320

***

Upon spotting the priest who was walking into the dining room with the young altar boy, Inés elegantly set down the old teacup and rose from her seat.

"Father Nivardo," she said politely.

"Ah... Lady Inés Escalante?" The priest's voice didn't hold much certainty, as if he was meeting a noblewoman for the first time. "I heard you would be visiting us at Misere soon... Please, if you will take a seat, my lady."

The altar boy asked hesitantly, "Would you like another cup of warm tea, my lady?"

"No need. You may leave us now," she responded.

The boy nervously glanced at the priest before walking out the door.

Misere was one of the poorest parishes in Mendoza, and none of their believers were aristocrats or even wealthy commoners, which meant Anastasio should have been able to identify her despite her sudden visit-even if he were a "normal" priest. Their shortage of money probably explained why the priests' dining room served as the drawing room as well. As far as she knew, the drawing room that she was sitting in was the most extravagant and presentable space in all of Misere.

Even as Anastasio walked around to the other side of the table, she kept her eyes downcast and quietly examined the priest's surroundings. Only when he asked her to take a seat again did she sink into a chair with a smile.

"This is a blessed place," she observed. "Everyone is so kind."

Anastasio nodded and responded, "We may not have much, but no mouth goes unfed here. We have all found a great blessing in the midst of a tumultuous world."

"I see."

"Perhaps you would like to take a look around the workhouse, my lady. It stands right next to the chapel. The donation that you sent to us through the parish of San Talaria was the biggest one we have ever received... The gemstone was exchanged for gold coins right away, and the people of the workhouse ate a nutritious meal for the first time in quite a while."

"A great blessing indeed," Inés responded humbly.

"A blessing that we received from you, my lady. Afterward, we were able to repair the damages that we had been neglecting due to lack of funding. Now, I can proudly say that it is much more presentable, although it may not appear so in your eyes...I believe it may be best if I showed you around the parish so you can see how your donations are being used, then we can discuss things further."

"Holy Apostle..." she said, savoring the word. "Do you truly believe I am here to collect repayment for a few gold coins? I am but a lost sheep, seeking answers. A different question swirls within my mind every day. For instance...now I am wondering why you saved me that day." Why did you save me in the hunting grounds? Why did you help me in all those other chance encounters with death... She allowed the rest of her inquiry to fade in her throat.

Initially, he had only seemed like a priest who was carefully interacting with a noble benefactor. However, his face soon changed into the strange one she had seen on Mercedes Street-the lifeless yet undying face of the apostle, neither human nor divine.

The final remnants of her smile slipped away. She continued steadily, "Whenever I think of you, my thoughts circle back to what happened that day. God has always remained indifferent regardless of his children's suffering, and you, his apostle, have been a bystander to both humans and God alike... So why did you save me? Why did you allow me to save Juan Escalante, although you have never even managed to save yourself? In the parish, you told me that Oscar had killed him in the past, and he could do so again..."

"I truly do not believe I did much to help," Anastasio said softly.

"What Oscar told me while I was asleep might as well have been whispered to me after my death. I should never have known those words," she said, lowering her eyes respectfully to avoid showing even the slightest hint of blame or resentment. "I would say the same thing about that lifetime when I last saw you in Calztela... My first lifetime, in which I was sickly and frail. I made many mistakes, ones that I wish I never remembered... but I did not die a blasphemous death-I simply died alone and young of a terrible illness. Now I understand that was not His plan, as I was born without any of those memories... but it was not an intentional death, unlike the others. Afterward, I sinned twice and lived three more times. Even then, I never recalled my first life until recently, and the memories I have regained are terrible... They overwhelm me with guilt and make my courage wilt away."

"Yet you have not let your hope wilt," Anastasio said, smiling.

Her lips twisted slightly. "Yes... quite a shameless act indeed for someone who claims to be His daughter. All those painful, miserable memories... Were those your way of helping me as well?"

"If you cannot find the answer, my assistance will never be anything more than Satan's whispers. Yet you do know the answer, do you not?"

After a brief pause, she asked, "Why did you save me?"

The memories from that steep path in the hunting grounds of Teruel Castle felt incredibly distant, almost like they were from another lifetime, but those events had taken place in her current life. She remembered being six years old, powerless and small, despairing at still being alive. At the same time, she had slowly descended into madness from the relief of knowing that certain events were only in her memory.

If she had to return to life through suicide, she had prayed she would be able to die in a way that wasn't self-inflicted. She had wished for death, no matter how it found her.

Duke Valeztena had been worried for his young daughter, who did not seem quite right after recovering from a long fever. Fearing that his wife, prone to nervous breakdowns, would end up ruining Inés, he had taken his daughter to the hunting grounds of Teruel Castle. However, Inés had slipped out of the castle early in the morning on a donkey she stole from a servant, which she ended up losing halfway up the mountain. Afterward, she had single-mindedly made her way up toward the summit, tripping over stones countless times. The entire time, she had prayed death would find her again. Back then, she hadn't known a thing about destiny or the fact that humans were essentially God's playthings. She had simply believed that everything would be over if she met a natural death.

The human body was easily broken, and she had thought this rule would apply to her as well. As a child, she had believed that she had to die before Oscar found her again, before everything was ruined... before she ruined everything again. After all, she had been completely weak and powerless.

Her staggering feet had slipped on the steep side of a rock and departed the narrow path used by mountain keepers. The side of the hill had been covered with dried and twisted leaves that had fallen in a recent storm, and her body had slipped helplessly down the slope. Just a few more seconds, and she would have encountered a steep hill that was no different from a cliff. The moment her body fell, she had thought she would hit her head against a rock or be impaled by a branch and meet her demise. In her mind, this would have been a "natural" death, for rocks and branches had been created by God himself. They were not man-made objects like guns and blades that were meant to kill.

Therefore, she thought her death would be a perfect one.

As she slipped down the hillside, her flailing hands grasping at falling stones and dirt, a pale hand had grabbed her wrist and dragged her back up.

"Thank goodness I caught you. Are you all right, my lady? A noble lady like yourself shouldn't be walking around these rough tracks by yourself," the mountain keeper had said with a sonorous, godlike voice.

When she looked into his eyes, all of her resentment and frustration at being saved had died in her throat.

"I hope you are not hurt. There can be no more mistakes, my lady. Your God is truly omniscient..."

His large hand had covered her small forehead, just like the way it had upon the moment of her passing a long time ago.

As her eyes slipped shut, the mountain keeper had whispered once again, "There can be no more mistakes. Do not repeat the cycle of pain that I have lived through..."

Then he had erased all those words, his voice, the encounter, from her memory, like a lizard cutting off its own tail.

Snapping out of her recollection, Inés continued, "You did something that was... forbidden. You weren't supposed to save me in the hunting grounds. You should have allowed me to sin again so that I could be brought back to life, to live in a world without Inés Valeztena and despair... so that I could regret all of my decisions in a different lifetime and descend into madness. Then I would have been punished for my sins. That would have been the natural order of things, and our God would have been satisfied..." She slowly raised her head to gaze at Anastasio. "Holy Apostle, why... did you help me? Why..."

"I betrayed the Lord and took my own life, just like you... I was the very first one," he responded calmly. "He learned about loss and grief because of me. I am his most despised child out of all eight apostles." His gaze drifted past her shoulder, staring into the distance.

Suddenly, Inés felt something cold brush against the back of her neck, as if some strange being was present in the room with them.

Anastasio gave her a calm, gentle smile, as if he had become the priest Nivardo again. "But the Lord granted me forgiveness in exchange for never allowing me to know the serenity of death. He also allowed me to die as a martyr ceaselessly so that I could spread the glory of God. As you said, I cannot even save myself from death, for I mustn't break the natural flow of life and death under any circumstances. I am simply a shepherd. I only revive those who have met wrongful deaths that go against their own destiny, those who are out of place in this world... I speak of people like your very first husband, not sinners like the two of us."

His voice sounded distant and inhuman. Inés gritted her teeth, determined not to forget a single word.

He gazed at her with some pity and said gently, "Your punishment may be finite, but the forgiveness that the Lord has granted me is infinite. I may not age, but I will die. I may be revived endlessly, but I will never be reincarnated. I may not be human, but I shall live forever with fragments of mortal experiences... And the greatest irony is that I live every single moment of my short lives feeling human emotions and fears. That is why."

"What... do you mean?"

"You were sitting by the crown prince, looking upon me just as I was about to be executed."

Immediately, a scene flashed across her mind. She had been twenty-six years old; it was one of the most vivid memories that she remembered from right before her death. Strange posters had been plastered all over the walls of Mendoza, and the city had been going through a violent upheaval.

Those posters had read, "Better {is} a poor and a wise child than an old and foolish king, who will no more be admonished. For out of prison he cometh to reign; whereas also {he that is} born in his kingdom becometh poor." (Ecc 4:13-14)

The blame for this incident had been placed on the Protestants, and the enraged emperor had ordered for them to be rounded up. The crown prince, who had been thirsting for his father's approval, had quickly executed hundreds of Protestants at the execution grounds of San Talaria.

Inés remembered that it had been her first outing in a very long time. The emperor had said that he wanted Oscar and Inés to display a stern front and set an example, just as he and Cayetana had done. Oscar had been quite excited that day, completely unaware that he would be blamed for all of the cruelties that were being committed. He had asked the executioners to make the Protestants' deaths incredibly painful, saying the sinners didn't deserve to have their necks chopped off with just one swing. It was like the two of them were on a normal date, and he simply wanted to impress her.

"I think they deserve three swings of the ax before their necks are severed. Wouldn't you agree, Inés?" Oscar had asked.

She had been sitting there, pretending to be sober, watching the "sinners" who would soon become martyrs. She couldn't even remember what she had said in response to his question. She had simply wanted to be more intoxicated-a part of her had felt an unreasonable desire to run up to the executioner and beg him to kill her first, even if she had to falsely label herself as a Protestant.

Anastasio's voice brought her back to the present. "You nodded in response to the crown prince's question, then you rose to your feet, parted the crowd, and approached the scaffold. At that moment, I was simply terrified of the pain I would experience during my slow death... Then you placed ten gold coins atop the scaffold, one for each sinner, asking the executioner to give us a swift, painless death. I remember you turned to me and asked me to tell the Lord something upon meeting him after my death... 'If your God is real and not ours, please allow those who are wishing pain upon others to suffer that same agony."

She fell silent.

"While we only have one God, he is far from reasonable. I know he would never grant that wish of yours... However, those words lingered in my head, and I found myself drifting back to you despite being unable to help you in any form. I wanted to be the one to grant you that wish if the Lord wouldn't do it.

You see, in that moment, you became my God with just ten gold coins."