I start after her, keeping careful count of all her turns. I can see nothing but the deep blue veil she wears. It drags behind her, blackening at the edges like burnt paper. The streets grow more narrow. The city is closing in, a maze of brick and iron. I am panting in the fog. This pace burns my lungs and makes the skin on my legs crawl, but there is something she can tell me if I can only get close enough to hear.

We burst into a wide, cobbled square where the cathedral dominates the core of the maze like a giant, sleeping heart. Ahead of me, she slips into the cathedral, looking over one shoulder to be sure I am following. For the first time, I see the black falls of her hair and her skin like shifting sand, but her eyes are hidden behind her veil.

Inside, the fog is thicker, the pews all gone. The black-and-white floor is hidden beneath gray mist. The Greek tabernacle is nowhere to be seen. The normally white columns are all black down one side. Instead of the altar, there is a cradle, but no sound emanates from within, no cries of new life. I step to it carefully, afraid to look. A pink blanket is wrapped around something small and soft, and just as I am reaching for it, the cathedral ignites in a blinding flash of pale light, as if the moon has swallowed us whole. I cover my eyes with my arms. The light recedes, and I see the woman standing beside the cradle, her face shrouded in shadow, a black cat curling around her ankles.

“Are you the Madonna?” I ask her, my voice slipping out like a sigh.

“I am the book you cannot read and the voice you cannot hear. When you sleep, I am your dreams. When you wake, I am your nightmare. In the darkness, I am your light. And in the day, I am your shadow. To know me is to fear me. To love me is to die and be reborn.”

I feel her words within my chest as if they are the whispers of my own heart.

“And the child?” I ask with a nod at the cradle.

“You are my child, Catia. And your mother before you. And her mother before her. I am the mother of all women and the desire of all men. You may call me Sophia, or Shekinah, or nothing at all. I am the Indwelling. My name is of no consequence.”

“Why can’t I see your eyes?”