The Handmaid's Tale: A Short Story

Epilogue

Robert Langdon had awoken to a start. This was better than the previous two days of sleep he had avoided. He had dreamt for the first time in days. Confused, he sat up looking at the light trying to make its way through the blinds, Was it dusk or dawn? he thought. Langdon’s body was filled with content at the warmth he was feeling. Standing up, he had realized what at really awakened him…..the strangest thought. For days he has tried to sort his thoughts with reasoning but now he found himself fixed on something he hadn’t considered before. Could it be? Enthralled, he stood still for what seemed an eternity. He decided a shower could do his thoughts a favor, so he walked to the glass panes and stepped inside. He let the water
He was more intrigued in what had been on display to his right. Turning, he felt his feet again tracing the invisible path of the Rose Line, carrying him across the courtyard to the Carrousel du Louvre—the enormous circle of grass surrounded by a perimeter of trimmed hedges in a neatly order—once the site of Paris’s primeval nature-worshipping festivals. Langdon felt as if he crossed into a new dimension, a new world, as he stepped over the bushes to the grassy area within the circle. This sacred ground was now marked by one of the city’s most unusual monuments. There in the center gaped the giant inverted pyramid of glass that he had seen when he entered the Louvre subterranean entresol. La Pyramide Inversée. Trembling, Langdon walked to the edge and looked down into the Louvre’s underground complex, aglow with light. His eye was memorized not by the pyramid, but with what laid beneath it. There, on the floor of the chamber below, stood the tiniest of structures….a structure Langdon had written about in his manuscript. Filled with curiosity and wonder, he stared once again down below through the glass at the tiny structure that laid beneath. I must go down
Langdon’s manuscript had made a passing note of this pyramid. “The miniature structure itself protrudes up through the floor as though it were the tip of an iceberg—the apex of an enormous, pyramidical vault, submerged below like a hidden chamber.” Illuminated with soft lights, the two pyramids pointed towards each other as if they were mirroring each other, perfectly aligned, their tips almost touching. The Chalice above while the Blade was below. The blade and chalice guarding o’er Her gates.

He was standing directly underneath the Rose Line, surrounded by the works of masters. What better place for Sauniere to keep watch? Finally, he sensed he fully interpreted the true meaning of the Grand Master’s verse. Lifting his eyes to the heavens, he gazed through the glass upwards.

She rests at last beneath the starry skies.

Like the whispers of lost spirits, words of forgotten memories echoed. The quest for the Holy Grail is the quest to kneel before the bones of Mary Magdalene. A journey to pray at the feet of the outcast one. Like a sudden surge of energy, filling him with reverence, he fell to his