Between Two Fires

by Christopher Buehlman

“What we say and what we do are …” “Well, I do what I say. Which is why I don’t say much.”

It was the hour of the fallen angel. And God had stopped the fountain of His love. And it was said that He had gone to make a new world and new angels and new men. And the walls of Heaven would fall. And all these now struggling above and below would perish.

Heaven was a woman holding your head in the crook of her arm and looking down at you. Heaven was a warm hand on your cheek and the smell of soup with garlic on the fire.

None of them noticed that the maple stump against which Delphine had slept had grown into a tree.

“This is exceptional stew,” the priest said. “What’s in it?” The woman told him. Cabbage. Turnips. Mushrooms. Pork belly. And a few pinches of real pepper. And at precisely that moment a sparrow in the tree above Thomas shat in his.

“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.”

And they’ll take good and bad alike to Hell, because there won’t be anyplace but Hell anymore. Not without love. Not without forgiveness.”

“We all fall short of perfection. You. Me. Père Matthieu. We all disappoint someone. Can we forgive only those who sinned against others?”

And so were readied the armies of Armageddon, yet not at the hour long foretold. And the dead stood with the living, and the living knew it not. And the Lord made no answer.

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.