A Choir of Ill Children by Tom Piccirilli

thistles in my robes, or over there, that pile of donkey shit. Perhaps they all have their place in God’s plan.
    He says, “I need to speak with you, Thomas.”
    “I’m listening.”
    “I’m not sure how important this may be but I felt that I should broach the subject with you. It concerns Sister Lucretia.”
    “Lucretia Murteen.”
    That’s the one-eyed woman he was bedding down with a few years back while drowning in tequila, after he’d grown as lost as my father over the failed project to clear the jungle and bring in strip malls. When he found his faith she did as well and became a nun in the order, a bride of the Flying Walendas. I’ve seen her in the monastery tending the gardens mostly, keeping to herself.
    “What about her?”
    “You know that she and I were once intimate. Before we started the order. Back when—”
    “You’ve got nothing to be ashamed about.”
    “And I’m not, to be sure. But it’s also true that she’s been acting . . . reticent lately. Perhaps a bit taciturn. She refuses to tell me what’s bothering her. I’m afraid that these troubles are actually making her consider leaving us.”
    “That’s her right.”
    He waves a hand in the air. “Of course, and normally I’d simply wish her well if that were her decision. We’ve all got our own courses to follow, wherever they may lead us. I wouldn’t dare to interfere so long as she chooses to go willingly and not because she feels she’s being forced to do so.”
    “Forced?”
    “Either by this burden or because of someone else here.”
    “You think one of the monks or travelers has been bothering her? Threatening her?”
    “Not as such,” he says. “But perhaps she does feel threatened nonetheless. She is a complex woman who’s had a lot to bear in her life.”
    “Why tell me?”
    The vertical scars at his wrist are bright in the late-afternoon sun as he steeples his fingers under his chin. He nods, thinking things through first before relating anything on to me. “She has . . . a secret.”
    I want to say
Not anymore
but manage to restrain myself. “I see.”
    He taps his incisors together in a nervous tic, eyes beginning to roam. A trickle of blood trails down his neck from where a barb had plucked his skin. “I overheard her praying. She mentioned a name.”
    “Mine?”
    “No. Your brother’s. Sebastian.”
    At the sound of it my side begins to hurt. His teeth marks are still on me where the face had once been. The bite scars are no longer red. They’ve cooled to a dull gray. A dentist could take an impression and make a good set of dentures.
    “Anything specific?”
    “No, but I admit that it bothers me greatly.”
    “Me too.”
    We stand beneath the darkening sky looking at one another and not getting anywhere fast. I’m not sure what he expects me to do but I’m glad that he came to me. I turn it over for a while trying not to brood, wondering why Lucretia Murteen might mention my brother’s name. I head off.
    “Where are you going?” Abbot Earl asks.
    “To ride the jackass.”
     
    S ISTER L UCRETIA M URTEEN WEARS A WHITE EYE patch that catches the moonlight and spills it at her feet.
    She isn’t quite dancing but she’s more than swaying as she moves across the floor of the empty nursery. She mimes being an RN checking on the preemie babies in their incubators. These are precise, fixed actions: turning on the monitors, scrutinizing the tubes, and examining the oxygen flow. The controls are delicate.
    She reaches into nonexistent cribs, coos and picks up newborns that aren’t there—phantoms, perhaps memories. She sits in a rocking chair and rocks the infants as they sleep, carefully inspecting their tiny mittens and woolen beanie hats. There is no rocking chair and I’m shocked at how well she can perform the movement, in that hideous position, tottering to and fro in a seat that’s not even under her. Her legs and back must be ready to collapse.
    This isn’t a selfish endeavor or