Matrix

by Lauren Groff

She was given everything, not least a great blessing of ugliness, and she would repeat that Marie would right now be dust and rot with the grubs crawling through her rib cage if she hadn’t been so lucky to be born so ugly. The wind flicks and flicks Cecily’s white lock against the dark wool of her headcloth. Her cheeks are flushed, she is a girl again, frank and blunt. But now over her face there slides a confusion and she says with alarm that it couldn’t be true that Marie’s eyes have grown teary; she has said nothing so severe as to make such a venerable ancient abbess cry, has she? And Marie says in a distant voice, blinking back the wet in her eyes, that she never realized Cecily thought her so revolting as all that. Cecily goes painfully down on her creaking knees before Marie and takes her hands and brings them up to her lips, and says Marie may have some accidental royal blood in her veins, but the rest of her is entirely old fool. For when it comes to strength and goodness and brilliance and gentleness and grandeur of spirit so vast that it takes one’s breath away, beauty is nothing, beauty is a mote to a mountain, beauty is a mere straw alight beside a barn on fire.