The Force is no longer a cosmic linkage between all living things but a shorthand for the discipline it takes to turn the other cheek. You outgrow the habit of peeking under a dew-spattered leaf for traces of last night’s faeries even when no one is looking your private companions become, perhaps, the characters in your stories. Rather, over time you find yourself planted more firmly on one side of the line, viewing the denizens of your personal mythology in relation to reality.

Growing up is not precisely a matter of abandoning this world. The gradual encroach of what we will one day know as adulthood settles myth into metaphor. I played in a world populated with deities and demons from a hodgepodge of sources: the sanded-down version of the ancient Greek pantheon to which we introduce children, depicted in a big book with beautiful pencil illustrations the heroes of Star Wars and Sailor Moon, stories not unlike the Christianity I knew in which love is elevated to the realm of magic witches, especially as classified by Roald Dahl, whose definition spurred furtive lunchtime discussions about whether we had spotted a hint of blue around the teeth of our wicked gym teacher and the myriad invisible creatures my friends and I willed ourselves into seeing, from girls trapped in gemstones to stray cats with mismatched eyes, always carefully described as having been not invented but found. The belief of childhood is promiscuous, the line porous between imagination and faith the best game, after all, is the one you trick yourself into forgetting you made up. I liked well enough what trickled into my awareness about Jesus, the stuff about love and kindness, and I liked more the sense of virtue and maturity I could access by pulling the Bible off the shelf. I liked the annual Christmas pageant, from the nursery class dressed as sheep to the sorrowful grandeur of a story in which the glory of salvation is birthed somewhere dirty and cold. I liked the sensory rituals of religion: the dark wooden walls of the church, the organ’s gleaming pipes rising above the altar, the battered blue hymnals with their pleasantly steadfast Protestant harmonies. I liked the picture of Him-and in the religion of my childhood, it always was a Him-in my head: an avuncular humanoid drifting among yellow-green clouds, something like Einstein by way of Jim Henson, white-browed and warm and ready to listen. Sign up for our newsletter to get submission announcements and stay on top of our best work.

Something dark and holy trilogy