Chapter Text
Her alarm rang at three thirty in the morning. It was not like the halo bearer to stand up the instant that her clock, a mechanical wooden rooster, signals the start of the day. Often, it would be Lilith’s persistent knocking that would nudge her out of her slumber, their whole dorm corridor having already been woken up by the crowing of the clock as it mimicked its real life equivalent.
“Goodness, Ava, could you not have gotten a more traditional alarm clock? This is the reason why we don’t take care of chickens here at the Cat’s Cradle. This is a priory. Silence is sacred,” Lilith told the halo bearer months ago when she was finally woken up by the insistent and rather forceful knocking of the sister warrior.
“But it’s a present from Beatrice,” Ava replied, pouting. “A gift from when we were in a mission together in Barcelos.”
Lilith was silenced by the halo bearer’s answer. She no longer brought up the rooster alarm clock again.
Yet it was not an ordinary day at the Cat’s Cradle, so Ava stood up and stretched, put on a pair of jogger pants and her blue hoodie, and made her way to the corridor's shared bathroom with her toothbrush in hand.
The sister warriors of the Cat’s Cradle, nuns from the exclusive and secret Order of the Cruciform Sword, highly trained in combat and tactical skills, often wake up together at four to go for a run around the convent before they start the day. Waking up thirty minutes earlier than most would allow Ava the solitude she required for the special occasion. No forced smiles, no looks of pity, the halo bearer preferred to have none of those, particularly today. She brushed her teeth alone in front of the marble top sinks, spitting out the toothpaste and watching as the white bubbles swirled down the drain. Next, she washed her face, removing the veil of sleep that still covered her eyes. When she was done, she dried her cheeks with a gray towel that was a standard OCS issue, not even bothering to gaze at herself on the mirror. No, she did not even bother to turn on the lights. Brushing her teeth and washing her face in the morning were just parts of a routine that she had to get over and done with to prepare herself for this extraordinary day. The halo bearer wiped her mouth and made her way back to her room.
She felt the cold seep through the gray stone floor of the corridor, a prelude to the early morning temperature outside. If Beatrice were here, she would have already scolded Ava for going barefoot.
“You don’t know what sort of organism would crawl through the pores of your soles.”
Her voice would be deep and stern, but her eyes would be soft, and Ava would know that she comes from a place of love. But she was not here, and today, the halo bearer wanted to feel what was real. The cold winds of dawn, the damp soil against the soles of her feet, the sharp thorns on the stems of roses she would later cut with bare hands. Today, her offering would feature no shortcuts, no easy way out. The halo bearer decided that for her, for Beatrice, she would feel everything. Every chill, every ache, every inconvenience, before she finally lets go.
She made her way outside the cradle with brown wrapping paper in hand, a pair of garden shears, and a gray canvas tote bag. The cold morning winds that made their way through the Iberian hills seeped into Ava’s joints. She would not use the halo to warm herself up this time. The matter was between her and her task, there could be no in-betweens. Today, her gift would be pure and unadulterated, a product of her mortal hands. Beatrice deserved Ava without the title of a bearer, stripped down to her meat and bones, down to every last drop of blood coursing through her veins, the velocity of the flow dictated not by the boon of the halo, but by the hope that she will meet Beatrice again. But today, she must finally let go.
The halo bearer stood in front of her rose garden, white and red bulbs that she has tended carefully since they were able to put the OCS back together after the affray at the Vatican. It was in the best interest of then the new Pope Duretti to cover up what has transpired underneath the holy city and to work with the sister warriors in order to defeat what has been lurking in the catacombs of the Necropolis for several centuries. It was an evil that was unearthed and unleashed due to the cunning of Father Vincent, and it was one they did not fully understand back then. If one were to ask the halo bearer, she would say that even now, no one in the OCS fully understands the nature of Adriel, the halo, and Divinium. The Order has seemed to sweep that gap in their knowledge under the rug because exactly a year ago, the great evil was defeated. Exactly a year ago, Adriel took with him into the abyss a part of Ava, a piece of her heart, a shard of her soul.
Mary always told Ava that she could not just cut the roses out of her own volition.
“Those are OCS property, just because you were tasked to take care of them does not mean you can just take them whenever you want to,” Mary tried to reason out.
“But these are for Beatrice. I am going to visit her,” Ava replied, pouting.
Like Lilith with the alarm clock, Mary was silenced, and she never brought up the subject of the roses again.
Today, like that day with Mary, no one would begrudge her for cutting the roses. Today, everyone would send a smile her way, or put a hand on her shoulder. Today, Mary would not roll her eyes at her and Lilith would hold her sharp tongue. She could probably even curse like a sailor in front of the altar and Mother Superion would choose to look the other way. There would be eggshells around every space she takes up, one that the sister warriors, hardened martial artists, would be too careful to tread. Ava brushed the thought away as she snipped away at the roses’ stems with intent, tongue sticking out of her teeth. She honored each flower and laid them down carefully in two piles: a dozen for the shrine and a dozen for the mound in the churchyard.
The halo bearer walked to the mound first, where no one would bother her for hours. She rested her back against the cold slab of stone, a marker, and placed a dozen of the white roses on the loam beneath. The red roses are for the shrine, to make it look pretty. The white flowers were for the mound, clean and pure. The grass was soft against Ava’s palms. She moved her hands in a circular motion to feel the fuzzy blades, to be one with the earth, to be one with those it claimed.
“Hey, it’s me,” the halo bearer said. “I may not be able to visit you for a long while. We have not had any incidents of the demon expulsion kind in a year and I am finally leaving the Cradle tomorrow. For good. Remember the innkeeper I told you about who offered me a job when Mary and I were in Ronda? That’s where I’m headed. I called him and he said his offer still stands. It’s not much, but it’s a start. It’s what you would have wanted.”
Ava took out a thick paperback from her canvas bag. It was Moby Dick. Beatrice would have been pleased that her reading has progressed to the classics. The sister warrior would have been pleased that a year on, Ava was still trying to live, still trying to forge her path. The halo bearer opened the book to where she left off the last time that she was here, which was yesterday afternoon, and began to read aloud. She spoke each syllable, each word, each sentence with intent, making the narration matter because it would be the last.
About three hours later, she was woken by a gentle hand on her shoulder. She had dozed off while reading a part she found boring, and the side of her head that rested against the cold stone slab ached. She knew at once that it was Camila. Neither Lilith nor Mary would have the courage to approach her today.
“We’re ready if you are, Ava,” Camila said, her voice softer than usual but the halo bearer knew it was genuine. “Mother Superion is waiting for the roses to decorate the shrine.”
“Sorry, I fell asleep. I thought a tale about sperm whales would be more exciting,” Ava replied. Any other sister warrior would have told her that no apologies were required, would have patronized her, but Camila simply smiled. It was for this precise reason that she was sent for this mission. “Help me up?”
Camila extended a hand and helped the halo bearer to her feet. She took the garden sheers and the canvas bag with the book and let Ava carry the bundle of roses. She knew it what was she needed to do.
“Where is it?” Ava asked as she walked alongside her friend.
“In the transept inside the cathedral, where we held Shannon’s and Lilith’s rites,” Camila said, “and Beatrice, the last time.”
‘Right,’ Ava thought. The rites the sister warriors held a year ago was for Beatrice. It was the standard ceremony held by the OCS for a fallen sister warrior days after her death. Today’s rites was for Ava’s sake. The halo bearer knew that was the case because no second rites were ever held for Sister Shannon a year after she died. And for Lilith, well, they found out that she had not been dead after all.
The halo bearer’s heart warmed up at the thought. Admittedly, outside the circle of Mary, Lilith and Camila, Ava failed to connect with any of the other sisters at the familial level. Knowing that the convent went out of its way to conduct a ceremony that was out of protocol because they think it was what the halo bearer needed made her smile. She would miss this place.
When they approached the cathedral, Camila left Ava’s side and walked to the church’s old upright piano right beside the small shrine. Several of the shorter pews were arranged before the altar, which was as simple as the last one. They recycled the same blown up picture of Beatrice that they used during her first rites, a candid photo taken when she was still a noviate. Her soft brown eyes wandered to a subject that was outside the photo, her soft, pink lips curled, about to form a smile. Beatrice felt more alive in this photo than any other image she could have posed for: dynamic, inchoate, unfinished. Just like her story. A lump was caught in Ava’s throat and one of the sister warriors took the flowers from her arm in order to arrange them in little vases on the floor underneath the easel that propped up the picture.
Camila sat down on the piano seat and began to tickle the first notes of her song out of the ivory keys. The halo bearer recognized the opening lines of an RnB tune, old, by her standards.
Games, changes and fears
When will they go from here
When will they stop?
I believe that fate has brought us here
And we should be together babe
But we're not
Ava felt an arm snake through her shoulder and another circle her waist. It was Lilith and Mary, her remaining family, making sure she makes it through Camila’s melody.
“We allowed her to choose the song, do you not like it? We can have her change it,” Lilith offered.
Ava shook her head despite the tears that were starting to form.
“No, it’s perfect,” she replied.
I try to say goodbye and I choke
Try to walk away and I stumble
Though I try to hide it, it’s clear
My world crumbles when you are not here
“Can you do this?” this time, it was Mary who asked, concern in her voice.
“I can,” Ava replied, “I have to.”
Right after Camila was done with her song, the halo bearer disengaged herself from her friends’ hold and made her way in front of the shrine, a lone red rose in her hand. She placed the flower at the bottom of the picture and faced the sister warriors who were gathered inside the cathedral.
“I want to thank you all for doing this today. For doing this for me,” Ava started.
“I know you’re not really doing this for Beatrice. She’s not here, she can’t see all this,” she continued, gesturing to the small crowd with her hands. “I get it, you’re big on the whole afterlife, watch-over-us-from-above-thing but we all know the truth about that, don’t we, ha ha ha.”
Mother Superion cleared her throat and looked away.
“Sorry, you know I’m not really great with this speech thing. I say whatever comes to mind and you all hate me for it, then I’ll be the TALK of town, haha! Get it? Get it?” Ava said. Nobody laughed.
“I just wanted to do this for her, one last time, before I leave. I know I only had six months with her, but she is the love of my life,” the halo bearer said, now more seriously. “She has touched my life only briefly and now I have to go on and spend the rest of it without her.”
When Beatrice died in the big battle against Adriel a year ago, it seemed like Ava would fall into her old ways. She had wanted to go away, had wanted to disappear, had wanted to leave the place that would remind her of Beatrice at every nook and cranny. She had given everything to the mission, had been willing to die for it at one point, yet it took the one thing that was the most important to her in return. She had offered the mission her all and she thought it was time to think of herself once again.
Yet Mother Superion, Mary, and even Lilith begged. They begged Ava to stay, begged her to wait and find out if evil still lurked in corners, bidding its time to be unleashed. She was, after all, the bearer of an important relic, one which the Order had protected for ages. But with no more demons to fight, the halo was nothing but an artifact, a vestige of a holy hoax. And so Ava gave them a year. She would wait a year until she would finally start her life. A year to honor Beatrice’ body in the ground. A year to finish what she started.
“But I want to thank you all for giving me the chance to be part of something, something big, something that’s not just about me,” Ava continued. “Thank you for accepting me and Beatrice and what we shared. It means the world to her, even if it was just for the last six months of her life.”
“That’s all, I, I’m gonna take the lessons I learned here with me for the rest of my life and I wouldn’t forget all of your kindness, and,” the halo bearer said, sniffling, then, staring at Mother Superion and then Lilith, “everything else in between.”
She concluded, and walked hastily into Camila’s waiting arms. Ava buried her face in the crook of her friend’s neck as the sister warrior ran a hand up and down her spine.
“Well, we’ve heard some heartwarming yet heartbreaking words from Ava, why don’t we share some memories we have of both of her and Beatrice? Let me go first,” it was Mary, taking over what the halo bearer could not finish. Ava was thankful for the sister warrior’s quick thinking. Mary had, in many ways, been the older sister she never had. Her love was tough, but it was genuine and caring. She will miss the woman.
Mary was recounting the first time Beatrice found out that she kicked the halo bearer off a cliff when Ava began to laugh again, her head resting on Camila’s shoulder and her arm around the sister warrior’s waist. Lilith went after Mary, recounting the time she caught the halo bearer sneaking into Beatrice’ room at night, and then Mother Superion, who finally revealed that she put Ava and Beatrice on operations together on purpose. The halo bearer gave the older woman a hug after her speech and watched as the rest of the sister warriors gave their testimonies one by one.
“Ava,” Lilith spoke once again, as soon as the last of the speeches was over. “The sisters and I have a little something for you, something that we think every young girl on the verge of a journey must have.”
One of the sister warriors, a young woman that Ava has only spoken to more than a dozen times, brought a box wrapped in silver and handed it to the halo bearer, who took it with both hands.
“Well go on, open it!” Camila urged her. “It’s just a little something, but I hope you like it. We all pitched in.”
Ava tore open the wrapper, the bright scraps of paper landing in a mess around her feet, and Lilith clutched her heart at the sight. A black, Nike shoe box was revealed to the halo bearer, which lid she lifted eagerly. Inside was a pair of brand new Nike React sneakers in the loudest colorway available.
“You were eyeing them in the mall the other day,” Mary said. “We thought you would need a comfortable pair for all the miles that you are going to cover from now on.”
“Oh, thank you, Mary,” Ava said with a huge grin, flinging herself to her friend’s arms to give her a hug. She felt strong arms envelope her body in an instant.
“I’m going to miss you, baby girl,” Mary said, whispering it to the halo bearer’s ear.
Camila sat by the upright piano once again to lead the sister warriors in a chorus of songs, each livelier than the last. It was a testament to how much Mother Superion has changed her attitude around Ava. She would never have approved otherwise.
The gathering ended at about eight, and Ava made the excuse that she needed to be alone in her room to pack for tomorrow’s journey. Everyone understood and allowed her retire early, but not without another round of hugs from the sister warriors.
“Come to me before you leave tomorrow, okay? I’d like to see you to the gate,” Camila said. She escorted Ava back to the dormitory and to the corridor where the halo bearer’s room was located. They stood in front of Ava’s doorway. She already had a foot in inside the room assigned to the warrior nun.
“Of course. I would never leave without saying goodbye,” Ava replied with her famous smile. “I’ll see you later, Camila.”
xxx
“What are you doing?” Mary heard a voice from behind her. It was Lilith. After the rites that morning, Mother Superion allowed the sister warriors to have the entire day off, and Mary disappeared into her room to clean and oil her shotguns, until she reappeared for lunch, only to disappear from the mess hall once again when she was done eating.
“Tending the roses, can’t you see?” Mary replied, not even turning to greet the newcomer.
“That’s Ava’s job,” Lilith said.
“Well, someone else has to do it now, seeing as she’s leaving tomorrow,” Mary replied. “Might as well get a head start.”
Lilith sighed and stepped around the bed of roses to make her way to the other side and face her friend. Mary was crouched on the ground, ridding the plot of weeds with her gloved hands.
“You’ve been hiding all morning after the ceremony. Something is the matter with you. Speak,” Lilith said. Mary sighed, removed the peach gardener’s gloves from her hands and threw them on the loam beside her friend’s feet.
“I was rehearsing how to say this, but if you insist on doing this now,” Mary started, finally looking Lilith in the eye. There was an expression of confusion on the taller woman’s face. “I’m thinking of leaving the Cradle as well.”
“But why?” the furrows that already featured on the nun’s forehead deepened further. “The OCS is your home.”
“The mission was my home. The OCS no longer even functions, the evil has been defeated for an entire year, I have avenged Shannon and there is nothing left for me here at the Cat’s Cradle,” Mary replied. “I am not a nun. I can’t pray and sing hymns and intercede for mortal souls all day. That’s not me, or else I would have taken the vows long ago.”
“What about Ava, she’s not a nun as well,” Lilith reasoned.
“You seem to be forgetting that she is leaving tomorrow,” Mary replied. “Yes, she stayed for a year, but we all know that’s not because she knows she is the bearer of a powerful relic that couldn’t fall in the wrong hands. She stayed because Beatrice’ body is buried here. Now that she has let go of her, she is finally leaving.”
“How about me, then?” Lilith said, a tinge of hurt in her voice. “Am I not your family?”
Something in the way she looked told Mary that there was more to what she was saying, a prelude to an unspoken conversation they’ve had several times. Mary knew there was no point, there was no way it could ever happen. Lilith was as committed to her vow to God as she was committed to the mission, even confusing the two at some point and, until recently, thinking that both were mutually exclusive. The last time Mary tried to share someone with God, it broke her heart.
“You’re a nun,” Mary replied.
“Shannon was a nun, Beatrice was a nun,” Lilith retorted.
“And look what happened to them. Look at what happened to me after Shannon died,” Mary said, her voice rising a little. “Look at Ava now. When was the last time you heard her make a pun since Beatrice died? The last time you saw her smile, really smile?”
“I don’t know if I can lose you as well, the way I lost Shannon,” Mary said with finality.
“So you just choose to not care about me that way, just choose to leave?” Lilith challenged. There was an edge to the sister warrior’s voice.
“I knew what you shared with Shannon. It is not my desire to replace her, like it wasn’t my desire either for her to die so that I could be halo bearer,” Lilith began. “I just want to be here for you now. You can’t just leave me-“
Lilith continued, but stopped as soon as she saw the expression on Mary’s face change. It seems like her friend was no longer listening to what she was saying.
“Lilith, what time is it?” she asked. There was an annoyed look on her face at having been interrupted just as she was about to bare her soul, but she humored her friend nonetheless, eyeing her thin leather-band wristwatch to give her the time.
“It’s five minutes to three, why?” Lilith replied.
Instead of speaking, Mary pointed behind her with an awestruck look on her face that Lilith rarely sees. The taller woman craned her neck to take a look at what caused the seemingly sudden fear in her friend’s features. The moment she saw it, she took a step back, almost falling on her behind on the bed of roses beneath. Luckily, Mary’s hands were there to catch her, strong fingers gripping the back of each of her arms.
Before the pair, the horizon was familiar: the same orange trees lining the walled edge of the cradle, the same rocky, rolling hills beyond the walls as far as the eyes can see. Only it was not. There was a flux, an anomaly of violent streaks of fiery red light and black smoke forming a circular barrier of about two meters in diameter like a hole on the horizon. It was dark on the other side of the hole, the stars above the Iberian Peninsula were visible and the wind was blowing harsher. Beyond the red and black borders of the circular plane, the sun stood stark and bright.
“You recognize those colors?” Mary asked.
“Yes,” Lilith replied. It was the same colors that would paint a space whenever a Tarask appears from another dimension, the same colors she disappeared into when she was dragged into the abyss, and whenever she would teleport from one place to another.
In the middle of the circular plane, a figure in black loomed from the night side, emerging from the shadows of the orange trees in the dark. Mary was unarmed, and so was Lilith, but the sister warrior never needed weapons anyway, not since she came back.
Mary ran around the bed to join Lilith on the other side, making sure that none of Ava’s handiwork were trampled upon.
“Get behind me, Mary,” Lilith commanded. If she had her shotguns, she would have protested, but Mary was smarter now, and did as her friend said. The pair got on their fighting stance, ready for who was charging at them from the other side.
It was a figure dressed in black from head to two, except for the silver material that was on their face, and a bronze circular object in their right hand. Lilith thought that the stranger was holding a chakram, and so she stepped in front of Mary, fully shielding her friend’s body with her own.
“Ready?” Lilith asked.
“Yeah,” Mary said breathlessly.
“Follow my lead,” Lilith said. They would disable the stranger, a protocol for deescalating uncharted situations.
The circular plane in front of them was slowly converging to its middle as the stranger made a beeline for them. It took only a few more seconds, and just as the figure in black made it to the day side before nighttime disappeared into into a singular point of red light and black smoke, and was gone. The orange trees within Lilith’s sight return to their spot under the afternoon sun.
The stranger lied sprawled on her front on the grass a few feet away from the bed of roses and where Lilith stood. Mary emerged from behind her and began to approach the stationary body.
“Careful,” Lilith hissed. “This person is armed.”
Mary was already a few steps away from the stranger when she stopped.
“I don’t think they’re carrying a weapon, Lilith,” Mary replied. “Not in the usual sense.”
She crouched near the body to inspect it. The stranger was wearing the black leather habit of a sister warrior, the multiple black leather straps that crisscrossed on her back were fastened in the middle by what was unmistakably the circular insignia of the Order of the Cruciform Sword.
On their hand, the circular object that Lilith mistook for a chakram, was a halo. It’s familiar bronze color was coated in what looked like a thick film of fresh blood.
Mary turned the stranger over. Their body remained motionless, going with the flow of the sister warrior’s hand, but the grip on the halo remained strong.
Lilith gasped. In front of the stranger’s habit, and secured by a leather brace, were a variety of weapons: different daggers, and a collection of kunai and shuriken. There was a hand pistol still inside its holster, and a knife secured on each of her boots. The silver material that covered their face was a mask made of chainmail. Its lower half was ripped apart and missing, the surviving part of the cruciform sword embossed in the middle.
It was Lilith, who was finally beside the body, who lifted the metal veil off the stranger’s face. She gasped, and both her and Mary took a step back in recognition of who it resembled.
“Mary,” Lilith began, dread in her voice. “The halo. This stranger has the halo. Something must have happened to Ava.”
xxx
“Ava! Open up!” the halo bearer heard Camila’s shrill voice from where she sat on her bead. Pieces of paper were littered all around her and she avoided stepping on any of them as she approached the door to open it for her friend.
At this point, Camila was banging her fists incessantly against the wood.
“Hey, where’s the fire?” Ava greeted her friend.
“Oh!” Camila replied, as if shocked to find the halo bearer in her own room. “Are you alright?” she said, inspecting Ava’s face, and then turning her around to feel her back.
“How’s the halo?” she asked.
“Still warm when I’m cold, why? what’s happening?” Ava replied, turning around to face her friend with a confused look on her face. Camila sighed with relief.
“What’s going on?” Ava asked, her brows nor furrowed in a confused knit.
“Nothing, I,” Camila began, and then peeked at the rest of the room behind the halo bearer’s shoulder. She saw the pieces of paper on the bed.
“What are those?” she asked. Ava stepped aside to let her in and the sister warrior approached the bed, picking on of the pieces of paper with her hand.
“Those are Beatrice’ letters,” Ava replied from behind Camila. “She was helping me with my penmanship and to practice, I would leave her little notes whenever she or I would go on missions without the other and we would have to be separated. I told her she never had to reply as I was just practicing but, she always did anyway.”
“We never had that many photos together, those few I had of her were destroyed during the-“ Ava tried to continue but Camila placed a hand on her arm.
“You don’t have to explain,” Camila said. Ava took the letter that was in her friend’s hand and sat down on the bed.
“What I wouldn’t give to see her again, Camila. She doesn’t even visit me in my dreams,” the halo bearer said. “I don’t want to lose my memories of how she looked like, you know how my memories are not as great as her’s. She’s Sister Photographic Memory. Maybe if it were the other way around and it was me who died, this wouldn’t be a problem for her at all.”
Instead of speaking, Camila stroked Ava’s back gently.
“I just want to see her again,” the halo bearer said, looking up. “I would give everything just to see her again even just once.”
Camila blinked. She felt uneasy seeing Ava’s glassy eyes, like her habit suddenly tightened around her throat and she could’t breathe.
“What is it?” Ava said, quickly sensing her friend’s discomfort.
“Nothing! I have to go,” Camila excused herself quickly. “I have to find Lilith and Mary.”
“What really is going on?” Ava asked.
“Nothing! Nothing you should worry your pretty little head about,” Camila replied, “bye Ava, I have some errands to do.”
The sister warrior turned back and ran out of the warrior nun’s room, closing the door behind her and leaving behind a confused halo bearer in her wake.
xxx
“Ava is fine, halo intact,” Camila announced breathlessly as soon as she got back to Mary and Lilith. The sister warriors were huddled together inside Beatrice’ room, the only room in the dormitory of the convent that was unoccupied. Adriel was ultimately defeated when Beatrice died a year ago, and there was really no reason to fill her position with a new recruit. Aside from Ava and the novitiates tasked to clean every facility of the Cat’s Cradle, no person has really been inside the room since the last time Beatrice lived in the space.
“Did she suspect that anything is amiss?” Lilith asked. She bit her nails as she stared at the person now lying in their dead friend’s bed. After a quick discussion with Mary, they decided the this room was the best place to hide the stranger, away from anyone who might pry but still within the walls of the Cat’s Cradle so that they might monitor the situation easily. It was Mary who wrestled the halo from the stranger’s strong grip and Lilith who carried the limp body on her shoulders and teleported them to the room.
Mary alerted Camila discretely, apprising her of what to expect in her dead friend’s room, sparing her from the shock when she finally sees the stranger with her own eyes. Together, they removed the weapons from their different hiding spots in battle habit. It was a task which Camila, as the custodian of the armory, expertly undertook. Lilith removed the stranger’s shoes and head covering, allowing the person’s jet black hair to flow freely down their shoulders. Afterwards, Camila brought in a basin and several wash cloths, and the sister warriors began cleaning the wounds and the dirt on every part of the stranger’s skin that was exposed.
The halo rested safely on top of a throw pillow that they placed inside Beatrice’ empty closet and out of the stranger’s reach. It was Mary who cleaned it of blood after Lilith extracted about a vial’s worth of the thick liquid for testing.
When all of those tasks were completed, the three sat around the bed on the stiff wooden chairs issued for every room in the dormitory and watched the stranger silently, observing any signs of movement. The person lay steady yet breathing, their chest rising and falling to a weak rhythm. The stranger’s head was partially tilted to the right in the direction where Lilith was sitting, the mouth slightly agape and letting out soft snores. The tall woman observed the stranger’s face. She felt a pinch in her heart upon realizing how similar they slept with her dead friend.
It was Camila who broke the silence.
“If Ava is fine, then what was on this person’s hand was a different halo,” she began.
“We still don’t know that,” Lilith replied.
“So, what do we do, we take it from them? It’s theirs, they brought it here from wherever they came from. We have no right,” Camila reasoned.
“Camila, if you saw where this person came from, you wouldn’t speak so surely,” Mary remarked.
“We don’t know what it is. We don’t know if it’s even a halo. For all we know, it merely resembles one,” Lilith said. “We are not taking it. Just preventing this person from having their hands on it. Besides, how sure are we that it’s theirs? A halo is supposed to be in someone’s back. Why would they have it in their hand? Why is it full of blood? It could have been stolen from the rightful bearer.”
“This is Beatrice we are talking about, she would never do that,” Camila reasoned, gesturing at the stranger on the bed with both hands from where she sat at the foot of the bed.
“That’s not Beatrice, Camila. She might look like her, but do not be fooled,” Lilith snapped. “Beatrice has been dead for an entire year. We buried her in the church backyard.”
Mary cleared her throat, trying to diffuse the tension. She sat on a chair opposite Lilith and had a foot propped up on the bed.
“The most important question now is, when do we tell Ava?” she asked.
“We don’t,” Lilith replied instantly.
“What?” Mary replied, her voice incredulous. “Someone who looks like Beatrice is bound to wander the halls of the Cat’s Cradle and you are saying we shouldn’t tell her, for a lack of a better term, widow? Or are you proposing that we keep this person locked up as well?”
“What’s the point?” Lilith replied. “Ava is leaving tomorrow anyway.”
“That’s not fair,” Camila said.
“How about this? We don’t tell Ava until we’re sure who or what this person is. Despite what you think of me, I do not want Ava to get hurt. Did you not listen to her speech earlier? The girl is only starting to accept that Beatrice is truly gone. To see a person in her likeness might not be good for her at this point in time,” Lilith compromised.
“Ava is an adult. Who are you to tell what might not or might be good for her?” Mary said.
Lilith opened her mouth, about to retort, when the stranger stirred on the bed. With her eyes still closed, her fingers tightened into a grip, seemingly searching for the object that was in her now weightless hand. Her palm grasped on the empty bedsheets in search for the solid object. When she confirmed that the halo was gone, she sat up immediately, taking in the room wide-eyed. The stranger got up on her feet at the same time that the three sister warriors did. The sister warriors saw the person feel their battle habit for the weapons that were no longer in place.
“We disarmed you, for your safety and our own,” Mary said.
“Where is the halo,” the stranger spoke. All three sister warriors were taken aback. She sounded just like Beatrice.
“You know about halos?” Camila asked.
“Of course I do. I am Sister Beatrice of the Order of the Cruciform Sword,” the stranger replied, standing proudly. “Just like you all of you are. You’re Lilith, Camila and Mary.”
“Something is not right,” she added.
“Damn right, something isn’t,” Mary replied.
“Do you know where you are?” Camila said, her voice friendly.
The stranger who called herself Sister Beatrice looked around the room, trying to discern the strange from the familiar. She swallowed the lump in her throat, and Lilith saw her Adam’s apple bob up and down, something that Beatrice always did whenever she felt that she was not in charge of the situation.
“I’m in my room in the Cat’s Cradle,” she replied. “Only, it’s not really my room, is it?”
She approached the plain wooden bedside table. The small capiz lamp that was there was unplugged and has not been lit in a year. In front of the lamp was a framed picture of Ava, the halo bearer’s first professional photo, wearing the standard blue sweatshirt issued by the OCS. The warrior nun had her hair up in a half bun, her famous grin displayed on her lips.
The stranger took the photo in her hands and examined it, tracing Ava’s features with a finger.
“Why is there a picture of Ava here?” the stranger asked, the expression on her face unreadable. “And where is her halo? The one I had in my hand?”
“The halo you had in your hand, you say it was Ava’s,” Lilith said suspiciously, speaking for the first time since the stranger woke up. “Why do you have it, then?”
“Lilith,” the stranger said, addressing the taller woman directly. “You took it out of her back.”
“And why would Lilith do that?” Mary asked.
The stranger stared at the three with a confused look on her face, and then fear, followed by sadness.
“Because Ava is dead,” she said, dropping her eyes to look at the framed photograph in her hand once more.