The Candle & The Sword

Ten stories. Ten thresholds where the eternal touches the human.

A flaming sword keeps the gate of Eden and remembers every soul that ever came to weep, rage, or bargain before it. An angel is sent to keep a forty-year vigil at one ordinary man's kitchen table. A demon is made to carry a name he never wanted. A wicked man becomes, without ever intending to, the instrument of a mercy he cannot understand. A healer who has never once doubted his gift is asked, by a dying child, not to use it. And a linguist finds, buried in every language on earth, a single sound that means both father and home.

From the author of The Candle comes a collection that runs from the monumental to the intimate-from the burning sword at the beginning of the world to a single candle in a quiet room. Angels, objects, and the ancient dead speak in the early stories; ordinary people speak in the later ones. Together they ask the questions that outlast every age: What is grace when it reaches the undeserving? What does it cost to be seen? And what, in the end, is never lost?

The Candle & The Sword gathers all ten stories into one illustrated volume, with a closing benediction and a colophon for each: a collection of short stories about faith, consequence, and grace.