3: World Between Worlds, Capitolo Secondo

"Time is no more than the point of a needle, and when time is over, so is suffering." --St. Caterina of Siena

Capitolo Secondo: Silenzio

Dialogue 45:

Time is no more than the point of a needle, and when time is over, so is suffering.

Flickering candlelight made Bonaventura’s face glow softly, as if health still remained in her cheeks. The illusion rifled a pain in Giacomo’s soul, one so deep he could barely put a name to it even though he’d been here, in front of death, so many times before. He was dizzy with a sense of illusion, lightheaded with grief, weighted within the deepest parts of himself, the parts scraped raw by mortality.

With each familiar death his soul grew another scar, bleeding things which never quite healed, crusted over but prone to breaking open at any moment; by a noise, a grimace, a fresh breeze, anything that reminded him of his lost babies. There had been so many! God had blessed him with an abundance of children, but so too had he been cursed with an abundance of deaths.

The twins never made it—there had been three pairs, all too small except the last, and even then only Caterina continued to breathe, to smile at him through her own shade of tears. Some children he’d lost before they could talk while others had grown a personality, strong and brisk, before something—fever, fire, plague—had taken them away. Giacomo had to believe in a peaceful afterlife because if he didn’t, he’d drown himself in his cauldron of bubbling dyebath or a barrel of strong wine. But no, no ... he could never give in to such thoughts. He had to think of the ones still living.