Matrix

by Lauren Groff

Goda has the affronted air of someone who lurks in corners to hear herself spoken ill of so that she can hold tight a grievance to suckle.

She listens all night, twice tricking herself that the yew’s branches clacking in the wind are the hooves of a galloping horse. But they are not. And no one comes. And no one will come. And there would be no one at all fetching her home.

some grumbling but most half proud to have a woman so tough and bold and warlike and royal to answer to now. For it is a deep and human truth that most souls upon the earth are not at ease unless they find themselves safe in the hands of a force far greater than themselves.

Marie looks behind her as she rides into the forest and sees that with the moon shining at their backs, the nuns on horses are huge and black in silhouette and their shadows paint the hill in terrifying shapes.

Among the nuns at the abbey only Marie practices silent reading, and every time she does, it makes Goda shiver and protest shrilly at her witchy magic. Yet if there is no inner reading, how can there be any inner life? Marie thinks and imagines the cold blowing desert that must stretch inside her subprioress.