Faithless

She doesn’t remember much about the moments before she was buried in the snow. She remembers how cold her nose had been, and the streaky feeling of tears on her cheeks she’d wiped away. They told her not to weep because it would freeze her skin and make her colder.

She remembers when they laid her in her snow grave and put her arms across her chest, and she remembers how blue everything became when they began shoveling in the snow. One after another, the sound of slicing snow echoing in her ears like a bad song. She heard it endlessly.

She remembers no longer having any space to breathe. The cold pressed into her face until it hurt and then until she couldn’t feel anything. She didn’t know how long she stayed there.

***

When she woke it was to the face of a girl.

She had pale blue eyes and copper hair, the daylight setting her afire around the edges. Her shadows were blue like the snow.

“Who are you?” she asked. She thought she’d known what would happen after they buried her. She did not anticipate this. “Are you also an offering?”

“Yes,” the red-haired girl said, after a moment. “Come, sit up.”

“Why?” she asked. “I am to wait for the forest to retrieve me. So must you.”

Her pale brows drew together. “You want to be sacrificed?”

She stopped then. “I want…to do as I am supposed to.”

The red-haired girl looked at her like she was quite stupid, but also like she didn’t understand why. She lifted a hand and brushed a bit of snow from the other girl’s hair. The tips of her fingers had blued.

“What is your name?” she asked.

“Lavinia. What is yours?”

“I am Ophelia,” she said. Her eyes wandered around Lavinia’s face. “You have very dark hair.”

“Yes,” Lavinia said. “My father says it is good that I do, that it will protect me from the Devil.”

Ophelia’s pale eyes met hers. “Superstitions will not save you in the Darkwood. Nothing rules but the Saint.”

“The Saint is who we are giving our lives to,” Lavinia said. “My protection passes from my hair to his hands.”

Ophelia did not speak for a moment. Lavinia felt briefly like she was looking at a ghost, for how little she moved and how pale she was. Her lilac lips set.

“Very well. Let us go and find him, then.”

***

The Darkwood was a labyrinth carved from shadows and scarred trees, bare trunks rising to incredible heights before branching off into spindles of blue darkness. Like prison bars they warded off the girls’ path and they followed a serpentine trail that was at every point indeterminate. Lavinia once looked back and found she couldn’t track her footprints; they were there, before her eyes, but the farther back she peered, the more they wavered, blurred, and sank into shadow.

Ophelia walked almost silently ahead of her. Her feet crunching the snow comforted Lavinia in their realness.

“Do you know where to find the Saint?” Lavinia asked her. “Did your family tell you?”

Ophelia glanced back at her. “No. They told me only that he would find me. That he knew where I was.”

“That is what my father told me,” Lavinia said. “He says the Saint knows all our hearts, and that he is drawn to the purest ones.”

“He told you that yours is so?”

“Yes,” she said, “because it is given in sacrifice. As is yours.”

Ophelia said nothing.

They continued through the Darkwood. The sky between the branches above their heads remained a broken frame of black and blue glass, no sun rising or setting, nor moon to light the sky. Lavinia looked at the snow on the ground all around her, under her feet and still in her hair, and realized she couldn’t feel it.

“Ophelia,” she ventured, if only to break the silence, “why did they sacrifice you?”

The red-haired girl ahead of her faltered slightly in step, but did not respond.

“My village sacrifices girls who carry the Saint in their hearts,” Lavinia continued. “The one before me was said to be very generous, giving bread to the poor and starving. My father told me about another who committed a miracle by bringing a dove back to life. What did you do to deserve a seat at the Saint’s table?”

“On the contrary, I have done nothing so great,” Ophelia said. “I was quite the opposite. I tricked a wealthy man into feeding a wild dog. When my father hit my mother, I put nails in his shoes. When the priest said I would be made an offering to the Saint, I asked why.”

She looked back at Lavinia. “And you? What have you done?”

Lavinia glanced at her feet. “You see, I do not know.”

“Why not?”

“My father told me I would be sacrificed when I was very young,” she said. “I have done everything I was supposed to do. I sat quietly during orisons and prayed for my family. I never stole or lied. I didn’t think it was enough.”

“But you are here now,” Ophelia said, pale eyes as dark as irises in the shadow. “It must have been.”

“I am here,” Lavinia said, “but the Saint is not. He has not come to retrieve me.”

Ophelia opened her mouth but a low keening sound, like the first echo of a bell, ribboned through the trees. She snapped her head toward the darkness that swirled ahead of them. Lavinia followed her gaze.

She couldn’t see anything. More voices echoed the first and a song of horrible eerie lamentation swallowed up all the silence.

“Ophelia,” Lavinia murmured in fear.

Shapes began to move in the shadows ahead of them. They trudged as if through much deeper snow, or like their feet were stuck to the ground and they had to pry them free. Their faces became clearer as they ambled closer; empty, dead eyes, some completely missing, and gaunt cheeks and blued skin. Their fingertips and teeth were blackened as if by soot. When their mouths opened, that awful dirge came out.

Lavinia grasped Ophelia’s hand, pressing herself close behind her.

“What are they?” she whispered.

“I…I think they’re the Saint’s Pages,” Ophelia murmured back. She didn’t take her eyes off them. “They keep intruders out of the Darkwood.”

“We aren’t intruders, right?” Lavinia said, shrinking closer into Ophelia as the first one stumbled past her. “We were invited. We are offerings.”

“They will ignore us,” Ophelia said. Still she stood rigidly against Lavinia.

One by two by three, the Saint’s Pages dragged their frozen bodies past the two girls like a river current parting around a rock. They paid Lavinia no heed; no touch nor glance.

They did Ophelia.

Many of them laid their blackened hands on her shoulder briefly as they passed. They did not look at her, and did not pause in their trudging. They only touched her shoulder as one would an old friend. Ophelia’s stony expression did not flinch, nor did she ever relax until the last ones had disappeared into the shadows whence the girls had come.

Lavinia looked into shadowed blue eyes. “Ophelia,” she said, “What did you do to deserve this?”

Her pale red brows were drawn. “The Saint won’t come for us. We have to find him ourselves.”

***

Some time later they sat in the snow in between the indeterminate trees on the unchanging path beneath the sky that did not lighten nor darken. Between them stood a single candle that Lavinia had been buried with, meant to help guide the Saint to her. It gave off no warmth, small flame that it was, but it did not matter. Neither girl was cold.

“Can I tell you a secret, Ophelia?” Lavinia murmured, her eyes wide on the candle. She had her knees pulled up to her chest.

Ophelia looked at her. “Sure.”

“I once doubted the Saint,” she whispered. “When my mother fell ill, and then died. She was a good person. She did not deserve it. She baked bread for the old lady whose son had perished in war. She patched up the shoes of the children who lived next door. She brought new cloaks to a family in the village who’d become sick from the cold. She came back sniffing.”

Ophelia’s face was unreadable.

“Then she died and I wondered what kind of Saint would let such a thing happen to such a woman as her,” Lavinia said. “What sort of reward is that, death? And it was a long, miserable one too. I found myself wondering if he existed at all. No one who knew my mother would have let her die like that.”

“We don’t get rewarded for decency,” Ophelia said.

“Well, I suppose she didn’t have to be rewarded. She just didn’t have to be punished.”

“I had a similar question once myself,” she said. The candle flame danced like a tiny sun in the sky of her eyes. “Someone told me that the Saint sometimes takes lives before they can experience greater suffering. That he would save those destined for worse.”

Lavinia felt tears sting her eyes. “Did you believe them?”

Ophelia looked at the candle sitting lonesomely between them. “No.”

Lavinia’s face contorted, and the tears welled and streamed down her cheeks in silence.

“Wipe away your tears,” Ophelia said to her. “They’ll freeze on your skin.”

***

“What do you think we’ll do, once the Saint finds us?”

Ophelia glanced over her shoulder. “What do you mean?”

They had resumed walking, though it felt increasingly like they were getting nowhere. The Darkwood remained unchanging. They did not again see the Saint’s Pages, but Lavinia had no complaints about that. Ophelia carried the candle as they walked.

“What does it mean to be sacrificed to him?” Lavinia asked. “Our souls will join his table, but what then? What does Eternity do with mortal souls?”

“Ruins them,” Ophelia said, “I imagine.”

“Will he be the one that kills us?” Lavinia murmured, mostly to herself.

“We are already dead, Lavinia,” Ophelia said, ice-blue eyes catching the dim light. “We died buried in the snow.”

Lavinia looked at her colorless fingertips and wondered why she hadn’t realized it before. She was not cold out here in the winter-laden woods. Her breath did not cloud before her mouth and nose. Ophelia’s lips and cheeks were the color of her eyes.

“Did no one tell you, that’s what sacrifice means?” Ophelia asked.

“I suppose,” Lavinia said, “I didn’t think it meant that my village would kill me, with their own hands.”

“The Saint’s conviction is a powerful thing.”

“Ophelia,” Lavinia ventured, “when you woke me, you asked if I wanted to be made an offering, as if it was a choice, still. If we were both dead already, what did you plan to do?”

The other girl was silent for a long moment.

“I don’t know,” she said at last. “Run away. Leave the Darkwood, perhaps live as a ghost. Though it doesn’t seem possible to leave.”

Lavinia started. “Have you been trying to lead us out of the woods this entire time?”

Ophelia’s voice was quiet and a little sad. “No.”

Lavinia relaxed, but Ophelia wasn’t done speaking. “Lavinia, can I tell you a secret of my own?”

“What is it?”

Something between the trees ahead caught Lavinia’s eye. It flickered weakly, but began to grow stronger, like a distant star winding closer and closer. She pointed past Ophelia.

“Look at that! Is it the Saint?”

Ophelia turned to look, squinting her eyes. The light grew stronger, reaching sharp points out into the forest.

“I don’t…”

Lavinia started running. The path stretched ahead of her, suddenly there, suddenly defined, the bright star reaching for her with its light. This had to be the Saint. They’d found him at last - he’d found her at last.

The light began to shrink.

Lavinia got closer and she was aware of space again. She could see past the light, and it was more wood. She could see the reach of the star, and it was limited. She could see its heart, and it flickered.

She fell to her knees in the snow before a candle just as its little flame was extinguished by an errant wind. Beside the candle was a grave in the snow.

Ophelia’s footsteps caught up to her. She stopped beside Lavinia.

“I didn’t do enough, did I?” Lavinia muttered.

Silence met her words.

“Being raised to be a sacrifice isn’t enough. Doing everything right doesn’t make you good,” she continued, her voice fraying at the first touch of bitterness she’d ever felt. “I didn’t earn it. He doesn’t want me.”

“Lavinia.”

“We are back where we started. We’ve gone nowhere,” Lavinia said, feeling those tears again at her eyes. “Perhaps if you had left me buried I would have died still having faith. This is worse than death.”

“Lavinia -”

“Ophelia,” Lavinia asked, “who unburied you?”

Silence. There were a few crunches in the snow as Ophelia walked to the other girl’s side. Lavinia noticed distantly that her crimson hair was almost long enough to graze the ground. It pooled like spilling blood as she crouched in the snow.

“No one,” she said, and held out her hands.

Her blued fingers were rusted with dried blood, scratches and scrapes on her knuckles that had frozen into scars. Her fingernails were broken and bent. One was missing completely.

“I dug myself out. No one came to find me,” she said. “I wasn’t buried with a candle. I was all alone in the Darkwood.”

She reached out with her cut fingers and wiped the tears off Lavinia’s face, as if she could forcibly push her sorrow away.

“What did you do to deserve this?” Lavinia asked again.

It took a staggered moment for Ophelia’s iris eyes to meet hers. “I made a deal.”

Lavinia sat back on her heels. “With who?”

For the first time since they met - Lavinia could not tell if it had been hours or days or weeks - Ophelia had an expression on her face that was not unidentifiable: she looked almost sad.

“I told you I had a secret,” she said. “I wasn’t buried for the Saint.”

***

She didn’t know how long she stayed there.

She fell asleep, at some point, the coldness slowing her blood and her heartbeat until she barely breathed. Behind her eyes was the only thing she’d ever truly feared.

Sleep, little daughter, sleep your way to me.

Are you the Devil, she asked.

Hush, little daughter, I am what you require me to be.

Are you the Saint, she asked.

Now, little daughter, who is to say the difference?

They have given me to you, she said. What will you make of me?

A perfect little hair on my head you will make. A lovely little feather on the lining of my coat. An indisputable letter on my coin.

Please, she said, have mercy. I will do anything.

Will you do anything, little daughter? Anything not to be a nail on my finger?

I will do anything, she pleaded. Save my fate.

Very well, little daughter. Devil I may be, but Saint I am also. I could have another use for your soul.

When she woke she saw blue, and she began to dig.

***

Ophelia met Lavinia’s confused stare.

“I was sent to take you to him.”

Silence. Lavinia stared at her eyes, unchanged, and yet entirely different. Every breath of air between them felt serrated, like the image of Ophelia was suddenly covered in teeth.

Lavinia’s voice was small and weak. “I don’t understand.”

“My village didn’t offer me to the Saint,” she said. “They offered me to the Devil. It so happens that they are one and the same.”

Lavinia felt a horrible dual panic that Ophelia had lied to her and that her heart should be beating harder, and faster, but it was completely still.

“I didn’t lie to you,” Ophelia said, as if she could hear her thoughts, which did not help her panic. “Everything I told you was true.”

“You were sent to bring me to the Saint, or the Devil?” Lavinia asked wretchedly. “Who is taking my soul into Eternity?”

“You were sacrificed to the Saint, Lavinia,” Ophelia said. “So to him I shall bring you.”

“But you haven’t! We are back at my grave! You lied to me!”

“This isn’t your grave, Lavinia,” she said. “It is mine.”

Ophelia tilted the candle in her hand toward the blackened wick of the candle at the head of the grave. A flame bounced tentatively to life upon it and she plucked it up, blowing out the candle that Lavinia had been buried with.

“You have been collected,” Ophelia said, her voice somehow flatter than it had been since they’d met; like there was nothing behind her words anymore. “Are you ready to meet the Saint?”

Lavinia stared at her with unshed tears in her eyes and that delayed surge of betrayal broke over her completely now.

“That is all?” she whispered. “You’ll just give me to him, the Saint that is also the Devil? You will just pass me on, another soul on a string to wear like a necklace? A candle to blow out? How long have you even been doing this?”

Ophelia looked at her with that same almost dismayed expression as when she had asked Lavinia if she wished to be a sacrifice.

“I made a deal with him,” she muttered. “I changed my fate once. I can’t do it again.”

Lavinia made her face look like Ophelia’s. “Says who?”

Ophelia looked doubtful, perhaps cautious. “You are mad.”

“I am faithless,” Lavinia said. “What are you?”