52

Will

W e stopped just as the sun spilled gold across the low hills, flattening the fields with long shadows that looked like fingers reaching for something they couldn’t quite grasp.

The church was small. They all were in the countryside. It was a chapel, really, with a cracked bell tower slumped against a crumbling roof. There were no windows, just slats in the stone where light passed through. The whole structure leaned like it was tired of standing, tired of bearing witness.

I knew that feeling well.

Thomas sat on the slope outside the chapel with his back pressed to the trunk of a tree that had outlived three wars and probably a dozen regimes. His eyes were closed, his breathing even—the kind of evenness that only came when you were faking it. He hadn’t said a word about how much it hurt today, but I saw it in the way he winced when he thought no one was looking, the way he held his arm like it might betray him if he let go.

The painkillers were gone. They had been for a couple of days.

While he claimed his pain level had ebbed, I could tell from the tightness around his eyes that it remained persistent, if slightly lessened.

Worse, the last of the antibiotics had vanished the day before the painkillers ran out, and Sparrow had used the final clean bandage to re-wrap his wound at sunrise. The rest of the gauze we’d washed in river water and dried over fire like old clothes.

I crouched beside him and opened the canvas roll of our pack. Inside were handfuls of dried bread, a flask of water, a map, and our worn identities. The last were now meaningless but still folded neatly like scripture.

“Once everyone settles,” I murmured, “we’ll slip off, just before they call for evening prayers.”

Thomas opened his eyes and gave the slightest nod. “Father Molnár?”

“I don’t think he suspects,” I said.

Thomas didn’t answer, but his mouth twitched, the closest he’d come to a smile in days.

Footsteps crunched behind us, slow and measured.

I looked up to find Father Molnár approaching. His silhouette cut through the twilight like something out of a painting—all black robes and bowed shoulders, with light haloing his thinning hair. He stopped just a few feet away and folded his hands.

“Brothers,” he said. “May I sit?”

Thomas straightened a bit. “Of course.”

Father Molnár lowered himself to the earth like a man who knew the ground well. For a while, he said nothing, just listened to the wind and the rustle of pilgrims settling into prayer circles or pockets of laughter and quiet exhaustion.

“I’ve seen the four of you,” he said eventually. “And your charges, the child and her father.”

I didn’t move. We hadn’t introduced Farkas as Eszter’s father, not to anyone.

“I’ve seen the way you walk at night,” he continued. “How your eyes don’t rest, and how your hands stay near your belts, even when you sleep.”

Thomas glanced at me, but I stayed still. Waited.

Father Molnár turned his head. “You’re not pilgrims, at least not those focused on a journey of faith.”

“No,” Thomas said after a moment’s pause. “We’re not.”

“I do not care,” Molnár replied through a thin smile. “I think . . . perhaps . . . you are something better. God works in ways no man could fathom. He uses tools to His design, to His will. Who is a humble priest to question His handiwork?”

I swallowed the lump in my throat.

Father Molnár looked past us, toward the chapel. “No one in this group will stop you. No one will follow. They are here for redemption and reflection, not judgment. Besides—” He sighed. “We have all done things we never planned, just to survive.”

Then without another word, he reached into his robe, pulled out a small cloth bundle, and placed it in my lap.

I opened it slowly.

The first thing I saw was a bottle of codeine, maybe half full. Beneath lay several strips of fresh white gauze, neatly folded, a roll of tape, a syringe, and a tiny tin of antiseptic.

I stared at it as though it was some frightened bird that might fly away at the slightest movement.

“I told them I was tending a sick pilgrim,” he said with a shrug. “And the pharmacist owed me a favor.”

Words stuck in my throat.

“If you’re going for the river, you’ll need to leave tonight,” he added. “I will distract the others, start a hymn, maybe, loud and long, something the children will join.”

After another moment, Thomas whispered, “Why help us?”

Father Molnár looked away and smiled at the horizon. “Because if I were fleeing darkness, I would want someone to light a candle at the door.”

I reached over and squeezed his arm, just once. “Thank you.”

He looked at us then, both of us, eyes sharp despite the softness in his voice.

“You may not wear the cloth,” he said, “but you carry the weight.”

He lifted his hand and made the sign of the cross over us, then whispered, “ Dominus vobiscum .”

“And with your spirit,” Thomas replied.

Father Molnár rose and walked back to his flock without another word. I turned to Thomas, my eyes burning and heart hammering. In a world with so much evil, good people still thrived.

“We go tonight,” I said.

He nodded once, and for the first time in days, he didn’t look like he was about to fall over.