With burning eyes, he swung a sidelong look at the crucified Christ.
“I hate you,” Milo spat under his breath, feeling the venom slide freely back into himself even as the words slid between his lips. “I hate you so much.”
“What was that, young man?” asked a soft, cracked voice behind him.
Milo jumped and nearly toppled out of his chair as he twisted around to see that the old woman had somehow crept up on him. Despite her shuffling gait, every step was silent. The magus in Milo instantly suspected magic, yet as she came closer, he saw that it was consummate skill and no doubt a lifetime of practice that enchanted the worn creature who stared at him with expectant, watery eyes.
“Uh,” Milo began pathetically as he realized he hadn’t answered her, “I’m sorry. I was just…”
Staring at the frail being in front of him robbed Milo of the last vestiges of his self-indulgent rage. He was hollow and black inside, but he couldn’t bring himself to fight with such a vulnerable creature.
“Just praying,” he lied, smiling weakly up at her as he folded his hands over the eagle-topped cane, which now felt paganly garish as he sat there.
“Hmmm,” the old woman said, clearly unconvinced. Milo held her gaze like all good liars, daring her to challenge him with the sincerity of his expression. The elder did not; to his horror, she did something much worse. With joints so stiff he could almost hear them give creaks of protest, the old woman settled into a seat near him.
Milo balked, suddenly experiencing social anxiety unlike anything he’d known since childhood. The woman seemed to sense it and took pity on him. She sat there in silence, letting the shock of her proximity settle and still, while the light of the setting sun shifted across the sanctuary. A shaft of dusk’s ruby light fell across her, and for a moment, Milo felt as though he saw her not as an age-bent creature but as a woman in her winter years but still very much alive. The scarlet light played across her features, and whether from a trick of illumination or imagination, he thought he could see more of her than the patina of age.
There were stripes of darker hair amidst her dry locks, iron and silver, and in her wrinkled face, her eyes, while dimmed with years, were sharp chips of emerald. He saw a strong Roman nose, a clean jawline, shoulders accustomed to heavy burdens, a wide, nurturing bosom, and hands hard with work but still femininely tapered. Age and all its cruel cares and infirmities couldn’t hide these things, not fully. Milo saw a fierce but faithful woman looking at him with knowing eyes.
For a moment they considered each other, disciple and blasphemer, the magus Milo felt a mad thought caper through his mind:
Perhaps I’d have been safer with her if I’d stayed angry.
Almost as though she could hear his thoughts, a slow smile broke across the old woman’s face. Green eyes flashing with hidden humor, she shifted stiffly to look at the crucifix over the altar.
“Sometimes I am angry at him too,” she said quietly, one arthritic, ravaged hand rising shakily to a simple locket hanging from her throat.
Milo narrowed his eyes at that, a hard, shadowy place within calling for him to spring up and wait for Ambrose outside. Tension rippled through his legs as almost without thought, his body began to obey. He looked around for his bodyguard and spied a broad uniformed back standing in front of a wax-dribbled stand, a single lit candle shining.
He thought about willing Ambrose to look up so he could gesture that he was going outside, but the big man’s head was bowed, and he felt the intrusion would have been sacrilege. Milo realized he’d have to get up and walk over there, but that would mean blatantly walking past the old woman, and somehow that would be even more awful than the conversation she seemed determined to have with him.
Milo sank back into his chair, running his fingers over the contours of the eagle skull as the devout elder waited patiently.
“You ever get him to answer?” Milo finally asked, not caring how sharply the question came out. “To answer for the ways he’s wronged you?”
She nodded, another knowing smile, reflective, not mocking, danced across her face.
“Sometimes, but not always.” She sighed, the breath carrying ages with it. “Sometimes I learn about hidden gifts, sometimes I see the bigger picture, and sometimes I know him better for it.”
Her fingers toyed clumsily with the locket as she turned to look at the crucifix again.
“Sometimes I have my Gethsemanes and my wildernesses.”
A tremor began in her shoulders. She stilled it with obvious effort and gestured with her free hand.
“But then, so did he.”
Milo blinked, his mind struggling to recall what she referenced. He remembered there was something about a garden, not that first one with snakes and nudity, but one about sweating blood and unwanted cups before an arrest. In the wilds, hadn’t there been a devil?
They were the pieces picked up from the times he was forced to attend services by the orphanage and the prattling of some self-important priest who harried the unwary in the streets of Dresden.
The fullness of the reference was lost on him, but he felt he understood enough, and it galled him.
“That’s not answering, that’s rationalizing.” Milo snorted. “He leaves us to suffer and squirm in the mud and then expects us to find excuses for him amidst the torments. That’s why I am not just angry at him. That’s why I hate him.”
He expected righteous indignation at his proclamation, flared nostrils and curled lips. Instead, her hand let go of the locket, and she turned back to look at him, her wrinkles deepening with concern.
“How has His creation tormented you?” she asked, her
