Sankt Dimitri, patron saint of scholars, may be praying there still.
SANKT GERASIM THE MISUNDERSTOOD
At a young age, the monk Gerasim took a vow of silence, and he kept to it for over fifty years, never speaking a word. In his seventieth year, he bid his brother monks goodbye and set forth from the monastery where he had lived his entire life. He made a pilgrimage across the True Sea and saw many strange places and extraordinary things.
When he returned, the duke who owned the land where the monastery stood ordered that Gerasim appear before him and tell the court of his journeys and the wonders he had beheld. But Gerasim would not break his vow.
The duke and his wife were not pleased and called for the abbot, who begged Gerasim to speak, telling him that otherwise, the monastery might forfeit the goodwill of their landlord and the monks might lose their home. He promised that the Saints would forgive him for breaking his vow of silence.
But Gerasim had not spoken since he was fifteen. He had been at the monastery many years before the abbot and had long since forgotten the use of his tongue. Still, he did not want his brothers to lose their home. He gestured for paints and brushes to be brought to him, and there, in the grand hall of the duke’s home, he painted a mural that stretched from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. It showed the prairies and ports of Novyi Zem, the crowded harbors of Kerch, the mists and stony shores of the Wandering Isle. It showed creatures of every shape and size, orchards blooming with unfamiliar fruit, men and women in all manner of dress and finery, and in the very last corner, the duke’s gracious palace. Gerasim painted himself and the abbot standing before the duke and duchess—both the nobleman and his beautiful wife dressed in gold.
It was said the Saints guided his hand, for no single man could create a work so fine as that. The colors glowed as if lit by sunlight, and the clouds seemed to move across the painted sky.
But in the end the duke and the duchess did not care for the way they had been depicted and ordered Gerasim executed. He died without ever speaking a word, not even to plead for his life.
The monks were commanded to leave their home and the monastery was destroyed, its stones used to build a new wing of the duke’s palace. Ten years later, while the duke was hosting a lavish feast, an earthquake struck. Neither the old palace nor the new wing were harmed, not a stone shaken—except for the wall bearing Gerasim’s mural. It collapsed, killing the duke and the duchess and all their guests, burying them beneath the old monk’s wonders.
Gerasim is known as the patron saint of artists.
SANKTA ALINA OF THE FOLD
A countess lost her husband in one of Ravka’s many wars. He’d been a high-ranking officer and should have remained far from the fighting, but emboldened by drink, he’d ridden his great white stallion along the front, taunting the enemy, looking for a fight. He’d gotten a bullet to the head instead. His horse had been found many miles from the battlefield, grazing beside a gentle stream. The nobleman was found there too, long since dead, his body hanging from the saddle, one foot still caught in a stirrup.
The countess buried her husband, and as was fashionable in some circles, she decided to convert her summer home into an orphanage for the many children left parentless in times of war. The house was painted palest apricot, its roofline and windows edged in gold leaf. From its rose gardens, you could see the wide stretch of a lake and the other elegant homes dotting its shores and, in the distance, the thick forests of the lower Petrazoi.
The orphans came to this magical place covered in dirt and lice, and those from the border towns arrived with ghosts in tow—memories of raids in the night, homes set to the torch, mothers and fathers gone suddenly silent and cold. The pretty house on the lake seemed an impossible haven full of good food and watched over by a beautiful new mother who wiped their faces clean and dressed them in new clothes.
It was true that they were made to work for their keep, but that was to be expected. The countess had no servants, and so it was left to the children to scrub the floors, stoke the fires, tend the garden, mend the clothes, prepare and serve the meals. The children were to tell no one of the work they did.
Once a week, the countess would dress her favorite orphans in matching apricot velvet and they would pile into the elegant boat she kept moored at her private dock. They would row out to the center of the lake, where all the residents of the elegant summer homes would gather to drink champagne and gossip. The children would sing when commanded to and tell of their wonderful, pampered lives when asked. “How lucky you are!” the noblewoman’s friends would say, and the children, desperate to please their new mother, would agree.
But at night, huddled in their beds in the dormitory, they would whisper to each other, Be careful. Be careful. Or Mother will take you to the garden. Because when a child displeased her or sang off-key or complained that he was hungry, sometimes that child would vanish in the middle of the night.
“Loving parents came to claim little Anya!” the countess said one day when Anya was gone from her bed. “Now do not make me wait for my bathwater.”
Klava did not believe a word of it. In the night she’d woken, roused by some sound, and gone to the window. Amid the roses, she’d seen the countess with a lantern in hand, leading Anya down past
