The Anchoress Soars

smgianotti@me.com  —  March 29, 2016

This piece of flash fiction first ran in Warden Magazine, February 2016.


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Drops of rain gather on the sill, like peasants on a feast day, then tumble down the wall. The rivulets remind me of things long ago—the tall Scots pines at the river where Mamm used to scrub our clothes, the maidens’ ribbons at Beltane festival.

 

I watch the trickle find the ground and then trace its way along the wall towards the shadow in the corner. Slowly, a faint aroma, but rich and earthy, mingles with the familiar dank of stone and clay. Perhaps tomorrow, before Eucharist, the clouds will tire of our burgh and allow the sun to illume the greenness of that clump of moss.

 

17155258766 ab2162acf5 kPhoto courtesy of kimberly/tippytoes via flickr.com.

 

A shock of light outlines the window with its overhanging sign. When they asked me what to etch on it, I said “His Alone.”

 

Two years now I have spent behind these walls—these soldiers of my soul. They bind my body to this square of dirt, away from the plague of gluttony, the temptation of the minstrel’s song, and the lesser loves of ploughmen and bairns. I refuse to be this world’s chattle, harnessed to it like a ploughing ox. No, I will soar, like the goshawks in the sky beyond my window.

 

The rain has stopped. I plump the hay beneath me and listen as the thatched roof sheds its last drops. I close my eyes and wonder…did Christ’s blood, as it fell from the cross, sound like drips of rain?

 

I decide that tomorrow, when I take the host and the wine, I will remember the sound of his blood. That blood…so red, so sharp on the tongue, so warm in the throat.