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I cleared my throat. My hands shook slightly. “God cast them out in punishment, and made them ashamed of their nakedness, and thrust a flaming sword in the gates of Eden, so that they could never return. Thus sin entered the world, and this trespass is the reason for all terrible things we must endure, for we live in the fallen lands that were the punishment of Adam and Eve, and outside the kingdom of God there can be no perfect peace.” I coughed and reached for more of the milky, acidic beer. “But the Lord Our God did not abandon His people.”

“It rather seems he did. Why did he not forgive them? A parent who does not forgive a child’s first offense is a tyrant. If I did not clap up my girl and cuddle her the first time—or even the seventh!—she pulled my tail or ate my portion of cameltail soup as well as her own, what sort of father would I be? If she spoiled her coat with mud and instead of dropping her in a clear pool and laughing while she splashed I cast her out of my house and called her… all those things you called Eve that I am too polite a beast to repeat? How could I forgive myself? And if she suffered, out there, because I did not yield, how could I live?”

“God’s ways are not the ways of mortals,” I said weakly. The great gryphon started some other protest, but I held up my hands; I prayed for the space to finish. I felt it best to skip over the many generations of Israel, since the Creation found so little audience with him.

“Much later, He sent to us His Son, whose very existence is a mystery no human can fathom. The Child’s being was part Flesh of his Holy Virgin Mother, and part Divinity, the Word of God. God walked among us, incarnated.” I smiled ruefully. “Where I come from we do little but argue about that last. I came here fleeing a war over it, seeking something holier, more direct, than scriptural debate on the point of a sword.” I shook my head, trying to get back on course. “Our Lord, who was called the Christ, had twelve disciples, who were great men, but not divine. But the earthly powers did not understand Him, and what they did not understand, they feared. He was crucified, and died in agony for all of us. In His death He redeemed us from the sin of Eve, and three days later He rose again, to break bread and promise the coming of the end of earthly life and the beginning of the kingdom of Heaven. He purchased for us Paradise and life everlasting at the right hand of God.” My heart quieted, as it had in the chapel when I first took my vows. As I finished my witness, I felt the long shadows of those summer windows grow within me, and a gentle calm. “Perhaps God could not forgive Himself,” I said softly, “and suffered for His own sins as well.” This was heresy, no doubt and no argument, but I was moved to utter it.

Fortunatus said nothing. He flicked his tail back and forth.

I pressed forward. “It is the tomb of one of those twelve disciples I seek. Thomas the Doubter, Thomas the Twin.”

The gryphon frowned deeply. His pelt quivered. “John, I do not wish to offend you. I have little experience with foreigners, nor their religions. But you are wrong.”

I laughed. Never had a heathen presented me such a firm and simple rejection. Fortunatus laughed a little himself, a throaty, purring thing.

I felt my balance return to me. “Christ did not come among you, and that makes things difficult. That is the nature of faith, to believe what you did not directly experience.”

“Oh, no, that’s not what I mean. I believe you, about Christ and his twelve brothers, and crucifixion and all that. But I already possess life everlasting.”

“Impossible. You spoke of a dead wife.”

The gryphon shrugged, a rippling of his broad muscles. He cocked his head as a bird will do, and thought for a moment. “Come with me,” he said abruptly, and snatched my collar, tossing me onto his broad back like a doll. I held onto his coarse bristles, and he left his cave, stepping into starlight and leaping up into the air. I squeezed my eyes shut; I could not breathe. I could not look down. It was not a long flight,