Immortal by Traci L. Slatton

answered dryly. “And I recognize you. You’re the boy with the broken stick and the bastard dagger….”
    “The boy God laughs at.” I nodded, scrambling to my feet.
    “Don’t take it personally,” he said. “God laughs at all of us. Life is a divine comedy, and this is how we show our reverence for it.” He indicated the paintings.
    I nodded again. “They’re holy, because they come from the beautiful place.”
    One of his graying brows lifted. “The beautiful place, eh? What is that?”
    “You told me that Florentines had great souls, that there were qualities inside us that made us who we are,” I said. “The beautiful place is where whatever is beautiful comes from; it isn’t inside us, but we can get to it from the inside. It’s not from this earth at all.”
    “If the beautiful place isn’t within us, how do we express it like this?” The older man waved at the frescoes as he trudged up to stand beside me. “Don’t you think it must be within?”
    “No,” I said, but softly, so as not to offend him. “It’s separate from us. The earth is full of ugliness. Like God’s laughter is. But beyond that, there’s beauty.”
    “What does a young hound like you know of ugliness?”
    I thought of the patrons who opened the door to my room. I remembered the blank faces of people who’d walked past me when I was starving and begging for a penny, a scrap of food, anything. I recalled how I myself had silently willed Marco not to reveal my part in his escape attempt. Experience had shown me that there was more ugliness in most men than beauty. I wasn’t going to say that to this man who crackled with quick intelligence, though I thought he would understand. “Ugliness is what we get for being human. It’s the sin that stains us since the Garden of Eden. The beautiful place is God being kind to us.”
    He stroked his chin and stared at me. “I had a friend who would have agreed with you. He would have said that beauty expresses the grace of God, and that we see beauty when we are purified enough to see all of God’s creation as one seamless unity.”
    “I’m not purified. I see a lot of evil.”
    “I daresay my friend Dante is spending a bit of time in purgatory himself these days.” The man smiled and it was a soft illumination from his heart, a smile of love and loss that encompassed everything and rejected nothing. I marked it well, resolving immediately that I would one day smile like that.
    “So he’s dead. Was he a good friend?” I asked, turning to look at St. John ascending.
    “Oh yes, a dear friend. A remarkable man and a poet like none other. I miss him still.” He sighed. “More than I would miss my family, I think. They’re a noisy and expensive lot.”
    “These are my family and friends.” I stretched out my arms as if I could embrace the frescoes. “These will stick with me.”
    For a time we contemplated the frescoes in silence. Finally he turned to me. “I have an appointment to buy some pigments, boy. Then I must return to work in another city.”
    “I have work, too,” I said, and the words were like ashes on my tongue.
    He nodded. “I will return to Florence in a few months. I would like to bring you something. You remind me of one of my children, with these ideas that are bigger than you are, and far too old for your age…. If my paintings are going to be your family—”
    I gasped. “You’re
him
? You’re the artist who painted these holy frescoes?”
    “Giotto di Bondone, at your service, and almost worthy of this much adulation,” he said dryly, shaking his grizzled head.
    I fell to my knees. “Master, I didn’t know, I would have been more respectful!”
    “Nonsense, you silly pup,” Giotto said gruffly. He pulled me to my feet with surprising strength in his liver-spotted hands. “Where do I find you, when I return?”
    Not at the brothel, no, that would be unbearable. More than anything, I did not want this man whose smile bore a hint of the