CHAPTER FIFTEEN

All because of one girl, the village of Krist flourished with prosperity; or rather, Our Lord’s favor on that girl. The church symbolized that favor. The church was a solid piece of craftsmanship, a form of praise to God. There were no stray axe marks, as one found on the peasant cabins. The walls were made of uniform logs, with mud caulking. The doors, window sills, and shutters were made of carefully planed wood, though there was no glass in the windows yet. A cross topped the intricately constructed onion dome.

Most of the villagers were of a uniform mind about the girl: grateful and in awe of the miracles and healings. For ten years, ever since her birth, the fields had yielded plentiful harvests, the longest run that anyone had ever heard of. Even the wolves stayed in the forest; at least they kept away from the villagers and their children, if not me.

The only exception was the crabby, old bachelor Koyla, who hated Sonja’s mother for spurning him in their youth, and transferred that feeling to each of her children. He was certain that Sonja was a witch. This was not a popular view and he learned to keep his accusation to himself. Pushing the point could easily lead to the accusation that he was a witch himself. After all, everyone knew that most witches were men. Koyla had spent some time in the monastery, but never took any vows because the monks could not tolerate his presence and sent him on his way. He did learn to write a bit, much better than anyone else in the village.

I went into the church and approached the altar. The nave was half full of pilgrims, murmuring in prayer. Carefully set candles bracketed the icon, illuminating Our Lord. My perception of the icon, formed from the memories of others, changed as I viewed it with my own eyes. The different color combinations resonated with me, making a different emotional impact. The young girl in the corner of the icon drew my attention. How could she not fascinate me?

I crossed myself and bowed before the icon before moving back into the shadows to make way for others. My gaze swept across the church. Young and old, rich and poor, knelt with bowed heads. Everyone needed what the icon offered.

Life on the northern taiga was harsh. The meadows were too soggy for farming and trees covered almost all the rest of the land. To make a field required felling the trees and farming around the stumps. Eventually the stumps rotted enough to allow a horse team to pull them up. The harsh winters demanded secure housing and a store of food to tide the villagers over. Such a life puts a premium on hope, and the icon brought hope, a gift as precious as grain or salt.

With Easter so near, even more pilgrims were appearing. Besides the icon, the travelers sought out the girl. She avoided most of them, though the richer ones often forced their way into her presence. Certainly I should seek her out and learn more, but I was afraid.

A vague apprehension, difficult to describe, inhibited me. What I might find? Or not find? Certainly I feared God. Would He be offended at my intrusion into her? Would He strike me down? A serious possibility.

Maybe I would find that she was a fraud. How? She was only a girl. A mere girl does not create such elaborate fantasies, especially beginning at the age of five. If she is no fraud then she is a possible source of answers to so many questions.

Did I fear the answers? The problem with answers is that they compel action. During my centuries of life I have decided to accept certain attitudes and created a system of morals to guide my behavior. For instance, I assumed that we really do have control over our destinies. Calvin and the Anabaptists were wrong and God did not predetermine our fates. But if God did not know what will happen to each of us, then how could He be all-knowing, omniscient, aware of all that had happened, is happening, and will happen? Such a question is well suited to philosophers.

Other questions have more immediate meaning to my life. The Bible prohibited murder, but I have at times deliberately taken lives. What if I found out that I was wrong? Maybe these acts were not justified. Maybe I do not have the judgment necessary to both condemn and execute another. Certainly, if I was a human, a single mind, I do not believe that a person could make such a judgment. But I am not human, or at least not a normal human. I can truly know the innermost thoughts of a person and find their condemnation within those thoughts.

These deliberations only succeeded in frustrating me, so I went to find the girl. She was sitting on a bench in front of her parents’ cabin. A crowd stood around her, staying a respectful distance away. One by one they detached themselves and moved forward to kneel on the dirt before her, even the nobles in fine dress, and ask her a question or for a healing. Composed and courteous, she touched them and gave an answer.

After a few minutes in the crowd I realized that most of her answers were not particularly satisfying. At least not to me. A young noble lady explained that after four years she had yet to conceive and asked if she would ever bear a child. Clearly this was an issue of importance beyond the personal urge to leave one’s progeny behind. Noble lineage and lands and money were probably at stake. Sonja told her that “Our Lord rewards those that follow His commandments and give aid to His church.”

A old man, his limbs twisted from some past famine, asked her when he was going to die. Her reply, “Only Our Lord knows and you should not fear going to join Him.”

Another man, dressed in the rough garb of a peasant, carried a child forward in his arms. “My son cannot walk,” he mumbled in a voice so low that I barely heard the words.

She drew back the hood covering the child’s face and tenderly touched his face. He was half her age with wide, innocent eyes. She blinked twice, then looked at the father. “In Heaven we are reunited with all that go before us.” When the father turned away, his shoulders were even more hunched, bearing his child and the answer away.

My turn came and I approached and knelt. “I am Pëtr Alekseyev, a monk. I have no question or ailment.”

“You are easy to answer. Go in peace with Our Lord.” When she touched me, a fragmental slipped into the fourteen-year-old girl.

* * * *

She is so exhausted that even her teeth ache.

All day the people come, bringing their pain or their vanity. The vanity annoys her. Rich people who already have more than her village can ever hope for, asking who their daughter should marry for the best advantage, or how to best manage their estate and serfs. Despite her annoyance, she strives to love them, for Jesus Christ loves the rich as much as any other.

The pain is worse. The Lord is a harsh taskmaster, causing misery among those who deserve only joy. When the man with the crippled son came to her, she knew that the boy would die by next winter, wasting away from the strange disease inside. She could only offer the hope of heaven.

More come to her, laying their burdens on her, and when the sun reaches its zenith, she raises her hand. “I must rest. I will return later.”

The crowd does not murmur in complaint. They move aside for her as she goes to the door. A few hands reach out to touch her as if she were a holy icon. Once in the privacy of her home, her mother kisses her, gives her some bread and piece of dried meat, and lets her out of the back door. Sonja does not spend her time in the house, but in the forest. Within moments she is among the trees, taking refuge away from everyone else.

She has been up since dawn. The night’s sleep did not give her a complete refresh, but only enough relief so that she can push on. As she follows familiar paths, munching on the bread and meat, the tension flows from her body. Unlike other people, she does not fear the forest and the wolves and the darkness within. Many of the villagers have noticed this and say that she is most certainly guarded by angels.

Her mind is filled with prayer, seeking answers and divine companionship. The answers come bubbling up from her hidden mind, the part of each human that is a cauldron of contradiction and confusion. Nowadays we call it the unconscious, but at that time only I knew enough about the ways of the mind to understand that it existed.

It is hard to delve into the hidden mind. When my fragmental pushes down inside, it is buffeted by passions and horrors. The raw emotions live here, pushing up feelings of futility, hate, and love. Her fears live there, clamoring for her attention. Different selves live down there, bound within complex matrixes of emotion and intellect. To summon up those selves now and examine them more closely would interfere with her current perceptions. My fragmental did not want to contaminate the experience for myself, so I choose to bide my time.

A flower drew her attention. Yesterday when she had passed by there, the ground had been drenched from the melting snow. There are still patches of snow under the trees, where the sun cannot reach. Now a scattering of yellow petals hugs the ground. Another miracle from the Lord.

She reaches one of her more favorite places. The forest is filled with wood spirits, but here lives the most powerful wood spirit. A large oak, white with age, sprawls next to a stream. The wandering stream had tried to topple the magnificent tree; in an angry response, the tree had forced the stream away. The spirits do not speak to her, not like the Lord, but she feels them and their worship of the Lord. All bow before the Christ.

She hugs the tree; the spirit is so solid. A bird chirps above her. She breaks the embrace and cranes her neck back. A newly finished nest of twigs lies at the meeting of a branch and the trunk. The bird chirps again, singing a song to attract a mate.

Suddenly it flies from the nest, all blue with a touch of black on its tail. Another bird of the same type appears and settles on a branch of the old oak. It chirps at the first one, which circles about, replying with its own words.

Despite the beauty of the flower and the bird, Sonja still feels worn out. No child should have so much thrust upon her. To sustain the hope of others is an awful burden. She looks to the sky and a feeling of pure love streams from her hidden mind, flooding every cranny of her being and calming her agitation.

It is an extraordinary feeling and my fragmental feels it too. I absorb her reaction, though it does not calm me for more than a moment. The existence of the feeling is too exciting. Is this feeling a blessing from God or from some recess of her flesh? If I killed and possessed her, would I still get these holy thoughts and feelings? Would I then be a messenger of God? I am horrified that the idea even occurs to me. May it always horrify me. Besides, certainly God must speak to her soul, not her flesh.

She sits and leans against the oak. Closing her eyes, she basks in the afterglow of the love. Such experiences sustain her when the demands of the crowd clamor so loudly. She wonders if Jesus Christ Himself ever felt so weary that He wanted His mission to just end. Did Jesus hope that another would come to replace Him? Another Son of God?

There is no answer to this question and she knows that her own mission will only end when she dies. An ordinary life is not to be her lot. She cannot even conceive of marrying or having children; that is for other girls.

As I contemplate her thought patterns, I realize that they are like poetry, not mathematics. Most peasants, lacking the opportunity for education or even sustained contemplation, ride the waves of their hidden mind, rarely imposing discipline upon their thoughts. Scholars, educated and adhering to logic, follow one thought to another, striving to keep the impulses of the hidden mind away from the topic that preoccupies them. They find glory in the structure that they impose on their minds.

Sonja is different. She is neither that raw cauldron of feelings, nor the analytical student. Her thoughts center around love and the other positive emotions. She thinks logically when required, but mostly she is just creative. All of us have creative flashes, inspiration that reorders how we look at a problem or life, but her entire existence is filled with neverending creativity. Her abiding fear and joy are the Lord and His purposes. The liturgy of the mass sings directly to her.

Time passes, random thoughts of little consequence cross her mind. An impulse to play with other children seeps up from her hidden mind, which she must reject. She is not like other children.

When she returned from the forest, she passed through her cabin, giving her mother a brief hug, then returned to her bench. The supplicants crowded closer. The afternoon sun almost seemed too warm for people used to the sharpness of winter. My core is the third to approach her. I touch her, instantly retrieving all that my fragmental within her had learned. I decide to leave the fragmental within her for the time being.