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In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home. It has no windows, and the door swings, Dry bones can harm no one. T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
They found the roses right away. The thorns took longer. First, there was the escape, which wasn’t an escape at all, really. The adults were busy with whatever it was that kept them cloistered and murmuring in the library, and the children were otherwise unsupervised, since no one thought any harm could come to them this far into the countryside.
Proserpina was last because Proserpina was always last. Not because she was disliked or because she was timid, but because she was dreaming on her feet while everyone else was walking.
And Auden stood at the edge of the woods, unable to take a single step closer. It’s really here. It wasn’t a quaint name, chosen on a whim. It wasn’t, as he’d once heard his grandfather say, a corruption of a Latin word referencing the thick forest canopy around the house. There was a chapel. It was covered in thorns. Thornchapel. And he had the strangest feeling that as he thought the name of this place, the place thought his own name back to him…
Proserpina entered the chapel with a crown of flowers on her head. The knot eased; it untangled some. And when Saint Sebastian decided that Proserpina needed someone to walk her down the aisle and he hopped up to take her arm, Auden quite literally could not breathe for a second. He didn’t know why—Saint Sebastian irritated him, Proserpina fascinated him, but he wasn’t entirely sure he liked her for having that effect on him—so why now, when the two of them approached the altar and drew near him, did he think of the need to hurt and the need to be hurt and why did he want to grab them both and
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He seized both Proserpina and Saint Sebastian and pulled them both to his mouth just as lightning cracked across the sky. A kiss. A kiss that was almost a bruise, almost a bite, and how he wanted both—he wanted kissing and bruising and holding and biting. And he wanted to shelter them from the rain and force them to kneel in the mud too, and he didn’t know what it meant or why it was happening or even why they were letting him yank them close.
And in a clearing in the woods, in a church ruined by thorns and time, something stirred. Something called all six of them by name.
Twelve years later Everything is possible. Thornchapel waits at the end of my journey, and everything is possible.
“You’re very easy to talk to, you know.” It’s something I’ve heard all my life, and I’m used to it, even if it sometimes makes me feel a little lonely. The person that everyone talks to but who never gets that comfort in return.
But I’m so susceptible to this kind of touch; I bloom like a rose when I’m handled like a weed,
Thornchapel knows my name and the crooked corners of my heart, and it wants me to make promises that I’m going to keep.”
And tomorrow he’ll have to go to Thornchapel and see Poe and maybe see Saint Sebastian again and have to pretend he’s not unraveling. Pretend he isn’t growing a tree of thorns inside his chest and that those thorns don’t have names. Delphine. Rebecca. Becket. Saint Sebastian. Proserpina. His thorns, his regrets. His hurts.
Auden finally speaks, his voice low and tight and furious still. “I hate him because he deserves it. I hate him because once upon a time, I gave him a piece of my heart.” He closes his eyes, a muscle in his jaw jumping. “And then he fed it to the wolves.”
“It’s not about selling things. It’s about building a presentation of yourself that you can use for anything. For potential employers or potential lovers or potential friends. It’s a place where you can compile the most salient expressions of yourself—expressions that you choose, you curate—and create a living biography. A testament to your life and the space you deserve to occupy.”
His lips press together in a bloodless, angry line, and he slams his hand against the door by my head. Just like he did earlier when we were kissing, except this time when he ducks his head low, it’s not to touch mouths but to utter low, acid words. “You want to know so fucking badly? Fine. The entire village of Thorncombe thinks that you should marry Auden. Auden’s father wanted you to marry Auden. Everybody in this entire goddamn place thinks you should marry Auden, except Delphine.” And Auden himself.
“There are as many different reasons to enjoy kink as there are people who enjoy it,” I say. “But for me there’s something fundamentally beautiful about pain and pleasure mixing together, because that’s real life, right? Being alive means the harsh is mixed in with the good, and every time I get to choose the harsh for myself, it loses its sting. Every time I taste the bitter and survive, I’m all the stronger to enjoy the sweet.”
“What about the parts that aren’t about the pain? The parts that are about”—and I can’t tell in the dark hallway, but I think she blushes—“about doing what someone says?” Mmm. Those are my favorite parts. “It’s like being loved,” I say. “Like loving.” “But Rebecca doesn’t love you,” Delphine says sharply. “She hardly knows you.” “I didn’t say she loved me. I said it’s like being loved. It’s like—” I break off, not wanting her to misunderstand. After four years of BDSM, you’d think I’d be better at explaining why I do it in the first place. I start again. “Maybe it is love in a way. You don’t
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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.
The word is in Latin. All along, the answers to all my questions were right here at the thorn chapel’s altar. Buried and just waiting to be found. I turn my face into Saint’s chest so I don’t have to see that word anymore, so I don’t have to see my mother’s picture or my mother’s orbital bone or the grass that once covered my mother’s grave. But it doesn’t matter. The word is seared into my mind just like everything else. Convivificat.
