"On the day of my baptism, I killed my father..."
So begins the story of Elektra Voltare, a teenager raised in a monastery, bred for an environment of mass extinction, wracked with guilt over having caused the death of her parents, and separated fro...
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HALLOWED GROUND—A place set apart from the world, sacred, a place of prayer and penance, a place of reparations offered for sins, the endless debt to be paid, only to be paid by God, himself, as man, on the cross, consecrated virgins offering devotions to Him, offered in sacrifice, such a place is a monastery. I, so close to this place, yet apart, dwelt beneath it, in the bowels of the earth, awaiting the promised day, when the purpose of my blessing would be revealed. Or so Father Salvatore had intimated. I suffered no such conviction or hope or whatever. The inescapable reality for me was that here, there was something of quiet beauty which may be within my reach. A place where I might lock myself away, like the princess in Father Salvatore's story, and cause no more harm.
My cell in the basement of the monastery was not in the enclosed space where only the sisters were allowed. I had been raised in this space, separate from the world, and separate from the cloister that was intended to be separate from the world. My own private cloister. A hermit by necessity, now I was becoming a hermit by conviction, my solitude the only penance I could offer for the sin of my existence. Sister Agnes cared for me most of the time now. Sister Mary Grace felt she was too trusting and I too devious, since my failed escape attempt. Sister Agnes took her name from the sister of Saint Clare, Santa Chiara, in Italian. Italian is a sweet and fluid language, the g's softened, each word a little melody, three syllable names each a little song; she preferred the Italian name for the foundress of the Poor Clares as well as for her patron, Santa Agnese, but had come to see the more pleasant-sounding names as a vanity. So, she was Sister Agnes.
In older times, girls were more routinely in the care of the Poor Clares, but my presence as a child was something unusual in modern days and suspect among many of the sisters. In fact, Father Salvatore mentioned once that he would discuss with the Abbess, Mother Mary Clare, whether I could have access to the enclosed space behind the grille, at least for times of Mass and prayer, so I might feel more a part of their community. Mother Mary Clare resisted the idea until I attempted my escape at age eleven. Father Salvatore informed Mother of the incident, and that I had now been fully advised of the necessity of my separation from the world. She had compassion on me; seeing that a community separated by choice was a severe enough way of life. A separation from the world, forced on a child by circumstances beyond any true choice, was an almost unbearable burden.
Mother Mary Clare was right, in her way, that a Poor Clares Monastery was no place for a child in the modern world, but Father Salvatore saw it as the safest place for me, for that very reason. A child raised by contemplative nuns, holed up in a lead-lined cell in the basement of a monastery, with no internet presence, no cell phone, no computer or electronics of any kind, was nearly completely under the radar of anyone who might wish to discover or exploit my power. In older times, girls taken in at monasteries did not need to worry about that. Nor did Abbesses feel obligated to provide sanctuary to dangerous mutants like me. But, anyway, the chance of discovery or mishap in an order more open to hospitality, like the Benedictines, was much greater.
