"The confession is over until I have an explanation."
Kurt and Stephani stayed off the main roads and stuck to wooded paths. In that way, it almost felt like one of their childhood adventures. Stephani had found a good straight branch and was using it like a walking stick, swinging it forward with each one of his long strides. Kurt walked a little a head of him, picking out the path with his sharp eyes in the early morning light as easily as if it were mid-afternoon.
"The train station is a lot further from Father Dietrich's than I remember," Kurt said.
"We always had someone to pick us up," Stephani said. "And you were always pretending to be asleep the whole time anyway."
"Oh, yeah. That's right," Kurt conceded. They were silent for a long time after that, the only sound that of their footsteps on paths that alternated between packed dirt and concrete depending on how populated the neighborhood was.
"Do you want me to jump us again?" Kurt asked when they reached a clearing where they could see well ahead of them.
Stephani shrugged. "Sure. It's a lot faster. You're not tired from before?" he asked, referring to how a mile or so back when Kurt, too tired to continue, had accidentally teleported them in place.
Kurt shook his head. "No, I'm fine now. Ready?" He slid his arms out of his rucksack and dropped it on the ground.
Stephani nodded, putting his backpack besides Kurt's. Kurt had discovered this was the easiest way to keep track of everything since himself and another person plus the luggage was a lot to teleport with. The two of them stood over their bags, as close together as they could. Kurt focused on the horizon.
There was a loud crack that seemed to come almost from within their ears, and they were standing about a mile from where they started.
"It looks like I've got room to do a couple more," Kurt said, looking at the landscape of gently rolling hills ahead of them. Obediently Stephani leaned in, putting his arms around Kurt's shoulders.
"You're the first person I've met who isn't bothered by this," Kurt said.
"Well, you're ugly, but we are brothers. I don't mind giving you a hug once and a while," Stephani quipped with a grin.
"No, I'm serious," Kurt said, "Everyone else gets sick, especially if they've never done it. And the one time I took Wolfgang twice in a row, he passed out."
Stephani shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "It's weird, but it doesn't really bother me all that much. It's like being momentarily car sick and then it goes away."
Kurt stepped back and scratched his head. "I don't get it."
"Well, don't knock it. Think about how long it would be taking us to walk all this way," Stephani said.
"True. But, doesn't it seem strange to you? I mean, everybody else…"
"I don't know why, Kurt," Stephani interrupted him irritably. "It just doesn't bother me. We're not going to figure it out standing here anyway. The person you want to ask is mom anyway; she knows about all this supernatural stuff."
Kurt nodded. "I guess you're right," he said. He stepped back into position over their packs and put his arms around Stephani's shoulders as Stephani did the same to him. "Ready? We're almost there now."
Stephani nodded. "Let's go home," he said and suddenly in front of them, the lights of St. Stephen's Chapel could be seen on its tiny hill, just a short distance ahead. Below it, spread out over the open field that the circus had rented so many times was a small city of tents and trailers.
It did look like home.
Stephani stopped. "My God, it hasn't changed," he said. "It's exactly like I remember it."
"It hasn't been that long," Kurt said.
"It's been long enough," Stephani. "Long enough that it looks good to be back."
Shouldering their packs, the two of them started down the hill, both ready for the journey to be over.
Father Dietrich sat in the cramped interior of St. Stephen's confessional booth with his hands folded in his lap. He normally waited out in the nave when he wasn't needed, but that morning he had been listening to a steady stream of confessions in Romanian, Russian, and German so he didn't bother to leave his seat. Listening to confessions in such a variety of languages was always a signal to him that the circus was indeed, in town.
The Wollecks, the Circus Gehlhaar's tightwire troupe, were all Roman Catholic, Romania's second largest religious affiliation and by far the largest single family unit in the circus. They seemed to be getting even larger as well since every year or two they produced a baby for him to baptize. Father Dietrich had been quite pleased when the Wolleck's joined Circus Gehlhaar because it at last allowed Kurt to live in a community of Catholics, something that had been missing from his life until then.
The other sign that the circus was in town was, of course, a visit from Kurt and so it seemed strange that that hadn't happened yet. Then again he had his meeting with Margali to ponder over. Father Dietrich still wasn't quite sure what she was trying to tell him. He didn't feel right dismissing her ideas as heretical as he had always respected her as a friend and as a good mother to her children, but it bothered him somewhat that it seemed that Kurt had become involved in activities that that could only be described as occult. It bothered him even more that Margali seemed to condone and possibly could have encouraged these activities.
Father Dietrich frowned. He wished he could just talk to Kurt. He wanted to understand what Margali meant by, "Kurt's permanent record needed to be changed. His lines weren't valid anymore." They had spoken for almost an hour after she'd made this baffling pronouncement and he still didn't feel like he was any closer to understanding what was going on. Actually he was rather horrified by what Margali had told him. She'd tried to present it as a sort of "coming of age ritual", but to Father Dietrich it sounded like Margali's sister had held Kurt captive in the woods and forced him to mutilate himself under the pretense that it would hide his fate from the supernatural. And what was worse, it seemed that Kurt had volunteered.
It was a mortal sin, breaking the first commandment, not to mention practicing what sounded to him like witchcraft. Surely he'd taught Kurt better than that. And yet it seemed he clearly hadn't. Father Dietrich shut his eyes against the tears that threatened to break free and slide down his cheeks. It broke his heart just thinking about it.
Brin stood before the mirror, her arms at her sides, not saying a word, her face inscrutable. She turned around, looking at the back and shifted the fabric a bit, watching the layers fall back around her tiny feet. Then she shifted the dress from side to side a bit as though testing its fit before finally attempting a full spin to watch the petal like layers of satin flare out evenly. She stopped and looked straight on in the mirror again.
"It's…" James started to say, but both Maria and Lysette shushed him in unison.
Brin went through the whole sequence twice more before finally turning around, grinning.
"I love it." She announced.
James let out the breath he'd been holding and Maria grabbed his arm just incase he went down.
"I love it! I love it! I love it!" Brin said running over to hug James, smothering him with kisses. "How did you know? How did you know it would be exactly what I wanted? I was so afraid it would look like Kurt's clothes."
Lysette scoffed. "I make Kurt his clothes from scrap box. You think I make wedding dress from scrap? I go to couture sewing school in Paris after I leave circus. Work at atelier. I know what looks beautiful on pretty girls." she said dismissively, waving an arm at Brin.
Brin laughed. "I was so worried," she said breathlessly.
"Me too," James said.
"So we have a happy ending then?" Maria asked. She sounded ready to move onto the next crisis.
Brin's face fell comically. "Not yet. We still have to get married," she said.
Kurt and Stephani had reached, as it were, a crossroads. In one direction lay the neat rows of trailers and tents that was their living quarters and in the opposite, the front door of St. Stephens.
"I'm going to go in," Kurt said, "to the church." He nodded in its direction.
Stephani smiled, nodded in understanding and turned, re-shouldering his pack for the last leg of journey to the living quarters below them.
The interior of the church was dark, cool, and familiar. Kurt could smell centuries of incense smoke that had settled indelibly to every tapestry, the wood of the pews, and even the stone itself. He genuflected towards the tabernacle and then considered what to do next.
Kurt normally climbed the narrow spiral staircase into the choir loft above, but when the church was empty, he might even sit in the nave. A murmured voice told Kurt the church was not empty however and he pulled his hood up quickly. The sound had come from the direction of the tiny wooden confessional in the far corner and Kurt saw the light was on above it.
So. This was his chance. His chance to explain everything to Father Dietrich – the reason he'd left so abruptly, the results of his journey with Azazel through … well, he still wasn't sure where he'd walked through, not to mention his idiotic behavior on the last night of their show. Kurt sighed. Not only would he be here for hours, he wasn't sure if everything he'd done necessarily warranted absolution. It seemed suddenly that world might be more complex than simply sins and forgiveness.
Still, he had to at least try.
Silent as a cat, Kurt padded across the floor, set down his rucksack and knelt opposite the priest's enclosure. If he was lucky, this was one of the days when one of the other local parish priests came to St. Stephen's to hear confessions. It would be so much easier if what he had to tell just came across as the mindless and varied wanderings of a deluded young man instead of how they would have sounded to Father Dietrich, who had been there.
"Bless me Father for I have sinned. It has been …" He wasn't sure. Months. Months at least since he'd last confessed. Kurt took a deep breath, "too long since my last confession."
Then Kurt didn't wait. He launched into it quickly, too afraid he'd lose his nerve.
"I've sinned in both word and deed," he began. "First, I committed violence and then I ran away from the circus without telling anyone. And I stole passage on a train, but only because I didn't have any money and even if I did I don't think I could have bought a ticket. Also, I broke into a library in the middle of the night. And also my brother's apartment, but I didn't steal anything." Kurt paused. Those were the easy ones. Taking another moment to collect his thoughts, he began again, this time with the much more difficult aspect of what he had to confess, "And before that I … Before that I left … uh," Kurt faltered.
Now that he was trying to say it all aloud, it was more awkward than he thought it would be. Did he explain about Azazel? About learning he could teleport? Or did he jump right into the really juicy sins of self mutilation and participating in occult magic? Would they be any less sinful if he claimed a reason for it?
Then again, wasn't what he had done rooted in his desire to seek God and be free of evil influences? Had not Martruska's magic involved the various choirs of God's own Angels? Azazel was certainly no Michael or Gabriel, but wasn't he still technically, an angel? Was there a way that it could be explained not as an act of defiance, but an act of faith?
He was still deliberating these finer points when a voice came from the other side of the screen.
"Kurt?" It was Father Dietrich's voice.
"Yes?" Kurt cringed inwardly. This was exactly what he hadn't wanted and was suddenly glad for the screen.
Despite his momentary revelation that maybe all this had not been in vain, Kurt had never so much felt like a freak as he did right now, sitting in the church where he'd been baptized, his face decorated with magical symbols that he'd … put there. It seemed to defy explanation and for the first time it occurred to him. 'Was this grounds for excommunication?' Kurt wished he'd thought of that before he agreed to Martuska's plan.
"Where have you been?" Father Dietrich sounded angry on the other side of the screen; speaking as though he was scolding a small child.
"I've …" Kurt wasn't expecting this. He'd never been interrupted during a confession before. Before he could try to explain, he was interrupted again.
"Do you have any idea how worried everyone is?"
"Well, I …" Kurt hadn't really considered that when he'd left. At the time it seemed that he wasn't exactly wanted or needed and that leaving without telling anyone, while an inconvenience, wouldn't be looked upon with concern.
"Not to mention how concerned I've been," Father Dietrich continued, "They way you left last summer… Everybody stopping by asking where you are… And what's this Margali has been telling me about you dabbling in black magic?"
"I wasn't …" Kurt started to say.
"I want you to go to the rectory and wait there. I'll meet you in a few minutes, as soon as lock up in here."
Kurt jumped. This wasn't exactly what he had been expecting. "But… Father, my confession!"
"The confession is over until I have an explanation." Kurt jumped back in surprise as the panel on the other side of the screen slammed shut. He sat for a moment pondering what to do and then finally, without a word, he gathered up his things and left the church.