The refectory could always be counted on as a place where you could feel at peace. Despite the religious nature of their day-to-day activities many of the Alucinari would tell you that breakfast, that short respite between prayers and chores, was an almost spiritual experience. The refectory hall became a whirlwind of contentment during mealtimes, untroubled chatter filling the rafters with memories and the telltale clamour of cutlery on china.
The atmosphere tonight was a little more subdued, as Sophie and Claudia brought out pies and plates and platters of sweet-smelling treats, and everyone sat in silence as the Etudes gathered at the high table. This glorious old table was carved from a single slab of oak and sat, pride of place, on a slightly raised platform at one end of the hall. Usually reserved for guests, visiting dignitaries, teachers and the Mother Superior, today it acted as a mark of respect to grieving comrades.
Compliments were given to the cooks and many oohs and aahs and wistful sighs were aimed at the pastries as they were distributed, and before much time had passed the wake had settled into a relaxed gathering, with small amounts of laughter littering the air. Abigail had set aside a chair in the center of the high table for Harriet, and cakes and sweets galore garnished her untouched plate. Her friends left little gifts on the seat of the chair, small bunches of flowers and handwritten letters she would never read.
Overall, the mood was a happy one. No Gol had been sighted since the incident, which was unusual but welcome. Bellemorde was sat with Grace the Alchemist, talking fast and quick, probably about something unsuitable for the dinner table if judging by the looks of the women around them. Lydia was on her third tart. Hazel was laughing at some joke told by another Etude, perhaps the first time she had smiled since losing her friend. Sister Jenny was folding her napkin into little birds, still wearing her infirmary smock. She had not yet been discharged since the shock of finding Harriet’s swinging corpse. Even Sister Amelia, the Nocturne, had appeared and left a small gift for Harriet. On closer inspection, it was a shiny, spherical stone of mossy green spirals. As the evening progressed the sisters ate their fill and chatted the evening away.
All, that is, except Wille.
She sat with her elbows on the table and her fists bunched up under her chin, her food untouched and cold.
Before she died, Harriet had seen something. A letter, perhaps, in the archives, which told her something that had scared her so much she had hidden the contents away. She had been killed before she could continue her research. Into what?
Wille sat up from the bench and pushed aside her plate.
“Excuse me… I’m not feeling very well.”
By the time she had reached the outer hallway she was practically running.
The rookery. That was what Harriet had written to remind herself of her hiding place. But where was that? She had no idea there was even a rookery at the abbey.
She was running. Running up the night stairs and into the dormitory. She searched around until she saw the small door that led to the narrow attic stairs. She almost hit her head on the frame, and the staircase was dark and steep but thankfully short and she pushed open the heavy wooden door into the attic space above. She had made it to the Etude’s sleeping quarters, a long shared dormitory that took up the entirety of the attic space of the main building.
She only had limited time to search before the feast was over. If they caught her up here they would figure out in an instant why she was here, and she would have to explain about Harriet and the letters. She needed to be sure of her hunch before she made insinuations which could potentially be traumatising, or get her even further into trouble.
Her hunch, that was, that Harriet had been murdered.
Not by anyone in the monastery, no. Surely not. But that a Gol attacked her as she was investigating something that frightened her, something that rooted terror into her very core… Was it perhaps possible that the Gol retained some residual intelligence enough to hunt a particular victim, perhaps one who was close to discovering a way to fight back against them?
Her rational self told her that it was just a coincidence. She must have been investigating until late, and got caught outside. But why open the gate? Her final notes had mentioned the catacombs and talked about the secret being ‘close’. It seemed from the collected letters that the secret lay beneath, not out on the misty hills. It was so ingrained into the psyche of everyone who lived here; do not leave the monastery, do not go out after dark. So why did she try to leave?
Harriet had been the first Sister she had met when she had joined the Alucinari. A small child of twelve, all tears and uncertain futures. Back then her hair had been long, and hid her face as she murmured her name.
“You’re going to have to speak up dear, I can’t hear you.” Harriet had said, as she remained poised with quill and ink ready to fill in the register with the new acolyte’s details.
“It’s Willow, miss.”
Her pen scratched against the parchment.
“Willow, will-o-the-wisp, where there’s a will there’s always a way!” She had crooned as she swooped down and hugged the crying girl tightly.
“I heard about your parents. It’s going to be all right now, you’re safe here.”
“I don’t want to be safe.” Already, the child was angry at this unfair world. “I want my Papa.”
Harriet had nodded, a wave of compassion falling over her face.
“We don’t just do safety here at Palus Somni, little one. We do change. We all work hard for a better future, every one of us.”
And Wille had worked for change. First, she changed herself. Off came the long, tangled mess of hair, gone where the dainty shoes of little girls, and her name was shortened. Where there was a Wille, there was a way. A new beginning, though the pain of the old life would linger for many years, like an old wound never to fully heal.
She had never really interacted with Harriet again after that. She couldn’t even remember the last time they had exchanged a greeting in the corridor, or talked about the weather over supper. She supposed now that this was because of Harriet’s last obsession keeping her away from daily routines.
Wille turned a corner in the dormitory and was faced with yet another long row of beds. Most were empty and slightly dusty, a memory of a time when Palus Somni was overflowing with supplicants. The remaining Etudes had spread themselves out among the empty space for increased privacy, though there was barely anything to mark whose was who.
One pallet had been pushed up against the wall to make space for various stargazing equipment, telescopes and rotary starscapes. Another had been pulled together with its neighbour, making a comfortable double bed for the Sister in question to sleep in. A third was barely visible under several towering piles of books. Wille thought this might have been it, but the bookplates all read ‘Hazel’.
Then she saw it, a bed at the very far end, the head against the flat wall of this section of attic. It was covered in flowers. Wille glanced out of the window to the right of the nightstand and saw below the distant shapes of people drifting out of the great hall. Time was almost up.
She rummaged without mercy through the draws, in the baskets beneath the bed, under the covers and in the end chest. It had mostly been cleaned out of personal effects, and she found only folded clothes and the odd ledger book. Nothing at all that pointed her in the direction she was searching for.
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She flopped down onto the bed with a large sigh, sending up petals and the odd feather. The air was filled with the scent of goose down and rose flower, with surprisingly little dust for such a large attic space. She breathed it in deeply and let the cosy blankets engulf her. Above her on the wooden beam a carving of a large raven stood recursant, its face looking back over its shoulder. She began to close her eyes and drift down into sleep. Soon, the others would find her and she would have even more punishments, but for now she would sleep.
Her eyes snapped open and she pushed herself up off the bed.
That was no raven, it was a rook.
She had to stand on the mattress to reach it, but sure enough when she pushed it, it gave way, and she heard a small popping sound as one of the wooden panels on the wall behind the bed came loose. She had to slide the bed out of the way to access it, but sure enough it was a small door that was half the height of an average adult. She slipped through, and grabbed the legs of the bed to pull it back into place. Bunches of roses fell off the bed and rolled across the floor, but it was almost back into the same position as before. She didn’t want followers. Down on her hands and knees she pulled herself through the gap, almost tripping over her long habit.
The room she had entered was dim, lit by a few beams of light that fell through from a badly repaired length of ceiling. It was also very, very unused. Everything had a layer of dust so thick that any original colour was almost lost, and there were a lot of things in here. Paintings with holes in the canvas, broken furniture, chests stacked to the roof. Wille wiped the surface of an oil painting that was bigger than her, and had to cover her mouth to stop a coughing fit as her hand gradually revealed a long-forgotten face. It was a nun dressed in an old, now unfashionable habit. Her eyes were closed in dreaming prayer, and her hands were spread out in front of her in a gesture of supplication. Several scars criss-crossed her palms. Wille didn’t recognise her. Other paintings were the same, portraits of old martyrs and Abbesses from times past, as well as a few landscapes of the moor in summer and one small frame containing the unfinished commission of a young gentleman.
“Oh! Look at this mess!”
Wille almost jumped out of her skin as she heard the voice of Hazel from the other side of the wall, and immediately felt like she had to sneeze. She cupped her hand over her face and waited.
“It was that damn cat again, always in here.” She could hear the sound of someone angrily fluffing pillows and rearranging flowers.
It was then that she noticed the path. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness by now, and among the debris there wound a trail of smooth and dustless wood, as though someone had walked through here many times in the past. The nuns on the other side of the wall were busy talking, and did not hear the extra creaks of the floorboards as Wille made her way carefully into what she now thought of as the Rookery.
She walked for longer than expected, all sense of direction lost. She passed over rooms and corridors, their contents just about visible if she put her eye to the cracks in the floorboards. At one point she heard someone singing from below, and when she pressed her eye to the gap she saw Lydia. She had stripped off the top half of her habit and was washing her body over the sink. Glistening droplets of water ran down her torso and wetted the top of her skirts as she washed away the dirt of the day. As she lathered the soap into her neck and shoulders, an island of soap bubbles slowly slid down her left breast. Lydria brushed it off absent-mindedly. Wille blushed, and looked away quickly, knocking over an empty frame in her haste. She thought she heard the humming pause, but she didn’t stay long enough to know for sure.
She kept walking, stepping over tins and tiles and up a rickety set of spiral stairs. Her head was full of unfocused ideas about bodies and breasts and secrets. So much so, that she didn’t notice when it began to get darker until she had to squint to see the dust-free route. Panic shook her, but not for long. There was no place left to walk, a circular wall loomed in front of her.
On her left was a bed. Or more accurately, a pile of carpets as high as her waist and covered in moth-eaten blankets and old pillows. Beside it, a repurposed barrel made for a table. She sighed with relief when she saw the candle and matches.
She was in one of the towers, she could see that now in the flickering orange light. The south tower, perhaps. She wasn’t sure. The window was covered with a faded pink taffeta curtain, which on closer inspection seemed to be an old repurposed shirt. It could be unbuttoned, if one wished to look outside.
Above the carpet-bed was a long shelf, again made from repurposed items found around the attic. A long floorboard, nailed to the wall and covered in books. Not just any books, Wille saw to her delight, but diaries. She flicked open the first one.
Property of Harriet DO NOT READ. Started All Old Pia’s Day, February.
She placed it back on the shelf until she found a more recent one. It was properly dark outside now, and she checked to make sure there were no gaps in the curtains that her candlelight might escape. The room was sealed, though a breeze came down from the trapdoor above. She was safe.
Sorry, Harriet. She thought as she opened the most recent diary, curling up on the bed of carpets. But I have to know what happened to you.
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Lore: The Five Orders
The Alucinari church has a reputation for syncretism, allowing several conflicting paths to intermingle and coalesce into the greater religion as a whole. Such things are only considered proper to the Alucinari themselves, who rely heavily on individual dream interpretation for both dogma and heterodoxy. There are five ascetic orders at Palus Somni, each of whom have their own particular focus when following a monastic life.
Etudes
The Contemplatives. Etudes sleep together in a shared dormitory in the sprawling loft that runs between the various interconnecting roofs of Palus Somni. They are the most strictly celibate of all the orders, preferring the company of books to the distractions of family life. They wear a particular shade of dark cerulean blue but the exact reason why is hotly debated. Some say it symbolises the reflection of the sky on water, and thus the margins of our understanding and the reflection of our inferior intellect against the vast unknown of the cosmos. Others say it was revealed in a dream. Wherever the tradition came from, it has stuck, and the term ‘Blue Etude’ has become a lay epithet for someone bookish and academic.
Orisons
The Brethren. Orisons have individual, simple cells in the dorterhouse containing little more than a bed and a chair which they use both for sleeping and for worship. With the Alucinari emphasis on dreams, the bedroom becomes a sacred place of prayer and contemplation. They wear habits of traditional black and white, derisively called ‘magpies’ by both commoners and the other orders. They take upon their shoulders the priestly duties of a monastery, leading prayers and services and advising upon religious matters. Indomitable theologians, if you want to distract an Orison for a few hours just ask them how many Gol can dance on the head of a pin.
Madrigals
The Laysisters. Ordained layfolk who take orders and, either permanently or temporarily, live at the monastery. They may have families they intend to return to after a period of retreat, or they may wish to remain at Palus Somni but with less restrictions than the other orders. As such they tend to bring in a wealth of various talents, more than any other order, due to their eclectic mix and external training. They are the cooks, the farmers, the engineers, the brewers and the gardeners. Technically they are supposed to wear a brown hooded smock but many simply wear their lay clothes but in more earthy colours. They have a bunkhouse cottage opposite the gardens, set apart from the main building. Some Madrigals undertake professions which provide them with alternative lodging, such as the gatekeeper’s loft or the barn.
Nocturnes
The Mystics. Rarely do Alucinari decide to walk the Nocturne path. It is not so much a choice, than a calling. Originally designated as the keepers of the holy relics, these ascetics know the secret keys that open the doors to deeper, more intimate knowledge of the universe and commune directly with the Dreaming Lord. It is not known where they sleep, or indeed how many Nocturnes currently reside at Palus Somni. Much to the consternation of the Etude registrars, as trying to get information out of a Nocturne is cryptic at best and incomprehensible at worst. They speak in riddles, making most interactions with them futile. It is assumed that they reside somewhere in the undercroft, and when spotted above ground they are usually sleeping. They wear a light grey with red accents, though do they perhaps wear white, which is merely dusty with age and stained with bog iron?
Quodlibets
The Myriad. Some nuns decide to follow more than one path, which is their prerogative. Most nuns are quodlibets to some extent, and doctors are considered quodlibets by default due to the nature of their work. They wear the colours of whichever orders they are a member of, or whatever comes to them in a dream. Hazel, the librarian, wears a small red bow in the style of the Nocturnes to remind her of her search for truth and while this technically makes her a quodlibet she tends to count herself among the Etudes. Some Quodlibets also worship other Gods or have a religious duty with local spirits. Among the general populace, to call someone a Quodlibet as an insult is to say they ‘do as they please’ and implies a lack of commitment.
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