Epiphania

By giawriter

No matter how many years later that Epiphania was able to recall every horrendous, gruesome detail of the Black Death, she could never pinpoint the first moment it reached Constantinople's golden shores.

Then again, she frequently explained to black-robed, wide-eyed novices in her old age, I have lived my life on the periphery. A cloistered, teenage monastic named Helena, desperate to claim God, and not a brawling, drunken merchant, as her loving Father would not stand as the first to bear witness to the plague that defined an age.

Her biological father fell early, of that Helena remained certain. In the spring of 1347, while a priest performed the Consecration at Holy Mass, she felt his soul pass into the next world. The sensation proved too invasive and startling, and she lost consciousness from sheer terror. When she came to and described her experience, her friend and fellow novice Eudoxia teased her mercilessly – "What a perfect mystic you are! We shall see you canonized yet." – and only ceased when the abbess hushed her. Helena never discovered if her experience aligned with the specifics of her father's death, as she had died to the world the moment she donned the black robe and never contacted her family again. However, the abbess elevated her position to a Rassophore, now called "Epiphania" on account of her little epiphany. She never intimately sensed the death of another and chose to believe that the absence signified the survival of her remaining loved ones, however unlikely.

For while Epiphania died to the world, the world refused to die to her. Rumors vaulted over even the monastery's high, impassive walls. The city wailed in its anguished spasms, its shrieks hurled towards an uncaring, aloof God. Not my God, not my God, Epiphania pleaded silently after she opened the window one summer morning and beheld a diseased, hideously disfigured crowd gathered around the monastery's gates. Some cried for mercy and sanctuary, others cursed God and his loyal monastics. Behind them, two crow-monsters in heavy garments slogged through the stifling heat – plague doctors. Unable to bear the stench and commotion any longer, Epiphania hastily closed and bolted the shutters.

"Helena –" Eudoxia, who remained the sole person in the monastery to address Epiphania as such, spoke from beside her. "– why do you harden your heart against those people? Aren't we supposed to care for the sick?"

Their ailments appeared horrific even from a distance, and the thought of being forced near them, with the chance of contracting plague, filled Epiphania's throat with bile. She stepped farther from the window, reaching for the Bible perched on her nightstand. "The Book of Revelations," she breathed. "Does Pestilence ride wild through our city, Death in tow? Has the appointed hour of the world's end come? If so, what can we mere mortals do?"

Eudoxia rolled her eyes and gently dislodged the Bible from her friend's grasp. "Without the thousand other signs meant to accompany them? The sun, moon, and stars still burn. The oceans are calm, and the fields still produce a harvest. Perhaps God is punishing our sins, but repentance and healing can be achieved."

"You accuse God, our merciful God, of inflicting this plague upon us?"

"I accuse nothing," Eudoxia raised her hands in surrender, belying the controlled rage in the harsh edge of her voice. "I reason, using my God-given intuition. And besides, even the Apocalypse, which you believe has come, will be divinely inflicted."

"Human intuition has been clouded since our banishment from Eden. Clearly, you can't tell the difference between unholy vengeance and a necessary plan to fulfill the promise of eternal life. Beaked demons and black death walk the streets, and you think you could act as the people's savior. You are a blasphemous fool!" The girls were screaming now, neither able to truly believe or properly formulate their arguments.

"At least I emulate the acts of our Lord, rather than spouting prophecies of doom alone in my chamber, Epiphania." At this, Eudoxia stomped from the room. Epiphania, seething at hearing her acquired title used as an insult, did not watch her leave or call out after her.

She never saw Eudoxia in the flesh again. Yet, time and time again, Epiphania beheld her dearest compatriot in dreams, huddled in some dank alleyway or fetid sickroom, her once-beautiful bronze skin pallid, bulging, and blackened. "Blasphemous fool!" Eudoxia shrieked Epiphania's final insult through the midst of her agony, blood rising to the lips that once reviled her friend's inaction. Occasionally, the writhing, diseased figure in her dreams took the faces of others – her mother, her sister, her young niece – but Eudoxia appeared most frequently.

Epiphania, spurred to insomnia by these nightmares, whiled away those horrid days and nights of disease chanting, "OurFatherwhoartinHeavenhallowedbethyname...". She prayed for her continued existence. She prayed for the peace of the millions dead. She prayed out of habit. Sequestered in her tiny chamber, she avoided the fate of several nuns and monks. Still, she heard news of their painful departure from this earth, whispered through the cracks in her door when someone brought her meals. Epiphania stopped praying on the winter day the abbess died, and refused to speak to her God until the calendar showed the year 1349.

Years passed, and further waves of the Black Death devastated Constantinople, but none with such might as that first surge that caused She of the Little Epiphany to question God. Only decades later could Epiphania finally identify fear – crippling, blinding fear – as the source of the schism between her and her dearest friend. They had both fallen into the trap of their forefathers in faith, screeching religious jargon at each other to disguise their own uncertainty, leaving only a yawning chasm between them. Some awed novices dubbed her a saint, but she always shook her head and firmly declared, "You think of Saint Eudoxia. There is no Saint Epiphania." She was a coward, not a saint, and saints died while cowards lived.