Eden Page 6

  Suddenly a great commotion erupted from the enclosure. Eden could hear her master shouting. She had never heard him so angry. He was shouting at the people inside the temple courtyard. Her master wanted the merchants be gone from the holy place. He tore at them with a fury Eden had never known.

  Tent poles fell, the merchants began to cry and then shriek in rage.

  Chaos reigned.

  The cracking of broken pots rang off the stone walls. A bright cascade of coins jingled in the air and tinkled like a thousand bells as they hit the paving stones. A covey of doves exploded overhead, circled the compound and flew in a hundred directions. By the temple gate twenty lambs ran willy-nilly through the curtains, past Eden and the donkey, bleating, “We’re free! We’re free!”

  The two animals looked at each other and laughed. The lambs’ owner stumbled past them with a switch, cursing anyone who stood in his way.

  “Free until they’re caught again,” the donkey said.

  Last of all their master appeared, and strode from the temple compound without looking back. In full rage, merchants from the enclosure threw bruised fruit at him, striking his shoulders, staining his cloak. His companions leapt to shield him, standing at their master’s back as the wrathful traders cursed and shouted. But the companions’ stern faces kept them at a distance. The angry stall owners and money changers dared not come closer.

  A single coin rolled out the temple gate following their master’s footsteps, then fell on its side and lay still.

  At once three beggars from the street pounced on it. They snarled and tore at each other’s rags for possession of the single coin. Eden and the donkey were shoved against the temple wall, while their master looked at the desperate men in pity. The coin was snatched from hand to hand until one of the beggars dropped it and it rolled off once more. The three scrabbled in the gutter, but the precious coin rolled into a drain by the grated curb and vanished down a sewer.

  The pitiful ragged souls stood about the hole in the street and began to weep.

  Silently Eden’s master removed his coat and handed it to one of them.

  “Sell this or wear it,” he said.

  The three beggars paused, uncertain what to do. The stall owners and money changers whispered among themselves, more confused than angry now.

  Three beggars, but with only one coat between them …

  Their master tightened his belt about his robe and gazed at his companions with a question in his eyes. Had they nothing to offer too?

  A moment passed, and in those few seconds the companions understood, not needing to be told. They too offered what little they possessed. An old woolen cloak to one ragged man, an extra pair of sandals to another, a threadbare shirt to a third, worn but clean …

  The stall owners and money changers, the traders and merchants, huddled together in the shadow of the temple curtains, their anger gone. Then one by one each turned from what they witnessed in the street and returned to the enclosure.

  All except for one among them, a slight man with red hair and hard eyes, who found something of his own to give. He seemed both fascinated and yet ashamed. Cautiously, he fished a few dull coins from his leather purse, putting coppers into the palm of each beggar.

  And before the day ended the travelers found yet another who wished to follow.

  His name was Judas.

  The companions left the city that very hour. In the hills to the east Eden heard the tinkle of silvery bells, not wild rams this time, but the temple lambs. From out of nowhere the fleeing sheep appeared; a noisy confused mob of curious faces. So the lucky things had slipped the herdsman’s crook after all:

  “Who are you? Where are you going?” the lambs bleated all at once. “Can we come too? Are you our masters now? What are your names?”

  The lambs’ tiny voices bewildered Eden’s ears.

  “Children, don’t talk all at once!” the dog told them. “And straighten up that line,” which they did, one by one and two by two. After a moment, the herd came to heel, following the dog and the donkey as if they’d always belonged there.

  “We’re not going to have you wandering all over the road and getting underfoot!” Eden scolded.

  And the little lambs bleated back, “Yes, Miss. Yes, we will. But where are we going and what kind of dog are you?”

  Eden fell silent. Indeed what kind of dog was she? The old village dog, her master’s companion, nameless traveler.… She glanced at the donkey and realized she didn’t even know his name. The long gray nose looked down at her as if he read her thoughts.

  “I have the same name every donkey is given. What they shout at you from the day you’re born. Mostly, Get Going! Or Dammit, Get Going! But when I came to the man in the river, my burdens were lifted, I sat on the bank eating hay as you found me, and no one shouted at me anymore.”

  “Then let us find you a new name,” Eden told him. She looked over the half dozen lambs, trotting after them. “What do you children think? What shall we name our big, strong friend?”

  For a moment the lambs padded on in silence, then shrilled as a chorus all at once, “Samson! We’ll call him Samson, because he’s so big and strong and his mane is so stiff and spikey.” Then all at once, “Samson! Samson! Samson!”

  When the chorus died down, Eden looked at their large companion. The old gray donkey thought seriously. Then nodded his ruff:

  “Better than Dammit,” the donkey said. “Samson is good.”

  He cleared his throat. “And the children have a point. Where are we going?”

  As it turned out, back to that wide lake where the companions had joined the wedding feast, where Eden had shared her bone with the dog too old to fight for it and where Eden’s master had seen that no one went hungry. The place where clay furnaces smelted ore into iron and smithies pounded iron into swords, a great wide sea of fishermen, boats and nets, and fishtails on the shore.

  But for Eden that single destination didn’t answer the question.

  Where were they going? Nowhere and everywhere. Across the lengths of the land they wandered, always on the move, never tarrying for long, their master speaking to any who would listen. Samson the donkey plodded along on stoic hooves, the little lambs trotted behind without complaint. Stranger still, the lambs seemed to stay little lambs and not grow any older, and the donkey’s hide grew lustrous, his face no longer gray. Eden ran all day to catch the wayward little ones, but never seemed to tire.

  While the dog’s sharp eyes made sure no lamb strayed.

  And none of them ever did.

  While the mice in the fields gossiped among themselves. Look at her run! She’s so fast, she’s so strong, she’s so smart!

  Night devoured day and day banished night. Their road seemed an endless march, and Eden watched the crowds gather at her master’s feet with every league. When the companions paused to rest or talk, she never wandered far from his side. Did he love her the same as before? As when the two of them struggled with that Hollow Man on the ledge, or lay broken down below, waiting for the end?

  Eden did not know.

  Like the two worn stones, the black and the white that had rubbed till their insides showed, Eden and her master were there for all to see. When she came near him, his hand reached for her, and when he spoke he drew her close so she might sit beside him and listen with the others. And well-being seemed to flow from him, filling Eden with a kind of light, for which she knew no name …

  As for the companions, they treated Eden as one of their own, and she knew each man by his scent. Mostly they were clean scents, not the stench of labor and worry. For walking purified you, as if each step you took shed a bit of your troubles by the wayside, cleansing each man the farther he traveled.

  But the one named Judas was different from the others, and the companions treated him so. At first he stood out because he gave his money to the beggars at the temple walls. Despite the gift of a few copper coins, or perhaps because of it, the others let him carry their common purse, tr
usting him to hold what little they possessed. A few meager coins: mostly coppers, one silver, but no gold.

  Later, he stood out because he acted differently, withdrawing from the others when they rested for the night. But what could Eden tell? He smelled of little more than human sweat and a dusty road. Yet the scent of sadness and doubt clung to his robes and Eden often went to him, letting the man stroke her ears as they kept watch at night. Not a bad man, but he shrank from every nighttime shadow, dreaded every turn in the road on the next day’s march. And Judas often walked alone.

  Samson noticed it too, coming to the man’s side when Judas retreated into periods of heavy thought. Then he mumbled to himself as though struggling with an invisible foe, as if a foreign spirit possessed his mind. Muttering phrases and broken sentences even as Eden walked on one side, Samson the donkey on the other. The animals never truly understood what Judas said, but they let him ramble on, every now and then croaking:

  “Stop it!”

  “Get out!”

  Then Judas would pause by the roadside to scratch under his cloak, searching his clothes, examining his arms and legs as if they were crawling with mites. Eden and Samson felt the burden of an extra mind constantly tormenting him, as he argued with some creature who wasn’t there. Muttering:

  “Get away.”

  “I won’t!”

  “You can’t make me!”

  For their part the animals let Judas talk, letting the troubled man unravel the knots within until he fell silent of his own accord. Of course the companions noticed too and Eden’s master most of all, but no one thought badly of Judas. Or wished him cast from their circle. He was one among friends. And over countless miles the man’s endless arguments with himself seemed to lessen. But whether Judas calmed the storms within or smothered them by force of will, no one could say.

  Signs and Wonders

  Now a time of wonder changed all things known as Eden’s master drew the improbable from the hopeless like thread off a spool. By the touch of his hand, a glance, the flicker of a smile … he altered what could never be to that which stood beyond a shadow of a doubt. The companions rubbed their eyes and gaped like fools.

  While the animals—

  Eden, Samson and the lambs, being innocent of all corruption—

  Accepted everything as it happened.

  For like the mice who crouched behind every rock and gnarled root, the animals needed no herald to tell them what they saw with their own eyes. And as the travelers walked from hovel to hut, from meadow to orchard, the dog, the donkey and the lambs watched the mice come out of hiding. Lining the roadside the little creatures waved green blades of grass as the companions passed. For countless throngs and tribes from every pasture had heard of the strange tidings, the tale of the many strangers who feasted, the tale of the lambs set free … and the mice cried in their high voices, “We have heard of you from afar, from our cousins in every ditch and field.”

  Then the many mice laid the thin green spears on the dusty roadway so all might tread on soft ground. Eden looked boldly at them and Samson stiffened his ears, both animals amazed that so many had heard of them, that so many noticed.

  The lambs snuffled shyly, “It wasn’t our doing, not us, not us …” but still pleased to be praised simply for walking by, murmuring lamb to lamb, “What admirable mice there are in the world. Do you think they are right? Perhaps we are amazing!”

  Even a fox paused on his endless hunt for dinner, ignored the mice at his feet and wondered out loud, “Can it all be true? These signs, these marvels?”

  “Join us and see,” Eden called out to him.

  But the fox, perplexed, shook his head and muttered, “No, I think not. I will have to ponder what this means. Though I shall not walk with you today, I shall never be far.”

  Of the many miracles known and counted, the animals saw only a portion. So some great works were forgotten, while those remembered lived on as spoken tales the animals may not have heard and in scrolls the animals could not read. But as Eden and the companions marched from hill to vale, or rested beside tree or stream, no ailing creature went untouched, no sick thing ignored if it came before their master’s feet.

  In all that time three great moments stood out in Eden’s mind.

  They had come to a village at dusk with nowhere to sleep.

  Nothing unusual in this …

  They often wandered into places and were rarely turned away during the day. For their master’s name had spread far and wide, going before him like those blades of grass waved by the field mice. But people closed their doors against strangers after dark, thus the night was no time to come begging for shelter.

  This place was much like Eden’s own town of the carpenter’s shop. On the outskirts date palms and pastures, sheep and cattle in pens … then narrow streets and the houses so close together, ramps and gangways sprang from roof to roof. Just like home.

  The companions and the animals stopped at the shop of a potter, his house attached to a shed. On shelves sat row upon row of fired vessels. The potter’s wheel was still, a damp cloth over a lump of clay, and in the depths of the dark a cold kiln no ember burned.

  The jostling lambs, the dog and the donkey crowded together in the street. Eden stood under Samson’s broad belly to keep from getting stepped on. One of the lambs bumped into a clay pot by the potter’s doorstep, tipping it over. The crack of broken clay rang off the street stones.

  “We’ll have to pay for that!” Eden snapped at the lambs. “Behave yourselves! No pushing!”

  The lambs hung their heads, ashamed, while the companions rushed to pick up the broken pot shards. They looked to Judas in dismay and feared for the meager coins in their common purse. Clay pots weren’t free; how could they afford this? Such a pot would cost more than a few coppers.

  Suspicious eyes stared out at them from half-open doors and windows along the street, but no voice rose in anger from inside the potter’s house.

  Two small candles burned within.

  A child lay on a low bed. Her father, the potter, stood in a dark corner, while her mother knelt by the bedside. The woman didn’t look up but quietly wrung her hands and grasped the wooden leg of the bed, as if by stroking the bed’s leg the child might come alive again. Eden saw a little girl, her eyes rolled upwards showing the whites. At her feet curled another dog, not unlike Eden except you could see the creature’s eyes alert, watching for anyone’s approach.

  The companions’ curious faces crowded at the door.

  The watchful dog uncurled, bared its lips, snarling, “Get away …”

  Then lay across the child’s legs, guarding her.

  The child’s father came out of the shadow and went to the door where the companion called Judas offered him coins from the common purse for the broken clay pot. At first the potter stared at the open palm, but didn’t seem to understand what the coins were for, or didn’t care. Instead, the potter folded Judas’ fingers closed, imploring:

  “Please, please ask your master,” the potter whispered in a broken voice. “Ask him for me. I beg you. Ask him. There must be something he can do.”

  Judas listened carefully as the father told how his child had hurt herself, and then tucked the purse in his belt and went to where their master stood in the street. Eden’s sharp ears heard every word.

  “The little girl and the dog were running with the other children, from house to house as they always do. One of the gangways slipped from a roof. She and the dog fell into a hay cart. She fell with the dog clutched in her arms, but the wind was knocked from her. Now she cannot wake and the dog will not leave her bed.” The other companions who had gathered close murmured among themselves considering what could be done, and the animals crowded at the doorway.

  Samson poked his long nose into the potter’s house, the lambs shuffling about bleating, “Let us see! Let us see!” The donkey looked down with serious ears. “If you can’t grow up, the least you can do is be quiet.”

  “Hu
sh now,” Eden shushed the noisy things, “And go into the street before I growl.”

  The lambs turned away in disappointment. “Aw … we want to see.”

  “There’s nothing to look at yet. Go be good,” Eden told them. Her eyes dwelt on the dog on the bed. She knew that look. Approach and die. Be warned.

  The potter gazed over everyone in the crowded street and shook his head in dismay. He had not enough room inside to invite them in, but didn’t want anyone to leave. Would their master try to help? Eden did not know.

  At last, her master said to the potter:

  “We shall wait with you.”

  Then to Judas and the others:

  “Let us remain here in the street. Let us rest by the open door where our thoughts and prayers can be heard by all who listen from above and those who listen from within.”

  The companions began to complain. The street was too hard, the night too cold, with nothing but a house wall to rest their heads on. They’d even given away their cloaks in the last town, and if they paid for the broken pot there’d be no money even for a crust of bread in the morning.

  The animals grumbled too, even though they knew discomfort more than people. Each of them looked for places to bed down as the dark came on. Samson was too big in the narrow street to find a comfortable spot, complaining to anyone who would listen, “No grass, no water … nowhere to lie down. I want a stable with a manger. There must be one nearby.” Craning his neck and trying to look around corners. “Do you see a stable down there? Let’s find a manger.”

  And the lambs were no better, crying as one, “What about us? What about us? Doesn’t anyone care about us?”

  “Shush, all of you!” Eden scolded. “You’ve been colder before, hungrier before, and no one says you have to stay!”