magnificat
They call this day the stillness of the sun. A part of Sophia wishes it really were. If the sun would stop moving, perhaps everything else would, as well.
It's dark, of course. Night has fallen early, as it does at this time every year, that cold and distant coin lowering itself down the sky and spreading its thin gleam on Nisan's snow-capped fields and houses, the frozen lake. In other years, Roni has made jokes about how the ice out there must be thick enough to walk across -- usually followed by a few slightly intoxicated soldiers volunteering one another for the experiment, much to everyone's chagrin and amusement. Not this year, though. It seems like Roni's barely been around since he returned from the desert, always with one mission to run or another, and his good humor has followed him out of Nisan's streets. It has been a silent winter, and the fear remains unspoken that the sun's return will not spell that silence's undoing.
There are good reasons for this.
They have been at war for nearly seven years, a war they hope will free them, and all of those who remain to stand and fight are gathered into the Nisan Cathedral tonight, shrouded in pitch-darkness; for the most part, they are packed shoulder-to-shoulder and wall-to-wall, points of contact in the lightless church, except for the narrow, uneven gauntlet that runs down the middle of the congregation to the altar. Even the upper levels are filled solid. From where she stands in the marble doorway, holding the possibility of a flame, it makes Sophia glad and a little afraid to know that they are still so many, even when she knows that they have become few. It is for those people in the aisles and packed up into the rafters that they keep these rituals, she reminds herself, as she does every year; not for her, and not for those who keep pace with her, and not for that quiet whispering voice of the soul whose existence she preaches to these people at two unwavering services once a week. That voice that's become harder and harder to hear, as they have sunk into the darkness of the year and of the war, and of each other. But she doesn't want to think of that now.
Twenty-three women -- young, old, and in between, maybe half of them already close friends -- are clustered in a small crowd behind her, some of them trickling out the cracked doors and into the freezing, starry night behind them. All of them are holding unlit candles. Soon the opening silence will be finished, and this will change. She has always insisted on these silences, at the beginning and end of every service, and she has always thought them eerie, unearthly things; so much silence out of so many people is both unnerving and something that approaches the holy, the divine. It's everything she's always known, however it is that she knew it, and what she's tried to tell everyone else: even in the heart of the chaos that is life can stillness be found.
As she once told Roni, she had never meant to begin a religion. Who does? It seemed that one had just grown inside of her, wanting to be free -- like a trapped bird, beating its wings against the cage of her ribs. Like a small voice that spoke. And even now, she isn't sure that the life it has taken on belongs to her at all.
The eldest of the nuns, Sister Helena, takes her place by the first rank of the congregation, and strikes a long wooden match. It's time, then; Sophia tucks the twist of her hair into the top of the shawl she wears, for safety's sake, and steps forward. Sister Helena lights her candle, and the small, grave smile she offers the recently-named Holy Mother of Nisan is bathed in a faint orange glow. A few people turn, at the back of the church, to see what light has come to push back the heavy darkness; not many, however. Most of them have been attending this ritual since they were born.
Her candle aglow, Sophia takes the first step into the nave of the church. Her brief and impromptu prayer for the cooperation of her sickly lungs is as much a part of the tradition as anything... and as soon as it is done, she lifts her voice and sings.
She carries only a few words alone; after the first line, the rest of the sisters behind her pick up the melody, strengthening it and filling the darkness with the music of their joined voices. It is a simple tune, more a chant than a song, plainsong that swells and falls and echoes over the heads of the hushed mass. Another midwinter miracle, perhaps, how the voices of twenty-odd women can hold hundreds -- if not thousands -- in awe. And in that spell of music they process, Sophia leading song and steps, forward down the dark aisle that has been left for them; they go lighting their candles, taking a bit of heart's fire forward into the nave, where an entire town, an entire army, stands waiting for the light.
It is an old ritual, the solstice ceremony, although no one can say for certain exactly how old. Many will tell you it's been for as long as people have dwelt here, as much a part of life in Nisan as the hills or the lake or the desert that stretches out to the south. Sophia isn't so sure. Every tradition begins sometime, and comes from somewhere... but if a sense of age is what people need to feel confident in calling back the light, she will not stand against it. What would be the point? The illusion of eternity is not always harmful, merely false.
Nothing is forever. Nothing ever has been.
The light grows behind Sophia as she approaches the altar, and by it she can recognize the scattered occupants of the first few rows; generals and church officials side by side, all their faces equally rapt. Roni and Rene, essentially a single noun by this point, stand in the second row, near the aisle. Rene catches her eye briefly, between lines of song, and smiles, much to her gratitude. Roni's eyes, however, are closed as they so often are, and in his reverence he looks ten years younger, more like the boy who was first sent out from the Cymru bearing the expectation of great deeds. She wonders if his people know how many of those he has done already, how many she has no doubt he will still yet come to do. Not far from them, closer to the altar, is Queen Zephyr, her small stature nearly losing her in the crowd; she, too, has her head bowed, her fingers clasped in front of her. She is a year younger even than Sophia, but to the Holy Mother she already looks careworn, and very tired. And though as she reaches the altar and begins to ascend it, she tries to stop herself from looking around for faces, she cannot quite miss Krelian, standing at the front with the other participating clergymen. His eyes are not closed; they are on her, in fact, until the moment she meets them, and then they drop to fix on the stone floor.
She doesn't see Lacan, but she knows he is out there. Even as she takes her place on the steps of the dais, hands clasped around the dripping votive candle, she can feel his gaze on her like a firebrand.
No, no; she will not think about it now. Now is different. Tonight is different. There is no room in this endless night for any further darkness.
Five of the sisters have peeled off, ascending the stairs to the upper levels; the rest have fallen into a row across the front of the altar, and there they finish out the song, the song sung at this time on this night every year since as long as anyone can remember. There is power in that, she believes, even without the weight of years. There is power in repetition, in memory, in cycles. In the return to a place where we have been before. The only light in the darkened church is what starlight sneaks in through the stained glass over all their heads, and the eighteen candles flickering across the front of the cathedral. But for now, it is enough. They sing, and they bear the flame that will bear them through the longest night of the year, and it is enough.
How many are they; how many packed into these stone walls on the far side of the lake from their homes and beds? How many adults and how many children, all of them pledged to a cause that was taken up seven years ago by a bright-eyed girl who didn't necessarily know any more than they did? How many who came and said yes, we will fight for our freedom, and for yours, and for this we will stand beside you? It doesn't matter. Enough. If there were only six, or two, or one, it would have to be enough. War is not mathematics: it is not always numbers that decide. She looks out over their faces, from the raised ground on which she stands, and sees not an army but only friends, people who have come together over the mutual willingness to die for something in which they believe. She does not know how many they are, nor how many of them will still be alive when spring thaws out the lake, but only that they are beautiful and their beauty will not last. That isn't justice; she thinks it with a sickness on her heart. It is only despair. War's natural fruit is not victory, but grief.
And its first casualty is choice.
"Alleluia; alleluia..."
In a moment the song will be done, and then they will all sing, in a single voice. And then she will have to speak to them, those hundreds-maybe-thousands of faces shining expectantly out of all the room the church has to offer, and when she does, she will say, In the darkness of the year, we are the light. We are whole only together, and we perfect ourselves. And they will smile as if she had told them something that will actually matter when their mothers and sisters weep over bodies in boxes, given to the ground only when the spring sun makes it soft. Light will not defend them, no more than darkness kills.
She hates herself for these thoughts, but not enough to stop. If she doesn't have them, who will?
There is silence in the cathedral once more, and she raises her eyes. And there is Lacan -- standing at one edge of the second balcony, looking down. Far, but not so far, then. There are worse things, one might say. Amen; alleluia.
The organ strikes suddenly into full, glorious song, and with its first triumphant roar, every sister's candle touches oil in one of the cathedral's torches. The cathedral blazes with sudden illumination, like the visual echo of that thundering music. They drown out the candles, the starlight, the moonlight. Perhaps even the sun, were it to show its face once more.
In the darkness, we are light.
Yes. There are worse things.