Anchor's Away
Flash fiction, 800 words. For IAM's June 5 prompt. Hope you like space nuns!
On Thursdays, St. Laren turned away from the window.
The Rule didn’t require it, but perfection did. She was Rigel-9’s only Living Saint, in a universe where Living Saints were rare enough.
One turn, one slip, one curious glance could destroy the work of her 92 years. She was weary beyond all comfort. A wracking, bloody cough brought words of worry from beyond the wall.
She held on for the good of Rigel’s people. Her life was dedicated to them all.
On Thursdays, a novice brought St. Laren her weekly food. The duty belonged to the best behaved. What a reward, to encounter to the saintly anchoress at the same window through which four suns brought their cheer.
The anchorage’s one worldly eye.
St. Laren enjoyed meeting these eager youngsters. Conversation was permitted. She spoke daily with all manner of confessors, pilgrims, kings, queens, abbesses, priors, criminals, nuns, and the occasional small child who’d taken a wrong turn toward the washrooms.
Conversation was permitted. Eye contact was not. Indeed, since she was handed over as an infant, she had not held the eye of another. She had been placed in the company of Anchoress Risheld, whose own eyes had been gouged out in the Great Pillage of 9452. Risheld had beheld too much of the world to become a Living Saint – too much indeed, poor Risheld. But the abbess, as well as the late Dragon-Duke of Rigel, St. Laren’s sire, had been determined that the planet would have a Living Saint.
Purity, prayer, piety.
This had been hard for a child, and especially for an adolescent, but those days were long behind St. Laren. Now she welcomed it. In the eyes of another she might behold great good, ‘tis true. But more likely all manner of venality, sin, resentment … even admiration could prove fatal to a soul determined to be humble.
Did she witness these things in speech? Certainly. Frequently. But the eyes were a window to the soul, a pit lethal as the ravenous black star that pulled Rigel-9 ever closer to its demise. Death came for them all, eventually. Whether life continued after that depended on her prayers.
Her body shuddered. Her mind wandered.
When St. Laren was 16, her novitiate ended. The time for vows was nigh. Risheld told her that a young man would visit the window at noon. Her father regretted sending her to the anchorage, and considered marriage a happier fate for his cloistered daughter. The man to appear was a patron of the poor, a knight with a noble soul. If Laren chose to behold him, she would leave with him and enjoy the luxuries a duke’s daughter deserved, while yet having all opportunity for charity and piety. She would never be a Living Saint, but then, most saints didn’t receive their crown in this universe anyway.
Laren and Percival had a delightful conversation about the virtues of acorns and the artistic merits of the local orphans. But she did not turn toward the window, and in time Percival withdrew gracefully.
Her father had taken it badly. Had it been permitted, he would have stood at the window himself and commanded her to look. Instead, he’d assaulted the screen on the other side of the cell, berating her until his invective offended Risheld. The anchoress had offered up a hymn in a loud voice, the honey of her love drowning his acid. He had apologized and not returned for some time, the next to bring to his daughter her late mother’s galaxy charts, a hymn to life all their own. Once a month after, he’d sent cherries in their weekly basket. There was nothing in the Rule against cherries, eaten in moderation.
Such a long time ago now, her father and Risheld and Percival.
A fit wracked her skeletal frame. She collapsed just as her decrepit ears heard a flutter. The novice had arrived. She heard the click of the window latch. Poor child, what would she see?
“Here has come your reward, Laren.”
Because of her dying thoughts, she heard Risheld’s voice. Because it had been permitted to look upon blind Risheld, the only person St. Laren had ever beheld, her failing eyes fluttered open.
Her life’s work! Her soul cried out. Every careful moment, her sacrifice of Percival’s love, her offering of her father’s riches. In this one slip of her dying brain, she risked temptation. Indeed, her soul had no callous and no defense. She hoped her deathbed would render her blind.
Instead, she beheld the eyes of another.
And saw nothing in particular. They were encased in a face she had seen a thousand times, in joy, frustration, mirth, sorrow, disappointment, rapture, boredom, always expressed without the benefit of the eyes. The eyes were there now, but they no longer terrorized St. Laren.
“Come,” said St. Risheld, holding out a perfectly formed hand.
St. Laren grasped it and climbed out the window, eager to see what she’d missed.
The absurdity of Laren's sacrifices make them seem all the more divine at the end of her life. Great story.