Written by Bailey Flaherty
“And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free,” John 8:32
The Watchers were posted at both sides of the Cathedral’s arched doorway, their slender bodies tensed in wait. Underneath the moonlight, their metal limbs glistened with something akin to sweat, and their face, if you could call it that, glowed uncannily. The conglomerate of ruffled feathers and that one, infinite eye looked real. Natural, as if the Watchers’ bodies weren’t built.
Judith knew they weren’t alive, and yet, watching them now from the lookout spot, she wondered if maybe that thought was all wrong. Were they alive? Was she?
“Damn bots,” Simon muttered from beside her with a shake of his head. His binoculars were dangling loosely around his neck, dropped and forgotten in his annoyance. “Why’d they make them look so terrifying?”
As if the Right Watcher had heard him, its head snapped towards the lookout. Its eye opened wider, feathers flapping as if taking flight. Even from so far away, Judith could see the iron rings wrapped around the eye, a helix of protection for the bot’s central piece.
“Simon, you idiot,” Micah rasped from behind them. “Keep it down.”
The three of them, the self-dubbed Hands of God, had set up camp atop the roof of a diagonal building. It was a work in progress, an up-and-coming rooftop restaurant, gated in by a semicircle of iron beams. Between the slabs were small slits of openings, and squinting through them allowed a direct view of the Watchers standing guard before the Cathedral’s vestibule.
The Right Watcher spun its head around, scanning all perimeters. Its neck twitched and shook as if agitated, cracking like the rupture of a spine. It locked eyes with the Left Watcher in an odd hold of telepathy before returning to a fight-ready stance.
“Both of you,” Judith whispered, biting her lip as she studied the bots’ movements. “Need to shut the hell up.” She wasn’t going to let either of them impede the mission she’d been preparing for months. All her research, all of Uncle Marko’s lessons, led her here, to the Cathedral. She’d do anything to get inside, anything to answer the unquenchable question of What lurks inside this holy place?
She peeked through the iron slit again, hoping to get a closer look. What she wanted to see was a physical connection, a spark shifting between the bots. There had to be something in the ground, or something in the light, that carried a shared knowledge between them.
A current.
Judith needed to find the current.
Her eyes graced over the Cathedral in full, and while she’d seen Saint Peter’s glory a million times before, tonight it was even more magnificent. She was finally getting in, finally taking it apart and biting into its core. All the unanswerables Uncle Marko hadn’t given her were behind these ancient, exquisite walls. St Peter’s beauty was in its architecture, an archaic brick and stone like all the buildings in the city had once been. It was in the windows stained of mosaic tiles, brimming with light. There was something alive about it, unlike the rest of the dead, mechanical city. Even Judith couldn’t deny St Peter’s Cathedral was a sight.
Above the doors, the Watchers stood before was a tympanum marked in symbols from the Era Organica. There were willow trees and ravens, insects and acorns, and the flesh of human—only human—hands. Judith yearned to know the meaning of them; the bedtime stories and textbooks Marko had given her of the Era Organica weren’t enough to quench her desire. She needed more, always more.
In the upper towers, the light of the mosaics splattered out, their shards illuminating the base of the Cathedral and the post of the Watchers. The inside of Saint Peter’s was always bright, shining with the artificial light that framed their mechanical worship. Marko had once told her about the old things called museums, placeholders for memories of the past. Some exhibits had objects locked in a glass case, protected from a museumgoer’s touch. The Cathedral was like that: a hidden display. Untouchable.
Judith wondered what would happen if she turned off the light.
She faced her boys again, asking, “You ready?” Micah nodded swiftly while Simon pulled out a small disk. It was cog-shaped with a screw stamped into the middle, and bronze coils poking towards the outsides. He grinned, twisting the screw at the center. Inside the disk, gears grinded like they were suiting up for an explosion. “Ready.”
He threw the disk off the side of the building, and as it fell, it began to tick like the insides of a clock. The farther it went, the louder it became. If Judith hadn’t been able to see it with her own eyes, she might have thought it was heading towards them rather than away.
When the ticks became unbearably loud, the Watchers craned their eye towards it. The disk hung in the air like a bird in the wind, coils flapping like feathers and shaking like it was breathing in the night around it. Judith had made the piece herself, and now, watching the Watchers and the strange resemblance her disk had to them, she wondered if it would be so hard to make one of them instead.
Judith thought she could do it. Maybe it was pompous, but she’d proven her worth enough. The Watchers were probably simple compared to all the machinery she dealt with daily. They were dangerous, yes, but on the inside? Just a bunch of notches and gears.
Their feathers unfurled as their eye locked in on the disk, their torsos latched upright. After a second, the disk’s ticking ceased at the same time its gears stopped churning. It fell to the cobblestone, hitting the ground twenty or so feet away from their posts. The Watchers paused for a moment, locking eyes again, and then they rushed towards the disk, going after their tiny attacker. They’d been trained against alchemical bombs and the like, so investigating Judith’s device would be of utmost importance to the Watchers, more so than staying at their posts.
Judith fished inside her satchel, pulling out the grappling hook and hangers she’d brought along. There wasn’t much to prepare for a break-in such as this, but Judith had her inventions, her boys, and her bravery, which had to count for something. She wished she could have brought her dusty books and scribbled notes, but there wasn’t room nor time—she’d have to remember all she saw and write it after, before she told the rest of Marko’s group.
With another look at the Watcher’s distracted below, Judith pointed her gun a foot above the bottom rung of the lintel and shot. The hook fell against the stone with no noise other than a muffled scratch. After tying the rope around the iron beam, she pressed a hanger into each of the boys’ hands and slung the handle of her satchel around her shoulder. It would unbalance her weight while she crossed the night, but she could take it. Marko had always called her stubborn, though she liked to think of herself as resilient.
She lined up her own hanger with the rope and stepped on top of the beam before them. “Okay, boys,” she said, the familiar thrill of mischief slicing through her nerves. “I’ll see you on the other side.”
They saluted, and with a kick back, Judith was off, gliding toward the Cathedral.
The night air brushing against her skin only heightened her exhilaration. Even though a chill was rushing under her, the moon shining just barely enough light to see five feet ahead, the feeling was unparalleled. Judith was flying. Judith was free.
The closer she got to the Cathedral, the more Judith felt as if she were entering an alternate universe. The light from the mosaics was pulling her in like the gravity of a black hole, warping the night around her. She felt as though she were inside a kaleidoscope—that if she twisted her body a certain way, she might just get the combination right. She might solve the riddle of the Watchers’ worship.
Just before she made contact with the trumeau, Judith released her hold on the hanger, falling approximately five feet to the ground below. She caught herself and rolled to the side, leaving space for Simon and Micah to follow. With another glance at the Watchers, now holding the disk in their hands as fragile as a baby bird, she waved at them to follow.
Simon was first, graceful as a swan, and Micah was second. His hanger nearly fell off the rope with how much he was trembling; Judith had to smack Simon’s shoulder in order for him to stop teasing. With the three of them finally mounting the doors of St. Peter’s, Judith allowed herself a moment to breathe. The hardest part was over.
Midnight meant that no one else could get inside the Cathedral. This late, it would be an empty place, desolate of Tellers and Disciples. No one else would bother them once they got past the Watcher’s posts. In and out, just like that.
Judith pressed her hands against the door. The wood was cold, and its face was engraved with the same symbols of the tympanum. She thought maybe the current was here, wrapping itself around the Cathedral. But she found nothing.
She hung her head and pushed open the doors to the inside.
The narthex was hollow and empty, the kind of place that felt bigger than it actually was. Above the three sets of doors into the Cathedral were arches with more tympana, all engraved with the same natural symbols. The stones were elegant and barren, tiled like someone had once crafted a design for them before thinking better of it: fortuitous; unfinished.
Judith stepped towards the middle ashwood door, each footstep echoing around them. It felt impossible that behind these doors was Judith’s key to everything unanswered, her curiosities quenched after tonight. A small part of her wondered What happens next? but she tried to remind herself to focus. The enlightened future didn’t matter now; she needed to be present. She needed to find the past.
A hundred pews with splintered edges greeted her at the creak of ashwood. Each row opened to a center aisle tiled with dark red, paving a road of blood all the way up to the Altar. The centerpiece of the Cathedral was that cracked marble table, blacker than the night outside. It was grand, rising above the pews in such a magnificent way that Judith felt the urge to kneel. The gravity of herself seemed to shift into her hips, tugging at her very core.
Though behind the Altar was something even more electrifying: the Reliquary. Even with the barest glance, she felt its magnitude. It was strong like the event horizon of a black hole: an endless force, an inescapable pull. She moved closer helplessly.
Judith knew her quick steps echoed loudly across the space, but she didn’t care—couldn’t care when all that mattered was beholding that Reliquary with her own eyes. Her hands were trembling, her ears ringing, and while she knew Micah and Simon were close behind, she couldn’t find the strength to turn her head and check.
The Reliquary was taller than Judith had expected. Its silver base, made of metal so pure that it reflected like a mirror, reached the underside of her chin. At face level, golden rays, chiseled to resemble a hieroglyphic sun, outstretched to where her wingspan might reach. The rays were larger than human limbs, a power too great for someone like Judith to hold.
At the center of the rays was a glass vessel, its surface so clean that Judith decided no one had touched it since it was placed here by whoever had made the Cathedral. She wanted to press her hand against its face, to dirty this holy thing. At feeling the presence of Simon and Micah, one brushing either side of her shoulders, she held herself back.
Behind the glass was the relic of Judith’s dreams.
St Peter’s rib was a relic so old it barely looked like a rib at all anymore. Its edges were jagged and rough; all soothing marrow vanished from so many years locked away. Mold, or some other kind of blackness, sat rotting along its curve.
Even from behind the glass, Judith could feel the radiation of a current—the electricity she had been searching for for so long. It hummed like it was whispering the answer, a language unintelligible to Judith.
She’d known, in some cobwebbed corner of her mind, that the current would be here, and yet the discovery was both frightening and incredible. She needed to open the Reliquary at once. She needed to hold the rib in her own two hands.
She fished through her satchel and pulled out the device she and Simon had been tinkering with for a week now: a spool of twine attached to a gear train machine. Pulling on the end coil would set the machine in motion so that its twine wedged itself inside a keyhole, shaping into whatever mold was needed to unlock.
She raised it towards the Reliquary, a little mournful that all her curiosity would be sated so soon. But at the spark of a touch between the coils and the glass, Micah moaned beside her. “Jude…”
She turned her head to see him clasping his own, fingers pressed against his temples. His eyes were closed tight, lips twitching. She knew a vision was sweeping him away, and she startled, looking around the empty Cathedral as if someone was lurking in the shadows. It would do them no good if someone noticed Micah’s twitching, his connection to the spiritual world so long forgotten. Judith wondered, for a moment, if the rib had triggered it—if the current really was as strong as she’d imagined. Luckily, all the arches were weeping and lonesome, the pews flagrantly empty. Instead of giving in to paranoia, Judith focused on gripping Micah’s hand instead.
It steadied him, for a moment, but then he was falling into Simon’s waiting hands, limbs twitching. When he opened his eyes once more, his lips were pursed. He shook his head, “Someone’s watching us.” The smallness of his voice was terrifying. Judith knew Micah had never been the boldest of them, but the meekness he held now was so unlike Micah that Judith simply had to believe him.
Simon had a different thought, his brows raised in skepticism, “We left the Watchers outside the Cathedral.”
Micah bit the inside of his cheek, “Not the Watchers.”
As much as Judith wanted to turn tail and run away from whatever shadow creature was stalking them, she couldn’t abandon the accumulation of her discoveries. She needed to open this Reliquary, and she needed to do it now. She cursed something unholy under her breath and pressed the machine against the keyhole, tugging on the coil until the gears began to turn.
“Jude,” Micah murmured, “I don’t think this is a good idea anymore.”
Simon curled a hand around the back of her shoulder. “I agree, captain. The Hands of God can come back another day—some time when we aren’t being watched.”
“Don’t be an idiot, we’re always being watched.” Judith shrugged him off. “The Watchers never stop, so why should we?” There was a fire burning in her gut, an unsatisfied spirit rising higher and higher. She needed more, more, more.
The ticks of gears filled the empty space, and with each passing second Judith felt the hairs at the back of her neck rise. Each click was the footstep of a shadow moving closer, the countdown of an explosion. Though if her death sentence was near, then she was glad this was the way she went out: falling before the answer to her studies, her life’s work. Marko would be proud.
She felt the tension rolling off of her companions, but she ignored it. Instead, she locked her eyes on the ticking machine, watching as it molded, little by little, into the key that unlocked the Reliquary. The pop of success startled Judith—so much so that she failed to notice the shadow encroaching toward the silver base. Limbs of smoke wrapped around the metal sun, blocking the light that burned into the rib.
“Oh, foolish one,” said the darkness, “That relic is not for you.”
Judith’s eyes spun toward the shadow and found a cloak with a figure stuffed inside. It was a man, a tall and plump man. Another human. His hair was silver like the Reliquary’s base, and his cloak was red like the Cathedral’s tile. His pale skin was bright against the artificial lights, sunken like a wrinkled grape. Where his hair receded, Judith noticed a small iron oval. As the man shook his head, the oval glinted in gold, its edges outlined with a circle in the middle: an eye, just like those of the Watchers.
“Who…” Judith trailed off, unable to form her tongue around anything else. He had to be a Teller, based on that cloak and chip, but what Judith didn’t understand was why he was here, now, after sunset. The words fell flat. Simon took a step forward, chest puffed out as he finished her awestruck question, “Are you?”
The man sauntered to the side of the Reliquary, crossing his arms as he looked down at the three of them. “Teller Vanidicus,” he answered with a scoff as if it were obvious. His mouth curved like the fang of a snake, “And you’re not supposed to be here after dark.”
Judith eyed the relic with planes and diagrams flooding her vision. If she grabbed the rib and ran for it, then maybe she could make it. They could escape the Teller, escape the Cathedral and the Watchers—all of it—and finally figure out all the knowledge this place was covering up behind its old walls and glass cage.
“We’re doing repairs,” Simon lied, “For the Reliquary.”
Judith had no better explanation—she hadn’t expected anyone to be here, had known that only the Watchers circled the premises after the moon rose—but Simon’s wasn’t too convincing. She watched the Teller shake his head and let out a booming laugh of disbelief, “Right.”
For all the things Marko had taught her, Judith had none of it to put forward. She was speechless. Caught. Both Micah and Simon were frozen, too, paralyzed by the reveal of their secret rendezvous becoming known.
Teller Vanidicus brushed a finger against the opening of the Reliquary, just under where the rib was resting. “This knowledge is not made for impertinent children such as you.”
Judith wanted to tell him how she’d studied the Tellers and their Watchers for years, that she knew, from an outside perspective, how they ticked. Instead, she bit her tongue. “Who’s it for, then?”
“The Tellers. The worthy Disciples.”
“And what makes a Disciple worthy?”
“Certainly not a foolish child like you. Disciples follow the Watchers wholeheartedly and with a pure mind.” The eye at his hairline flashed menacingly as he scoffed, “And the worthy ones? There’s much less of them than you’d think.”
Judith wanted to break the jagged exterior of his grin, hammer hard until it cracked and broke. “Try me.”
“Do you even believe in the Watcher’s word? You must be the most unworthy….”
“Perhaps,” she cut him off, her throat a raging maelstrom. "I'm the most worthy.”
He laughed, and its echoes reverberated around the empty space. Judith felt as though it penetrated the cavern of her skull. It repeated over and over again. Not worthy. Not worthy. Not worthy. She didn’t believe it. She believed in Marko and everything they were working towards: enlightenment; a return to the Era Organica.
And yet, she knew what Vanidicus said was also true. She didn’t really feel worthy, no matter how many times Marko had told her she was.
“Child, what makes you think you have any idea what’s going on here?” The glint of the golden eye at the edge of his cheek shone mockingly from the mosaic’s light. He knew more—of what? Judith didn’t know, but whatever it was was something he was holding over her head. She needed to know what he knew more than anything. Curiosity, the killer be damned.
She lifted her chin, crossing her arms to mimic the Teller. “Tell me, then.” Her voice was clear as a blade, strong and assertive, doing its best to hide the vats of boiling dread. “I’ll prove that I’m worthy.”
“Jude,” Micah whispered, “Please…” He trailed off, eyes closing, body spasming, in what Judith could only assume was another vision, and probably a bad one at that. Maybe the apocalypse, maybe the end of the world. If Judith were worthy, would the world burn up in flames? If she wasn’t, would it go up in smoke? She’d prepared for this, and yet, she didn’t think she’d ever feel ready.
She shook her head, ignoring Micah’s grimace and Simon’s pleading eyes. “Show me,” she barked, “Now.”
Teller Vanidicus thumbed at the dust circling the rib and brought it to his lips. He blew it derisively at Judith’s face. The dust was bitter and hot like the embers of a fire. “Who do you think is in control here, child?” Teller Vanidicus kept his gaze locked on Judith’s, but his pupils were dilated elsewhere, some faraway place that Judith would only be able to reach in the accumulation of this relic. “It’s not the Tellers. It’s not me.”
“I know,” Judith replied, because she did. She did know that all the goings-on in the Cathedral couldn’t possibly be the work of humans like her. That St. Peter’s preservation of the Era Organica would be impossible to keep up with in the mechanics of the world they lived in now. There was another force out there; there had to be. And what was more powerful than the Watchers?
Judith knew that only in understanding this relic could she find the truth. All of it.
Teller Vanidicus’s eyes came back to him, small like the sun itself was staring at him: the truth personified. “Take the relic, then. You’ll see.”
His words came out so earnestly that Judith first considered them a lie. How had it become so easy that the Teller was advising her to take the very thing she’d been looking for? The thing that a Teller such as himself was supposed to protect? Her eyes glazed over him, from the shadows of his robes to the chip of his skull. He looked human, but he also looked… made. Built, like the rest of the architecture in their city. Real, and not.
Judith believed him.
Judith wanted to uncover the lie.
Her hand was reaching out before she was truly cognizant of it, pulled once more by the magnitude of such an impossible thing. She hadn’t known what she’d find in this Cathedral, only that it would be an answer. Though once she’d felt the relic so close, she knew it had to be this. The current was everywhere here, wrapping her and the boys up in an inescapable field of allure. Nothing else mattered but the rib; Judith felt only its inanimate pulse.
Her own desperation was enough to close the gap. Judith’s hand shot forward as she closed her fingers around the rib. The contact was static; her own skin dissolved into a blur. She was unreal. She was a shadow. She was lost.
In the darkness, there was light—windows of it, full of greens and browns and blues that Judith had only ever heard of, never seen herself. They were paintings, moving paintings. Doors and portraits. Openings to touch.
Judith looked into the first one and felt her skin simmer into something otherly. Her body wasn’t her own, and her mind shifted inside someone else’s. She was watching. She was experiencing the nature Marko had told her once colored the world. It was green. So green.
Whoever’s body she was seeing from was sitting in a field of flowers, the kind she’d seen in old books. The fanciful nature engraved into the tympana. The air smelled unlike anything she’d known before. There was no oil or melted ore, just a fresh and supple breeze. Everything was so much lighter and tangible and visceral than the way it was now. The grass was itchy, and the trees in the distance had enormous branches swinging in the wind. It was beautiful. It was green. Judith wished more than anything that the world were still like this. Where had all of this flora gone? What had they done?
She was pulled back into the darkness before she could figure out how to breathe in the new, pure air.
The next doorway was just as green as the next. And the next after that. The worlds she stepped inside were so impossibly, wonderfully beautiful. She couldn’t believe that these places had existed once, that the world she lived in now was a descendant of that. Marko had told her as much, and she’d supported the thought enough to join his rebel group, but there had always been some small part of her that didn’t entirely believe.
Now, she believed him. And she wished she’d never seen it—that she could deny this beautiful world and never recognize it—because, now, it was all too much. How could she go back to the metal cogs of her city? How was she not meant to dream and yearn for the world that once was every second of her entire goddamn life?
She came back to herself in pieces and fragments, a fight between what was real and what was not. She felt the relic wrapped inside her fingers and nearly dropped it. It was what she’d come here to find: the truth. Though now, she wished she hadn’t. She wanted to throw the relic at the ground. She wanted to break it as if its destruction would somehow remove the magnificence of the old world from her head. Her vision was clouded, cheeks soaked through.
She found Teller Vanidicus’ eyes once more, and now—now—she understood. He knew about that green, green world, and his mind drifted there. Judith lost herself the same. “That’s what we could have?” She felt the heat of tears falling between her parted lips. “Why would we… How could we destroy it?”
Teller Vanidicus frowned. “Perhaps you are worthy.”
Judith had never felt more conflicted. She wanted to be worthy like Marko had said, but it was a heavy crown to wear. The burden of knowledge was pressing down onto her shoulders. “I wish…” she whispered mournfully, “I hadn’t seen.”
“All of us do.” His finger tapped the oval eye. “That’s why we have this: to remember. To remember what we Tell is a lie. The relics are the truth. A truth only some of us know.” Judith felt the current of the relic at her fingertips. She knew the green world couldn’t uphold such an electric current, so it had to be something else, the same thing that had implanted itself in the side of the Teller’s head. That kind of current—a manufactured one.
Judith’s truth had been a fallacy all along.
“That’s torture,” she said, finally piecing together all the knowledge that had led her to this. “The Watchers… they make you remember what they took from us?”
Where she’d thought Teller Vanidicus might show some drop of pity, he shrugged. “Punishment. For creating them without the ability to feel as we do.”
“Bullshit,” Judith yelled, suddenly aware of her space, of the friends she’d forgotten in her disorientation from the memories. Simon and Micah looked small as tots, afraid of Judith and all the things she now knew. “Bullshit,” she said again, quieter. “Taking away our feelings just because they don’t have any? Making us worship them instead of something natural?” She shuddered, still crying and quite unsure how to stop, “It’s bullshit.”
“You wanted the truth.”
“Not a torturous one!”
Teller Vanidicus pursed his lips. “Truth is often tormented, child. Knowledge is a burden.”
“No.” Judith felt like the world was shifting from below her feet. She didn’t want to disappoint Marko; she didn’t want to bear the burden of the Era Organica. She was atop a breaking building, falling down, “Not this knowledge.”
Simon gripped the space above her elbow, and for once she didn’t shove him away. The pressure was a comfort, a stability in her splintered world. “Judith,” he whispered into her hair, its strands red as the Cathedral tiles, red as blood. Judith felt suddenly and certainly unreal. She wanted nothing more than to just fade away.
Teller Vanidicus shook his head at her foolishness. “The Watchers are still dealing with your disk outside. Put the relic back where it belongs and leave before they see you. Pretend you never saw any of it,” his voice wavered with the offering, as if he didn’t quite believe the words himself. “Forget the relic. Forget everything it revealed.”
Judith knew she never would. It would haunt her like a ghost for the rest of her days. Green would follow her, would turn all her dreams into flower fields and fresh air and swaying trees. And yet, she found herself nodding along. “Okay,” she said, “thank you.”
The Teller whisked himself away before Judith could blink, leaving only herself, her boys, and the hollowness of St Peter’s. Both of them eyed her wearily, waiting for her—the one with the memories, the one able to share them—to speak.
Judith put the relic back into its rightful place at the center of the sun and shut its glass cage tight. She’d thought the humming in her fingers would fade at the dismissal of the relic’s current, but when she pulled away, she felt just as, if not more, electrified.
The current hadn’t vanished after all.
Impossibly, her lips curved into a grin. It seemed like, maybe, that manufactured current wasn’t what she was looking for after all. It was instead something far deep inside of her that she hadn’t found before touching the rib. But it was there now, burning up her skin and all the images of green she now held inside her mind. She was the current. She’d finally found the truth. And perhaps, it wasn’t such a burden. Perhaps to suffer was to know.
She needed to get back to Marko and the rebels. She needed to share the weight of the old green world because maybe then it wouldn’t be so much, and then maybe they could bring it back, just like Marko had always promised.
The journey back to the hideaway would be difficult— suffocating, now that Judith had tasted fresh, real air. But if drowning in an interlude led to a final act of breathing purely once more, she could do it. She would do it. She was worthy—not of what the Tellers deemed but of the green, the Era Organica, the current. She’d been chosen to bring it back, and bring it back she would.
Her cheeks were warm at the thought. “Let’s get out of here,” she said, “The Hands of God have work to do.”
About the Author
Bailey is a sophomore creative writing major attending Emerson College. She loves books about bees, researching 17th century automatons, and plotting heists that will never happen with her friends. She can be reached on Instagram: _baileyflaherty and Substack: unbeelievable.substack.com.