The Eyes of an Absent God by Kihin Ranno

When she was a little girl, she made the flowers dance beneath her fingertips. She found water beneath the ground when she was thirsty and made fire with her skin when she was cold. The wind bent to her will and storms stayed away when she wanted to play. She could see the sins in men’s eyes and she could see the goodness in others.

When she was a little a girl, there was a man who held her hand when he saw all of this, the corners of his mouth wrinkling with a smile. He kept her hidden, kept her safe, kept her practicing. He called it a gift from God and put wafers on her tongue every Sunday to make her understand. He could see something in her that others would not have and he was not afraid.

When she was a little girl, she was happy. Her hand was small when the man held her hand, and her heart soared when his skin wrinkled. She wove her secrets in his darkness, and she learned the meaning of the bread and wine. They lived together and she could not imagine anything being different.

Then she wasn’t a little girl anymore.

-----

She was not welcome there.

Eyes of stone filled her vision, a war between gazes that the living could not hope to win. Rock would smother the fire. The statues were everywhere, multitudes of angels and saints tucked away in every empty crevice and hanging from the walls. But all of those were pebbles melded together in comparison to the Christ figure hanging from his cross behind the altar. He was the only one who didn’t look at her, eyes tilted towards heaven. He leaned from the back wall, suspended by wires that seemed too weak to carry the weight. She almost whispered “the sky is falling” but an older voice stopped her lips, echoing across the wood and marble like dragons in a pit.

“Adriana.”

She turned, long hair getting stuck between her teeth. “Father.”

The old priest heaved a sigh and strode forward, his hands hidden and his rosary hanging freely from his hip. When he stood beside her, his fingers reached forward and tucked the wayward hairs behind her ear. He missed one. “What are you doing here, Adriana?”

“Is there a law that says I can’t be here?” She held up her fingertips, the holy water from when she’d crossed herself upon entering was long gone. Even so, she felt its presence lingering. “Didn’t get burned.”

“I never said you were a demon, Adriana,” he whispered. Something in his tone rustled like paper, making him sound different than she had remembered. It took her a moment to identify it as a wheeze. Her chest jerked as if rebelling against a sudden pressure.

“Didn’t hear you calling me angel when I woke up every morning, either,” she reminded him, her lips pressing together. She remembered blueberry pancakes in the morning, reassuring hugs at night when the dreams were too vivid, and eyes that followed. But no angels.

“I never had much use for nicknames.”

She exhaled. He stood at her side, lined face still and unremarkable, the eye of a tempest. Looking at him made her tense, waiting for when the storm would come back around again. “Isn’t there something you want to know?”

He shook his head, a quiet sigh exiting his lungs. It felt much heavier than air. “I already know what you have done, Adriana. Every time I see you, it is after you have, as you say, taken matters into your own hands.” The hands clasped behind his back gripped each other tightly, like a dying man grabbing onto a hand to help him stay alive. “I do not know whether you come back to torment me or if you seek my forgiveness. Although it is freely given, I rather doubt that you come here for the latter.”

She exhaled, her bangs struggling to fly away from her forehead. They stayed put. “You always assume things. One day I’m going to come back and tell you I want to join the Church again, and you’ll be too busy assuming things to hear.”

He laughed, and it sounded like an empty desert. “I do not think I will ever have to worry about you returning to the Church. You were never a part of it, although I baptized you myself.” He paused, and a shadow passed over his face. “An uncle’s duty,” he concluded.

She turned sharply, her heels clacking loudly against the floor. “Don’t talk to me about duty, Father. It’s one of many things you think you understand, but you haven’t the slightest idea in the end.” She stopped, reaching forward and running her fingertips down one of the various candle displays on the altar. She thought it might be the baptismal one, but she couldn’t be sure. She’d never been a very good student. “A duty to your parishioners isn’t the same.”

“No, it is not.”

Her fingers tightened around the gold stand. “You’re mocking me.”

“You would think that,” he sighed. “Adriana, you know my feelings on… what you do.”

She snorted and gestured at the candle, a flame appearing with a sharp gust of wind. “Do you mean that?”

There was a long pause before he responded, and it gave her time to listen. She heard her own heart pushing blood through her warm veins, heard her own breath whistling in and out of her nostrils with a quiet whistle, heard nothing from him. It was like he’d disappeared.

“Put that out.”

A moment’s hesitation. A flick of the wrist. A light gone out. “I apologize,” she whispered. “I didn’t come here to argue.” Darkness filled her vision and she felt her hair move against her neck. “I don’t know why--"

“You know, Adriana,” the priest responded wearily. “You know exactly why. I am the one in the dark.”

She swallowed, her tongue darting out and wetting her lips. “Fine. Think what you want.”

More stillness, but this time she couldn’t hear a single thing. Not even silence uttered a sound.

“I am going to assume a few more things,” he said, sounding a little sorry. “So you will have to forgive me…. I am guessing that you have come here to hide.”

Adriana remembered watching a movie when she was a little girl. A cartoon with a disfigured hero and a pretty gypsy they called a witch. He saved her from being burned and fled to the Notre Dame. Once they were safe, or once they were supposed to be safe, he held her up above the crowd, screaming, “Sanctuary!”

“I’m laying low for awhile.”

Another sigh; he was always full of them. “So this is more of your so-called justice.”

“At least there’s justice at all,” she snapped, on the move once again. Prowling up the steps to the altar, closer to the statue that refused to fall. “None of your waiting for God to do something about it.”

“I would correct your theology, Adriana, but I know it would be a monumental waste of time.” His footsteps echoed a beat behind hers, following her. “Preaching to a deaf woman is like not preaching at all.”

“Reasoning with a priest is like not reasoning at all,” she mocked.

“You are committing murder,” the priest told her, the dragons returning. “You call it righteous, but I see the blood on your hands. So does He.”

She didn’t turn around, but she guessed that he was pointing. She shook beneath the eyes of an absent God, her fingernails seeking out her palms and dragging across. It was welling within her, rising, threatening to come bursting through her fingertips. She felt, not heard, a quiet hum rise from her skin, filling the air with energy only she could feel. The familiar warmth spread through her, and the temptation to release was enough to make her mouth water. It would be so easy, so very easy to put it all on display and make him understand just who he was dealing with. Lighting a candle was nothing compared to her full capabilities. Maybe if he knew, maybe if he knew.

“He lit buildings on fire because he liked the smell,” she hissed, octaves dropped and trembling. “People were dying, and no one was doing anything because no one knew. But I saw the sin in his eyes, and I did something about it.” She looked down at her hands, tracing her life-line to the end of her palm, ignoring the tiny crescents slowly filling with blood. “He wanted reassurance of a long life. What else could I do?”

“Report him,” the priest insisted.

Adriana scoffed. “On what evidence?”

Strong hands gripped her shoulders and she was whirled, looking up into eyes blazing with fires she would take the blame for this time. “I know you have been given a gift, Adriana. Other men would have called you a devil, but I knew that you had a good soul. I did my very best to teach you the right way to use this, but you have ignored all of my advice and thrown it back in my face. Your anger has made you into a killer, and I do not even know why!”

She inhaled and felt ghosts moving against her skin. Hands clutching at thighs that were covered now, always covered. A knife slicing open her flesh and spilling crimson, hot and winding like a river of lava down her leg. Fingers in her mouth to shut out the noise. Her heart struggling to leap from her chest. Being pried open and invaded, ripping and tearing and stars in front of her eyes. Then burning flesh, a monster’s scream, a man on fire. The day she knew there was no such thing as God.

The corners of her mouth quivered as if to smile, but the act remained unfinished. “There’s nothing you can do.”

Fingers tightened enough to bruise. “I can stop you.”

“With what?” she asked, pulling away as if he hadn’t been anywhere near her. “God’s providence?” She shook her head and descended the stairs, blinking away his puzzled features. “Obviously, I’ll not find solace with you, so I’ll have to move on. I’m sorry to bother you.”

“I can stop you,” he repeated again, his conviction made stronger in the whisper.

She slowed, hand resting against the end of a pew. “There can only be enemies and allies. There are no bystanders here.”

“You are a vigilante,” he hissed. “What side do you think I will take?”

She closed her eyes. “Good-bye, Uncle.”

The wires snapped.