Laertes peers around at the clearing with naked awe. His first thought is, this place feels unholy--but that's not true, exactly. It feels holy the way lightning and the deep ocean and eclipses are holy: masterless and sublime, beautiful in a way that has nothing to do with men.

He thinks of Galahad, who has lived his whole life by the wheeling cycle of prayers and fasts and Latin masses, and he thinks of Galahad's gentle blasphemies. Claudius painted like an icon, one hand raised in benediction, a serpent twined about his wrist and a bitten apple like a drop of blood in his other hand.

Galahad will not find the order of his youth here. He will find something more elemental--a faith like a thunderclap that reorders the world in unfamiliar shapes.

"It's perfect," says Laertes, low and reverent.