Between Two Fires

by Christopher Buehlman

The girl suddenly felt the hurt in the woman, how it mirrored her own hurt. One had lost a daughter, the other a mother. Each saw a flicker of the dead one.

“You roll dice?” the pirate asked Thomas. “Every day I wake up in this world, the same as you.”

“She was tempted by something stronger than her. Adam was tempted by a weaker creature. Or so we are told. If Eve was his inferior, his sin was greater. You can’t have it both ways.”

“Tell me she’s dead. Tell me the plague took her and she died in a fever saying she was sorry. Maybe then.” “It doesn’t work that way. That’s not forgiveness, it’s justice. And wretched justice at that.”

Two angels and a devil had tumbled into the water. Three angels came up. Forgiveness, then, was possible even for the worst.

Hell, like prison, is worse when you don’t feel you earned it. Eventually, of course, that goes numb. And they find something that’s still raw and they work on that, or they give you something back only to make you feel enough to scream when you lose it again.

This was the meeting of their souls, then—his withered, hers in glory, hers somehow not just her. He had never seen a sight that looked so beautiful; he had forgotten what beauty was.