The Oblate's Confession by William Peak

from his fire could cause stones to burn, water to burst into flame. I was told to watch him closely when he prayed, that he might float like a cloud, the air above his head fill with lights. And if that was not enough, there was the attention I received as his servant. Monks waylaid me on the garth, knelt by me as I weeded, woke me in the night; they whispered, cajoled, pleaded for a moment of the hermit’s time, a prayer, a special blessing, a little help with “something I haven’t wanted to bother Father Abbot with.” Even Father Prior stopped me once in the peas and asked that the hermit say a prayer for him. He didn’t tell me why. Indeed, I think he wanted me to think it perfectly normal, merely a matter of courtesy; but of course I didn’t. You must remember that I was very young. The idea that grownups ever did anything out of the ordinary was entirely foreign to me. That they did, or seemed to, for this one reason, impressed me more than anything else.
    And so, morning after morning, I sat opposite the hermit and waited as he prayed, certain I would see something miraculous. And—morning after morning—I saw nothing. Once there was something, a swirling in the air over the hermit’s head as if a cloud of midges had suddenly been attracted to that place, circled for a moment, then as quickly departed. But, otherwise, nothing. No concourse. No angels dressed in white, no voices singing.
    Nothing at all really. The man just sat there. He might have been asleep for all I knew.
    It was Waldhere who first suggested the hermit might be sleeping instead of praying. Of course at the time I thought he was just jealous of the attention I was receiving, but, as week after week passed without any miracles, I too began to have my doubts. Looking back on it now, I suppose it was inevitable I should get into trouble.
    It was foggy that morning—as most mornings on Modra nect were—and concentrating on the empty air over the hermit’s head had made me dizzy. Waldhere and Ealhmund sometimes made a game of dizziness, spinning and spinning until, unable to spin anymore, they staggered around like drunken beggars, wide-eyed and laughing at themselves. But I didn’t like it. Being dizzy made me feel sick, and I didn’t like anything that made me feel sick again.
    I opened my eyes and the hermit was still sitting there: eyes shut, head drooping—looking for all the world like a monk asleep in choir. It was irritating when you thought about it, and not very smart. Didn’t he worry someone might tell?
    Unseen in the fog overhead, a tree rubbed against another, creaked and groaned. When I looked back down again I was surprised to see a small leaf, purple-red in color, resting on the hermit’s forehead. For the first time that morning I felt a little excitement. Now he’ll move, I thought, now he must move!
    But of course he didn’t. I waited and waited but, though I had to scratch my own head in sympathy, the hermit never so much as twitched. It was like watching a dead man pray.
    The thought brought the predictable response: there again sat Eadnoth, rainwater pouring off the roof onto his feet. I looked away, tried to think of something else, and found myself thinking instead of the similarities, the resemblance between that image and this. Here sat Gwynedd, perfectly still, oblivious even to the fall of leaves, and there in my mind sat Eadnoth, equally still, equally oblivious to the rain. And maybe that was it. Maybe that was why I hadn’t seen anything. Maybe I hadn’t seen anything because there was nothing to see...here. Maybe, like Eadnoth, the slack-jawed, loose-skinned thing sitting before me now wasn’t so much the hermit as it was the carcass he’d left behind, a skin shed and waiting, like me, for the return of its master.
    Goose flesh ran down my arms. I was lying on my back in front of the hermit, my head resting on my hands, feet nearly touching his...and yet, possibly, not his. If I was right, those feet