Ceremony

The tent flap opens and it’s her mother. Draped in elegant blue fabrics, adorned in white gold and garnets, her steps are tight and quick as she marches toward her daughters. Ana was more or less fine until now, disoriented by the surreality of her surroundings, she hasn’t had enough mental footing to get truly anxious. But the nervousness her mother brings with her saturates the air, and Ana’s pulse begins to climb. 

Her mother has directed every aspect of the preparations. She’s lost her temper with the dressmaker, made her sisters practice hair and makeup on each other, and lectured about the ceremony for hours. “Keep your chin lifted, Ana. Walk with confidence – with purpose. Do not, under any circumstances, stumble or trip on your dress.” The same words, over and over. 

“How are you feeling?” she asks now. Ana’s youngest sister smooths down a sleeve, inspecting it for blemishes while her eldest sister fixes her hair. Scared, she wants to answer, but tucks the word under her tongue. Her mother’s eyes narrow, and Ana hopes it isn’t dissatisfaction she’s seeing on her face.

She holds one hand with the other to keep them both from shaking. Her ribs are crushed by her bodice; it squeezes like a cinched and frozen serpent, shortening her breath and smashing her breasts. Her sisters don’t make a sound as they attend her, dabbing and straightening and plucking specks of lint. 

“Fine,” she lies, avoiding eye contact. 

The tent is large, thrown with rugs, and a brume of frankincense permeates the space. It's warmed by small heaters, but she can still feel the chill through the canvas walls. The wind pushes them inward with violent palpitations that crack like sails in a tempest. Her mother cups Ana’s chin in her hands. They’re as soft and cold as fresh snow and they tilt her head upward, forcing eye contact. When she looks, Ana sees a trace of warmth there, buried deep in the gunmetal blue of her mother’s eyes. She reaches for it but it does little to soothe her. 

“You're going to do fine,” her mother says. The words sound tender, but feel final. Ana doesn’t know who they’re meant to reassure. Her mother understands her nature, having spent sixteen years trying to change it. Now, Ana wonders how much her mother fears she will burst from the tent and run away as fast as her oppressive dress will allow. She’s sure everyone in her family shares that worry, and their concern isn’t misplaced. She’s been considering doing just that from the moment she stepped in the tent. 

Her mother squeezes her shoulders firmly and leaves quicker than she entered. Ana turns to look in a gold-framed mirror sat between a chest of drawers and a table laid with ornaments: necklaces and bracelets, a dainty gold crown. The knife. Ana is hypnotized by her reflection. Her hair was brushed for an hour and fixed into an elaborate, shining braid. Her dollish makeup erases the burn under her nose from when she pressed it against a hot pan as a child, trying to smell bread fresh from the oven.

She’s never felt beautiful before. She’s never been dressed this way, in soft white that falls in cascading folds like sheets of buttercream frosting. It’s a dress made to be worn only once, intricate with lace and silk and other fabrics she can’t name. She’s never seen or touched them before. 

“You don’t look real,” her sister says over her shoulder in the mirror. Her eyes are near-vacant; they don’t seem to see Ana, and Ana doesn’t understand the detachment she feels from the girl she spent so much time giggling and gossiping with. She wonders if her sisters are jealous of her. Maybe of the dress, she thinks, but not of what it means. No girl is that foolish. 

“None of this feels real,” Ana says, and almost falls over when she turns to face them. The dress makes her movements stiff and awkward, and her sisters steady her before they begin decorating her with jewelry. The necklaces go on first, and the bracelets. The veil is draped, and the small crown set over it. Her pulse is in her temples. She’s becoming lightheaded. Her body hums as her nerves condense, forming a molten nest that surrounds her heart. Her vision zooms in and out, trying to find focus through the chiffon. 

A man’s voice thunders from outside and there are other voices too – smaller chattering spread across a crowd. Ana closes her eyes and listens, unable to make out the words or discern how many people there are. She hears the waves then, tucked in with the slapping wind, louder than the man, and she finds a momentary pause of calm. The infinite roll of the ocean has been the heartbeat of her life. She projects herself to its surface in a little boat in her mind, making herself feel its steady, arhythmic rocking. She takes a single, deep breath, her chest defying the bodice. 

A strong hand falls on her shoulder. “It’s time.” Her father. She opens her eyes and looks at him, poised and serious, his thick jaw held high. His eyes point down at her, and she feels the same distance she feels from her sisters. The usual familiarity and warmth are gone, as if her family has been replaced by skinwalking spirits. Imposters. Or maybe they’ve temporarily forgotten who she is, dressed this way, without grime beneath her chewed-down fingernails and sand in her hair. 

He gestures toward the table, to the one remaining item. Her hands tremble as she picks up the knife and holds it upright against her bodice, the way her mother showed her. The handle is polished bone, fatter than a broom handle, and long enough to fit both her small hands. This can’t be real, she thinks, it just can’t be. Soft weeping eeks from her sisters in the corner, and her father takes her elbow, leading her to the tent flap. He stops before they exit. 

“I’m so very proud of you,” he tells her, and the words sound practiced. The shapes in his face shift as she studies him for any hint of softness. From behind her veil, his features slide unnaturally with the flickering light. What she sees is the suggestion of her father, but it isn’t the person who’d scolded and praised her all her life. “You and your sisters are the most precious things in my life,” he says. The word – things – hits with another crack of the canvas that startles her as the sounds of the ocean and wind wrestle like quarreling gods outside. 

Her father opens the tent, revealing the path to the altar at the end of the rocks, and the rows of people who are there to witness the ceremony. She catches glimpses of the fine suits and dresses beneath their heavy coats as they stare. The rain blows sideways in thin strands. The real storm hasn’t started, and there isn’t much time. She feels tethered to the safety and comfort of the tent even as her father pulls her from it. The witnesses, some familiar, some strangers, watch silently as she passes. Her veil dances against the wind, the meager weight of it the only defense against the gale. 

“Do you see it?” her father whispers. “There, in the clouds at the horizon?”

Above the porpoise-colored and thrashing waves, far off, a dark range of storm clouds hangs. Behind the veil, she can see they’re blacker than the night that surrounds them, thick as a volcanic plume. 

“Do you see?” he asks again, more firmly. She’s shaking as she looks for the shape of the thing in the clouds. It’s hard to see anything, but she tells herself she does. She knows she’s supposed to. She sees it. 

“Yes,” Ana lies. 

There’s no moon or stars and the surrounding cliffs are lit by fires that show as streaked and jagged blades climbing their faces. Thunder tumbles through the cove, and a wave punches the rocks. A spray of dark water explodes up, feet from the altar, and her father squeezes her elbow tightly. He’s dragging her now. She wants to run back to the tent. 

A woman is singing somewhere in the crowd, a church song, and Ana’s delicate slippers fill with water as they land awkwardly on the craggy surfaces. She presses the knife more tightly against herself as her hands start to freeze and loosen around the handle. Some people are crying, the sound almost snuffed by the storm and sea. 

Her mother stands near the altar, beside the priest. Ana can’t read her expression, but she’s never been able to. The priest steps forward and waits for her. He’s dressed in black, as all priests are, and is a foot taller than her when she reaches him. Her father releases her elbow and it feels as if the wind may blow her away, across the ocean, catching her dress like a tossed flower. She wants it to. 

The priest looks down at her delicate veil. He lifts it slowly before the wind snatches it violently up over the crown. He stares at her with adoration and pity as rain spits in her face.

  Without the veil, the world is too vivid. The priest’s face is old and pocked. He held her as an infant and watched her grow. His smell, unavoidable because he always stood too close, has made her nauseous her whole life. It’s putrid meat and musty paper, and she can smell him now, even in the rain. He brings a large, ornate cup to her lips and tilts it. 

The liquid is thick and bitter as it enters her. There are fibers in it she can almost chew and a trace of it tracks down her chin that the priest catches with a thick finger as she forces down gulps. Her body revolts, stomach spasming, throat locking. She jerks her head back, but the priest’s enormous, granite hand seizes the back of her neck and he tilts the cup harder, pinning it against the corners of her mouth until she’s drained it. When she’s done, he steps back and it’s as if Ana is tumbling in the waves themselves. The world swoops in circles like rolling down a hill, colors and lights spark in her eyes. The wind bullies her. 

“See the Colossus, little one,” he says, bringing his hot breath close. “See it. Know your purpose, and be grateful.” He steps aside, stretching out his arm toward the horizon. She looks across the stone table of the altar. “Do you see the shape of its wretched anatomy tangled in the storm?” he asks. The priest’s brew warmed and numbed her; she’s not sure if the whirl of her vision is the world moving or her body. Maybe it’s her brain rolling in her skull like a sticky-wet ball of dough. Her eyelids feel tied with anchors. She squints, trying to see the danger that looms over them. She knows what she’s supposed to say. There is only one answer ever expected by a priest. 

“Yes.” Her voice has become a slow pour of syrup. 

“Do you see its monstrous head moving to consume us?” 

Her eyes are barely open, and she’s worried she might vomit all over her pretty dress. “Yes.”

She swallows the vomit. 

“Do you understand your purpose?” 

Her father explained her purpose to her over and over again, all her life, even before she was chosen. 

“Yes.” 

The priest grabs her tightly by the shoulders. The thumbs of his mammoth hands almost touch across her thin clavicle. His eyes are black in the shadows of his deep sockets. He spins her toward the witnesses with little effort, dizzying her further, her mind unable to keep time with the world. He calls out strange words she doesn’t understand. They’re muddy, and in some language she recognizes but doesn’t speak. The witnesses respond in unison. The storm has grown stronger and no one is crying; maybe the time for that has passed. Staring at the throng, the faces look the same, distorted by the rain that comes down harder. Her parents are amongst them, but she doesn’t know which shapes they are. She wonders if her sisters are watching. The priest turns her back again. 

“Now, lay down on the altar and ready yourself for me.” She falls forward onto the table and attempts to climb, but her limbs won’t respond fully to her command. The priest hoists her up in a clamor that’s made clumsy by her dress and intoxication. He rolls her onto her back. The wind, rain, and sea slosh dully in her ears, and she’s nauseated again. The altar table feels like it’s been spun like a dial. The cold stone beneath her naked thighs causes a low sear of panic. Everyone can see her legs, but her body is too heavy and useless to do anything about it. 

The rain forces her eyes closed as the priest drones on. His words garble like a drowning man’s. He yells, and the witnesses answer. He yells again and again. Ana pushes the human sounds away and listens to her ocean. She feels her heart align with its chaos, and she goes back to her mental boat. The rain feels thick as wax sliding down her frigid body. Her pretty dress is drenched through. She sees prismatic shapes behind her lids and, for a sweet moment that melts almost as soon as it appears, Ana forgets where she is. 

The yelling ceases; she rests in the hypnotic, tuneless music of water. 

Ana opens her eyes. The priest is holding the knife. She doesn’t remember him taking it from her, and rain runs from its tip. It’s crying for me, she thinks. The priest’s face is passionless, his eyes still hidden in shadow as he adjusts the blade's position in both hands above her. He calls over her body, across the ocean to the thing that will consume them. She lets her head fall to the side, away from the priest and the witnesses and her father and mother and sisters. She wants to look at the ocean. 

The horizon is dark, but she thinks she sees stars out there, resting on the lip of the Earth like hastily drunk milk. The end of the storm. She examines the clouds again, searching for the Colossus, and finds nothing. 

It’s just a storm, she thinks. Why do they think they can stop a storm? 

The stiff fat of the priest’s hands lands on her chest. She feels nothing as her body jerks once against the force. She feels nothing as her soft heart is lanced, as she hears the tip of the knife snap against the stone beneath her – she has served her purpose.

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Jimmy Gardner lives and writes by the ocean in Santa Cruz, California. He is currently at work on his debut novel and publishes short fiction and personal essays on Substack under the publication Clean Chaos.