Book of the Just

by Dana Chamblee Carpenter

  Angelo tried one end and then the other against the ends of the obelisk rod. He found a match on the third try. The end of the wider stick fit perfectly against the thicker end of the one he’d recovered yesterday—they belonged together. He cocked his head, waiting, half expecting them to magically knit themselves together, craving some clue to their purpose, some sign that he was doing this right. He got nothing.

  “We go now. Still have to fight the wind and climb the mountain,” Birhan said as he laid a hand on Angelo’s shoulder.

  “I want to do something first.”

  Angelo went from cairn to cairn, praying. It was the mourner’s kaddish from the Jewish prayer service for the dead—as much of it as Angelo could remember from his studies, anyway. He said it in broken Hebrew twenty-seven times.

  “Now they have Jewish prayers and not just Muslim and Christian, they be at peace,” Birhan said quietly as they crawled out of the cave.

  “Maybe,” Angelo said. And the stone rolled closed behind him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Ethiopia?” Angelo asked. “You think it’s that far?”

  Birhan was on one side of the map spread out on the hotel bed and Angelo on the other.

  They’d made it down the mountain just after nightfall. Angelo had paid the old man extra for the use of the camels, grateful for their sure-footedness. Now he and Birhan were trying to figure out where to go next. The last mark on the map was in the far low corner of the third plate—much farther away than the second had been from the first.

  Birhan shook his head and took a bite of food. “Not really far. No farther than Asmara from here, but is trouble.”

  “Because we can’t get across the border?”

  “There’s still fighting—not as much now the war is over, but the law says no one goes from Eritrea to Ethiopia.”

  “I don’t care so much about the law if there’s a way to get across.”

  “There are ways, Mister, but there are rebels on both sides. They like to kidnap people like you for ransom, and they like to make people like me carry guns. There is also army to keep people from going or coming and they are sometimes shooting. I know boys who have died trying to cross.”

  “Is there a way to get there legally?”

  “For you, yes. Go back to Asmara and get visa to go to Sudan and then get visa in Sudan to go to Ethiopia.”

  “How long will that take?” The clock in his head started ticking louder—Angelo didn’t have time to waste on red tape.

  “Not so long. A day, maybe two. Eritrea like Sudan, and Ethiopia like Sudan. I know a man in Asmara who can get the paperwork through quickly.” Birhan wasn’t looking at him. Angelo knew why.

  “But you couldn’t come.”

  “They will not give me a visa to leave Eritrea. They want me to fight. They know if I leave, I will not come back.”

  “Your mother wants you to leave,” Angelo said.

  “Yes. But the only way out for me is with the smugglers. She cannot make the journey. Is very dangerous. Is only for the young. And many of them die anyway.”

  “Would you go if she had to stay behind?”

  Birhan pressed his lips together, thinking. “She is safe in Asmara. She has good job. She has friends and my uncles and aunts. The military does not want her. I would miss her and hope to bring her with me some day. It will make her sad to have me gone, but I think it will break her heart if I let them teach me to kill. She wants me to go to school.”

  “What do you want, Birhan?”

  “I want to live. I want to not take a life. I want to find this last piece of Allah’s puzzle with you.”

  Angelo’s chest burned with unease; it was such a terrible risk, trying to cross the border illegally with Birhan at his side. He thought about the impossible choice the parents in the cave must have had to make, running from the danger they knew, only to be caught by another, unseen. Birhan’s mother’s choice was also impossible, to send her son away, perhaps to his death, or to lose him forever when the army taught him to kill—or to die. How was Angelo supposed to pick which gamble to make?

  “I don’t know what to do,” he said.

  “But I know,” Birhan said softly. “If you go here,” he pointed to the mark on the map, “I go, too.”

  “I don’t have a choice, Birhan. I have to go.”

  “Then I choose to go.” He took another bite of food. “We are looking for more mountains? Maybe happy one this time?” he asked, his own decision made.

  Angelo’s decisions were anything but made, though there was no point talking about them anymore. With a sigh, he opened his journal to the guide poem. “The writer says, ‘The journey is long, But the end is sweet, And the lion watches over me.’”

  “Long? But this is not long.” Birhan pointed at the distance on the map.

  “Well, it would’ve been on foot. And I’m not sure if he means the actual journey or if we’re supposed to read it as a metaphor—‘journey’ as life.”

  “Ah, so makes ‘end’ a death, yes?”

  “Maybe.”

  “So much for happy.” Birhan clapped his hands to clear away the crumbs.

  “He says it’s sweet,” Angelo offered.

  “He must be old, then.”

  Angelo chuckled. “Any ideas on the lion?”

  “We have lions, but they eat you, not watch you.”

  “He could mean the lion of Judah or a statue or something.” Trying to untangle the clue quieted Angelo’s other worries.

  “We understand it when we need to,” Birhan said as he stretched out on the bed. “Like bitter mountain. Now we know why is bitter. Soon we know why end is sweet and why lion only watches.”

  He was asleep minutes later, though Angelo lay awake long into the night trying to justify the risk he was taking with Birhan’s life. He ran from that thought into another. Birhan’s life hung in the balance of the decisions Angelo made, and so, too, did Mouse’s little brother’s. If Angelo did nothing, Kitty and the Reverend might find a way to capture him.

  Mouse whispered in his mind: He’s just a boy.

  The sunrise prayers played out from the mosque speakers. Birhan rolled out of bed and went sleepily into the hall to pray.

  Angelo, already awake, was sitting on the side of the bed, back hunched, his head bent as he stared at his hands in the murky light. He’d slept very little, just long enough to have a dream, another like those he’d had at the Martu outstation and at Valaam. He could see the Mereb River at the border of Eritrea and Ethiopia. Moonlight lay across the coffee-colored water like icing. Then flashes of light and the rattled pop of gunfire ran like a line of fireflies behind him and in front of him. Birhan scurried out of the shadows, shouting at Angelo to get down, until blood splattered out of his mouth and he arched backward, grabbing at his chest and looking down at the holes in his shirt, blood leaking out. He fell to his knees. Angelo caught him, but he was dead already. On a hill rising up the near bank of the river, Angelo saw the tattooed man, the man who was not a man and whose face, like Angelo’s, was haunted with remorse.

  Angelo had enough faith left to believe this dream was a warning. He sat for hours listening to Birhan breathe, feeling the weight of the boy’s life in his hands. Take him across the border and he died. Leave him behind and the army got him and he died—in body or in spirit.

  Angelo needed someone who could help him get Birhan out safely. Mouse had left him a contact who could forge passports and visas, but working that thread would take access to technology he didn’t have in Eritrea. His only other option meant taking a terrible risk. But what choice did he have? His hands shook as he punched the numbers on the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “I need help.”

  “Well, bless your heart.” Kitty sounded like she’d been expecting his call.

  He pulled at the tendons on the back of his neck. “Please.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Eritrea.”

  “Where?”
/>   “Africa.”

  “Why on earth there?”

  “Following a lead from the gold book.”

  “Have you found anything?” There was a breathless anticipation in Kitty’s voice.

  “My last hope of finding anything useful is in Ethiopia.” The answer was technically accurate, but it hid the rest of the truth from her—another skill Mouse had taught him. “I know I shouldn’t have left without telling you. But . . . I don’t like your husband. I don’t like being bullied. I want to do this on my own.”

  “Clearly you can’t.”

  Angelo’s jaw locked tight. “You’re right,” he finally said. “I need your help.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “I need visas to get from Eritrea to Ethiopia, probably by way of Sudan. One for me and one for someone else.”

  There was a moment of silence, and then, “Someone else?”

  “A guide. Someone who knows the area. But it will be tricky getting him out of Eritrea.”

  Kitty laughed lightly. “Just give me his information. I’m good with tricky.”

  Angelo had just hung up when Birhan came back into the room, yawning.

  “Grab your things,” Angelo said. “We need to get to Asmara by noon.”

  “Asmara? I thought we were headed to the border. Tonight.”

  “Change of plans.”

  “What has happened?” the boy asked.

  “Nothing. I just decided we’re going to fly instead.”

  Birhan sank onto the bed. “You are leaving me behind.”

  “No, Birhan. It’s just too dangerous to try the border. If you were to—”

  “But I cannot get visa.” A note of panic threaded through his words.

  “There’ll be visas waiting on us at the airport, one for me and one for you. I promise. We are brothers, yes?”

  Birhan jumped onto the bed and wrapped Angelo in his arms. “How have you done this thing?”

  “I called . . . a friend.” Angelo pulled away from the boy’s embrace and nervously ran his fingers through his hair. He was already counting down the time he had to get ahead of the traps Kitty and the Reverend would inevitably set.

  “I am going with you. I am leaving Eritrea. Truly?” Birhan’s face was lit with joy. “Thank you for this miracle, brother. Thank you, Angelo.”

  Birhan blasted his music in the jeep, half dancing and half driving back to Asmara, leaving Angelo to wrestle with doubt. The call to Kitty hadn’t just been for Birhan’s sake.

  The bones of the dead children in the cave had been rattling in his conscience. Images of the suffering they must have endured played on a loop in his head whenever he closed his eyes. His imagination painted faces on their small bodies. They all had delicate features and brown hair. They all had green eyes. In his mind, they were all versions of Mouse—but not her. They were all her little brother.

  The truth had been stalking Angelo since his night of prayer in the tiny church at Gethsemane. It had finally sunk its teeth into him last night after his dream and would not let him go. His conviction that he was God’s chosen warrior was a lie fed by his bitterness and grief. He hadn’t really wanted to be a warrior; he just wanted to die so he could be with Mouse again.

  In the dark hours of the morning, Angelo had decided to do something much more difficult. He would live in a world without Mouse. He would live to honor her. She would not have wanted Angelo to kill her father—she’d had that chance at Megiddo, and she had chosen not to fight. Mouse wouldn’t want him to fight either. Mouse would want Angelo to save her little brother—it had been her last wish. And so he would. He would be Father Lucas to the boy and raise him to be like Mouse. Armageddon would just have to wait.

  Angelo had called Kitty to help him get Birhan out of Eritrea, but he also needed to know if his suspicions were right. Was she planning to use the blood on the stone angel to track Mouse’s little brother? Had she done it already? Angelo’s best chance of finding answers was through her.

  He still needed something to protect him from Mouse’s father, something that would get him past the demon minions and back out again with the boy, alive. Angelo had no idea how sticks and gold plates and a box of magic ash were supposed to help. Where was the Book of the Just? Would he be able to find it and hide Birhan before Kitty and the Reverend caught up to him?

  When he and Birhan got to the airport at Asmara, a courier was waiting for them with everything they needed—visas, tickets, and a new cellphone for Angelo. It had a text from Kitty. I’VE MISSED YOU. WELCOME BACK.

  Before their flight to Khartoum, they had just enough time for Birhan to call his mother and say good-bye, and for Angelo to pick up a map and guidebook to Ethiopia. Birhan was quiet on the plane, watching out the window as his homeland fell away behind him. Angelo thumbed through the travel guide, looking for anything about ancient cities and tombs and lions in the north part of the country. He found two likely candidates—Axum and Yeha. Both had been ancient cities: Yeha was thought to belong to the earlier kingdom of D’mt, and Axum, the eventual capital city of the Axumites. Both cultures were thought to have direct ties to the ruins at Qohaito. Both places also had excavated tombs, and Axum boasted several unusual obelisks, including one inscribed with what some scholars thought might be an early rendering of the Ark of the Covenant.

  There was also an Ethiopian church at Axum claiming to have the actual Ark itself cloistered away, where they had watched over it for centuries after the son of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba brought the holy relic out of Jerusalem for safekeeping. With a little less dramatic flair, Yeha offered an ancient temple, thought to belong to a group worshipping a fertility goddess. There was not much known about the site and the people who had lived there. Neither entry mentioned anything about a lion.

  Angelo picked up his phone to search the internet. There was another text from Kitty. SEE YOU SOON.

  Worrying about her wouldn’t help him, so Angelo shook her off and found what he needed with one hit. A travel blog mentioned an odd formation in the hills above the ruins of Yeha, a mountain outcropping that looked just like the head of a lion. There were even pictures. Today people called it the lion of Judah and claimed it guarded the ancient city. No one had excavated the area yet. No one knew if the formation was natural or man-made, but, to Angelo’s eyes, the picture looked like a worn-down version of the sphinx, legs stretched out in front of a majestic lion’s head elevated high over the surrounding valleys and rolling hills. It looked like a good place to be set to rest—a sweet end.

  Angelo and Birhan ate breakfast in the rental car on the way to Yeha, the sun just easing up from the horizon as they parked at the lot below the path that led up to the temple ruins. They saw no one as they walked past the tombs and the temple and headed for the mountains on the west side of the village. The monument stood out, dark against the violets and pinks of the lightening sky, a clear silhouette of a lion’s head, as if a child had drawn it, simple and stark.

  “We think to look in the mountain and not the tombs?” Birhan asked.

  “We found the other two objects—”

  “Sticks.”

  “Sticks,” Angelo conceded. “We found them in the mountains. Makes sense this one would be, too. And if it were in the tombs, at least the ones that have been excavated, someone would’ve already found it, right? Even if they didn’t know what it was.”

  “Do we know what it is?”

  Angelo grunted, “No.”

  “We think is inside the lion?”

  “Or beneath it. Or below it. Or at its base.”

  “That’s a lot of ‘or’ to be looking at.”

  “I know. We’re going to split up to cover more ground.”

  As they neared the mountain, Angelo sent Birhan up what was a terribly easy slope compared to their climbs at Qohaito. He wanted him to search all around the lion’s head. Angelo searched in the dip at the chest and along the rock jutting out like legs. The terrain was difficult—not as steep as
Qohaito, but layered with loose stone that broke away under the weight of his crutches.

  Hours into searching, the heat and lack of sleep beginning to sap his energy, Angelo rested against a rounded stone and pulled out his canteen. He could hear Birhan above him sending little avalanches down the lion’s face, as if the beast was slavering shards of rock. Angelo could see people wandering around the temple below, tourists who would likely make their way up to see the lion’s head soon enough.

  The lion watches over me, he said to himself again and again. He looked over his shoulder at the lion’s head. “You’re not looking at the temple or the tombs, are you? You’re not looking at me. What are you watching?”

  Angelo turned slowly, following the lion’s line of sight. That’s when he saw it.

  “Birhan!” he called up. “Come down! I think I know where it is.”

  The lion was staring directly at the rugged mountaintop beside it. It was really part of the same mountain with a section in the middle gone. Eroded or carved away—Angelo didn’t know or care. With urgency, he pulled the straps of his crutches up his arms so they dangled loosely from his elbows. He scrambled over the rock in front of him and then slid down the other side, bits of jagged stone ripping his khakis and cutting his hands, his crutches bouncing and clanging as he dragged them with him. But he was sliding too fast toward the deep gap on the other side. At the last moment, he shot his leg out, wedging himself against the next outcropping to keep from falling. Angelo cried out as his hip twisted up against his spine, sending a flare of pain up his leg and back. The gap opened up below Angelo like a waiting mouth.

  Birhan was on the lion’s leg but made it to Angelo in a couple of running leaps. “I’m here, brother. I’ve got you.” He grabbed him under the arms and pulled him free.

  Panting, Angelo laid his head back against the rock, tossing his arm over his eyes to shield them from the sun, which was now high in the sky.

  “You wait next time, yes?” Birhan clapped him on the shoulder and tugged him upright. “Where we going?”

  “There.” Angelo pointed at the rough, rectangular mountaintop in front of them, resting just a little lower than the lion. “That’s what he’s looking at.”