Unholy Night

going so perfectly.

And then he saw her, and it all went to hell.

He’d been walking home from the forum, carrying a bag of grain along the cobblestone streets of his new neighborhood. A neighborhood that was home to the “better” families of Antioch. Families like ours. Typically, he spent these walks staring at his feet, his mind wandering through a series of disconnected thoughts and images.

Something funny Abdi said it’s cloudy out today bodies will there be tonight my feet are killing father felt anything when he died.

But on this day, at this moment, he decided to look up. And when he did, he was struck by an otherworldly image. At first he thought it was a ghost. The ghost of a beautiful girl, rendered as real as the hallucinations he used to have in the graves. She was sitting alone on the front stoop of a one-story brick villa — one of the nicer homes in the neighborhood.

She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, and she was crying her eyes out.

The most unlikely little sliver of sunlight had cut through the clouds and fallen on her back, making the edges of her black hair burn and giving her that ghostly, otherworldly look. She was a native Syrian, like him. But Balthazar knew at once that she wasn’t like him at all. This was a girl who hadn’t grown up stealing for a living. Who’d never known hunger.

But you haven’t had it easy, either. No, you’ve had a terrible time on this earth. And somehow that makes you twice as beautiful, although I’m not sure why, or even if it’s possible for you to be ANY more beautiful than you already are.

As it happened, Sela looked up at precisely the same time and found a boy standing in the middle of the street with a bag of grain over his shoulder, staring at her like a dumb animal. His body frozen, his mouth hanging open as he watched her cry.

“What are you looking at?”

“I… uh — ”

“You think it’s funny, standing there and looking at me?”

“No! No, I — ”

“Leave me alone!”

She turned away, crossed her arms, and waited for the boy to leave. And waited.

“No,” he said.

Later, Balthazar would only remember pieces of what happened next: Sela looking up and glaring at him through her tears, wickedly beautiful and dangerous. He remembered dropping his bag on the ground and working up the courage to sit beside her. He remembered asking her what was wrong. He remembered her resisting, then relenting. And once she began to tell him everything, he remembered that she didn’t stop until long after night had fallen. It was a variation of a story he’d heard so many times before. Another tale of woe at the hands of the Roman occupiers.

Sela was an only child, her mother having died when she was very young. Too young to remember her face, her voice, or her touch. But her father, a successful importer, was able to provide her with a comfortable upbringing. He was a quiet, kind man. And though he never spoke of his departed wife aloud, Sela knew that he never stopped mourning her. He doted on his only daughter, and, in turn, she devoted herself to his happiness — eschewing the usual childhood pursuits to be by his side. It was all very pleasant-sounding, Balthazar remembered now. Pleasant days passing pleasantly by, blending together until they formed a relatively pleasant, if uneventful childhood.

And then, like a scorpion stinging the foot of a passerby, Sela’s pleasant days had been suddenly and violently ended. Her father had found himself on the wrong side of a business dispute with a member of the Roman provincial authority. An assistant to an advisor to the Roman-appointed governor of Antioch. And while he couldn’t remember the details of the dispute — something about price promised versus price paid — Balthazar remembered the outcome:

Sela’s father had been roused from sleep that night by a banging on his door, dragged from his home as his daughter scratched and pulled at the faceless soldiers around her. That very night, he was sent to the executioner without trial, beheaded and tossed in a shallow desert grave. All on the whim of some nameless, middle-ranking foreign bureaucrat. All over a business dispute. Just like that. That’s how fast these things happened.

Balthazar remembered the chill that had gone from his toes to his fingertips when she’d told him this. And while he would never tell her of his dealings with the dead, not on that or any night, Balthazar would often wonder if her father had been among the bodies he’d dug up on the other side of the Orontes. If some small part of his happiness had come at her expense.

A year had passed since her father’s death, and here she was. Fourteen. All alone in a big house. Struggling to get by as best as an honest girl could, but not doing a very good job of it. Here she was, wiping away her tears and saying something to a boy she’d only just met. Saying it like she absolutely believed it: “I swear… before I die… I’ll watch all of Rome burn to the ground.”

Balthazar remembered thinking, Now, there’s a nice image… all of Rome in flames. A beautiful girl laughing as she watched it burn from a hill above the city — the warm winds kicked up by the fire below, making her hair dance around her face.

Balthazar said he believed her. Though silently he doubted that any army, let alone a single person, could pull off such a feat. But there was no doubting her resolve. He could feel the anger radiating off her body, just as heat radiates from the stones around a fire, long after the flames have died out. And it was intoxicating, that anger. Anger and beauty, sadness and loneliness, all mixed up in one face.

He remembered a kiss and knowing that he was hopelessly and forever in love.

Pleasant days had blended pleasantly together after that. Balthazar had chipped away at the honest, sheltered girl he’d found on the stoop, teaching her how to fight, how to steal, how to do a better job of getting by. Showing her a side of Antioch she’d never known in the comfort and isolation of her youth. He’d doted on her, provided for her, spending his every free moment by her side, often with Abdi tagging along. Sela, for her part, fell into a familiar role, devoting herself to his happiness. Forcing Balthazar to unfurrow his brow. Forcing him to laugh. Showing him a side of Antioch he’d only recently discovered but never really known.

They’d been the kind of days that shone golden in the memories of the old. Days when it had all been promise and forever ahead. Days spent confiding in each other, whispering things they’d never dared to whisper before. And nights, those impossibly warm nights, spent walking the Colonnaded Street, hand in hand. Sneaking off to the banks of the Orontes, disrobing by the light of the stars. Wading into the water and standing face-to- face, pressed against each other beneath the surface. Feeling each other’s nakedness in the black water. The same water Balthazar had waded through, back and forth between the living world and the dead. But these things were far away when he was with her. In these moments, it was just perfect, and it always would be, as if destiny had delivered them to exactly this place, if you believed in stupid things like destiny. Like he’d been sent to rescue her from being alone. To look after her. And like she’d been sent to rescue him back. And, God, it had been so stupidly giddy and erotic and perfect.

And then, like a scorpion stinging the foot of a passerby, it had all been brought crashing down in a single moment.

Just like that.

III

It was a big house by any measure, especially for a woman living alone. The first floor had two bedrooms, one where Sela had slept alone for the last five years and one where she’d worked when there was work to be found. They were centered on a large kitchen and common area, with a table and chairs and rugs covering every square inch of floor. There were three smaller bedrooms upstairs. The previous owner had filled them with