The girl had no more teeth left to spit.
Decimus leaned closer. He heard her whisper: “No.”
Then the light swallowed her, and where her body had been, there was only a small heap of white ash—and, growing from the ash, a single white dove, which flew once around the arena and then vanished into the rain. Martyr Or The Death Of Saint Eulalia 2005l
“Again,” the magistrate whispered.
Eulalia did not open her eyes. But her lips moved. The girl had no more teeth left to spit
Behind him, the sky broke open.
Not a shout. Not a sermon. Just the same syllable she had given them yesterday, when they broke her fingers with the vice. The same word she had given the day before that, when they dragged her through the street of thorns. The same word she would give tomorrow, if she lived to see it. “Again,” the magistrate whispered
Not the smile of a saint in a mosaic. Not serene. It was the smile of a child who has just remembered a secret: They cannot reach the part of me that is already gone.
He did not mean to. The haft clattered on the stone, and several guards turned to stare. But Decimus was already walking—not toward the girl, but away. He passed the magistrate, who shouted after him. He passed the priests of the imperial cult, who stood in their white robes like worried storks. He passed the open gate of the arena and kept walking into the empty street beyond.