Free The Book of Shadows by James Reese Page A

the distraction of a duty.
    Two branches had been disbanded, and I stood at the end of the third line when the youngest girls were dispatched, told to wash and ready for Compline—the seventh and last of the canonical hours—and then, blessedly, sleep. Finally, I was released by Sister Claire: the last to leave the kitchen.
    When next I saw Peronette it was in the dormitory, where she waved to me from her cot with red-tinged fingers. As Sister Claire eyed us both, continually, I dared not speak to Peronette; but she, tripping lightly past my cot as she came from the washroom, whispered, wickedly, “ Bad girl! See what it is you’ve done?”
    In concession to the storm, and to the strange events of the day, the novitiates let the younger girls burn their candles down; this, and a faint moon, lit the dormitory, but still I fell fast asleep. I was exhausted—emotionally, yes, but more plainly from my labor in the smithy and on the work line.
    Attendant upon sleep, I listened to the rain fall from the roof into buckets and bowls placed among the disarrayed cots, and I tried not to cry. The storm raged on, and the crash and spark, the great show, gave rise to something akin to the call and response of the mass: one girl would whimper and another would cry out to comfort her, and so on till a high-pitched keening filled the room. Scattered here and there were appeals to the Higher Powers.
    My neighbor, a bovine little blot named Constance, whimpered terribly. When she’d woken me a second time, I leaned from my cot and threatened to cuff her if she did not desist. I was terribly tired, and hopeful of sleeping away my fears.
    It was later that night—how much later I cannot say—when I was woken by the movement of my cot, and a warmth beside me: Peronette.
    Though I’d begun to consider her careless and dangerous, though I had begun to see her as willful and wrong, irresponsible, all she had to do was come near me and I forgave her all and everything. Fool that I was. What’s more, finding her beside me, I opened to her comfort.
    Of course, we girls were not to sleep together; this was plain, so plain as to have never been openly stated. Still, it sometimes happened, for myriad reasons. It was a punishable offense, yes, but we slept unpoliced—rarely did the novitiates dare to walk those dark and quiet floors at night, for fear of mice, or worse. And that night—that night of all nights!—I gave not a thought to breaking the rule, gave not a thought to the day’s hysteria and the heightened… feelings to which it had given rise. All I thought about was…In truth, to say that I thought at all is to overstate things; all I would do that night is better described as instinctual .
    Peronette was shivering, no doubt from stealing barefoot across the stony floor, amid the scattered cots. I folded back my blanket, slid the single sheet down, and as she slid in beside me the mattress sank, and the thin strips of hammered iron stretched across its frame gave with an eerie song. Her white nightgown was buttoned up to the base of her neck; a thin band of throat showed like a collar beneath her chin. Her loose, dark hair was afloat on the pillow, wavering in the inconstant light.
    This memory is muted, like a dream forgotten too fast.
    Did Peronette take my hand in hers? Did I drape my arm over her, forming of it the soft harness by which I would bind her to me forever?…Let me say only that I pulled the sheet up over us both that stormy night; and therein contained the world entire.
    Her gown of white flannel, worn and soft, smelled like water. She bore too the scent of lavender. Her unbound hair had a scent all its own; pure, clean, and natural, perfumed, it seemed, by herbs or wildflowers or fruit. That is the scent I recall…can verily smell if I close my eyes and put myself there, in that bed, that unquiet night, beside Peronette.
    Peronette curled into me, into my