Page 23 of The Salt King

Avelyn hadn’t known that you could feel joy and fear at the same time. Simultaneously, he had an electric happiness—and the lurch he imagined a detective might suffer if she searched a ruined house, opened a closet door, and found a shrine to herself, full of pictures of her with the eyes burnt out.

“He knew I was coming,” Avelyn said at last.

“I didn’t show you to scare you. I showed you because . . . Look at it. That isn’t how you dream about someone you want to hurt. I think he’s worried about you.”

Avelyn nearly laughed. “How would you know? That could show a horrifying murder, and you’d think it was just an omen of change. For the better. And unicorns.”

“Hang on, you only met me a few hours ago—”

“Yes, losing a fight with a snail,” said Avelyn.

“Fair enough,” Jericho admitted, with a little bow of his head. “I’m sorry. Are you frightened?”

“No.” He paused, and then sighed. “My first ministry was at a prison. High security. I met this man once; his father was a serial killer and he used to help with the bodies, even though all the bodies looked a lot like him. I said, ‘Probably you should not do that,’ and he said, ‘I know, but I love my dad.’ He was eventually . . . serial-killed. I’m worried this is that.” He lifted his eyes, suddenly aware that that was the most he had spoken about anything more personal than the letters of Pliny to Emperor Trajan8 for a long time.

“I don’t think so,” Jericho said. “And I understand why you say that what’s here must be a demon, but—well, you’re the expert here, so you have to tell me if I’m wrong—but whatever is here doesn’t seem like it means anyone any harm. It hasn’t for a thousand years, until last week. What if it isn’t evil or good? What if it’s just—itself, like a tree or a cat?”

Avelyn smiled halfway. How lovely it would be, to see the world like that. No good, no evil. It would all look so still, and pristine; bleak, but like new-fallen snow. “The ras doesn’t feel like anything good to me.” He had to rest his eyes on the floor, and felt his contact lenses catch slightly. They were drier than they should have been in this salt air, but he’d sit in his room and die before he went anywhere without them.

“Really?” Jericho said, puzzled. “Most people like it.”

Avelyn had hoped Jericho would understand straightaway what he meant, but that, he realized, was making the mistake of assuming that Jericho had ever had an impure thought. Avelyn was more and more convinced he hadn’t. Probably Jericho thought that pornography was to do with drawing prawns. “I don’t think they would if they had to get into a cold shower.”

“Oh. Are you sure that isn’t by accident though?”

Avelyn laughed. “It’s nice to give things the benefit of the doubt, but after a point you start sounding a lot like the cardinals who said, ‘I’m sure it’s all fine, they’re all terribly good chaps, really.’”

Jericho took a whole step away from him. “I didn’t mean—”

“No, I know,” Avelyn said, feeling bad, because that had been like bringing a gun to a pillow fight. “But just because something is senselessly horrible doesn’t mean it isn’t true.” He scanned the salt again, and had that same shiver of joy and dread. “The Salt King is not an accident, or a tree. Only a thing with a mind can dream. Give the Devil his due.”

Jericho looked as though he wanted to argue more, but the bells tolled the half hour and then kept tolling to call people in for Mass. Before long, streams of clergy carrying lanterns filed in. They were from many orders—Franciscan friars like Matthew in the brown habit, Dominicans in black and white, Carmelite nuns in black as austere as the Jesuits, sisters from open orders in blue and white—but they all carried lamps, and they all sang the way in. Latin. Avelyn felt his own shoulders ease. It was so good to have a whole language that was entirely clean, one reserved for holy things.

All through the congregation, there were at least ten or twelve people who stood out much more than the others. They had a salt light halo. It surrounded them, as though they were attracting it. On some it was faint; on some it blazed.

8 A little bit famous because Pliny, the Roman governor of a province towards the end of the first century C.E., had asked what he should do about these bizarre Christians who wouldn’t sacrifice to the proper gods, and were making people worry that the gods would be angry and start a smiting rampage. Trajan had said it was fine as long as they promised not to be so annoying again; the subtext was that it didn’t matter because there were only ten of them anyway and the whole thing was unlikely to catch on, given that this son-of-god-rising-from-the-dead business was clearly just a peculiar regional version of Dionysus.

11

It was a disrespectful thing to do, but Avelyn was too curious not to: he stood in front of the altar and took a picture with the silver-clad camera of the whole congregation. People frowned at him and made Stop that motions, and he bowed his head to apologise, but even as the camera rolled out the picture, it was developed enough to see that the halos were showing up. He caught up with Jericho, wanting to show him.

“Jericho, who’s that lady?” he began, about the closest person with the halo. She was a Carmelite nun who had just sat down at the end of a row, the salt light around her writhing in beautiful half-colours. Avelyn’s fingers itched to take another photograph, but people were still peering at him disapprovingly and he didn’t want to be crucified so early in the morning.

“That’s Sister Annunciata. I have to take her back to her room after the service, she’s blind.” Avelyn was going to ask if they could sit with her, but Jericho got there first. “I, er . . . speaking of whom, I’m hoping you’re available as an Emotional Support Jesuit?”

“I am?” Avelyn said, glad Jericho wasn’t annoyed with him for arguing earlier. He put the photograph in his pocket. “What for?”

Jericho looked anxious. “She’s Irish and terrifying. You need to help me. And—by help, I mean protect.”

“She can’t be that bad,” Avelyn said, studying the nun, who was an inoffensive-seeming person in her fifties or so. Jericho was right, nuns were terrifying—for sure they went to special classes—but they didn’t usually take aim at sweet doctors who looked after you at six in the morning and tried to convince you that your demon was probably quite nice really.

That halo . . . she looked like a holy visitation.

God is there too, Father Li had said.

“No,” Jericho said strainedly. “Of course not.”

In some holy orders, you took a new name upon entry. It wasn’t just whatever you liked, though. It came from a long process of discernment9 and prayer, and you had to go with what came to you after that. This was brilliant if you discerned that you were something devastatingly cool like Annunciata or Malachi, but Avelyn had always been glad that you didn’t have to change your name to be a Jesuit, because he had a deep-down worry that he’d discern he was a spiritual Gavin.