A monstrous fate will turn a girl into a legend.On an island in Lake Obersee, where The Sisters of St. Gertrude abide, a destitute Moor named Durra arrives. Sold for taxes, she and her two companions tend to the nuns and their collection of cats. At night, she combs the library for details on the order, the remote island, and the beasts howling outside her window.But when a prank reveals the sisters’ gruesome secret, Durra is forced to accept a new fate. Bestowed an unearthly power, she must choose between life as a nun or living among the monsters beyond the convent walls.Her path is about to change the tide in the ultimate war. The war between good and evil.
A pair of dark oak doors,
masterfully carved with six different panels, came into view. Winged creatures,
with horns and pointed tail, appeared in every panel terrorizing humans who
fought against them with pitchforks and fire. The tale was of a fierce battle
set in a field not far from a village. Large snarling dogs assisted the humans
in fighting off the agents of the Devil. The carnage recreated in painstaking
detail had dead men and dogs with gashes across their middle, spilling their
guts onto the blood-soaked ground. The bottom panel showed the forces of good
overtaking the fiends and driving them from the battlefield. But it was the
last panel that unsettled Durra.
This carving depicted the dogs
that survived the fight. They gathered around a fiery pit and pushed the dead
monsters into a vast hole, returning them to hell.
Durra touched the carved figures. “What
story is this?”
Monica put her hand on a door pull of a
wolf’s face with a brass ring through its mouth.
“The Battle of Cadizia. It’s
where man and his faithful dogs first drove back the agents of the Devil.”
“Cadizia?” Durra furrowed her
brow. “I never read about that in the Bible.”
Monica pulled the heavy doors open. “Nor
will you.”
“But what—?”
Monica nodded inside the doors.
“It’s time to pray.” She walked beneath a stone lintel and entered the
abbey.
Durra followed, a million
questions running through her head, but when she stepped inside the abbey, all
her apprehensions faded away.
Thick columns with capitals of
more winged creatures, their pointy tails directed at the altar, complemented
the mural painted on the panels of the ceiling.
The story was the same as on the
door, but the details emphasized the role of the dogs. Silver-backed, with
thick dark coats and bright glowing eyes, the beasts appeared like magical
beings while confronting the demons. They stood, surrounding a gaping pit
filled with a lake of fire, snarling and driving the winged creatures back to
hell. “That’s scary.”
Leida stood next to Durra, gaping up at
the ceiling.
Sister Monica appeared in front
of them and took their hands. Her face contorted in an angry scowl as she
whisked them to the back of the abbey.
Monica pointed at a bench, “Stay.”
Durra took her seat while scouring the six stained-glass windows, eager
for more on the strange
dogs, but all she found were images of a woman in a black nun’s habit,
carrying a large wooden staff. The figure had different animals gathered at her
feet, and the kindness of St. Gertrude contrasted sharply with the violence of
the painting on the ceiling. But the windows had no portraits of dogs, only
squirrels, birds, and, of course, cats.
Emily nudged her and then
pointed to a white linen altar, sitting before a carved figure of Christ on the
cross. The odd-shaped skull atop the altar struck her as grotesque. “What is
that?” Emily asked.
“Wolf,” Leida whispered. “You
can tell by the flat part from the top of the skull to the tip of the nose. A
dog’s head has a steeper angle.”
Durra regarded the girl with a
newfound appreciation. “How do you know that?”
Leida demurely folded her hands
in her lap. “I told you—I grew up with them. My family used to hunt them.”
“A wolf hunter in our midst.”
Emily nodded. “That might come in handy.”
“Shh.” Monica stood in front of
their bench, her cheeks red with anger. “Have you no respect for the house of
God?”
Durra eyed the skull once more. If this is a house of God, what’s a wolf’s
skull doing here?
