Rites

By the next morning, Cecilia threw her duties aside momentarily, deciding instead to visit Atison once again. This time, though, it was far more important than fluffing pillows and ridding corners of cobwebs.

When she entered his chamber again, she found him not in his chair by the window, but laid flat and immobile on his bed. He slumped against his pillows, pale as candlewax, his sketchbook lying closed at his side. For a dreadful moment, Cecilia’s breath caught, eyes wide and disbelieving as she thought he had actually slipped away.

Through the lump in her throat, Cecilia choked out a quiet, “Atison?”

By the grace of whatever good gods existed in this realm—At her voice, Atison’s eyes opened, fighting against the heaviness of his lids. The dark hollows of his sockets flickered with pale-blue awareness, and as his pupils rolled to meet Cecilia’s figure, his lips parted in a weak grin.

“Well, hello, Cecilia. You’ve arrived while I was rehearsing my death,” he said dryly. His exhale was too loud, too taxing, and his eyes slipped closed again. “Perhaps you keep me tethered.”

She ignored the remark, walking to his grate to reignite the fire that had gone out who knew how long ago. Hands clenched tightly around her tinderbox and flint, trying to light a new fire while smothering her hands’ faint trembling. She had not realized until that instant how much she dreaded the thought of his absence, and she said, “You shouldn’t joke like that. It attracts bad luck.”

As she knelt to set the fireplace alight, she heard Atison speak again from behind her, his tone sharper than usual. “What could any amount of luck do for me now? I could hate this body, you know. Some days I do. I rail against it, curse it. What is art to me if I am too weak to finish a canvas, too frail to carry a poem to its end?” He tried to clench his hands into fists, but the effort alone made his muscles ache, and he let go with a frustrated gasp. “Tell me, maid—Would you still cling to beauty if it spat in your face every hour?”

Cecilia looked over her shoulder at him, startled at the anger in his voice. “I…” She swallowed, her gaze lowering to the floor as she admitted, “I don’t know.”

“Of course you don’t.” His laugh was bitter, but it eased into a sigh. “Nor do I, most days. But then…” The rest of his body relaxed as his voice softened. “Then I see the way the light cracks through the curtain and paints the floor in gold. I hear the rain against the glass. I remember the shape of wings in flight. I cannot help myself. I must love it all, even as it abandons me.” He gave another small shrug, as best he could. “Or maybe as I abandon it.”

Her throat tightened. All she could bring herself to say was, “It sounds like a tragedy.”

“It is,” he said. His eyes fixed on hers, urgent despite his weakness. “That is the point. To love the world when it does not love you back—That is the fiercest act of defiance. And you—” His voice cracked into a cough, but he pressed on. “—You look at the world as though it is only a prison. What will become of you if you cannot find joy? If when you do not have it, you cannot bring yourself to chase and find it?”

She stared at him, the words pricking like As she tended his fire and straightened his scattered papers, she felt something shift inside her. Atison had pressed a small, uncomfortable seed into her heart’s soil with his stubborn, trembling hands.

Soon she finished, standing up and straightening out her skirts, letting the seconds stretch to linger as long as she could. The air was tense, uncomfortable, a fog of the inevitable settled throughout it—But she wanted to make the most of the little time. So, as she idled in his doorway, she murmured, “Thank you, Atison. For sharing.”

His eyes were closed, his chest rising and falling so shallowly she couldn’t have seen the blanket over him move without focus. But he smiled, and that was enough.

When she left, his words haunted her steps. The manor still loomed like a cage, the shadows still pressed in close, but somewhere in the rhythm of her breath, she finally noticed the faint earthy sweetness of the air after rain she had never before.

For the first time, Cecilia wondered if perhaps she could fight not only for freedom, but for the right to savor life itself, once she won it.