"I am no stranger," the bare teeth said. "I am Thanatos. I have come for this woman's soul."

It had to be true. The figure had stepped through the wall without disturbing it, at the very moment Jolie was sinking into oblivion.

He remembered something his father had told him. There were Incarnations, and Death was one of them. But he came personally only for those whose souls were in doubt.

"Jolie is a good woman!" Parry protested. "She has been everything to me! How can her soul be in doubt?"

The hood tilted. "I shall ascertain that for you." The hand moved again, this time reaching into Jolie's body and catching something there. In a moment it emerged, holding something like a netting of glowing spider web. It was her soul.

Thanatos studied it. "She is a good woman," he agreed. "There is virtually no blight on her soul. Yet I was drawn to her. Let me investigate."

Then, suddenly, the world stopped. Parry was frozen in place, unable to move, even to breathe, yet was in no discomfort. It was as though time had stilled. This was magic of a far superior order!

Then, after what could have been an instant or a day, motion resumed. "I have inquired," Thanatos said. "She is not evil, but the circumstance of her death precipitates monstrous evil. We do not know its nature, for we find no current evidence of it, but it is nonetheless present. When it coalesces, it will be known that this was the site of its initiation. Therefore the goodness of her soul is balanced by the evil of its situation, and I was summoned."

"She cannot go to Heaven?"

"I think she cannot escape the mortal realm," Thanatos replied. "She must remain as a ghost, until the evil abates."

"Then let her stay with me!" Parry cried. "I will care for her ghost!"

Thanatos shrugged. "Take a drop of her blood on your wrist," he said. "She can inhabit only her own essence."

Parry touched his left wrist to Jolie's wounded breast, picking up a smear of the blood.

Thanatos set the soul against that smear. It shrank into the blood and disappeared.

Parry was silent, gazing at the blood. By the time he thought to ask another question, Thanatos was gone. Parry was left with Jolie's body, and his grief.

Then he heard the soldiers coming. He had to flee, for they would kill him on sight. He could not even remain to give his beloved a decent Christian burial. That was grief upon grief.

He became the wolf and leaped from the shelter. An arrow sought him, but missed. In moments he was away and hidden among the trees. He escaped unscathed-in body.

Chapter 3 - FRANCISCAN

He ran till he was leagues from his home region; there was no longer anything to hold him there. His father, his wife-He paused in his motion, to revert to his natural form. Now his grief struck with full force. What was he to do, without Jolie? All his other losses he could handle, but hers he could not. He had based his future on the assumption that she would be with him.