At the Church of Saint Forgotten

by Elizabeth Twist

The largest of the remaining church walls is a hunchbacked beast. It looms in the half-dark. Beyond it is open sky, and far below, the patchwork quilt of farms and bogs and the world you’ve left behind.

The guide takes you by the sleeve and tugs you closer. Her grip is insubstantial, a moth’s flutter. Pluck pluck pluck.

“The rose window, dedicated to Queen—to Queen—to the Queen,” she says.

Her thin white hair floats around her head in an ethereal cloud like fine feathers, shifting as she turns to admire the empty air.

You want to reply. Maybe you do. “I see,” might sound nice, or “Yes.”

If anything of the window remains it’s beneath your sandaled feet, swallowed by meadow plants or ground into rainbow sand.

The wind whips over the hilltop, shushing through the towering oak tree that occupies the former nave and swirling the guide’s hair dust-devilishly. She moves to another part of the church. Pluck pluck pluck. You follow.

“See there?” She points through a crumbling archway into an alcove. Some of the roof still covers it.

Inside, the floor has heaved, scattering mosaic tiles. You pick one up. Red glaze catches the moonlight. Maybe it would make a peace offering to the friend you left behind in the pub. Her name is—she is—

Maybe you’ll keep the tile for yourself.

“The red represents the blood—from the seven wounds—the five wounds of—” The guide shuts her mouth.

“Okay,” might be a thing to say. Maybe you say it.

“See the medallions on the ceiling?” The guide gestures broadly at the sky.

There, in the blue-black, the first few stars are out. It’s late, and the hill is so high.

“Each one was painted by hand. See the pictures?”

You are a moth trying to thrust through a nocturnal window into a well-lit room. Maybe it’s always been that way.

The guide plucks your sleeve. You take her hand. Her skin is paper-thin.

She gestures at the broad expanse of sky. Overhead shine stars and stars and stars.

“See?” she says. “Each one is an incident in the life of—in the life of Saint—in the life of the Saint.”

Elizabeth Twist worries about where all this is going and what's going to happen to us. She does her part by trying to be kind, untaming a garden, and teaching meditation. Lately she's been writing about sacred pacts, unholy bonds, egoic mind structures, and fungi. Her stories have appeared in Agita, Dark Spores: Stories We Tell After Midnight, and Unfettered Hexes, among others. She lurks on Bluesky @elizabethtwist.bsky.social.