The room was awake before Sister Meribel was.
Morning had found it the way it always did: thin, colourless, exacting. A pale strip of light pressed through the narrow window, just enough to outline the geometry of the convent cell—the straight-backed chair, the washbasin with its chipped lip, the crucifix darkened by years of incense and dust. The light did not warm anything. It only revealed.
Meribel lay flat on her back, hands folded low on her stomach, eyes open and fixed on the ceiling's hairline cracks. They formed a faint map above her—branching, intersecting, leading nowhere. She had traced them so often that she knew their paths by memory, could follow them without seeing them at all. Sleep had released her sometime before dawn, quietly, without apology. It always did. It never finished the job.
The mattress beneath her was thin and unyielding, the straw long since compressed into something closer to habit than comfort. The blanket, grey and coarse, rested lightly over her legs. She did not move to pull it higher. The cold was already inside her, settled deep, the kind that did not care for fabric or prayer. It lived in the joints, behind the eyes, in the slow ache at the base of her skull.
She breathed carefully, as if each breath were something to be rationed. In through the nose. Hold. Out through the mouth. Again. She counted them without numbers, letting rhythm replace thought. This was the small mercy of the morning: a few minutes where nothing yet demanded her voice or her body, where the bell had not rung, and no footsteps crossed the corridor outside. The convent was holding its breath with her.
Fatigue clung to her like a second habit, heavier than the one folded on the chair nearby. It was not the sharp tiredness that sleep cured. This was older, duller—a residue left behind by years that refused to rest. It sat behind her eyes, tugged at them, asking her to close them again, though she knew there would be no return. If she closed them.
She let her jaw loosen. Let her shoulders sink into the mattress. The small disciplines, taught early and repeated endlessly: release what you can. Keep what you must. The day would take enough from her soon enough.
The room smelled faintly of soap and stone and the ghost of last night's candle. Somewhere beyond the walls, water moved through pipes with a low, tired murmur, like an animal shifting in its sleep. Farther still, a bird cried once and fell silent, as if embarrassed by the sound it had made. The world was beginning without enthusiasm.
Meribel blinked slowly. Her eyes burned, not from tears but from their absence. She felt older in the morning. Night allowed a certain softening, a blur that made endurance easier. Morning sharpened everything—the chill of the floor she had not yet touched, the weight of the hours ahead, the narrow margin she would have to stand within. There would be prayers, and work, and silence shaped into obedience. There would be faces she knew too well and thoughts she was careful not to finish.
She thought of the bell—not yet ringing, but inevitable. She imagined its metal throat opening, the sound spilling down corridors, into rooms like hers, calling everyone up and out. The bell did not care how tired anyone was. It rang for the living, and the living answered.
Another breath. Slower this time.
She told herself, gently, that this weariness was not failure. That it was simply what remained after years of standing where she had been told to stand. She told herself this the way one tells a child a story—without certainty, but with care. The words settled unevenly, but they settled.
The light crept a fraction farther across the ceiling, touching one crack, then another. Time was moving again. Meribel remained still, eyes open, gathering what little strength could be gathered from stillness alone. When she finally rose, she would do so deliberately, as she did everything now, measuring the cost before paying it.
For a moment longer, she stayed where she was: a small figure in a narrow room, awake, tired, and waiting—listening to the morning assemble itself piece by piece, preparing herself to step into it.
The sound came anyway.
Not the bell. Not yet.
It was a knock.
It came from above her—dull, deliberate, pressed down through the ceiling rather than the door. The sound was not loud, but it was exact. A firm contact. Wood or stone striking something that could carry it. The ceiling answered with a faint tremor, dust shifting.
Meribel did not startle. She did not sit up. She only counted.
Seventeen.
She reached the number without effort, as one reaches a familiar scar without looking. It was the seventeenth morning. The seventeenth time she had heard it. Always once. Always from the same place. Always at the same moment in the thin stretch of time before the bell announced itself to the world.
One minute before.
Her breathing slowed further, as if even air might disturb the pattern. She kept her eyes on the ceiling, now feeling it rather than seeing it—the distance between her face and the sound, the weight of the convent pressing down through levels of stone and timber. Her room sat at the far end of the hall, given to her without comment when she was moved here. A practical decision, she had assumed. Spare rooms were placed where they fit. Silence was easier at the edges.
She had not thought much of it then.
The knock had come on the first morning like an accident. A single, misplaced sound in a building full of them. Pipes knocked. Beams settled. Stone shifted when the night cooled too quickly. Convents were old, and old things spoke in ways no one could fully translate.
By the third day, she had considered children—boys from the town bold enough to sneak inside, amused by the thought of unsettling a nun. By the fifth, she had imagined one of the sisters above her, perhaps restless, perhaps unwell, perhaps unaware of the noise she made. By the tenth, those explanations had begun to thin, stretched too far by repetition.
Now, on the seventeenth, she no longer reached for them with conviction.
The room above hers was meant to be empty. She knew that. She had been told, casually, when she first asked about the layout. Storage, perhaps. An old cell no longer in use. The convent did not waste time filling rooms it did not need.
The knock came only once. It never repeated itself. It did not scrape or drag. There was no answering sound, no movement afterwards—only the faint settling of whatever had been disturbed, like a held breath released.
Meribel swallowed.
She told herself it could still be wood. Expansion. Contraction. Temperature arguing with age. Stone answering stone. She told herself these things the way she told herself many things now: firmly, without warmth, as if belief were a muscle that only responded to pressure.
She did not look toward the door. She did not sit up to listen more closely. She lay still, allowing the moment to pass over her. If the sound wanted her attention, she would not give it freely.
Then, exactly as it always did, the bell rang.
Its voice rolled through the convent, filling corridors, climbing walls, pressing into rooms whether they welcomed it or not. The knock was swallowed by it, made suddenly insignificant, as if it had never happened at all. Life resumed its sanctioned rhythm. The bell did not ask questions. It made statements.
Meribel exhaled.
Seventeen mornings, she thought. Seventeen answers given to nothing she had asked.
She swung her legs slowly over the side of the bed, the stone floor cold and familiar beneath her feet. The fatigue returned at once, settling into her bones as if it had only been waiting. She reached for her habit, fingers steady despite themselves, and dressed with the practised efficiency that left no room for hesitation.
As she stood, she glanced once more at the ceiling—not searching it, not accusing it. Only acknowledging it, the way one acknowledges a wound that has not yet decided whether it will heal.
The day took her the way it always did—without asking.
Morning prayer folded itself around her as soon as she stepped into the chapel. The sisters moved as one body, habits whispering against stone, hands finding familiar positions without instruction. Meribel did not need to think about where to stand or when to bow. Her knees bent at the right moment. Her mouth shaped the words as it had shaped them for years. The prayers lived somewhere below thought now, carried by muscle and breath, recited even when the mind drifted elsewhere.
Candles burned in shallow pools of light. Wax had run down their sides in pale, hardened tears. The air smelled of cold stone and last night's incense, faint but persistent, as if it had seeped into the walls and refused to leave. Meribel kept her eyes lowered, not out of humility so much as habit. Looking too long at the altar sometimes made her feel hollow, as if she were staring into a place where something ought to be and was not.
After prayers came silence, the sanctioned kind. The sisters dispersed to their assigned tasks, each one already knowing where her feet would take her. The convent functioned on a rhythm that resisted interruption. Breakfast was simple—bread cut thick, porridge thin and lukewarm, tea that tasted faintly of metal. Meribel ate without appetite and without complaint. Eating was not meant to be enjoyed. It was meant to be finished.
She washed her bowl, dried it, and placed it upside down with the others. She did not have to think about this either. Her hands moved while her thoughts lingered somewhere behind her eyes, heavy and unformed. Half the time, she suspected she could move through the day entirely without her mind present at all.
Her work that morning was in the laundry room. Damp stone. Low ceilings. The steady labour of water and cloth. Sheets were soaked, scrubbed, wrung out, and hung in long rows that dripped onto the floor. The work demanded endurance rather than attention, which made it dangerous in small ways. A moment's distraction could mean a missed stain, a torn seam, a rebuke later.
She worked beside Sister Agnes, who breathed through her mouth and hummed without realising it. Meribel did not look at her often, but she knew the pattern of the sound well enough to notice when it faltered. Sometimes that was how mistakes were born—someone's rhythm breaking just enough to let error slip in.
All morning, the same questions hovered at the edge of her awareness. Not dramatic ones. Small, sharp ones.
Had she folded the linens tightly enough? Had she bowed her head for the full count during prayer? Had her voice blended properly with the others, or had it risen, or lagged behind? Would Mother Superior notice? Would Mother Superior care?
Sometimes she did. Sometimes she did not. That was the worst part.
Mother Superior's presence was never loud. It did not announce itself. She moved through the convent with measured steps, eyes always taking in more than they seemed to. A word from her could be mild and still feel like a weight placed carefully on the chest. Correction here was never cruel, but it was precise, and precision left little room to hide.
Meribel had seen sisters corrected for the smallest things: a candle left too short, a prayer rushed, a tone that suggested impatience rather than devotion. She had also seen bigger mistakes pass without comment, which made no sense at all. Order was meant to bring comfort. Instead, it demanded vigilance.
At midday, the bell rang again. They washed their hands, lined up, prayed, ate. The food changed, but only slightly. The silence remained. Speech was permitted only when necessary, and necessity was narrowly defined. Meribel was grateful for that. Talking required energy she did not have.
The afternoon brought work in the garden.
The soil was cold and uncooperative. Weeds came up in brittle snaps, roots clinging stubbornly to the earth. Meribel knelt until her knees ached, hands dark with dirt. She knew the rows by memory, knew which plants were meant to be there and which were not.
Her thoughts wandered despite her efforts. They returned, as they often did now, to the morning—to the knock, to the ceiling, to the room above hers that was not meant to hold anyone at all. She pushed the thought aside as she had learned to do. Dwelling led to questions. Questions led nowhere she was allowed to go.
Late afternoon prayers. Evening chores. The day unwound itself slowly, each hour laid carefully on top of the last. By the time dusk crept through the windows, Meribel felt as though she had been awake far longer than a single day deserved.
At supper, a cup was dropped.
The sound cracked through the refectory like a gunshot. Every head turned. The sister who had dropped it froze, colour draining from her face. Mother Superior looked up. There was a pause—brief, exacting.
"Be mindful," she said.
Nothing more.
The cup was cleaned. The meal continued. But the air remained tight, as if the sound had left something behind.
When night prayers were finished and the sisters dispersed once more, Meribel returned to her room at the end of the hall. The corridor was long and dim, lit by lamps that never fully chased away the shadows. Her footsteps echoed softly, then stopped as she closed her door behind her.