Looked on the parchment. She could read, of course. Her mother had insisted that she learn. There was more written on the page in his clear and lovely script.
There was always more. One life may end but another begins.
The branches of the rosebush trembled in the wind. A horn rang, far off, that might be a greeting or a fare-thee-well. Or a pack of young riders out on autumn’s hunt, eager to try their skills, heedless of the ebb and flow around them.
A child’s memory is malleable and elusive, and she had only seen him that one time, really, in the dark church at Hersford when her father had woken out of the Abyss into which he had fallen, although most people call it death.
We are all changed by the tempest, each in our own way.
Impulse must not govern action.
Be merciful.
Then you have done as he would have done. Go in peace.
Some say he died in that distant valley and lies in an unmarked grave. Some say he was translated up to the Chamber of Light by the hand of God our Mother, because of his great holiness. Some say he took a vow of silence and retired to an isolated monastery to pray and to teach by his example of humility and good works. But there remains a story—among the common folk from whom he sprang—that he walks abroad still. That he walks unseen to the sight of mortal women and men, except to those in hunger, those who suffer, those in need. That as he walks among the common people he touches a few, and at his touch the rose of compassion blooms in their hearts.