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“The Church is not that keen on God, in my experience,” said Baron Rikard. “They think of him much as a lawyer thinks of the law. Something to be got around.” “You’re a vampire,” snapped Brother Diaz. “Of course you hate the Church.” “On the contrary, I am a great admirer of the tenets of your religion. I merely find it a shame that the Saved are, as a rule, so little like their Saviour.”
“Virtue is found in the resistance of temptation,” said the bishop, “rather than its absence.
A worn statue stood marooned up to its knees in the centre, holding up a handless arm as though begging God for rescue. That didn’t work in Sunny’s experience. Not on God, not on anyone. You want rescuing, you’d better get ready to rescue yourself. Maybe God will congratulate you afterwards, or something.
Gods, just the sea-smell and sail-snap and chill spray fresh on her skin. She’d forgotten how much she loved this. Forgetting was a talent of hers. Forgetting could be a gift. But it could be a curse, too.
“If there’s a secret…” mused Vigga, who’d either forgotten she still had her legs wide open or didn’t care, “it’s to never be shy about asking the question, and never fear what the answer will be, and waste no tears over the refusals, and clutch with both hands at any flicker of warmth that can be clawed from the uncaring darkness of existence.”
You’ve got to shrug it off. Toss it away.” And Vigga wiped out her ear and flicked away the water. “Like nutshells?” he grunted. “Exactly!” And she thumped him again. “When you’ve eaten the nuts, you don’t keep the shells, do you? Till you’re dragging sacks of the bastards up every hill? Till you’re sleeping in a great heap of the fuckers?”
“We all see the world through the lens of our own obsessions,” murmured Jakob.
She shunned her failures, whether they were her experiments, or her students, or her sons. But she could not stop making the same mistakes, right to the end. Admired her? No. But understood her? We all have our reasons, do we not? We are all the prisoners of our own flaws.”
“When I was young,” said Jakob, “I thought I was working towards something. Building to last. Some perfect state of things. Of the world. Of myself.” He gently shifted one leg under her, then the other. “You get to my age, you realise nothing lasts for ever. No love, no hate, no war, no peace. If a thing hasn’t ended … you haven’t waited long enough.”
“But you’ve fought great battles, won great victories, suffered great wounds—” “My greatest battles I fought against myself, and they were all defeats, and I’ve suffered far less than I deserve.”
Jakob had never been much for giving praise. In his youth, because he wanted all the praise for himself, like a dragon hoarding gold. In his old age, because he feared his liking a thing might lead to its destruction. But sometimes the right word can nudge a life towards the light, and a life changed is the world changed. By tiny degrees, perhaps. But for the better.
“I fear you will find, as we all must, that hope and regret are sisters eternal.”
She could’ve asked for one last kiss. She got a feeling that’s what Alex wanted. But a kiss is the start of something. A doorway to something else. The fun is all the promise of what’s on the other side. A kiss, when you know it’s leading nowhere … what’s it worth? It’s just a reminder of what you don’t have. The first sentence of a story that’ll never be told.
