# Proskomide

*Sacris solemniis
iuncta sint gaudia
et ex praecordiis
sonent praeconia
recedant vetera
nova sint omnia*

She needed to pee.

Cecily gritted her teeth and gnawed restlessly at her lip. Above her head, the ceiling of the cathedral rose into infinity, a cyclopean tangle of domes and pillars, studded with stained glass, defying gravity, defying physics. Whenever she looked up during prayers, she always got clouted for her trouble, but she'd kept doing it. It had evolved, over the years, into one of her little defiances. She loved her little defiances fiercely. They were all she had left.

Despite the cathedral's immense size, its walls were always pristine. The shafts of sunlight streaming in through the stained glass were entirely free of dust, even though the Order didn't employ any cleaners. To hear the priests speak of it, the cathedral had stood for a thousand years, and would stand for a thousand more. Cecily knew, however, that Christianity hadn't been introduced to North America until at least four centuries ago. She remembered that much from her pre-Order childhood.

The thought of her childhood brought tears to her eyes. She didn't remember much of it anymore. What she _did_ remember was haggling painstakingly for stationery in the cold, drafty dormitories. She'd preserved her family on those meager pages and held on to them for as long as she could, but those scraps of paper had been confiscated within the month. She hadn't given up, though. She'd fought back, and fought hard. She had to hold on to that, at least. She'd fought like hell.

But it didn't change the fact that she'd forgotten her parents' names.

She barely remembered their faces. Had she had a brother? A sister? Multiple brothers, multiple sisters? Cecily blinked rapidly and attempted to haul herself back into the present, but she was too far gone. She felt as though she was regressing, tripping back through time, evolving backwards into the wet-eyed, clueless child who had first stepped through the Order's gates all those years ago. A hot, coppery tang filled her mouth, and she realized that she had bitten her lip.

A soft sound of disgust came from her left. A thick-fingered, calloused hand grasped her jaw roughly from where it was obscured by her veil and gave it a dismissive jerk. Cecily felt the bloody wound on her lip closing up. "Stupid girl," Brother Coughlan sneered, just loud enough for her to hear.

Anger swelled in her chest, but Cecily refused to give in to it. Fighting back would just make her situation worse. And although she knew that this was the smart thing to do, on a deeper level, she also knew that this couldn't last. The more submissive she acted, the closer she got to becoming one of _them_, empty-eyed and obedient. Every time she shrugged off one of their little insults, she could feel a little bit of herself crumbling away. Before long, there wouldn't be anything left. She had to get out of this place. Even if it was the last thing she did.

*LET US KNEEL*

The assembled Order obeyed. Cecily pictured them in her mind's eye. Each pew had ten children, bracketed on either end by a Brother or a Sister. From the back, they resembled nothing so much as a collection of shivering crows, their heads covered by coifs (for the girls) and hoods (for the boys). Further behind, the misfits clustered: adults, for the most part, and supervised closely. She'd been one of them, once upon a time. As Brother Coughlan and Brother Cothran knelt smoothly to either side of her, Cecily planted her palms flat on the back of the pew in front of her and struggled to her knees. Interlacing her fingers, she lowered her head but did not close her eyes. Her knees twinged.

Below, her stomach protruded out from between the slats that made up the back of the pew in front of her. She couldn't take her eyes off it. Every day, it felt as though it grew just a little bit bigger. It was no wonder that she was growing; whatever it was that the Order had put inside of her, it was _ravenous_. If she didn't eat at least nine meals per day (she'd counted), she'd collapse from exhaustion. The priests had finally found a way to neutralize her permanently.

_No,_ Cecily thought firmly. _You're not neutralized. You're just... regrouping. That's all._

Her previous escape attempts had hinged on her slim frame. Her narrow shoulders and bony hips had helped her to wriggle her way out through rubbish chutes and sewage pipes, but now, if her hunger didn't cripple her, then her size would. And then there was always the possibility that she'd just burst like a balloon one day, having eaten one too many meals. The thought didn't scare her as much as it once had.

A bell rang, clean and clear, reverberating off the walls and making her innards squirm. Brother Coughlan and Brother Cothran seized her arms and hefted her upright. Cecily's face burned. She'd cramped up while kneeling three weeks ago, and the priests had milked that one lapse for all it was worth.

When she had first been locked away, they'd only dragged her out once every few months. But after they'd put the _Thing_ inside of her - after it had begun to dull her senses and fill out her habit - they'd started bringing her to monthly prayers, then weekly prayers, and now she was being paraded out in front of the rest of the Order every other day. They'd made an example of her. _No one is worthless,_ Father Joachim had said in a sermon once, before she'd started ignoring his homilies as a matter of course. _Each and every one of you is an instrument of the Lord._

Cecily closed her eyes and counted to three, then opened them again. The hunger was back, somewhere in the pit of her stomach, and she knew from experience that it would grow steadily, advancing with each passing minute, competing with the strain in her bladder and the miscellaneous aches and pains that were her life now. Her legs trembled. When had it become exhausting for her to just stand up straight for a few hours?

Brother Cothran's hand, slim-fingered and bony, glided over the coarse fabric of her habit. His breath was warm against her temple; he'd probably been aiming for her ear. "Don't you fret, Sister Vega," he murmured. "We'll get you some food once this is over."

Cecily did not respond.

***

Sequestered on the extreme left of the pew but close to the front of the cathedral, Cecily was one of the first to leave. Low whispers trailed behind her as Brother Coughlan and Brother Cothran brought her down the aisle. She imagined the children whispering to each other, their teachers curiously silent, implicitly encouraging them to gossip. _See her? That's the girl who tried to escape last year, and the year before that. See how well she behaves now._

Frescoes, triptychs and sculptures lined the corridors. Cecily had no doubt that they were, each of them, exquisite in their own right, but she'd never been trusted enough to roam the halls on her own. Now, though, with her gait reduced to a pathetic waddle, she'd found that it was possible to take in the sights in a limited sort of way. The iconography was perversely familiar: Adam and Eve in the Garden; Job in the desert; Paul on the road to Damascus; Jesus on the cross.

Cecily had never been terribly religious, but she was also fairly certain that Jesus's eyes weren't supposed to be black and pupilless.

They came to a halt in front of a blank and featureless wall. It was unusually featureless by the Order's standards; not a single artwork was present on either side of it. Brother Cothran raised his hands, and the wall crumbled, receding into the floor like sand. Brother Coughlan shoved her in, uncaring of whether she tripped or not, and Cecily stumbled on into her cell. The sound of grinding rock filled her ears as the wall rose back into place behind her. She didn't bother to turn and check if they'd gone.

Her cell was windowless, but a minuscule square in the center of the ceiling had been replaced with a thick panel of transparent material, providing a makeshift skylight. She'd tried to reach it more times than she could count, but she knew, deep down, that she wouldn't be able to fit through the hole in the ceiling even if she'd been able to reach it. The walls, ceiling and floor were spotless. She'd tried rubbing at the wall once in a bid to wear it away somehow; her fingers hadn't even been smudged.

They'd given her a chamberpot and a container of fresh water for washing and drinking. There was a narrow, flimsy desk in the center of the room, and on the desk was a Bible, suspiciously pristine despite her resolute refusal to so much as crack it open. (She'd stood on it more than a few times, though. To get at the ceiling.) It was placed atop a fresh habit, and to its right was a steaming bowl of stew. Cecily didn't even stop to think; the stew was gone in a matter of minutes. Satiated temporarily, she carried her bowl to the wall from whence she'd came and placed it on the floor with a grunt, then relieved herself with a sigh.

Her scapular and coif came away sticky with sweat. Cecily sat down hard on the floor, panting, and pulled her tunic off in one sharp tug, shoulders aching. The wall was cool against her bare back. Staring blankly at the featureless expanse opposite, she tossed her habit to the side and felt only a vague twinge of satisfaction as it landed in a perfect heap beside her empty bowl. Her belly pressed against her thighs, warm and heavy. She raised her hands and saw that her wrists remained bound by a thin ribbon of metal, then reached for her throat as if to check that her collar was still there.

_I'm getting used to them._

She didn't want to get used to them. She wanted to tear the bracelets off, and her collar too, but she hadn't been able to remove them. She'd tried. She'd tried so hard. She'd tugged at her throat until she fainted and scratched at her wrists until they were bloody, but nothing had worked.

Cecily groaned and buried her face in her hands.

***

`He can discover unto thee what the Earth is, and what holdeth it up in the Waters; and what Mind is, and where it is; or any other thing thou mayest desire to know. He giveth Dignity, and confirmeth the same.`

Cecily opened her eyes.

She was lying flat on her back, staring up at the tiny hole in the ceiling. Her whole body was one large bruise. She'd tried to climb up onto the desk at dusk, but she'd finally gotten too heavy for it, and the entire thing had come crashing down. She'd probably concussed herself or something. Groaning, she propped herself upright and surveyed the damage, eyes straining to make out her surroundings. The desk had been reduced to smithereens, and she had a few nasty splinters, but her clean habit had somehow spread itself out and protected her from the worst of the damage. She didn't see the Bible, but frankly, the less she saw of it, the better.

`His Office is to go and come; and to bring abundance of things to pass on a sudden, and to carry or re-carry anything whither thou wouldest have it to go, or whence thou wouldest have it from. He can pass over the whole Earth in the twinkling of an Eye. He giveth a True relation of all sorts of Theft, and of Treasure hid, and of many other things.`

Cecily jerked, stunned. There was a voice in her head. It'd woken her up. Warm, velvety and rich - it sounded masculine. It sounded like how she thought her father had sounded. She'd been alone in her head ever since the priests had fastened the bracelets around her wrists and the collar around her neck. It was like she was opening her eyes for the first time in a long, long time.

_Hello?_

The voice cut off. Cecily waited with bated breath, willing it to start again.

`Hello. Who are you? I thought I was alone here.`
_Where are you?_
`I don't know. It's somewhere dark. Somewhere warm. Somewhere wet. Somewhere - oh.`

Cecily waited. While she waited, she cleaned up the shattered wreckage of her desk and stuck what remained in the corner. Her habit had been ruined, and she still couldn't find the Bible. She was most probably in trouble, but there was someone else in her head.

`I know where I am. I'm inside you.`

Cecily's insides turned to ice.

`What's your name, darling?`
_What are you?_
`I'm picking up undercurrents of desperation. Notes of despair, hopelessness, panic. A trapped animal gnawing its leg off. You're a captive. Just like me.`

There was nothing to say to that. Cecily slid down the wall and sat down flat on the floor. On a whim, she pressed one hand to the surface of her belly and felt a dull, lugubrious throb. It felt as though it was coming from very far away.

`Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, there were two nations at war, the Red Kingdom and the White Kingdom. The Red King captured the White Duke, a powerful servant of the White King.`

His voice was slow and patient, the perfect cadence to fall asleep to, but Cecily was wide awake.

`The White Duke fought hard to break his bonds, but the Red King brought him far, far away, and his bonds were tight, oh, tighter than tight. And when he had been brought to the very ends of the earth, the Red King cut off the White Duke's head. Then he cut the White Duke's body into thirty-six pieces and scattered them across the world.`

There was a pause.

`The White Duke could survive without a head, of course.`

Cecily stared blankly into the darkness.

`After he had finished dismembering the White Duke, the Red King took his enemy's head and shut him away in a prison. A living prison. That's you, dear girl. That's you.`

Cecily swallowed. Her throat was dry. Carefully, she pulled a tiny shard of wood out of her palm and winced. The pain helped to clarify her thoughts. Finally, she asked: "What do you want?"

`Why, the same thing you do, of course. To be free.`