Sublime

Life is a battle between the Maker and His creation. Hoel grows expert at the fight.

La guerre tue les hommes, martyrise les bêtes, éloigne les dieux, laboure la terre et engraisse le sol.

The fisherman’s challenge is to face Lady Death, her embrace, and her life and death cycles. Unlike other tales in which an underwater creature is captured but then released, thereby granting the fisherman a wish in gratitude, Lady Death is not letting go, Lady Death is not graciously granting any wishes.

Thus did the Commendatore—or the Idea that had taken his form—meet his end. Tomohiko Amada had sunk back into his deep sleep. Standing next to the Commendatore’s body, Masahiko’s bloody knife in my right hand, I was the only conscious person left in the room. My labored breathing should have been the only sound. Should have been. But something was

The body was bobbing gently in just a few inches of water, facedown, snagged on a fallen branch. The small current trying to tug it away every few seconds. A woman, wearing a thick housecoat. Her hair splayed out on the water. A shock of white. Claudia Mayer.