for where we are is hell

“Campione,” she said from the doorway.

He spoke some words she didn’t understand. He cut himself in yet another place.

“Bad?” she asked.

He answered her again in that other tongue. But at least he laid the knife aside as the words came pouring out of him, thick and fast and liquid.

“I understand,” she said; “I understand.”

“You don’t.” He looked at her. “You cannot.”

“You’re hurt,” she said. He shrugged, and ran his thumb over the shallow cuts he’d made, as if to erase them. “No, hurt inside. You see what is not bearable to see. I know.”

“I see it in my mind,” he muttered. “So clear—so clear—clear and bad, I see.”

She came behind him, now, and touched his arms. “Is there no medicine for your grief?”

He folded his face between her breasts, hearing her living heartbeat.

“Can I cure you, Campione?”

And he said, “No.”

“Can I try?” she asked.

And he said, “Try.”

Ellen Kushner, The Man With the Knives