“It’s gorgeous.” I held one finger to my lips, pausing mid-step.
Another muted refrain rang out, the low alto rising in a soporific crescendo. I arched up to my toes as the music swelled, peeking into the triangular window of the nearest door.
“C’mon.” He grabbed my hand, yanking me down a dim hallway. “If anyone’s destiny depends on this, it’s yours.”
“Fine. Have it your way.” I waved my farewell to the beautiful music, my beacon of hope that melted away the dark subway vision.
Yellow light spilled from the open doorway into the dim hall. Bryan led the way, and everyone else trickled through behind him.
“After you.” Tony stopped and waited for me to walk into the small library in front of him.
“Good to know chivalry is still a thing.” I nodded at him, the smell of burning wax searing my nose right away.
In a room as big as a bedroom, shelves of books lined the walls from plush carpet to coffered ceiling. The windows were draped with burgundy velvet. Candles flickered in gilt candelabras on the windowsill between the fabric panels. Old hardbacks stacked with ancient leather-bound volumes lined each shelf, all miraculously dust-free.
Bryan and Lenny stood in front of a large mahogany table in the center of the room, their sisters seated in Victorian chairs in front of them. Bryan scooted out the remaining chair, nodding at me to sit.
Then a black-clad man with a white collar bustled in. “It’s nice to see manners haven’t died out in the teenage population.” He adjusted his dark frames against his grayed temples. Those small, beady eyes reminded me of someone.
Bryan shook hands with the priest, who then took the remaining seat. “Thanks for meeting with us, Father Patrick. You’ll be a big help to our project.”
Father Patrick cracked his knuckles, then flexed his fingers. “You’ve been assigned one of the more interesting saints, I must say. What did you want to know?”
“We want to know the legend of St. Lucia.” Laura’s tiny voice sounded larger in this small space. She gulped, then turned to me. Silence hung heavy in the room.
Brooke glanced at me just like Laura had. Then she pulled out a pad of paper, her pen poised over it. “Tell us about how she became a saint.”
Behind me, Bryan rested his hand on my chair. His fingertips grazed my shoulder, tracing the tiniest circle on my back. How could I concentrate while he was doing that?
“There are many legends that surround St. Lucia.” Father Patrick’s gaze swept over us in a wide arc. “The legend goes that she was martyred for her faith after she refused to marry a prominent man. He purportedly turned her over to the Diocletian’s governor in Syracuse, who killed Christians in the Middle Ages. When she refused to recant her faith, they tried to drag her off but couldn’t move her, as if she were made of stone. Then they tried to burn her, but God saved her then, too. So they gouged out her eyes, eventually running her through with a sword. Because of her eyes, she’s the patron saint of the blind.”
My jaw dropped, but I closed it with a snap, biting into my cheek to stop the scream that rose in my throat. Still, my blood curdled. “Why would they gouge out her eyes?”
Bryan’s hand clamped around my shoulder. Was it to comfort me or hold me in my chair so I couldn’t run away? Brooke scribbled furiously on her notepad, filling page after page.
The priest’s eyes probed mine, sort of like the eyes in my subway vision. Then his gaze softened as he adjusted his collar. “I’m obligated to tell you that the Catholic Church doesn’t endorse all of this as fact, since there’s not enough evidence to support it. That form of torture wasn’t common in that time but was done on occasion. There is evidence on both sides, but the older sources do support the theory.”
The rotund man moved to a shelf on the opposite side of the room, his black suit crinkling as he moved. “Wait, I think we have something that will help.”
He pulled out a large brown volume and gently laid it on the table in front of us. With shaky hands, he flipped through the ancient leather-bound parchment until he came to a picture. One I’d seen before, a woman with hollow eyes.
“It’s also rumored that God gave her glorified eyes to replace the ones she lost. Whether that was in heaven or on Earth is much debated.” Then he flipped to another picture, a drawing of the sandy-haired saint with jeweled eyes.
I gasped. I’d seen that image two times before, but never like this.
Behind black frames, his eyes found me. “Beautiful, isn’t she? Personally, I find it hard to believe the part about her eyes isn’t true. All the artwork from medieval times portrays her without eyes or with her eyes on a tray. Some even with her glorified eyes, like this rendering here. There must be a reason she’s the patron saint of the blind.”
He slid the book back and shut it with a bang. “Even though the evidence is scant, that is mostly due to the time period. They didn’t call it the Dark Ages for no reason. Sometimes, you have to have a little faith.”
I shot a sidelong glance at Laura and Brooke, but they wouldn’t meet my gaze. Did they know about this? Why wouldn’t they have told me already? Those questions twisted into an inner funnel cloud of what-ifs.
He threw his hands up and let out a long sigh. “But alas, I am among the few who still believe the old legends. If we could only discover why Diocletian would gouge her eyes out, everything might finally fit into place.”
“Is there anything else you can tell us about the eye myth in particular?” Brooke’s pen paused for a split second. She actually met my gaze this time. “If that’s okay with you.”
“Let’s hear all about it.” I couldn’t censor
