The Road to St. Julian's Cathedral

Magnus told me where it was to be dropped—in the fountain on the other side of a dream. Of course, it made no sense at the time. None of it did. Most of it still doesn’t.

Maddening jeers echo between my ears where church bells used to chime. I remember when the crocuses would break through the last of winter’s remains. Each year there they were, right along the curb, little priests cloaked in sacred purple. I’ve not seen a crocus since, well, it’s been many, many years.

The dust from the street kicks up as I’m pulled along, dragging my bare feet. This isn’t really a street, more so a derelict path in the middle of a trash pile. Abandoned cars, broken storefront windows, an empty Coke can, it all sits there patiently waiting to wither away into nothing. I cannot report the same for the citizens.

My slow traipse toward the ransacked cathedral steps would be a walk of shame, except all shame evaporated with a majority of the atmosphere several years ago. At that point, catharsis crept its knobbled fingers around shame’s neck and crushed its windpipe. No, there’s no shaming to put you in your place, there’s only the snuffing out of a human-sized model of catastrophe or even minimal threat. For many people, it’s the only certainty they have left. It’s a particularly bad time to be a thief. But, I’m not a thief. I’m a naked woman being pulled down Main Street. You can’t steal what’s yours.

Someone managed to wrangle a horse from the Outskirts. This horse, a rich bay, flanks me on my right. The crowd lines my left like a fleshy, soiled picket fence that also yells angrily—incessantly. There used to be real picket fences, the fresh-coated kind that no one remembers anymore. You could find them dotting all the neighborhoods in what I suppose is now the Outskirts. The Outskirts isn’t so much of a place as it is an idea these days, really it’s any questionable place you may not want to go for various reasons—disease, violent crime, and unsafe radiation levels to name a few. Citizens don’t seem to want to go there, but animals, scarce provisions, and information like to hide out in its ether. Magnus likes to live there.

I haven’t seen him since that night a few months ago. I had found my way into a peaceful pocket of the Outskirts, one that had recently been raided by the Good Citizens Brigade. They break in and “clean out the clutter” a few times each month, meaning they violently attack easy targets, mostly off-the-books merchants that just want to trade goods for what they’re worth and not ration their lives away alongside people who expect dilapidated systems to keep the lights on. The merchant goods are seized and distributed into the communes. The merchants are eliminated for their crimes, dragged away, and burned in pits.

Anyway, the area is sanitized and usually left alone for a few weeks afterward. It was in that interim period that I found myself sitting on a toppled concrete pillar, looking up at the heavens, when the thought occurred to me that I may have been looking at a distant memory. In fact, I may have been reading the notice my entire life. How many millions of years ago had those celestial bodies been snuffed out? Isn’t that just so human to idly admire the font of a death certificate?

“Nice evening.” A gravelly voice rustled through the shadows.

I knew that voice. What did he want?

“Magnus. What brings you out?” I rose to my feet slowly, affecting calm, but as I did that old, swirling feeling began to rush through my veins. Of all the things, why couldn’t that have been snuffed out?

“I need your help with something. That is, if you’re not too busy.” He replied, stepping quietly into the moonlight.

Magnus was not a very impressive figure at first glance. His build was slight, his hair thinning and graying. He gave one the sense that he was slowly evaporating, that is, until he caught you in his gaze. And I don’t mean a casual glance. I mean, two dark eyes, pitch to the core, they’d shoot through you. You’d never forget it. He intended it that way.

“By too busy, you mean I’ll have to waylay my plans to die a slow death?” I replied dryly.

“Yes, I was hoping to speed that up for you.” A faint smile bled across the left corner of his lips.

This would be how I’d meet my doom, shooed along by my former temple master in some last ditch campaign for salvation, whatever salvation meant these days. “I don’t know what you have in mind, but I’m surprised you would entrust any task to me. After all, I’m a—what was it you said? Ah, yes, a spiritual delinquent.”

“You are. I only ever say what I mean,” then, laughing to himself, “and what I know to be true.”

“Yes, but the only one who ever really knows what you mean is you.”

“Elissa, we don’t have much time. I need you to take something into the city for me. “ He whispered, drawing me to him. “Guard it with your life.” His hands closed over mine, and I felt a small, leather pouch fall into my palm. “Of all the things I’ve said, please remember I’ve always said that I trust you.”

“Magnus, what is this? And what do you want me to do with it?” My calm veneer had started to peel. The patrols would be out by the time I reached the city gates, and they would be doing searches. That much I understood.

“Take it to the city. Drop it in the fountain on the other side of a dream.”

“You say to guard it with my life, and then in the same breath to throw this precious object in the sewer and expect a miracle? You make just as much sense as always. Maybe I wouldn’t have been such a delinquent if you had provided clearer instruction.”

“I said nothing about sewers.” Magnus stiffened, narrowing his eyes.

“The fountain? At the entrance of St. Julian’s Cathedral?” I continued, hoping I was wrong.

“The same.”

“It might as well be a sewer. On its best day it bears striking resemblance to an unflushed toilet bowl. I see you haven’t—“

“Holy water is holy water, no matter how dirty.” He interjected, raising his voice. He only ever did that when I pushed just the right button.

“Did you single me out for this one? Or is everyone else just gone? Busy being dead. Our meeting here is no accident, I’m sure.” Tears welled in my eyes, I would not cry. I did not cry the night of my banishment. I did not cry the night our Babel crumbled. I would not cry now. I stood in the silence.

“How the events have transpired doesn’t really matter now.” Magnus annunciated each word as if he were practicing for a diction exam. I hated that about him. Ladies and gentlemen, the man who enunciates his anger away. “If you do this for me, I promise you a way out of here.”

His words jolted me from my ruminations. “That’s what you’ve been up to isn’t it? Up all night scouring the tunnels and passages for a way out? You’re a rat caught in a maze, Elissa. The key to your freedom is in that pouch. Do as I say, and you won’t have to scurry along in the moonlight anymore.”

He turned on his heels and vanished into the shadows. He knew what my answer would be. Talk between us had only ever been a formality.

And so I walked. I scurried through the moonlight as was my custom, dodging the patrol at every corner. I sat it out with the rats and cockroaches in blind alleys. I scaled rubble and foraged along the way. I managed to pull some copper wire from a collapsed building. It would be a handy bartering token later. Midnight found me safely inside the city gates, slowly stepping toward St. Julian’s fountain. I pulled the pouch from my pocket. Not wanting to waste good leather, I planned to keep the pouch and dispose of the contents as instructed. My fingers wandered through the lining until they brushed against what felt like a chain of some sort. I withdrew my hand to find a golden, heart-shaped locket. It looked rather large for something the average person would wear around their neck. But, I had no time to contemplate the practicalities. One quick toss and I had sent the locket to swim in the depths of the fountain’s stagnant, black water.

With the pouch empty, I quickly wound the copper wire into a neat bundle, tucked it in the pouch, and hid it away in the trick pocket of my jacket. I smiled to myself thinking of the extra rations I’d be able to furnish. A golden locket would have gotten more, but a promise is a promise. I kept mine at the bottom of a toilet bowl filled with holy water, apparently. Magnus had better come through on his end.

I wasn’t two yards from the fountain when the sirens sounded.

“Freeze!” A megaphone blasted. Suddenly, lights surrounded me. How long had they been watching?

Of course, the Good Citizens Brigade strip searched me and found my copper stash, even with my trick pocket. Who was I kidding though? I had sewn it myself. They returned nothing, bureaucratically deliberated over my punishment for weeks, and finally sentenced me to drown in the very fountain where I had made my fateful delivery. The punishment was unorthodox, but they had been looking for a spectacle to keep the other citizens at bay. You see, with the merchants all but extinct, there was no one to keep goods in circulation, on or off the books. The worst masses are hungry masses. Channeling the violence is just best practice.

So here I am, slowly walking along the road to St. Julian’s Cathedral to drown at the bottom of a vast, holy cesspool. The sun burns my skin. The mob has started to spit and toss pebbles. An occasional hand juts out to fondle this or that bit of flesh. So much for freedom.

Are we there yet? I think that to myself, but as the guards hoist me up to the lip of the fountain a dread settles in my bones. They pause for a moment, not for my benefit, but so the crowd may reach its orgasmic uproar. They summon forward the robed horse rider; the executioner I presume.

Two hands coil around my shoulders, at the ready to push me into the inky black abyss. Everything falls silent. Then, a gravelly voice just over my shoulder whispers, “Trust me.”

In one swift movement, the hands slide from my shoulders down to my waist. My executioner and I plunge to the depths of the fountain. Threadlike streaks of sunlight illuminate the floor. With one hand bound to me, the anchor, the other hand frantically sweeps the bottom until landing on a glinting object. I recognize it—it’s the heart-shaped locket. The flick of a thumb opens it to reveal a key. I’m dragged to the fountain wall, where the key sets into motion the groaning and creaking of giant gears. A panel opens and sucks us in.

I gasp for air. Magnus’s face is all I see. “It was the other side of my dream.” He bellows over the rush. And there it is again, that old, swirling feeling, winding us tightly together as the water ushers us along.