The Kingdom of Shadows

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He had never seen anything else as beautiful. A photograph in a shop window – if he was not yet old enough to be initiated into the faith of his fathers, then she would be his angel of light.

His brother Matthi knew, smiled, but did not mock. “When you are older, Pavli.” Matthi had already entered the world of adults. “Then you shall know a lot of things.”

Matthi had taken pity on him and had shown him a secret, a mystery. Undoing the tight, three-buttoned cuff of his shirt – all the Lazarene men wore shirts with cuffs like that – Matthi had pushed his sleeve up and shown Pavli his wrist. The soft inner skin had still been reddened and sore from the slow, patient needles, but the tattooed wound was starkly visible, a dark blue line a few inches long, thick in the middle, tapering at the ends.

“You see?” Matthi had shown him the tattoo on his other wrist as well. “That’s how you know it’s true. These people who call themselves Christians – they think the nails went into His palms. But that’s not how it was done. It was through the wrists.”

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