Between Two Fires

by Christopher Buehlman

“Don’t take on so,” said Thomas. “Nothing cunting matters.” “That’s the way a man talks before he damns himself.”

Thomas knew somehow that what he was seeing was not precisely true, but a translation; he had no way to understand what he was seeing, so his mind painted its own pictures.

The priest also remembered the song. He had heard it just before he went to take orders, when the bishop’s personal musician came to the lord’s castle and hushed the room with it, making it seem possible to Matthieu that a greater world lay beyond the disappointment of his father and the vanity of his brother; a world where God’s love was unfiltered by priests or texts and could be had freely by looking up at the sky. Or hearing a man sing.

And you won’t have to forgive anyone or be merciful, or thoughtful or courteous, because devils will rule here. They’ll kill the good ones first, and when all the good men are dead, they’ll come for men like you, who were almost sound, but not quite; the bowls that leaked.

“I see your mind frothing with questions, and yet, recognizing the delicacy of the situation, you don’t ask them. Instead, you watch for yourself and come to your own conclusions. I think you have a future, Tristan. I think you will make yourself very useful.”

So much of life demanded a kind of truce with perceived facts—one could not allow the suffering of the kitchen women, for example, to spoil the taste of capon. Neither would those women trouble themselves about the gnawings of a rat at the summer sausage; just cut that end off and serve the rest.

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.

fear of Hell is one of many paths to it. Forget Hell and love one another. That is all He wants of you.