It is in late summer that she approaches him first, as he is tearing handfulls of grass out of the orphanage's lawn that has gone brittle and yellow from the heat. Tex is standing over him like a portend of doom and growls at her when she comes near.
The girl doesn't react, because no one but Cris ever does. She is short and stout, her long black hair braided and glinting in the setting sun.

"Hey," she says, "didn't you hear the dinner bell?"

He looks up at her blankly, then back down like Tex taught him. His eyes scare the adults, but she isn't impressed.

"You'll get in trouble."

She sounds ticked off, but he doesn't care. She'll leave soon enough - none of the other children want to be near him for too long.

Then she does something Cris does not expect: the girl grabs his arm and none too gently hauls him up, unbalancing them both for a second.
He slaps her hands off him with undignified haste and hisses at her, but instead of flinching away she looks at him like he's stupid.

"Why did you do that?"

He has no idea what to say to that. So he says: "Don't you know to stay away? I'm cursed. It'll rub off."

In reality he has no idea if that's true, but it's always worked to keep annoying pipsqueaks off his back. It does not work on the girl.

"What do you mean you're cursed?" she asks, now no longer annoyed but earnestly curious. It makes him uncomfortable.

"I'm possessed," he says, and "all the adults say it. I'm evil."

"Have they tried exorcism?"

"Many," Cris says, as Tex behind him growls again, in pleasure now.

"Hm. Then maybe you should just die."

Cris' mouth falls open, but she doesn't seem to want to take it back. He knows many of the nuns have thought it, but none has ever expressed it quite so crassly, let alone to his face.

"It's the only way to be truly free from anything. If you're lucky it'll even kill the demon first and you'll have your body back for a bit."

"Before I die too?" he asks tonelessly, and the girl nods.

"I can't die now," he says dumbly, "I would go to hell."

This gives her pause for the first time. Cris watches her bite her lip in thought and scuffs his feet against the ground in the dimming light, not knowing what to do with himself or how to escape this conversation, until she comes to a conclusion.

"You'll just have to atone first. Okay! Meet me here tomorrow after lunch."

She gives him a wide smile and flounces off as Tex' delighted laughter rings in his ears.

†

"My name is Rin, by the way," is the first thing she tells him the next day.

"Rin," Tex repeats in his gravelly uneven voice, like he's swirling a sip of wine around in his mouth. Cris thinks he's contemplating eating her, but whatever.

"Today," she starts, dropping down into what's left of the grass behind the chapel, "we'll work on letting you right your wrongs."

Cris nods.

Without even looking to see if he's following, she sets off in the direction of the playground. Cris trotts after her, his gaze fixed on her swinging braid. He lay awake most of the night listening to Tex suggesting he pull on it until she screamed and worse. It makes her look silly, and younger than she really is. He doesn't even know why he's following her - it may be that he's never had to learn how to deal with people who aren't at least a little scared of him, or it may be that he's already decided that he and Tex will be her end.

She stops abruptly in front of the swing set, planting her feet with childish determination. Then she flings out an arm to gesture at Cris, as the boy on the swings peers at them with dull bug eyes.

"Cris would like to apologize to you."

Cris would prefer not to, in truth, but he does as she suggests. Halfway through he realizes that he actually enjoys the charade a bit. Tex is laughing so loudly it nearly drowns out the boy's reply as Cris acts out what a decade of nursemaids and nuns have tried to drill into him with the selfish christian hope that if they made an earnest effort and failed he would become someone else's problem.

The subject of his saccarine prostrations frowns at him like one might at a squished mosquito on the wallpaper and gets up to leave.

Cris and Rin watch him go wordlessly, before she turns to him and cocks her head ever so curiously.

"How'd you do it anway?"

Cris blinks.
He'd walked by the rabbit's pen one night before dinner and made eye contact with the creature - that had doomed it, because despite trailing Cris like an evil disproportionate shadow, Tex always looked through his eyes. The entire meal he'd bounced his leg impatiently, and when he'd finally wolfed down enough food to be allowed to leave the dinner hall, he'd snuck out to crouch by the pen. Acting on Tex' will always made him feel powerful like a wild animal, and he twisted his little fingers through the mesh and bared his teeth at the rabbits, which scattered.
He was drooling, he remembers, and the darkness of the falling night had only encouraged his hunger. Cris had stalked through the hay in the enclosure like the monster that he was, his stomach growling. Finally, his hands closed around the poor rabbit. He pressed cold shaking fingers into its back, tracing the ridges of its spine, until Tex said, breathlessly, "There," and he'd pressed down.

"Hey," Rin says, and the after image of hot wet entrails between his fingers leaves him, standing in the playground with his eyes all vacant.

"I drove it into a corner and tore it apart with my nails," he says, finally.

"Hm," she says, and "next person."

†

"I don't think this counts as atonement," he says after another unwelcomed apology, and watches her eyebrows knit together. She puts a hand to her chin in an exaggerated gesture of contemplation, one fat finger tapping her cheek without rhythm.
Cris looks away, at the leaf litter by his feet; stares at it like his undivided attention alone will make something interesting emerge from it.

"It hasn't rained in weeks," says Tex in his ear, "dry things burn so nicely, don't you think?"

Rin snaps her fingers before he can think of what to reply to that.
"I've got it. You need to confess!"

†

They can't go to the orphanage's chapel, so the next day Rin charms the sister in charge of play time into letting them run into town so they can visit the church there. It's not a long walk, but they have nothing to talk about, so it feels like it. Cris picks up sticks and breaks them apart in his hands while Rin hums as she walks. It's an annoying habit.

The church is drab, with a tall spire and a hunched community building to one side which is nothing short of revoltingly ugly. The greying red bricks of centuries past are warm in the mid-day sun and the wood carvings of holy men observe their entrance with disinterest. Cris feels a bit sick in the cool air inside as Rin leads him to the confession booth with confident steps.
He sits in the small wooden box as she goes to get a priest. Tex' foot falls sound on the marble floor all around like a haunting. Finally, someone comes to listen to him.

Cris does not put much faith in confession, or really in anything, but he does feel bitterly validated when they chase him out after just a few minutes of honest retellings of his deeds. He barely gets out how nice it was to hear sister Penelope's bones crack when he pulled the ladder out from under her before the bench on the other side rattles.

"Devil child! Wicked thing!" the priest cries as Cris scrambles out of the booth, calm fatherly voice turned ugly and ragged by anger.
He already knew that he was a devil child and a wicked thing, but it is good to be seen. Tex is chittering in his ears, and the sound hurts. At the door he grabs Rin's hand and they run off together, back to the lonely path through the woods.

They stop when the church is already long out of sight, huffing and panting, and Cris says again, "I don't think that counts as atonement."

Rin sits down right there on the dusty ground and nods seriously, still catching her breath.

"I'll think of something else," she says, and he believes her.

†

"Fasting?" Cris repeats dubiously.

"No," Rin chides, "lent. You need to give something up, but not just food."

"I have nothing."

She has to think about this for a second. Tex' arms wind around his shoulders familiarly, dark as night, and he whispers in Cris' ear lowly, like Rin might hear him. No one else ever has, but it doesn't hurt to be careful.
"Give up her," he says, "you can leave her in the woods and come find her again when winter comes."

Minutely, Cris shakes his head, and Tex huffs.

"You like being around her, little sparrow. It would be meaningful."

It's undeniably true, but if he goes that far the nuns will tie him up and throw him in the river like an unwanted litter of kittens, and they both know it. Nevertheless, the idea is alluring. She would beg, and he would say no, and he would tell sister Siobhan that he'd lost her on the trail.

"Your crucifix," Rin suggests.

Involuntarily, his hand flies to the rosary around his throat. It's one of very few possessions he has, and easily the best among them: it used to belong to his mother. He isn't unique for that - plenty of children here treasure contextless possessions of their dead parents like they're holy relics, but his is different. Because it's his, but more importantly because it's nice. The cross around his neck is intricately woven silver and so nice that even some of the nuns look at him with sinful envy.

"I'll keep it safe for you."

Cris eyes her suspiciously, but he isn't good at reading people, so he can't tell if there is greed under her more obvious enthusiasm. He puts his rosary around her neck and feels like he's crowning the queen of England herself as Rin bows her head to accept it.

†

In the end it seems to be Rin who has given something up. Sneaking off to see him can be kept a secret, but wearing his crucifix around her neck marks her irrevocably as tainted.

Cris watches their fellow orphans treat her like a leper for nearly a week before she taps him on the shoulder - outside the dining hall, in full view of everyone. She might as well have stepped up to the witness stand and said 'if you want to convict him, I ought to be put in the hole too. Take me away'. It's just like her to prize absolution over politics.

"You're doing the good christian thing?" he asks, disgusted. Rin just looks at him.

It makes him feel clunky and stupid, and he opens his mouth to - what, apologize? But she spares him the indignity.

"There is one way that needs to work no matter what."

†

Rin finds him in the crowd pushing out of the chapel the next day and pulls him off by the wrist. Tex keeps pace with her hurried steps easily even as Cris stumbles along - he has the long legs of an adult, although he rarely walks at more than a leisurely and arrogant stroll.

"In such a hurry," he tuts. Rin's braid swings over her back like a pendulum and the box of match sticks is heavy in his pocket.

She leads him to the river, and Cris puts two and two together. Tex says "Maybe she wants to drown you," just as Rin starts to speak too, so he misses her first words.

"Well?" she prompts.

"Well what?"

"Take the shirt off and empty your pockets."

He hesitates, but Rin doesn't wait. She opens her satchel and puts out a cloth for him to put the starched white shirt he wore to mass on, and seeing this he obeys. Shamefacedly, he pulls out the matches and puts them down, piles up everything he's carrying under her patient gaze. Lucky for him, most of it is less incriminating.
Then Rin takes the rosary off and lays it down on his neatly folded shirt - there'll be trouble if it gets stained, trouble even he doesn't relish.

She bids him to turn around and changes out of her nice dress into something that frankly looks more like a shift than a dress. It used to be white, but in the morning sun it's got a yellow tint to it. He is sort of pissed off that she didn't warn him to bring a change of clothes, now.

Together, they take their grass stained shoes off and stumble down the embankment into the cold river. Brown and yellow dead leaves drift past them as they shiver. Autumn has crept up on the land, meeting warm summer days with bitterly cold nights, and soon the forest paths will be all mud.

"How deep do we have to go in?" Cris asks, throwing a glance back at Tex standing just at the edge of the water, watching them.

"At least waist deep, I think," she says, wading in in long, determined strides. He follows, feeling ice cold pebbles slip away between his toes.

"Why are you qualified to baptize me anyway?"

"I figure I'm the best you're going to get. I'm sort of a spiritual leader right now, aren't I?" she says, throwing a grin back at him that he does not return. Following her is confirmation enough.

Finally, Rin stops and turns to him, a look of concentration on her face as she holds out a hand to him. He steps obediently into the circle of her arms, and they awkwardly try to work out how this is supposed to go.

"Maybe we should go further in," Cris says, and then his mouth is full of water and his arms are flailing out to the sides as Rin pushes him under. For a good second he thinks she really is going to drown him - but no, she dips him and then the hand between his shoulder blades is hauling him back up. Cris emerges coughing and sputtering, and both Rin and Tex laugh at him. The river water feels awful in his throat, not to mention his eyes sting and he is cold, cold, cold.

Rin slicks his sopping wet hair off his forehead and gives him a smile.

"How do you feel?"

He has to think about it, because mostly he feels like he's just done a few naked barrel rolls through the snow.

"Unchanged," he says finally, and Rin sighs.

"Alright," she says, "I have one more idea," and starts back to the bank, leaving him shivering.

†

"I've read about sin eaters," Cris whispers, doing his best to tread lightly on the polished granite floor of the chapel.
"I think they probably stopped doing it because it didn't work."

"Don't be silly," says Rin, and steps right up to the altar like she belongs there. Maybe she does, he thinks. She might not make for a bad nun.

She sets the basket on the altar, which surely can't be what you're supposed to do.

"How would they know it didn't work?"

"How will you?" he shoots back, standing stiffly because he doesn't want to lean on anything lest he break it or taint it. Tex leaps atop the fine altar cloth, entitled like a cat, and it chases a shiver up Cris' back.

"We're not actually killing you, so we'll see," Rin explains, laying out her scrounged up feast. It's just a few slices of bread and an apple, but she touches it with reverence like they're holding Eucharist. He hates seeing her do it.

Rin tells him to lay down in front of the altar and he does, toying with the edges of the carpet. She blesses the food as he stares blankly at the chapel's ceiling, made up of intricately painted sections bordered by the strong unadorned stone beams that hold it up. In reality he's remembering them more than seeing them - the only light in the old stone coffin of the nave is the moon shining in through sloppily mended stained glass windows. It's almost like he's floating, just for a second, his mind blessedly empty in the face of a surreal moment.

Then Tex says, "How long is this going to take?" drawing the syllables out like a whiny child.

"How long is this going to take?" Cris repeats almost without thinking about it. Hopefully it sounds less pathetic to Rin's ears.

"Stop complaining," she scolds, "I'm buying your freedom."

"I think at most you're leasing it."

"What do you want me to do, sacrifice a lamb?" she snaps, and Cris realizes for the first time that she is doing this for herself and not for him. He can't fault her. He would never trouble himself with someone else's sins for nothing either.

"Maybe," he says, and sits up. "Is this working?

"You tell me."

"It's not," Tex singsongs, peering down at Rin's bowed head.

"Any more ideas?" Cris asks instead.

"One," she says, sounding very unhappy about it. "Come over here."

Like a well trained dog, Cris gets to his feet and pads around the altar. She has finished half the apple and part of the bread, and she is licking the fruit juice off her fingers with a childish disregard for manners. Her hair, unplaited for once, has an odd silvery sheen to it in the dim light.

"I brought something just in case," she says. She pulls out of her satchel an ornamental dagger with a scene from the old testament on the hilt, and Cris knows at once which display case she cracked to get it.

"Careful, little sparrow," says Tex, still looking down on them, his dark form barely visible.

"Theft - you'll have to atone for that."

"I know," she says, and for a second they're both looking at the blade in her hand in thought.

Then suddenly, she throws herself on him, bodily. They both topple to the granite floor painfully, and she is kissing him. She kisses him like he always imagined a disciple would kiss Jesus, and he feels selfishly like God's lamb himself, born to die. His head throbs from its impact with the stone, but he opens his eyes when Rin straightens above him so he can see her face all scrunched up, the determination shining in her grey-green eyes.

When he feels the edge of the dagger press into his throat he does not struggle, but it's a very near thing. This is what sister Angelica must have felt like when he held the pillow down on her face, he thinks. It's like an electric pulse shoots through his body, his muscles twitch and howl at him to fight her off. He doesn't. Above them, as though growing distant, Tex roars in anger or despair. He can do nothing.

The knife sinks easily through skin and muscle, but Rin has to press down with both hands to push it through his trachea and aesophagus. Finally, she hits bone, and lets out a little gasp. Of triumph, surprise or horror, he cannot tell, nor does he care.
Cris is shaking, and it jostles Rin on him making it even more difficult to focus his eyes on anything. Black creeps across his vision, but he zeros in on her left hand, bare and on the blade of the knife, cut right to the bone like he is, intermingling their blood on the floor.
Her eyes follow his and she turns the hand to examine the gash in her palm. Rin is crying already, and the sight makes her look a bit green.

"Blood willingly spilled," she says shakily, "counts as a sacrifice. I am buying your freedom. Be thankful."

He can barely process the words, all he can think about is how the puddle of hot blood around him keeps growing and his body feels colder and colder. Choking on it, he tries reflexively to take a breath in and it whistles through his severed windpipe with a horrible noise and a worse spike of pain.

"Be thankful," she says again, now with a definite tremble in her voice.

Rin's hand lands over his eyes and Cris twitches in alarm, and then is still.