“You rescued us in Bethlehem,” he said. “You led us through the desert, led us here. And you nearly gave your own life doing it. I thanked God for sending you, because if he hadn’t, we’d be dead.”
“In the future, instead of thanking God, you can save yourself the trouble and just thank me directly.”
Joseph smiled. “I know men like you,” he said. “Men who believe that God has forsaken us. That he’s grown tired of our imperfections. These men are burdened by sin. By weakness, and temptation, and guilt. And so they think all men must be this way. And if all men are this way, why would God want anything to do with man?”
“And I know men like you,” said Balthazar, “who believe that every drop of piss is a blessing from ‘almighty God.’ Men who spend their miserable little lives shaking and mumbling, reading their scrolls and setting their goats on fire—afraid they’ll eat the wrong thing, or say the wrong word, or think the wrong thought, and SMACK! God’s fist will fall out of the clouds and flatten them. Well let me tell you—and I speak from experience—God doesn’t care, okay? He doesn’t care about you, or me, or what we do or say or eat or think.”
“He cared enough to send me his son.”
This time Balthazar made no attempt to hide the roll of his eyes. You’ve got to be kidding me…
“Right, right—the Messiah. And let me ask you a question: Of all the thousands of years, of all the thousands and thousands of Jews he had to choose from, God chose a poor carpenter and a little girl to raise him? Why not a king, huh? Why not let him be the son of an emperor? Give him a real chance to change things?”
Joseph thought about it as the baby began to cry in the other room. In truth, the best he could manage was, “I don’t know. I just know that he did.”
“See?” said Balthazar with a smile. “That’s the problem with your God. He doesn’t think big enoug—”
“BALTHAZAR…OF…ANTIOCH!”
The voice had come from outside, cutting off the rest of Balthazar’s insult. An unfamiliar voice, from in front of the house. Balthazar felt the strength leave his limbs. The blood in his fingertips froze, just as they had when he’d seen the Roman legions in Hebron.
They’ve found us.
Silence followed. A deathly silence as Balthazar and Joseph shared a look of dread, their argument already long forgotten, and moved toward the nearest window to sneak a look through the curtains.
Here were the empty houses of Beersheba. In front of them, standing in neat formation in the street, were Roman soldiers—led by a young officer atop a brown horse. Beyond the soldiers and empty houses, a long, dark cloud hung near the horizon, silent and still. Sandstorm, thought Balthazar. Big one.
“That is your name, isn’t it?” asked the officer. “‘Balthazar’?”
The baby’s cries were suddenly behind Balthazar’s ears. Mary and Sela had come running into the room, drawn by the commotion. As soon as they saw Balthazar and Joseph kneeling by the window, they knew. They’ve found us.
“Can we get out the back?” asked Sela.
“Doubt it,” said Balthazar.
He was smart, this officer. This time he would’ve taken care to surround them first. To make sure there was no chance of escape. These discouraging thoughts were still forming in his head when Balthazar spotted two men standing beside the officer’s horse. But these weren’t Roman or Judean soldiers. They were liars and thieves. Cowards and traitors.
Gaspar and Melchyor.
“I can see why you don’t use it,” the officer continued. “‘The Antioch Ghost’ is much more colorful, more menacing.”
Balthazar glared at his fellow wise men across the wide street. “How long?” he yelled. “How long have the two of you been working for these dogs? Is this how they found us in Hebron? Did you lead them right to us?”
“On my life,” said Gaspar, “we did not.”
“Your ‘life’? Your ‘life’ isn’t worth the spit in your lying mouth! You only have a life because I spared it! I saved you! Both of you!”
Here it was. Here was a vindication of everything Balthazar believed. Here was proof that men were dogs and that all hearts were empty vessels. It’s too bad I won’t live long enough to rub this in Joseph’s face.
“You have to understand,” said Gaspar, “they caught us in the market! They…they recognized us. We had no choice but to—”
“Lies!”
Balthazar was right. Gaspar had been considering this betrayal for days—especially in the wake of their near-capture in Hebron. And when he’d watched the mighty Antioch Ghost get beaten senseless by a woman, the last of his faith in their fearless leader had evaporated. Better to strike a deal and live than cast their lot with Balthazar, whose luck had clearly run out.
“They offered us pardons,” said Melchyor, so stupidly and apologetically that it was hard not to feel for him.
This part, at least, was true. When Gaspar had approached the Romans, he and Melchyor had been offered pardons in return for the Antioch Ghost and the infant.
“They offered us pardons if we led them back to—”
“Led them back to what,” cried Mary, “an infant? You’re no better than Herod’s men! Both of you!”
Melchyor looked away, clearly ashamed.
“I’m sorry,” said Gaspar.
“Go to hell,” said Balthazar.
As far as insults went, it left a lot to be desired. Especially since Balthazar didn’t even believe in such a place. But under the circumstances, it was the best he could muster. With an entire legion of Roman troops staring him down, surrounding the house. There would be no angry pilgrims to help them fight this time. This time they would either be captured or—
“Balthazar!”
Sela was looking out a side window, clearly distressed. Or at least, more distressed than everyone else under her roof. Balthazar and the others hurried to her and peered through the curtains and saw why.
They’re going to burn us.
A handful of Roman soldiers stood ready with flaming torches in their hands, awaiting the order. Their young commander sat atop his horse, his eyes darting between the house they’d surrounded and the long, dark cloud hanging low to the horizon. Sandstorm, he thought. A big one, and growing closer.
For all the fugitives’ fears of charred flesh, Pilate had no intention of burning them out. There were Jewish zealots in there, and he knew how zealots thought. They would rather give themselves to God as burnt offerings than surrender to a godless Roman like me. No, if he ordered the house set alight, he would only be able to watch as they martyred themselves in the flames. And what good would that be? And the Antioch Ghost? What glory was there in burning him? Pilate wanted to present his emperor with a living, quivering specimen, not a heap of charred remains. Unlike Herod, he wasn’t comfortable having the blood of women and infants on his hands. This campaign had taken on a dark enough tenor already.
It was a dark thing to hunt a newborn child with swords and spears. But Pilate had comforted himself with the idea that he was merely delivering his targets to their judges. He wasn’t responsible for what happened after that. What Pilate wasn’t comfortable with was the magus. The way he frightened the men with his strange little rituals. With his very appearance. The power he seemed to have to conjure visions from the air, to breathe life into places it didn’t belong. The way he seemed to know exactly where their targets were going. This was an altogether different kind of darkness. One that any rational man would know to fear. But in this case, Pilate’s hands were tied. Augustus wished it, and so it must be done. But Pilate had tried to keep the emperor’s little mystic on a tight leash—keeping him sequestered “for his own safety.” Under guard, alone in his tent. Miles from where they now stoo—
Stop.
Pilate caught his mind wandering and reined it back in. The image of the magus had just popped into his head out of nowhere, distracting him from the task at hand. Regaining focus, he noticed the torch-bearing solders beginning
to advance on the house, their faces uniformly blank. Their movements stilted and awkward, as if they had strings attached to their limbs, being pulled from above. At first he thought it was some kind of joke.
“What are they doing?” cried Pilate to his officers. “WHAT ARE THEY DOING?” But when he got a better look at their faces, Pilate knew. They have no idea what they’re doing.
“STOP!”
But it was too late. The torches were laid at the foot of the house on all sides, and in seconds, the flames had taken hold. They climbed the walls, hastened by the dryness that permeated all of Beersheba. And though he would never have the opportunity to prove it, Pilate would go to his grave believing that the magus was responsible for it all: flooding his thoughts to distract him. Sitting cross-legged in his tent, eyes closed, muttering some strange old chant. Controlling his men, all the while thinking, This is what you get for trying to keep me on a short leash, you insignificant little nothing.
Inside, Balthazar and the others backed away as the flames climbed through the windows, filling the room with blistering air and setting the curtains ablaze in the process. Smoke began to pour in almost immediately, crawling across the ceiling and forcing the fugitives to crouch. As Mary covered the baby’s face with her robes, Sela hurried to the wall farthest from the fire, grabbed a washbowl, and threw its contents at the burning curtains. But this had all the effect of spitting into a volcano. The flames were spreading too quickly, the smoke already too heavy to be beaten back. They were faced with the unsavory choice of burning alive or running out of the house and being captured by the Romans.
Before Pilate could order his men to storm the house and take the fugitives alive, his eye was drawn away from the conflagration by a darkness in the west. The low cloud had risen from the horizon and doubled in size in the few moments since he’d last looked at it. Pilate had never seen a sandstorm—or any storm—move so fast. But that wasn’t the only strange thing about this cloud. It was shrieking. The sound had been barely perceivable at first, but it was unmistakable now. The cloud was shrieking. Emitting a constant, otherworldly sound—like the ceaseless scream of an angry animal. The scream of an angry god. A million voices raised in unison, growing closer by the second.
“Sandstorm,” said Gaspar. “We should take cover.”
“It’s not a sandstorm,” said Pilate, his eyes fixed on the shrieking cloud.
It’s a swarm.
Locusts. Millions of them, flying in a cloud so dense that it choked out the sun. Moving so fast that it defied nature. They’d crossed into the city, washing over the dead streets and abandoned houses like a wave, heading straight toward them. There were no crops left to eat in Beersheba…but still they came.
Pilate’s men saw it too. They heard the shrieking of the millions of locusts, saw the wave washing over the city. Like their leader, they turned away from the flames that climbed the wall of the house and stared in rapt wonder at the cloud. This is no sandstorm.…
Some of them began to break ranks and run for cover, but it was too late. By the time they took a few steps of retreat, the leading edge of the cloud slammed into the Romans with enough force to knock men over. Pilate’s horse reared up in fright, throwing him to the street. Dazed and hurt, he covered his face with his arms and curled his body into a ball as the shrieking swarm washed over them. All around, men held their shields up to their faces to protect themselves from the onslaught, insects clanging against them like stones from a slingshot. Locusts flew into the mouths of those who’d had the misfortune to leave them open, lodging themselves in men’s throats twenty and thirty at a time, choking soldiers with their armored bodies, biting them from the inside until blood ran from their mouths and nostrils.
What had been an orderly siege was suddenly chaos. An endless swarm poured over the Romans, drowning them. Blinding them with their numbers, and in some cases, blinding soldiers by feasting on their eyes in groups. Men tried to swat them away, to crush the locusts in their fists. But for every bug killed, ten more seemed to take its place. The soldiers might as well have been swatting at boiling tar.
Still balled up on the ground, Pilate saw a man crawling past him, completely covered by locusts. The man pulled himself for a few feet, then stopped—and the locusts covering him flew away en masse, leaving behind a mess of ripped skin and exposed innards. His lips were gone, leaving his teeth exposed in a ghastly eternal grin, and his eye sockets were nothing more than empty holes in his face. His carcass looked like it had spent a week being picked apart by crows. But it had taken only seconds.
Pilate heard the crunching of winged bodies everywhere as soldiers ran for cover in adjacent houses or rolled around on the street, trying desperately to brush thousands of insects off their arms, legs, and faces. He saw one soldier sitting upright, his palms pressed to his temples and his body writhing as something feasted on the inside of his skull. The man let loose a muffled scream, then fell over, silent and still. A moment later, Pilate saw locusts crawl out of the soldier’s mouth and eyelids before rejoining the swarm. These weren’t the mindless, dead-eyed bugs that had eaten their way across half of Africa, leaf to random leaf. These had been possessed by something. Given orders.
Pilate turned toward a pair of nearby voices and found Gaspar and Melchyor pulling themselves along the ground, looking for refuge as locusts covered them like a blanket. It was strange…the bugs seemed to be targeting some of the men but avoiding others completely. Like me—so far, anyway. In Gaspar’s and Melchyor’s case, they seemed less interested in killing than torturing—biting at their flesh, feeding on them one microscopic bite at a time.
Pilate watched the thieves crawl along, wondering what all of this meant. Wondering if the magus or some other magic was behind it. And if not the magus…who? He might have kept watching and wondering forever, or at least until the locusts changed their mind and began eating his eyes, had one of his lieutenants not grabbed his arm and dragged him into one of the adjacent houses. As he was pulled inside, Pilate saw that the flames that had engulfed the front of the fugitives’ hideout had begun to retreat, beaten back by the bodies of locusts that willfully flew into the fire, sacrificing themselves to put it out, and in doing so, buying the people inside precious time.
Inside, Mary had turned away and buried her head in Joseph’s shoulder, terrified by the otherworldly shrieking and horrified by the sight of men being eaten alive. Balthazar turned away too—less horrified than dumbfounded, and found himself confronted by a smiling little face. Despite the chaos in the streets, despite the sounds of men having their skin torn away, the baby was back to his calm, curious self. Resting in his frightened mother’s arms, looking—no, beaming—at Balthazar. Sela hurried around the room, drawing the curtains over every window, as if the thin fabric would be enough to stop the swarm from entering. But they won’t enter, thought Balthazar. They won’t even try…because they’re not here for us.
Somehow, he knew. The strange, almost blinding comet in the sky above Bethlehem. The clear, cool stream in the barren desert. A swarm of locusts, beating back the Roman Army. On their own, any one of these events was strange. Any two were nearly impossible. All three? Almost too much for even the staunchest realist to ignore. It was an interesting feeling, watching something that couldn’t possibly be real. And Balthazar reveled in it for a moment, watching the screaming Romans, before sense caught up with his senses, and a single word struck him with the force of a fist from the clouds above:
Go.
10
The Dead
“Dry bones…I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life.”
—Ezekiel 37:4–6
I
They’d all lived through sandstorms, had all felt the stinging of fine grains against their skin, the dry desert blowing over squinting eyes. But this was unlike anything they could’ve imagined.
This storm
was alive.
Each grain of sand had been replaced by a locust. Their eyes lifeless and black, their spindly legs and hard shells the color of desert sand. The bugs flew at them like debris in a tornado, their bodies forming a cloud that surrounded the fugitives, blinding in its density, deafening from the fluttering of its millions of wings. And while at a distance it seemed like the locusts were flying under their own power, in the cloud it was clear they were being blown along by something powerful. Something angry.
Balthazar’s hunch had proven right so far. The locusts didn’t seem interested in the five of them. Not directly, anyway. Not in the way they’d been interested in the Romans, choking them with their bodies, biting at their eyes and flesh. But while they weren’t the target of its wrath, the fugitives still had to contend with the millions upon millions of bugs flying past them toward Beersheba, pelting them like living hail and leaving marks on their arms and faces as they marched against its current. This continued until the darkness of the locusts around them began to give way to the darkness of the sky, and the cloud evaporated at last.
As the sun vanished behind the horizon, painting the last of itself in the pale sky, the fugitives stopped to rest and take stock of what they’d seen. Joseph cradled a bundled robe beneath his head, grabbing a few precious minutes of sleep on the ground. Mary, in turn, cradled the baby, feeding him beneath her robes.
Sela sat a stone’s throw from them, drinking from a canteen and looking at her arms and legs in the fading light. Examining the small bruises from the constant beating of tiny bodies against her skin, and examining the thoughts that had been beating against the inside of her skull for days now.
Here I am.
Once again, Balthazar had managed to turn her life upside down. The first time, he’d done it by leaving. This time, he’d done it by showing up.
She’d been perfectly unhappy in Beersheba. Perfectly alone. Now that her misery had company, she was worse off than ever: stuck in the desert without a possession left in the world. Stuck with two strangers, a baby, and an old flame she’d learned to hate in the absent years. Even if she could go back to Beersheba, what was there to go back to? Her home had been burned. Her city abandoned. If they were caught, the Romans would kill her just as quickly as the others. She was one of them now, like it or not. A fugitive. And while there’d been a time when she would’ve found that a romantic, adventurous notion, now it was only deeply annoying and troubling.
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