on my nightstand and looking at it. Looking at my mother trying to put the torc on Ralph’s neck. Like a collar.

  “She was Ralph’s Domme then too. Which means Ralph was submissive . . . but how could he have been?” I wonder aloud. “He was so awful to everyone around him. He hit Auden sometimes, I think, and I know he yelled at him so much, he was always angry.”

  “Abuse has nothing to do with kink,” Dad says sharply. He sounds very sober right now. “And it especially has nothing to do with what kind of power dynamic gets you off. I’ve known Dominants gentler than Mother Teresa, and submissives more vicious and ambitious than you could ever imagine. Ralph was a tainted man who just happened to get off on pain. It didn’t stop him from trying to control everyone and everything around him. It didn’t save him from himself.”

  I think about this a moment. “Did Mom ever want to marry him? Like before she knew how awful he was?”

  “Of course not.” My father’s voice is still sharp. “I told you that we loved each other deeply—we still chose each other, we still chose our commitment to each other and to you, and she didn’t entertain his ideas for a single second. It infuriated him. Enraged him beyond all measure, but the angrier he got, the more she’d punish him, and the more she punished him, the more he wanted to marry her. It was a vicious loop, and it finally twisted hard enough that I thought it would strangle us all. Everyone had to leave before our work was finished, and it was the end of whatever we had. I haven’t spoken to any of the others since.”

  I try to remember the day we left, if the adults had seemed angry or strained or sad. But I can’t picture any of their faces, hear any of their words. I’d been too busy saying goodbye to the other children, memorizing the color of Auden’s eyes and the shape of St. Sebastian’s hands, and there’d been no room for me to notice how the adults felt when I felt so cheated and wronged to be taken away from my friends and the magic house of Thornchapel.

  “Why did we come to Thornchapel at all?” I finally ask. “How did you meet everyone? What were you working on?”

  He answers after a long pause. “It’s a conversation we should have in person. It’s a very long, very weird story.”

  “Weirder than telling me that you and Mom slept with other people, and oh, sometimes she beat them too?”

  He lets out a tired laugh. “If you can believe it, yes. It’s even weirder than that.”

  “I’m holding you to your word,” I say. “I need to know.”

  “You could come home now and I could tell it to you?” he offers hopefully.

  “Dad.”

  “Just promise me you won’t go out to the chapel ruins,” he says. “Don’t go into the woods. Especially not today. Please.”

  What can I say to him?

  Sorry, Dad, I can’t promise that because a bunch of us are going out to the ruins to have a sex party in the dark?

  “Okay, Dad,” I lie. “I won’t go out there tonight.”

  “Good.”

  The rain’s swallowed the house now, we’re in a world of rain, and the narcolepsy creeps back for me, clutching at me with fingers made of yawns and nods. I manage to say goodbye to my father—after getting his repeated assurance that he will finally tell me the story of the adults that summer—and then I lie back down and disappear into dreams of mud and sex.

  Dreams of tonight.

  Chapter 22

  To Thee Do We Cry, Poor Banished Children of Eve

  The sawn boards give off a pleasant fresh-wood smell as St. Sebastian carries them into the clearing. He skipped the maze and went to the ruins using one of his poacher’s paths through the trees, wood lengths balanced easily on one broad shoulder. It takes four trips to get all the wood into the clearing, a final trip to bring out the tools he borrowed from Augie, and then he gets to work assembling the low platform in front of the altar.

  He loses himself in the tactile, methodical comfort of building, in the music of the drill and the clink of screws in his palm. The world outside the clearing slinks away from here, and by the time St. Sebastian finishes, there’s mud on his knees
and his hands, and one thick daub across his cheek, as if he’s been marked with the only world that matters. The only earth, which is the earth of Thornchapel.

  His mind is clean and clear. He likes this work. He likes this place.

  He stretches his back and examines the fruits of his labor.

  The platform is much smaller than a stage, but it’s big enough that six adults could lie comfortably on it. There’s enough room between it and the altar that all six of them could easily congregate in front of the grassy mound, and there’s enough room between the platform and the front of the chapel that they can still safely build a fire inside.

  It will be warmer than laying in the mud.

  It occurs to him, as he walks around the platform examining it for flaws, that this is the first project he’s ever finished. The first idea sparked in his mind that he didn’t eventually snuff out with his inevitable indifference or doubt. He had the idea for the platform last night as he lay awake in bed, thinking of Proserpina’s kiss, of her hand on his erection, of the curve of her breast in his hand before he ruined everything. He wanted to say sorry and he wanted to atone and he also wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her until she admitted that he was right and she was better off without him.

  He wanted to explain somehow that his entire life was defined by one moment, by one cowardly moment, and he’d never forgive himself for it and no one else should either. He wanted to explain that he’d once done the worst thing one person can do to another, and in the process, had scorched the inside of his soul beyond all redemption.

  He wanted to explain to Proserpina that she scorched him all over again, but in the best way. In a way that made him feel like he wasn’t such a fuck-up, that he could be good, that maybe being scorched clean actually meant that everything unnecessary had been burned away to make room for something better.

  Maybe he’d been purified.

  So he got up at dawn and went to Augie’s workshop and started working on the platform. Not because it was a substitute for explanation—as much as he wanted to, St. Sebastian couldn’t delude himself into that—but because he wanted the night to be the kind of night that lent itself to explanations. He wanted the night to be perfect, perfect for Proserpina in particular even if she wasn’t chosen as the bride, and then after the perfection, he’d offer her all his imperfections.

  He’s done pushing her away. He’s done fighting himself. She might belong with Auden in the eyes of the village—hell, even in his own eyes sometimes—but he doesn’t care anymore. Auden is engaged, after all, about to marry Delphine, and so it seems the village is going to be out of luck regardless of what St. Sebastian does.

  And St. Sebastian is going to tell Proserpina that he’s falling in love with her and he’s terrified. He’s going to ask her to forgive him and then he’s going to offer her his scorched heart and then he’s going to pray, even though he doesn’t believe in prayer.

  He’s going to pray that she takes it.

  He’s going to pray that she offers her heart back to him in return.

  Becket hangs up his vestments in the sacristy, and then finishes closing up the church for the night. There’s no need to leave the side door unlocked since he’ll be with St. Sebastian tonight in the thorn chapel, as they watch the fire burn against the sky and two of his friends consecrate themselves with thorns and sex.

  Or it could be you that’s consecrated, a voice whispers in his mind.

  He thinks about this as he gathers his things in the rectory and then gets in the car to drive to Thornchapel. If by some random chance the others think he should be one of the people up at the altar, should he say no? Can a Catholic priest still claim anthropological distance when he’s fucking someone in the mud?

  No. No, he doesn’t think so.

  If he does this thing, he can’t pretend to himself that he’s doing it as a priest, or at least as a Catholic priest, since in a way, they’ll all be priests tonight. Priests for each other, priests for themselves. Priests for Thornchapel.

  By the vows he’s taken, by every creed and doctrine of the church he’s sworn his life to, tonight is wrong. Immoral and unfaithful to a jealous God. That can’t be denied. But the zeal can’t be denied either, and the zeal is demanding mud under his fingernails and the heat of a fire against his face. The zeal is demanding thorns and blood and worship.

  Primal, ancient worship.

  Isn’t all worship primal? Isn’t all worship ancient?

  Why should the zeal see a difference between muddy earth and cold stone floors? Between a bonfire and tall white candles? Between ale and wine?

  Between consummation and communion?

  He knows tonight can’t be undone. Whatever happens tonight will stay with him for the rest of his life. It will mark him, and whether that mark will bar him from heaven, he doesn’t know, but he also doesn’t know if he can afford to care what the rules are anymore.

  What are rules when God Himself has filled him with holy fire?

  Because the other thing he knows is that tonight is holy. And he is a holy man.

  With a short prayer and a long exhale, Becket puts the car into drive and starts down the road for Thornchapel.

  It’s almost dark when Rebecca gets to the center of the maze, but it’s not late, it’s not time for them to gather together and go to the ruins yet. Which is why Rebecca had the time to follow Delphine when she saw her going into the maze.

  She didn’t want Delphine to get lost and delay their ceremony. That’s why she followed her, and definitely not for any other reason.

  Certainly not because Rebecca could see from her window seat that Delphine had been wiping her face as she’d been walking toward the maze. That her shoulders were hunched as if she were crying. Certainly not because the idea of Delphine crying irritated Rebecca so much that she literally could not sit still while she thought about it.

  So Rebecca went into the maze, deciding she’d take the route to the center first, and then if she didn’t find Delphine along the way, she’d check the little dead-end paths and silent niches where the hedge was carved out to accommodate a bench or two. Fortunately, none of that was necessary, because here’s Delphine, precisely where she should be. In the center of the maze that Rebecca is planning to rip down.

  Delphine sits on the ledge of the empty fountain, her feet where the water will be once the weather warms enough and her coat wrapped tightly around her. She’s staring at the statue of Adonis and Aphrodite while tears run in slow, effortless tracks down her face.

  She doesn’t wipe them away.

  Neither does Rebecca, even though she is close enough to after she sits down on the ledge next to Delphine. Rebecca could so easily steal a tear off Delphine’s cheek and lick it off her finger to taste the salt.

  She takes a deep breath and looks away so she won’t be tempted to. So she can stop seeing how beautiful Delphine is when she cries.

  Instead she asks, “Is everything okay?”

  “I broke up with Auden,” Delphine says with a tiny hiccup as she pushes down a sob. “Last night. I guess it’s just catching up with me today.”

  Rebecca feels like the world has suddenly rolled over on its side. “You what?” she whispers, completely shocked. “You what?”

  Delphine just shrugs unhappily. “I couldn’t do it, Rebecca. I was marrying him for all the wrong reasons. Because he’s a good man and one of my best friends and I love him in the way that I’ve always loved him. Because it felt like the thing I should do, even if it wasn’t what I really wanted to do.”

  Rebecca can’t stop her thoughts from circling, racing each other faster and faster. Delphine and Auden were supposed to be a constant, a known variable. A stable, unchanging factor in their lives.

  “What changed?” Rebecca asks. “What made you realize all this?”

  Even in the dusky light, Delphine’s blush is apparent. “Well, if you must know, it was watching you spank Proserpina.”

  The place between Re
becca’s legs gives a single, tight throb, and she forces herself to ignore it. “Oh?”

  “Yes,” Delphine admits, her face still bright red. “I watched it and felt like—oh, I don’t know how to say it. Like I was waking up. Or like something in maths finally made sense or like I’d finally figured out how to ride a bike. It was something that had always been there, been true, and I just hadn’t put it together yet. I hadn’t seen it.”

  “And what hadn’t you seen before that night?” Rebecca asks in a low voice, almost not sure if she wants to know the answer. Not sure if the answer will change something that’s best left unchanged.

  “I saw Poe and I realized I wanted to be her,” Delphine says simply.

  Rebecca realizes she already knows this.

  She’s known this for three years.

  But she doesn’t let herself think about that week three years ago right now. She doesn’t ever let herself think about it.

  Delphine goes on. “I wanted to have that same expression on my face—the ecstasy, but also the pain and the trust. Ever since it happened everyone has been so good to me, so kind, and sometimes I feel smothered by it. But at the same time, if I’m brave, if I try to be strong, then I still want people to be kind and good to me after. I want to be rewarded and petted, and what I saw that night with Poe was that I can have both. I can be tested, I can be brave, and then afterwards, I’ll still get to be coddled. It seems like the best of both worlds.”

  “People shouldn’t want to be consensually hurt so they can feel brave,” Rebecca says.