Return
by James Vincent
a note from the editor: Christmas, according to my father, starts at 3pm on the 24th, with the live broadcast of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College, Cambridge; so this is timed for that. Happy Christmas, M
The saints came back. Not the gods nor the dead but the saints: emerging from crowds and forests and broken towns with eyes as soft as milk and hearts like booming cannons. They went among the people and worked miracles. They brought calm to the mad and grief to the unfeeling and so parted the lands as gently as a mother parts her infant’s hair. And wherever they went there followed behind them tides of envy and muttered complaint, for the world still knows what to do with saints and soon busied itself sending them on, to a better place.
James Vincent is a writer living in London.