Everyone Brave is Forgiven

by Chris Cleave

She ached, because the war had cut the thin cord that bound each child to its ancestors with links made from cross-stitch and calligraphy. She walked up into the corridor. The school was absolutely silent. How violent it was, this peace where children’s voices should be.

To be in love was to understand how alone one had been before. It was to know that if one were ever alone again, there would be no exemption from the agony of it. It wasn’t the happiest feeling.

“But what good is it to teach a child to count, if you don’t show him that he counts for something?”

“Women fall differently, that’s all. We die by the stopping of our hearts, they by the insistence of theirs.”

“Who knows which takes more courage—to die in battle, or to live in vain? It cuts all of us in two, I suppose.”