Light In The Depths

The storm, which had seemingly subsided the previous evening, broke out again almost at dawn, wreaking havoc around the orphanage. The tempest rolled through with such force that the garden at the back looked like the aftermath of a long flood, where the waters had finally receded. The trees bore white scars where lightning had struck, stripping away their bark and tearing off branches. Windows in several rooms were cracked, and in some, the panes had been shattered by the trees lashed by the wind. Although the weather had calmed somewhat, the clouds refused to lift. Dark clouds had been swirling over Cove Bay continuously since the day before. It was about an hour until breakfast, yet it was as grey as twilight.

The nuns clutched their heads as they surveyed the wreckage around the orphanage. A decision was made to inform the mayor of the damage right after breakfast and to request the city's help with the repairs. Suddenly, Sister Lemoine's gaze turned to the Clock Tower, followed by Sister Forsyth and Sister Bloom. All its edges sparkled with a pale blue light. In fact, it wasn't the only object emitting such a glow. Blue, green, and purple flashes radiated from all high points in the area. The orphanage's smaller towers, the treetops, the steep cliffs surrounding the bay, every sharply pointed object, and the ends of protruding things all shimmered with this mysterious light. The shifting hues were accompanied by hissing, murmuring, whistling, and around the Clock Tower, there was a loud whistling sound. This shimmering signified the calm before the storm. Sister Bloom crossed herself several times, announcing the end of the world.

"St. Elmo's fires are always a bad sign! Always!" she cried, gripping her wooden cross tightly. "May we at least have one day of respite from these storms!"

The nuns watched the flickering brush lightning with a mix of unease and curiosity. Wherever these small, luminous tendrils flared up, encased in a faint halo, a lightning strike was sure to follow. It was a sign and a warning that the storm had no intention of relenting just yet. However, their attention was soon drawn to something far less mesmerising than the glimmering discharges.

As they made their way across the courtyard towards the left wing overlooking the cliff, their eyes fell upon a horrifying sight. Scattered across the cobbled path beneath the windows lay several dozen dead birds. Disoriented by the storm and rain, they had crashed into the glass and broken their necks.

"Dear God!" Sister Bloom gasped, covering her mouth with her hand.

"Run to the stables and fetch the driver! Now!" Sister Lemoine urged, giving her a slight push. "Clean this up before the children see it!"

Without a second thought, Sister Bloom dashed towards the small stable at the back of the orphanage, stepping on the hem of her habit as she ran.

"What does it mean…?" Sister Lemoine wondered, her gaze drifting over the cobblestones strewn with dead birds.

"Nothing good, that's for sure…" Sister Forsyth sighed.

"I told you! I told you this place is cursed! Either that, or some irreversible hex has been cast upon it!"

Sister Lemoine's voice rose in alarm, prompting the Mother Superior to fall into thoughtful silence. She glanced towards one of the windows, where a shadow flickered past. Most likely, it was Mrs Brahe heading into the pantry to organise breakfast preparations.

Suddenly, a loud clatter of pots and a sharp cry reached the nuns' ears.

"What is going on in there?!" Sister Lemoine exclaimed, pressing herself against the window in an attempt to see what was happening in the kitchen.

But before she could make anything out, another scream pierced the air. This time, it came from the stables. Sister Bloom.

Sister Lemoine and Sister Forsyth rushed towards the source of the cry. At first, there was no sign of Sister Bloom. They called her name several times.

Finally, they found her at the far end of the stable, her head buried in the corner, turned away so that she could see nothing.

"What happened?" Sister Lemoine asked.

"There… in the pen…" Sister Bloom whispered, her voice trembling with quiet sobs.

Sister Forsyth slowly got to her feet and cautiously approached the last stall. Within moments, Sister Lemoine was at her side, gripping a pitchfork in her hands. They stood by the stall door and swallowed hard. Through the bars, they could see one of the horses lying motionless on the straw.

Sister Forsyth gave the door a slight push, but it stuck on something. She pressed harder and stumbled inside. Immediately, she clutched at the iron bars of the enclosure. Sister Lemoine stepped in behind her and barely managed to stifle the urge to vomit.

Both horses lay dead on the hay, their mouths agape and eyes bulging. The coachman was sprawled face down on the ground, yet there was no blood around him.

"Don't touch anything!" Sister Forsyth ordered, shoving Sister Lemoine back out of the stall. Then she pulled Sister Bloom out from the corner, instructing them to check the kitchen while she rushed off to inspect the children's dormitories.

Moments later, more horrors were uncovered. A sudden fever had spread among the children, leaving them weak and coughing violently. Yet what Mrs Brahe discovered in the pantry horrified her more than anything else. Every bit of food had rotted overnight, crawling with swarms of insects and vermin. As a result, no one received breakfast.

To Sister Lemoine, it was an omen of catastrophe. That morning, Aberdeen was shrouded in death, plague, and famine. Among them, only the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse was missing. War.

No one, however, was in any hurry to venture into the old junk room to check on Arya. It fell to Sister Forsyth, like the captain of a sinking ship who must be the last to leave, to walk straight into the lion's den. With her heart in her throat, she made her way to the storeroom, a lantern trembling in her hand.

Upon reaching the door, she stopped a step away and listened. Nothing. Utter silence. Only the echo of her own heavy breathing and the rattling of the lantern in her shaking grasp carried down the corridor. She took a deep breath and slowly turned the key in the lock. Still, no sound from within. She pressed the handle and pushed the door ajar, just a crack. A faint draught slipped out, sweeping a trickle of ash across the floor towards her feet.

Sister Forsyth froze. Had a ball lightning struck in the night and burned something inside? Panic clutched at her throat. She dreaded pushing the door open any further, dreaded seeing what lay beyond. But at last, she summoned her courage and stepped inside.

The junk room had been reduced to dust. Everything within had been scorched to cinders. Among the grey heaps of ash, only a single leaf stood out, growing from the floor, and Arya lay limp in the corner.

Sister Forsyth let out a cry and dropped the lantern. She ran to the girl and tried to wake her. That was when she noticed several drops of blood on Arya's right forearm. Frowning, she unbuttoned the girl's shirt and saw something strange on her skin. A mark.

She narrowed her eyes, studying the unusual shape. It hadn't been there when the girl was first brought in. "How could it have appeared overnight?" she wondered, leaning in for a closer look.

It resembled an eyebrow with a single eye outlined beneath it. Yet, with each passing second, the mark darkened, growing deeper and deeper in colour until it was as black as ink. But the blemish was not entirely uniform. Sister Forsyth strained her gaze.

The eyebrow above the eye was a ghastly procession—a macabre parade of bare skulls riding upon a cart made of human bones.

With a scream, Sister Forsyth bolted from the room, tripping over her habit as she ran, her cries echoing through the corridors.

When she had somewhat recovered, she immediately summoned Mrs. Brahe to her office and sent her with a letter to the Mayor of Aberdeen. Poor Mrs. Brahe, to her misfortune, had to walk almost a mile to Dunglass before she could catch a transport to the city. A shiver ran down her spine at the thought of the lonely walk through the bay's woods with another storm hanging over them. She therefore begged to be allowed to take two of the kitchen staff with her. To her dismay, the entire crew, during her conversation with the Sister Superior, had quietly fled, leaving behind their belongings. Armed with a kitchen cleaver and a sturdy stick, Mrs. Brahe set off, struggling against the rising wind.

As for Arya, she was locked in the sitting room, where the sisters would come during breaks and afternoon naps, and was left there because she could not be roused.

Meanwhile, Sister Lemoine and Sister Bloom, at Sister Forsyth's order, were turning the orphanage library upside down, searching for the oldest books and apocrypha, hoping to find anything about the strange mark.

"There's nothing here!" – Sister Lemoine exclaimed, slamming the book so hard that its cover burst open, sending a cloud of dust straight into Sister Bloom's face.

She immediately rubbed her nose and sneezed loudly.

"I've been saying from the start that this is devil's spawn! A skull-and-bones carriage! Why does this not surprise me!"

"Maybe it's a very old symbol," Sister Bloom mused, still scratching her nose.

"Old or not, it has to be a symbol of something evil! Death, plague, and famine! But there's nothing like that around here. Not in our legends, not in our fairy tales, and no writer has ever come up with such a monstrosity. Where could it have come from… maybe not even from Europe…" Sister Lemoine began to dig deeper, mumbling to herself and pacing back and forth in front of the table where Sister Bloom was surrounded by books.

"Maybe from antiquity. Or the Middle Ages. Probably from the Middle Ages. That's when there were loads of superstitions!" Sister Bloom suggested.

"Thunder…" Sister Lemoine whispered under her breath. "…the storms... I saw spots on her shirt yesterday. That mark and these sudden storms must be connected."

"The bell-ringing didn't help." Sister Bloom said, looking worried.

"You and your bell!" Sister Lemoine retorted sarcastically. "Arya always felt worse when the weather changed. Something in the air must have been affecting her. Or maybe we need to dig into the history of this place! When it was founded, who built it, and so on. The orphanage was once a citadel... so..."

"So... what...?" Sister Bloom asked, intrigued.

"You know how things go in places where bad things happened."

"What kind of things?" Sister Bloom asked, confused.

"People were tried here for all sorts of crimes, they must have been tortured into confessing their own or even others' sins. And executions were carried out here, of course."

"You're trying to say this place is haunted?"

"I don't know. It's definitely not a peaceful place. And it hasn't been since that wretched creature showed up! Besides, you must believe that something's lurking here, in some corner we probably don't even know about. Your bell-ringing during the storm isn't just a silly superstition. You know as well as I do that no bell or object created by man can drive away bad weather. Nature is far beyond our human control. So, why do you do it?"

"Harriet, you've been here the shortest. Sister Forsyth and I have spent more than half our lives here. And I swear to you, hand on heart, it has never been any different. Even before that child appeared, the same aura hung over this place."

"But no one died suddenly, there were no outbreaks of plague, and no swarms of vermin devouring the stores! You're telling me the storm's to blame? Maybe someone in poor health could die from a heart attack in such a storm, but animals? They're just animals. Stress could kill them. But they were in a well-heated, soundproof room, they didn't die from thunder or lightning. The children? We've had illnesses here, lice, food poisoning, but never before has there been a time when not a single one survived. And the food... Yes, in a storm, milk can sour, but entire shelves of supplies? If it wasn't Arya, then what is going on with this place?!" Sister Lemoine was getting agitated.

"We don't know that, because there's nothing about this place in the library. Remember how Sister Forsyth even asked the mayor for help a few years ago, to give her permission to search through the city library's resources? All she found were records of trials and executions that took place when it was a citadel. There's nothing written about when it was founded or who built it."

"Maybe it's a miracle from God? It just rose up on its own and chose this place? If no one built it, did it just grow like a sunflower?"

"We don't know. For some reason, Sister Forsyth found nothing. Either there's no mention of this place, or it's classified, or everything has been deliberately destroyed."

"And nobody finds it strange, this eternally gloomy corner of the town? Even someone as brave as Spall doesn't venture here, and he'd accuse even the king of witchcraft. Someone must know something about this place. And I believe it's someone who's got something dark to hide."

"What do you mean?"

"I've thought for a long time that this is a cursed place and there's something here we don't know about."

"You're scaring me when you say that," Sister Bloom swallowed loudly.

"Think about it. The constant storms and tempests. No ships have sailed through here for a long time. They prefer to take longer routes from the Shetlands to the south and back rather than sail this way. And the ones that dared, drifted into port with no crew! The woods around the bay. Every tree, without exception, is twisted and deformed, with branches growing in strange shapes. And those hordes of birds crashing into windows and walls. There were many days when I had to stop my lessons because they were hitting nearly every three minutes, or smashing entire windows. We gathered their corpses like falling autumn leaves! You could fill entire carts with them and throw them into the sea, and the next day, there would be even more! And have you ever…?" she sneered a little with irony. "…heard birds singing in these woods in the morning, the rustle of twigs in the thicket, anything rustling in the bushes, any chirping? Silence. Like a tomb. Then all the boats and fishermen disappeared. You won't see a drifting boat here anymore, or a net being tossed from one. Because the sea in this place is empty. As if the animals never saw this place. How can a hundred birds, or more, not see such a large building, and wild animals not notice such vast forests?"

"Maybe something is scaring them…" Sister Bloom said, almost to herself.

"A citadel, huh? So it's obvious that something is underground."

"What do you mean?" Sister Bloom's eyes widened, and she tightly gripped the crucifix around her neck.

"I don't know. Maybe some dungeons, or the cells of an old prison, maybe some undiscovered caves, hollowed tunnels, or mine shafts from some kind of deposits. It could be anything down there. Has anyone ever gone down there?"

"Well... no... as far as I know... no."

"Maybe that's where we need to look. Maybe that's where something is."

"Something?" Sister Bloom was drenched in cold sweat.

"Well, certainly not someone. They would have died of hunger long ago, right? Look into those so-called weather spirits of yours. I'm going to Sister Forsyth."

Around lunchtime, Arya began to wake up. Slowly, she lifted her eyelids, and the first thing she saw was the long whiskers and twitching wet nose of One-Ear. He was sitting on her chest, apparently waiting for her to regain consciousness. Arya rubbed her eyes and yawned deeply. She had never felt so utterly exhausted. She struggled to remember the previous day. A dull headache and ringing in her ears prevented her from getting up. Every time she tried to rise, she lost her balance as though her inner ear had suddenly stopped working. Her legs felt like jelly, and her arms were as heavy as lead. It wasn't until half an hour later that she gained enough strength to stand. She walked over to one of the chests, which was the nuns' "secret stash." There was always some treat to be found there. With a mischievous grin, she approached the hiding spot, certain she would find the chicken pies or a piece of shepherd's pie that Sister Lemoine had hidden, because her stomach was starting to remind her of its presence. She knelt on the floor and, smiling at One-Eear, rubbed her hands together in anticipation of the goodies she expected to find. However, when she opened the cupboard doors, she jumped back almost a meter in an instant. The sly smile on her lips turned into surprise. A mass of slimy bugs poured out of the chest, swarming over two chicken pies on the floor. Arya watched as the crawling mass covered its prize and pulsed on it like a beating heart. She remembered how, during a Latin lesson with Sister Lemoine, a small bird had flown into the classroom window and fallen to the cobblestones under the left wing of the courtyard. Sister Lemoine, however, carried on with the lesson, and the incident was soon forgotten. A few days later, when Arya and several other girls were told to weed and tidy the flowerbeds in the left wing, they found the decaying bird, surrounded by flies and, along with them, white larvae feeding on the carcass. Several girls ran off screaming, and two of them vomited at the sight. Arya, however, stood there with the same natural bewilderment she now had as she observed the discovery in the chest. Aside from the absence of tears, the lack of a disgusted reaction was the second sin for which Sister Lemoine punished her. Having learned from that experience, Arya had tried to scoop up the bird with a dustpan and throw it into the sea, but, drawn by the screams, Sister Lemoine had caught her in the act and concluded that Arya, in her amusement at the grotesque sight, had made a game out of it. She had beaten her hands with a wooden ruler so badly that Arya couldn't write during lessons for a week, and eating took nearly three times as long as it normally did when her hands were fully functional.

The memory was still fresh as she unconsciously massaged her hands, recalling the blows dealt to her by Sister Lemoine. This unpleasant reverie was broken by the creaking of a window and a loud whistle. The wind pressed against it so forcefully that it felt as though the tall protrusion was being pushed inward like dough rising out of its form. Arya cautiously approached it. But, as with Aberdeen, the grey that enveloped the horizon signalled an impending change in the weather. The stormy air tightened into a ring around the bay, and the wind began to emerge from its hiding places in the forest crevices, caves, and quarries. Along with it, twilight began to creep from every corner. Darkness quickly dispersed the mist, driving away the landscape from its utopian state into a gradually emerging gloom. It darkened, and the wind began to stir again. The clock struck 10 a.m., but it looked like dusk was beginning to fall. This mismatch of the time of day and the weather was nothing new in Cove Bay.

"St. Elmo's Fires..." she whispered to herself, following the sparkling sharp edges of the rocks below. "So, the storms aren't gone yet..."

She sighed and stared at the battle between the waves and the coastal rocks. From this height, the surf zone looked more like an atoll in the middle of the ocean than a sea coastline, and the rain fronts of northern England shrouding it made it all the more depressing. One felt completely cut off from the world here. There was something magical in this, yet also terrifying. The horizon, like a curtain, was obscured by ice fog, the only variation and consolation here. The distant, shimmering streaks of light covered the hills and rises. This was a phenomenon well-known in northern Scotland. It occurs when mist droplets freeze and turn into ice crystals, creating a unique sight. She had managed to glimpse this silvery veil once, when, during the previous summer, the sun broke through here for a few seconds twice, which was remembered as a near-historic event. The ice fog, in its light, sparkled like diamond dust. Arya imagined it as enchanted curtains, behind which lay another world. It must exist, for new children arrive from it, and Sister Forsyth occasionally leaves on official business. Arya dreamed of one day touching the icy mist, pushing it aside like curtains in the orphanage's classrooms, and peering to see what lay beyond. This strange frost, although seemingly not far away, appeared as distant as another world. It fell in a beam of diamond sparks on the cliff valleys, marking the end of the surf zone, giving the only flash of light during the approaching storm.

The second thing found only here, apart from the strange weather and sparkling mists, was the colour of the sea water. During the day, one could catch a glimpse of a blue glitter on the backs of the heavy grey masses of water crashing against the cliffs and coastal rocks, but at night, it felt as if a pale violet glow smouldered deep beneath the surface of the water, unable to break through to the surface. Arya observed that during important astronomical events, such as the winter or summer solstice, or during planetary conjunctions and different phases of the moon, the light appearing occasionally in the depths behaved differently. She kept her "research and observations" a secret, knowing that everything that had always happened here was seen by the nuns as a bad omen and danger. Therefore, it was better not to bring up certain facts and, even more so, to keep any evidence of them hidden.

However, that morning, amidst all the heavy grey, Arya could once again spot the familiar glow in the water. She pressed her nose to the window and strained her eyes. The nineteenth of May, 1718, so just an ordinary day. It was quite an odd novelty. Then, among the trees behind the wall near the entrance gate, she noticed what seemed to be a small orb of blue light. It would emerge from behind the trees, then hide back behind them. Arya rubbed her eyes. There was something there. She sprinted from the window to the door of the room. She slowly cracked it open and peeked out, glancing down the corridor. It was silent and dead quiet, as if everyone was asleep. She didn't hear any sounds from the classrooms or the bathhouse. She stepped out into the corridor and made her way to the atrium. It was just as silent there. She stepped outside and was immediately greeted by the hissing sound of "crackling" fire from all directions. She looked towards the sea. The waves were crashing furiously, roaring louder and louder. As she approached the retaining wall protecting the left wing from sliding into the sea, she saw dead birds. They covered the cobbled courtyard like a grey carpet. Arya didn't dare approach any closer, fearing that Sister Lemoine might see her from one of the windows. And, as if on cue, a shadow passed across the window on the first floor, moving from the direction of Sister Forsyth's office towards the bathhouse. Arya pressed her back against the wall and waited a moment. The ice mists had disappeared from the horizon, and a ring of dark blue clouds now hung over the bay, with the wind starting to stir. It should have been pouring rain by now, but the clouds seemed to be gathering rather than unleashing the storm. Arya peeked around the corner. The courtyard was empty. She darted across it like an arrow and quickly found herself outside the gate, running into the woods, where she crouched down. In nature lessons, she had learned that the forest was the kingdom of animals, yet she had never seen a hare, a deer, or even a ladybird here. These woods were truly desolate.

Arya watched the trees in the woods around the orphanage with great attention. Just as she had observations about the water in the sea, she also had her own thoughts on the trees. It was true that all of them had certain mutations that made them look unlike the usual trees that grew further away once you left the land surrounding the orphanage. They were covered with numerous distortions, manifested in clusters of growths, dense concentrations of unnaturally developed, strongly branched, sterile shoots. Besides the regular branches, they had these swollen growths and twisted knots of wild, curled branches that grotesquely marred the healthy shoots. During one lesson, Arya asked Sister Bloom about them: "Why are the trees in the bay so deformed?" Sister Bloom explained that these clusters of shoots were called "Witch's Brooms" in botany, but commonly they were known as monstrosities. The name was fitting. For when you looked up at a tree with such a mutation, it felt as though a huge broom was hanging from it. The ball of sickly shoots resembled a bundle of twigs. One of the superstitions said that you should not pass under such a tree because it would bring on a migraine attack and cause permanent hair tangling, and that a tangled knot was the beginning of fatal diseases. However, botany did not know the cause of their formation. And so, this time too, Arya observed them closely, watching whether they were changing, shrinking, growing, or remaining the same. The only change was that the Witch's Brooms kept increasing, and with them, the number of monstrous trees. Slowly, they began intertwining with one another, forming a dome, and that's why the locals called the woods by the bay the Black Forest, as less and less light reached it. Arya felt that this was something unnatural, a perversion of nature that didn't occur by natural means. Over time, these trees were encroaching more and more on the land, cutting off any trace of light, which was already scarce here. She squinted towards the monstrous trees, thinking that she should ask Sister Bloom about other superstitions related to Witch's Brooms, since she believed in so many strange and even foolish things, like the constant ringing of the bell, but sometimes even in madness, there might be a method. She decided to follow up on this lead as soon as she came across Sister Bloom. Meanwhile, she planned to have a look around the forest, especially the spot where the unknown woman had appeared the previous evening.

"Where did she come from and what was she doing here?" muttered the girl, walking through the dense underbrush. "Who could it be? Was she running from someone? But why here? How far did she have to run from the town to get here? How far is the town, anyway? I've never been there... Ow!"

Arya didn't finish her thoughts aloud because she was knocked down by a very thick tree root sticking out of the ground, but so covered in moss and undergrowth that even looking at her feet, she could have tripped over it.

"Beautiful..." she mumbled, pulling her face out of the mossy cushion and rubbing her forehead.

Suddenly, her gaze fixed on a single point. In the indentation of the moss sat a black butterfly. However, it was much larger than an ordinary butterfly, and the edges of its wings were covered with greyish patterns. Arya had the feeling that this creature was trying to tell her something. Suddenly, the butterfly's antennae moved downwards and pointed to the indentation where it sat. Arya pressed her hand on it. She sensed an empty space. She slid her hand under the torn moss and felt something very smooth. Too smooth to be a random stone. It was deeply embedded in the ground, though shallowly. Arya pulled out the find and opened her eyes wide. It was a small pendant in the shape of an icicle, hanging from a thick silver chain. The stone was smooth, with not a single scratch, and shimmered with a mixture of turquoise, green, and golden light. It looked like frozen resin, in which a beautiful mosaic of shapes and colours had been preserved. At times, it seemed as if its interior was moving and flowing, like molten magma within a volcano. She placed it on her palm, and the light it emitted was similar to the moonlight reflected over the bay at night. Arya stared at it, wide-eyed, as if enchanted. She had never seen such a small thing emit such a powerful glow, nor such pure light. After a moment, she closed her hand around it, and the light went out. Then she opened it again and admired the faint glow lighting the dark forest. She repeated this performance several times before hiding the find in her dress pocket. Once more, she plunged her hand into the mossy pillow and sifted the cold earth through her fingers. Something painfully pricked her fingertip. She took the pendant out of her pocket, lifted the moss, and shone it on the disturbed earth. Something barely glimmered beneath the black sand. Arya carefully dug it up. It looked like an elegant and surely not cheap cufflink. Arya examined it carefully under the light of the stone. It was probably gold. The cufflink had an intricate design. It depicted a wingless creature with four short limbs, coiled around a double-edged sword on a background of a fiery orb. Arya mumbled under her breath. She couldn't associate any similar coat of arms with a family mentioned in Sister Lemoine's lessons. She plunged her hand into the earth for the third time but found nothing more. Then, the black butterfly flew away. She stood up and looked around her. All the trees around this spot had bare patches where the bark had been scraped off and branches torn away. It looked as though several lightning bolts during yesterday's storm had struck here relentlessly. On one of these patches, something dark was caught on the jagged bark, gently swaying. Arya approached closer. It was a thick tuft of tangled hair. A few trees further, there was another. Several of the trees also had traces of blood. One could assume that either the unknown woman had been attacked here, or the storm had caught her, and she had nowhere to hide. Aside from these three clues, she didn't find anything else, though she was surprised that there were no signs of a chase—no beaten path, no scraps of clothing, if she had been attacked. She left the forest and stepped onto the road leading to the orphanage's entrance gate, exactly where the unknown woman had emerged the previous evening. The sound of a hiss and whistle reached her ears. The fires of St. Elmo once again surrounded all sharp edges and high points, shooting small bolts of lightning from all directions in a bundle, resembling the rods of a broom. The air was thick with electricity, shrouded in the stormy front from the north that had always haunted Aberdeen. The sky quickly darkened with heavy grey clouds. The first rain began to lash against the choppy sea. Small lightning bolts started striking the glistening surfaces. Arya ran to the entrance door, struggling with the large handle, and with difficulty, she squeezed inside. Barely slipping in, Sister Lemoine's heavy hand grabbed her by the shoulder strap of her dress. The nun, with her brows furrowed tightly, looked at Arya's torn stockings, muddy shoes with scuffed toes, and her once-white, now dirtied shirt. Her face and hair didn't look any better either.