A Girl tries to bring Saint Denis back to his own Basilica…

There was a decently long line of tourists at the entrance to the tall, white, asymmetrical church. Isabelle got in line and waited. There were police patrolling nearby, and a populace of scattered French clergy, Italian grandparents, German children, and English mothers. All the world waited to pass through the doors of the ancient church, the church of Paris’s greatest Cephalophore, the Basilica of Saint Denis. Isabelle, the eponymous headless Saint balanced neatly at her side, waited patiently for the line to inch forward.

“Do you see all these people?” Isabelle admonished. “They are all here to see the tradition you have left behind.” She saw the subtle tears of the Saint against her body and felt a motherly instinct to support the old saint as they slowly inched their way towards the inside.

“Search your bag, madame,” a frumpy-looking security guard stated in a French accent as she eyed Isabelle. The two finally neared the front doors. Isabelle first placed Saint Denis on the search table and then placed her duffle bag. The security guard scooped up the head, looked at Saint Denis all around without any curiosity, and placed it back on the table. She unzipped the duffle bag, quickly rummaged through it, and gave it back to Isabelle.

The saint stopped crying with the many motions and tried to focus on the power of the church before him. “No flash photography inside, keep your hands off the historic artifacts, s’il te plaît,” she said, “please.”

The two were then ushered through the mighty wooden doors. Isabelle, positioning herself amongst the crowd inside, could hardly see over the many foreign heads.

“We are here,” Isabelle said to a still stunned Saint Denis. But she could not sense any joy or pleasure in the head beside her.

“So what?” the saint replied darkly. “Je pourrais aussi bien être un crustacé dans la Seine,” I might as well be a crustacean in the Seine river. Slowly translating and realizing that all Saint Denis could observe from the height of her armpit was the many bodies in front of him. He must have thought he was in some crammed small inner sanctum of the church.

Isabelle thought for a moment of the kind words that Saint Denis had given her, of the patience he had had with her, and the comfort he had provided her on a day which could have ended even more miserably than her chaperoning an ancient skull around downtown Paris. The thin, short, bald, tattooed girl, who until today had hated the world for its purposelessness, raised the beheaded Saint Denis up as high as she could over her head.

The crowd looked at the sudden tall motion as the stump of Saint Denis’ neck, supported by two small tattooed hands, perched above a sea of people from all over the world. His eyes shot to the marvelous flood of colors of the stained windows. Colors rained down on the stone floors of the massive basilica. The colors danced with the flutters of angels as the sunlight beamed through. The beautiful pillars of Roman descent with great French iconography flashed strongly amidst the white marble.

He was pale with wonder. Stone personified as the weight of God reemerged in the marrow of his soul. “For God,” he muttered silently as the crowd around him looked upwards at a weeping head, pale and bearded in an archaic style. Cameras turned, and fingers pointed as the head shuddered upon its humble ivory perch.

A glowing ring of golden flame emerged around Saint Denis’ head as he felt the breath of God in every exhale of this stony basilica. “God is here, God is within me,” Saint Denis muttered. “I can feel it in my bones; I can feel it in these bones of this great church.”

People broke away and formed a path for Isabelle to walk through as she struggled forward, balancing this haloed saint along with her red duffle bag. People could not believe their eyes as they looked upon the grungy, bald Isabelle carrying the head of Saint Denis. She looked like some graffitied white pillar holding up an old relic as they walked to the altar.

The halo was golden, and all could see it. Old women from Quebec crossed themselves as they glanced upon it. Irish fathers fumbled through a prayer they remembered their mother muttering, and bored teenagers from New York glanced up from their iPhones momentarily to see why so many people had gasped.

As Isabelle marched towards the altar, the halo grew in height and flame. It became like golden sunlight emitting blinding rays through the church. The stained glass reflected back outside as tourists in line outside were bathed in the red and blue light glowing outward from the stained glass.

“I am here to return to you, oh Lord, and though I have doubted myself, doubted my place in your universe, never did I doubt you. Uncertainty might rain upon me, but the light of God’s faith is oh so warm,” Saint Denis said, again weeping in his disbelief in his moment of return—

“Excuse me, Madame,” a familiar, sharp voice broke the silence that had cascaded down upon the basilica. Isabelle stopped walking, and the halo around Saint Denis’ head flickered for a second. Some muffled footsteps came from behind them. Isabelle turned herself and Saint Denis around.

“Excuse me, Madame, but there is no flash photography, nor electric equipment allowed inside the church. I must say, this is very American of you,” a priest with long legs and black robes said. It was the priest from the taxi-ride. His lip snarled in disbelief; however, his disbelief was towards American rudeness. “I have never seen, in all my years, such rude behavior inside the domain of our patron saint,” the priest said angrily. “I believe you should leave before I call security.”

The flaming crown around Saint Denis’ head went out with a cold breeze. “This is the patron saint of Paris,” Isabelle stammered, “THE head of the cephalophore, San Denny! You must let him return to God. Please, we’ve come so far,” her voice whimpered as she looked up above her and saw that Saint Denis’ halo had gone out. He again became just a head. To those in the crowd, he suddenly looked like a damp theater prop.

“Madame,” the priest responded, “I am asking you kindly to leave; the next time will be with impatience.” Isabelle brought Saint Denis to eye level with herself. “I am sorry, my friend,” she said, uncertain as of what to do.

“What if you try to bring me—” Saint Denis started but was quickly cut off. “Madame, leave. Now,” the priest said with promised impatience. Two security guards walked in, hands on their firearms.

Isabelle and Saint Denny made eye contact with each other. Isabelle shrugged, and the ancient saint puffed his cheeks with uncertainty. As they exited, a few tourists in line called out to them to ask them what had happened inside the basilica. They looked into a gift shop that sold mini plastic steins. They were the body of Saint Denis, with the hinge just below the neck. When lifting the lid, the beer stein became the headless body of the famous cephalophore.

“A miracle,” Isabelle had said defeatedly, her eyes slouching towards the ground, “ruined by the church itself.”

Saint Denis blushed, his eyes peeking upwards to see if his halo had perhaps returned. It had not.

Isabelle walked them to the nearby park, Parc de la Légion d’Honneur, and laid them down in the grass beneath a large oak. The two exhaled deeply. It was getting towards the evening. Their eyes looked upwards at the sky.