A black-haired boy was hanging upside down, secured to a wooden rack with metal shackles, his limbs stretched sideways to achieve maximum extension. He was screaming in agony. There were four other wooden racks, now empty, spattered with blood. The ones who had failed. Ashes! I missed it!

Beside the boy stood the leader of the House of Oracles, clad in the black robes of a Sister. Dark circles cupped Sister Mercy’s eyes, giving her a look of profound sadness and pity. Women were not permitted to attain the honorific title of Acharya, given to the Masters of Knowledge who graduated from the Citadel of Meru. Thus, educated women resorted to having the less educated call them Sisters, even though there was nothing sisterly about these women.

‘I hope you understand I do not enjoy this,’ said Sister Mercy as she softly placed four glass bottles in a bag. She coiled the bag at the top and then slammed it viciously against the wall, once, twice, thrice. She then shook the bag, jingling the contents within – hundreds of broken glass shards. With one hand she turned the wooden rack on its axle so that the boy’s head faced her.

Sister Mercy held the boy’s face and slowly, carefully, lowered the bag over his head and cinched the drawstring tight around his neck. The boy’s face was invisible; he was a bagged scarecrow, such as the peasants used in their fields.

Sister Mercy began to chant, the Matrons echoing the last few words in unison: ‘But pain…pain is the great reliever, the path away from perdition, the salvation of our souls.’

As she uttered the words, Sister Mercy began to mould the bag around the boy’s face gently, as if it were a clay sculpture, with all the tenderness of a mother.

‘The salvation of our souls,’ echoed the Matrons.

The screams of the boy were muffled in the bag but his agony was loud enough. His body thrashed under the straps like a fish out of water. Sister Mercy’s pale fingers massaged his neck through the cloth, moving up to the boy’s cheeks to his eyes, and finally to his temples. ‘Pain will bring out the cursed demon in you; the curse gifted by the Father of Viles, to do us harm, boy,’ she said. ‘But we will purge you of Evil, and bring you to the side of Light.’

The bag grew redder and wetter with each movement of her hand. Stains formed where the boy’s nose and ears were. The boy’s wordless screams became so high-pitched that they hurt Masha’s head. Her gut cramped at the memory of her own initiation. Her tears may have dried, but she could drown in that pain anytime she chose.

‘To the side of Light,’ the chorus echoed.

Mercifully, the screams stopped and the boy began to choke out strange sounds. There were gasps all around. The Sisters took nervous steps forward and the Matrons took out their parchments. Seeing this, Masha fumbled for her own stationery.