Brother Ezra Piedescalzos

No one in the Order of the Dawn knows what Brother Ezra did.

They know he did it. That is enough.

Long ago, the Order found him. They were not looking for him the way you look for a brother. They were looking for him the way you look for someone who has done something that cannot be undone.

What happened next, no one tells either. Only that no one gave him what he deserved. That someone opened a door for him instead of closing it.

And that same night, for the first time, Elyra looked at him.

Ezra did not understand why. He still does not.

Elyra's mark was not given to a saint. It was given to him. Since then he has been Elyri, and he carries that light the way one carries a debt.

He took off his sandals on the first day and has never put them back on. Not in winter, not on stone roads, not in the snow. He says his feet remind him, with every step, of what he must not forget.

His brothers have offered him boots many times. He thanks them and gives them away to the first barefoot soul who passes. Not out of duty. Out of penance.

He sleeps on the floor. He eats last. He prays on his knees on the stone until his wounds open, and then he heals everyone else's before his own.

He asks for forgiveness often. Of Elyra, under his breath. Of his own, without them knowing why.

He never asks to be forgiven. That is not his to ask.

He owns only one thing: an old wooden cross. He never lets go of it. Not to sleep, not to eat, not to fight. In battle he strikes with his hands, and in one of them, always, is the cross. Every blow he lands gives him back a little of what he loses. As if Elyra were collecting his penance in instalments and letting him keep the change.

When he lays his hand on a wounded brother's shoulder, the wound closes. And the brother rises with the faith of someone who has seen something he cannot explain.

When the Order falters, Ezra raises the cross and blesses them all at once. Those who love him and those who still do not trust him.

As he blesses, he counts his own. Every one still standing kindles something inside him. Something that does not quite resemble peace.

He is eighty years old. He has spent almost all of them paying.

Sometimes they ask him whether he thinks he will ever have paid enough.

Ezra looks down at his feet, covered in scars, and keeps walking.