Sam slipped through the curtains. The soothsayer sat by the fire, smoking a pipe, wrapped in a dark cloak. Her eyes burned like the coals in the pit. The bells jingled in the gentled breeze. A stray lock of hair stirred. She turned to the young boy and smiled. The boy sank onto the stump of wood beside the fire, across from her. His placed his sausage on the tongs and held them over the fire, gazing at her.

"Tell me more about the assassin," he said. The fat dropped over the flames and sizzled.

"What more can I tell you? It's a story you shouldn't know," she said.

"But I want to know what happens. You can't break your promise now."

She leaned towards him, her earrings jingling. "What will you do with this knowledge?"

Sam pulled the sausage from the fire. "I would know about the man in the castle, I would visit him, and bring him a sausage."

The soothsayer laughed. Her gaze turned towards the castle peeking through the distant mountains. "No one has made it past the gorge. What makes you think a young boy like you would do what men cannot?"

The boy smiled. "I have the truth; they have tales."

The soothsayer arranged her cloak around her, not looking at the boy, as her gaze remained transfixed on the mountain. "Very well, I will tell the tale and its secrets, but you must do something for me in return."

"What must I do?"

"When you get through the gorge and find the castle, tell its owner Sophia sends her greetings."

"Sure," he said, nibbling on the sausage. "Now tell."

"One upon a time, in these very valleys there was a man known for his strength and bravery. Every battle he won, all his enemies were slain. Men and gods feared him. To be his enemy meant dancing with death. But beneath the bravado tales, he was just a poor man, over thirty, and seeking blood, thirsting for love. His life had been a mire of blackness and sin. Since eight, gunshots continued to ring, bullet after bullet, ending lives and leaving bleeding wounds open to decay. He saw nothing but the dark. The light that shone was hidden beneath coldness and despair. He had lost himself to himself. He drowned in his own sin, and forgot how to swim. Did he ever know how to swim? When his ambition was succeeding, he met her, the light beaming through the storm. Her words, her actions, tore the wounds he had hidden beneath the violence. No shot could cure him. She fired not with a gun, but what he had not. He found love but lost himself. He tried to hold onto her but she fled, hurrying from his soiled life, lest she drown too. He had never chosen to do good. He had never tried to be different. He just always said “I’m darkness, I’m evil.” He didn’t know if he tried, he could be the changed man." She added softly, "He only knew how to run from the chance of grace, because comfort came in the darkness. The light pierced him in ways he hated. Could he bear the torture to be embraced, loved, and healed by the Light?"

She shrugged and threw a log on the fire, the sparks leapt to the dark sky. Sam toyed with the tongs. "Did he?"

The soothsayer gazed at him, as a tear trickled down her cheek. "Perhaps you could ask him?"