Between Two Fires

by Christopher Buehlman

I’m not carrying anything worth robbing The girl looked up at him, her hair more gold than flaxen now that it was dry, now that the sun shone on it. Yes you are

“What are you called, little bird?” “Delphine.”

It had already begun devouring Avignon, where it was said the pope heard audiences between two fires to burn off pestilential air,

This pestilence cooked away pretense and showed people’s souls, as surely as it eventually showed their bones.

“But don’t you see? This is the one thing I can do as well as anyone else. I can’t plow. I can’t build. But I can suffer. God wants suffering now.”

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.

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

Love is always harder. Love means weathering blows for another’s sake and not counting them. Love is loss of self, loss of other, and faith in the death of loss.