The Messenger from Heaven

«Venne a la porta, e con una verghetta / l’aperse, che non v’ebbe alcun ritegno» (Inf. IX 89-90). He does not speak to Dante and does not look at him: he rebukes them and leaves, and it is the one place in the poem where the journey moves on without the two of them putting anything into it. The game says so in the only way it can, by leaving the player nothing to do but watch.

He comes in from the landing, waving the thick air away from his face with his left hand, feathered wings held open throughout as in Doré, and he carries his own light: he is the brightest thing in the chapter, and he is seen before he is understood. He once had a brazier planted in his chest, and players read it for what it was, an odd object nobody could explain; a messenger from heaven does not carry a torch, he is the light.

He does not take the wand back with him. It settles on the ground on the line of the gate, raised and with a lamp on it, because on a black ledge a key nobody can see is not a puzzle.