Wednesday, 5th Peace after Lammas. 8:26 am.

Nineteen bushels of winter maize.

Six jars of pickled red cabbage.

One demijohn of apple brandy.

A copper of clove oil.

I have no idea why she wants all that corn in her kitchen. I hope she does not intend to feed us porridge throughout the entire winter. By my calculations that would be too much to feed even a full priory, let alone the pitiful 30 or so souls we have left.

“Now now, Abigail.” She said to me. “Do not fret so, it is for visitors. The monastery always provides for the hungry, and the winter months will bring them out.”

I reminded her that we have not seen a single new face in several months, and the last was a corpse that Inka found on the road. She only smiled, and wagged her finger at me.

No matter. Sophie can play her games of make-believe. I for one do not need variety in my meals, but the rest of our cohort may not be content with a mere single bottle of brandy.

I rise at a quarter past four every morning, wash my face with maysoap and oil my hair. If it is a Tuesday or Friday I change my underdress for a new one, and take any soiled garments downstairs to wash. Today is Wednesday, so I leave it, but I do change the ribbon on my smock. The old one had begun to fray in the night, tiny spools of turquoise-tinted threads coming away in waves. Beyond saving. Useless for its purpose.

I am forty years old. I used to think forty was ancient, a distant age I would always be walking towards but never quite reach. I was wrong. It is not old, and I did reach it.

My height is five foot eight inches. I am not the tallest but I may be the second tallest, next to Elizabeth.

My skin is brown and my hair is black. Lydia once asked if Hazel and I were related. I said it was unlikely as I knew my family tree quite thoroughly, and that she was a racist. She apologised but does not talk to me much anymore. I’m glad.

I am an Etude-turned-Madrigal. I like lists. I like functionality. I like words like ‘tally’ and ‘inventory’ and ‘index’. I listed everything in the library there was to list, and so now I list our provisions and other commodities, including materials and produce. Stock constantly changes, whereas books tend to stay the same, and so I am content.

I dislike talking. But, I am attempting to make use of this notebook Sophie bought me for my birthday last month. She told me to take this book wherever I go and make an inventory of my own mind, some time for self-discovery. I think she does not understand me, but I will try. Here it goes:

My favourite colours in order of importance from most to least are:

Turquoise

Brown

White

Blue

Gold

Orange

Green

Red

Black

Magenta

I do not like magenta. Bellemorde once told me that it is not a real colour, only an invention of our own brains, primitive little things which are scared of reality. Light is a spectrum from ultraviolet to infrared, so any mixture of red and blue cannot happen in nature. To bridge the gap, our brains create an optical illusion of a colour that cannot exist. Magenta stops us from losing our minds. I resent it for that. The only other colour I cannot stand is black, for similar reasons. The darkness brings with it its own special brand of madness.

Turquoise is the opposite. It is a real object, a semi-precious gemstone that is mined out in the west. You can hold it, feel it. It is real. I love turquoise. Mother Superior said that the gem is mined by Alucinari monks, who use it to dye their robes. Apparently they do not have orders like we do, all of them wear turquoise and prefer manual labour to the reflective lifestyle. She is so kind to me, and brought me back some of the dye when she returned from her last visit.

Thursday. 5th Peace after Lammas. 8:14 pm.

I had to go down there again today. I hate the larder, such a dank and darkened place. I can barely see my hands in front of my eyes, and even when the torches are lit the yellow beeswax flame sucks all the colour out of everything. In every direction outside the circle of light is the subterranean blackness you can only get beneath the earth. I find it suffocating, I feel like a seed that has been planted. Buried in soil with the casks and bottles. How humiliating! When I see the light at the top of the stairs I walk faster, my shoots springing up through the earthen crust and rushing towards the sun, my lifegiving master.

It seems that it is now my task to feed her.

At the back of the larder is an arch, and through the arch is a hallway. Down the hallway is a door, and behind the door is a person. I was told not to talk to her.

I do not know her name, only that she is a nun like us, doing penance. For what crime I do not know. Sophie did not know either, when I asked her about it. She has been down there for such a long time, I should ask Mother Superior about it when she returns. Surely nothing could be so bad as to warrant that hellish life, no light or fresh air for company.

Her door is suspiciously plain. One thing I love about the Alucinari is we cover everything in art, not a single space is left plain. Palus somni is full of small protective charms painted into the margins and favoured saints carved above doorways. Even the bathroom tiles have years of religious graffiti littering the stalls, most of it simple prayers for happiness and love. But the larder door was plain, a thick mahogany with a single slot near the bottom for food and waste.

Today was the first time she tried to talk to me.

“You are a different little mouse come to visit me, hmm? Yes yes yes. I knew the smell was wrong.”

I heard her inhale deeply through her nose on the other side of the door, a rattling breath that felt like it must have drawn all of the air out of the room.

“Don’t be shy, little mouse. Come closer, so I can see. Used to the dark by now, yes, but my eyes aren’t what they once were.”

I pushed the lightly spiced maize porridge through the gap and said nothing. I could hear her laughter follow me down the passage as I left. I’m not going to think about her.

Monday. 8th Peace after Lammas. 5:47pm.

We have been on speaking terms for several days now. She listens to me as I recite my lists to her, and in return I tell her about my friends and the outside world. She has a voracious appetite for knowledge; what is my favourite food, where is my bedroom, what are my duties, what time of year is it… And, forgive me Sophie, I tell her. I take pity on this wretched creature, old and forgotten, a toothless tiger using the last of its strength on supper. I do not think she is any further danger, whatever her past. I tried to ask her once what it was that she did to end up in there.

“I asked, little mouse. I asked the wrong questions.” Her voice dribbled out through the grate.

“That’s nonsense, people do not go to prison for asking questions. We are a tolerant order, why, even some of the northern monasteries are atheist!” I was sat cross-legged on the floor, by back against the cold stone of the outer cell wall. I always had immaculate posture, but something told me that the crone in the cage was more crooked.

“Maybe, maybe. But tell me, what do you know of our God?”

“God? The Dreamer?”

“That’s right mouse, give me your list.”

I thought for a second about how to encapsulate the whole of God into a list.

“God is both the dream and the Dreamer. But, that duality is meaningless in the face of their most powerful essence; love. All dualities are meaningless. God is neither the cover nor the page, but in the act of turning. They are not in the words, or in the gaps, but in the margins. An exegesis of their own tenets. The corollary to their own canon. An enigma in their own right, which is why we welcome questioning, because to question is to become God. We Alucinari have many varied hermeneutical orders, accordingly.”

The crone nodded. I couldn’t see it but I could hear the folding of aged cloth as her head bobbed, brittle threads snapping softly. I continued

“The Alucinari have many names for this enigma. The Dreamer, Eyes-Wide-Shut, Mahaurovacana, The Gaze, The One Who Takes The Peony, Shinyumeda, Crow’s Milk, Bridge of Sighs, Ruler of the Yolk.” Once I got talking on a topic of interest, there was no way for me to stop.

“There are other gods, but this one is ours. They are not jealous, and their love is shared equally. For that is the beginning and the end of our faith; the love we share together.” I stopped to remove a curious spider from my lap, lifting it up by the thread of fine web and placing it gently on the stone floor.

“True, yes. Such a clever little mouse. The love we share is precious. And yet I languish here, far from the sight of God.” I watched the spider scurry under the door and into the darkness.

“Could you, just for a moment, only for a second of time, will you open this door for me?”

There was a sweeping sound as of clothes dragged across dusty stone, and a faint slap of palm against rock. Grinding teeth behind the prison door. As sure as my own name, I knew that she had eaten the spider. I tumbled away from the door, landing on my back in my haste to lean away. I scrambled to my feet, picked up my lantern, and left.

“Good little mouse, please don’t go. Little mouse, little mouse!” Her voice trailed after me down the corridor.

“Leave the light…”

I don’t care what Sophie says, I’m not going down here again. She will have to find some other keeper.

Friday. First week of Mabon. 4:29pm.

I haven’t been back to the kitchens. Instead, I have been helping Sister Alana record her stars. She is naming them, little by little, and creating a map of the heavens. She says it is important work. I agree, though some of the other nuns find it pedantic and place little value in information they cannot immediately utilise. I disagree. Not only is it good list-making material (I have an entire record of the fourth quadrant now, sorted by light density, angle and distance), but Alana told me that many of the stars we see at night are different to the ones our predecessors saw. She showed me an old book, so large it covered the entire table, filled with drawings of the night sky. She was right; the stars were wrong. Like an upset chessboard, the pieces were all in the wrong places, or tipped over, or missing. There were no pictures which contained the moon, but Alana put this down to archaic preference. After all, the moon was not a star and astrologers had no need to note its constant, ever-present phases.

We were interrupted by an Orison I didn’t know very well, Jenny, asking if we had seen Sister Harriet anywhere. I had not seen her for a long time, since before I started in the kitchens. This was not uncommon, she was often absorbed in her research and did not socialise much. We let her use the telescope to search the grounds, but there was nothing of note that she could see from the south side.

When we came down later for dinner Alana and I clutched at each other when we saw the commotion downstairs. Harriet was dead. It felt surreal, I don’t remember the last time the monastery saw a fatal attack. I did not go out to see her, I already knew what a corpse looked like. Instead we both stayed behind and helped sophie put the dishes away.

I did not have the stomach for dinner.

Saturday. First week of Mabon. 7:15pm.

I did what I promised I wouldn’t do, and went to see the crone in the cellar. What a godawful fool I am! I shall never forgive myself for this.

Sophie was overworked, preparing this massive funerary feast while babysitting all of the grieving nuns who look up to her as some sort of mother figure. I took pity on her, and agreed to take one, Sister Claudia, with me to collect some ingredients. The poor girl is scared of her own shadow, I thought she would faint just from being in the dark! I took some dried fruits and honeyed figs on a plate for the crone, and left her to choose the items she wanted.

I knew she wasn’t expecting me, so I did not take the silence to mean anything at first. She was only sleeping, or meditating, or whatever it is you can do to flit between the two when you have spent half a century in the dark. but, not even the sound of the keys scraping the floor roused her, or the quiet creak of the ancient wooden grate sliding open.

“Hello?”

My voice only echoed in the dark. She had never told me her actual name.

“Sister, are you awake?”

Silence. No mottled and twisted hand came to take the plate. And then, fool that I am, I stood up and unlocked the door.

At first, I wasn’t sure if it was the right key. The ring only had two, one for the hatch, and one for the door itself. It was stiff, and the keyhole so old the metal had melted and buckled over the years, bloating up against the wood. But, it did turn, more’s the pity, and here I am.

When the door swung open it was as though light could not penetrate the cell. A darkness, kept away from light so long that like an aged wine had become purified and hard to dispel. But dispel it did, if only for a small circle before my lantern. I could see the straw on the floor that she so often threw out of the slot when she was angry, it smelt dank with mould and general stagnation. There were chains on the walls, and I was relieved to see that she was not kept in them. A cot against the back wall, small and miserable. Mouse bones in the corner. all of this, but no crone.

“Sister?”

Sister?

And there it was, the echo from before. Louder now, repeating my words back to me, from the corner by the door.

I turned, and she walked into the light.

It was me. Every detail, every fold of cloth. The wrinkles on my forehead and the way my hair fell straight. It was me, in every possible way.

That witch, that disgusting old hag! She had been making her own list this whole time, a list just for me.

She hunched over, and tilted her head to one side. It pained me to see my own body crumpled up in such a way.

“Hello little mouse, looking for me, yes?”

I am not a slow woman. Far from it. I have lived through Gol attacks and worse. Questioning what I was seeing, wondering how this could be possible; that can wait. I know when to act and when to question, and this was a time of action not inertia.

I bolted for the door, but she was faster. I slapped her - me - hard around the face, my entire strength poured into the blow. Her neck made a strange crunching sound as her face turned with the impact, but her lips only laughed. With her head still at an unnatural angle, she grabbed my hair and ripped it sharply back. I gasped so hard I lost the air from my lungs. I wasn’t sure what happened next, but I felt a sharp pain in my belly and I collapsed to the floor on all fours. I think she must have punched me, and I vomited uncontrollably into the straw.

That’s when I heard it, the thud and click of the bolt hitting home. She had locked me inside, oh God, she had me trapped!

I heard a series of muscular clicks and osseous crackling, muffled by the heavy wooden door, and knew that she was turning her head - my head! - back to face the front. I am blessed that I did not see it, but that sound will haunt me for the rest of my days.

I waited for her to say something, anything, while I lay winded, my face hovering close above the pool of vomit. But I was no longer interesting to her, I had served my purpose. I couldn’t even utter anything after her retreating footsteps, my lungs had not recovered.

I was alone. I had my lantern, my diary, and the plate of dried fruits. I had picked them for her as a treat, something to soften the blow of hearing about Harriet’s death. I suppose I should thank myself for my kindness.

So here I am and here I remain, and I am not ashamed to admit that I cried.

Sunday. First week of Mabon. Time unknown.

I work quickly when I need to. It only took me three hours of crying, screaming, door-hammering and denial to set up a plan. I swept the puke into the toilet (a moss-covered grate in the corner. Lovely.), checked myself for injuries (bruises only), and put the lamp on its lowest possible setting. I reckon I have about three days of light before I run out of oil. I rationed out the fruit for three days, just in case. If Sophie thought I had brought supplies to the crone yesterday, then she will be back to visit tomorrow. I have time. but I will keep these entries short, to conserve light.

Monday. First week of Mabon. Time unknown.

I hate her. I hate her with all the fire of my being. That old crone knew what she was doing through and through.

A few hours ago, who knew what time of the day or night it was, I heard footsteps. Undeniably it was Sophie’s quick gait. Success! I had been worried that the crone would bring it herself, having taken on my duties. The hatch slid open, and the bundles of food and fresh linens was pushed inside.

“Sophie!” My lips were so dry the word cracked in the middle, harsh to my ears after a day of enforced silence.

“Let me out, oh please, it’s Abigail!”

“Oh no, not today.” Her voice responded like a knife in the gut. “I’m not playing that little game, don’t you try that one on me.”

I couldn’t say a word, the ability had left me. My willpower deflated, crushed beneath feet that looked just like mine.

“It is a cruel joke, you know. She’s upstairs, I’ve seen her, so let it be! I’m tired of this constant mimicry. It’s grown old, don’t you think?”

“I’ve… said this before?” I knew what her answer would be before she said it, my stomach was already lead.

“What? Of course! It’s been nothing but ‘I’m Abigail’ and ‘help let me out’ for weeks now, it’s wearing thin. Though I do admit, you have got her voice down perfectly.”

And there it was, the death blow.

“No Sophie, Sophie please! My diary, I have my diary!” I rushed to show it to her in time, fumbling for the book through my tears.

“No.” This time, her voice was firm. “I know she gave you that diary last time she came, the poor dear takes pity on you. Enough now. Good day, Saint Dosifea.”

I could only listen as her footsteps faded.

Please don’t leave me in here.

Please come back.

Day unknown. Week unknown. Time unknown.

This imposter Dosifea sometimes brings me my meals, but she never speaks to me. The silence makes it worse. I scream at her until my throat is bloody, but she does not react. I think she gloats behind that veil of mine.

The wick is getting low.

[From here onwards the final entries are unmarked. It is unclear where one ends and another begins]

I ate the last of the candied figs today. Tasy, but I should have saved it. She does not get sweet stuff very often. By she, I mean, me. Oh God.

The darkness keeps coming closer, but I cannot stand it. I don’t want it to touch me.

Here is a list of my favourite limbs, in order of how much I like them:

[The list has been torn out]

Why me

Why is this pen so blunt

I don care aobut her she RUINED my dress

itchy

hel