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VI. ON BEYOND BEDLAM
Josh leaned his head back against the side of the cave and swiped idly at his bloody nose. His strength ebbed with the evening as if he were a tide.
His heart grew anxious, beating a frantic pulse within his chest like a rabid moth, but Josh's senses dulled within the shroud of his weariness. He was alone and he hated this miserable cave and the day was darkening and, except for the pain, all of this was unendurably monotonous.
He could not remember ever having any courage, except that he surely must have brought some into this endeavor. Courage, a distant and meaningless word, lost in all the waves of retching. He could not remember the feel of it, any more than he could remember his family or his property or any of life beyond this dank empty hole of stone.
His world had been reduced to the precepts of the earthen bowl and its deceptively simple liquid premise, as incomprehensible and irrefutable as death.
Josh tried to think of Mira, but compassion was a luxury he no longer owned. His attention focused entirely on the center of his flesh, waiting with the unmerciful concentration of the predator, the taut dread of the prey.
Josh waited for the warning wave which would signal the next paroxysm and pain. He knew it would return and his only concern was when.
Josh had been ill before. This was something else entirely. Every muscle of his body was knotted and burning and bruised, battered beyond exhaustion. His insides were empty and raw. When his flesh had run out of vomit and feces to answer the spastic convulsions, it began to send out bile and blood. What was left? Would he gradually spew himself inside-out?
Josh ached with the growing tetanus rigor which never abated now, even in the brief respites between retching and fouling. His muscles were so sore he felt sure they had burst and only seemed whole because the overlying skin had not let them leak away like the rest of him.
Oh, Merciful Father! The swell of agony began again. He felt a tearing like impalement and disemboweling. The ghastly spasm caught him unprepared, for all his vigilance. What preparation was possible except knowing there was something beyond the pain? He had lost his chance for even that and the misery claimed the last of his reason, whipping him along a mindless path beyond perceiving, where pain acquired the dire bright colors of immolation.
When it had passed, Josh was so disoriented he could not think where he was or what was happening to him. He was only aware of a hoarse howling nearby. The moment he noticed the rasping noise, it ceased. He felt his jaw relax and realized he must have made the noise though it sounded nothing like him at all.
The cave tipped over and slapped his cheek on the floor.
Josh rolled his knees up to his chin and lay there in a knot, crying dry tears for himself, determined not to sleep. He was thoroughly astonished, and not a little disheartened, to find himself dreaming.
"Oh, Josh, shame on you," the gentle chiding washed over his ears, partly form, partly sound.
"I am sorry," Josh answered stupidly. And he was sorry, but mostly for himself.
He knew he dreamt. The pain was gone. The cave was gone. He sat in the kitchen at Date Home. Lydia bustled about, stirring the sun, warming him to all the pleasures he remembered. She had been so tiny when he took her for his wife, but after Joshua and then James, she had transformed into a soft and plumper version of herself, so that even when she was not with child, she seemed gravid, fertile, lush. Lydia was sheer comfort to him. Her velvety ways smoothed his rough life, blessed him with tenderness and ease.
To see her here was more miracle than he could contain and he was suddenly apprehensive about losing her all over again. Josh waited fearfully for her to speak.
"You have been laboring so long, old man." Lydia hitched up her pale green robe and sat on the table in front of him. She kicked her legs like a child sitting on the bank of a river. "1 should think you would have had that babe by now."
"I am poisoned, Lydia. I am dying." Should he tell her she was also dead and their reunion doubtless meant he was joining her?
"That is not what I meant, Josh." Lydia chuckled disapprovingly. "The kitchen, Josh? Well, I suppose I should be complimented, but I'd much rather have it be the garden."
As she said this her words became the truth. Josh found himself sitting beside her on the soft grass of the mount, beneath the oldest olive tree in the grove. The sunny morning had turned to deepest night and the wide sky seemed a grove of stars. Beyond the soft, dark earth of the newly-turned garden, Josh could just see the round well of the oil press.
"Yes, that is much better." Lydia folded her pudgy hands in her lap. "How are you, old man?" she asked with an intimate twinkle in her brown eyes. "Have you finally given up laboring that babe?"
"Lydia, what are you talking about?" He laid his hands on hers, apologizing for their iciness. "See how cold they are, Lydia? I am dying."
Lydia patted his hands and loosened the brown linen of her veil. She slipped it off. She busied her hands with folding it, ignoring the effect this provocative gesture produced in her husband. "Well I died doing it and you seem set on nothing less. You just have to stop it, Josh. You cannot have that baby, any more than I could."
"I am not pregnant, Lydia." Josh was utterly surprised that he could not keep his mind focused on his desperate straits. His thoughts were tangled in his wife's long loose hair.
"More's the pity, old man, that you do not hear what you say. What are the abandoned mothers you house? What is this lovely little Mira? What are any of these but the babe you cannot deliver, the womb you do not own?"
"Lydia!" He had forgotten how sharp her tongue could be.
"Oh, dear old man," Lydia pulled her hair over her right shoulder and began braiding it. "You could not have the baby for me. You could not save me. You could not save the twin. Still you labor. How many years before you will be delivered?"
"I am not pregnant, Lydia. Delivered of what?" He had also forgotten how very angry she could make him. Josh took her hands. The braiding was irritating him. He felt the heat of his ire building in his palms, cooling her hands by comparison.
Lydia's full mouth pursed and she shook her head, lifting her bright eyes to the star fields above them. "Be delivered, Josh. Bring forth the life that is within you. Bring forth the life that will save you. Be delivered."
"Stop this teasing, Lydia." Josh squeezed her hands more severely than he meant to. She curled her strong fingers and dug into him with her nails, reminding him to be civil.
"I know you are tired, Josh. I know you are anxious and short of temper. It is always thus when the time is so near."
"What is always thus?" Josh felt his head swirling round her words. The night smudged the garden with deepening shadows.
"You must go back, Josh."
He could hardly see her, just a darker shade against the night.
"How can I be strong when I am so afraid?" Josh thought she might take pity on him if she understood how badly the impossible poison had undermined his spirit.
"Be not afraid, Josh." Her words floated, disembodied out of the blackness.
"Goodbye, Lydia," he said to the emptiness. The lonely words tore his throat.
"And God is also with you, Josh," the answer drifted down to him as if from a great height. It broke over him like a wave and scattered into the darkness.
A thousand echoes, "Be delivered. Be delivered."
Josh flailed his hands out and struggled back from the verge of his dying.
"Steady there, Josh." Gabe ducked beneath Josh's waving arms and picked him up off the cave floor. "Dear Lord, what has happened to you?"
Josh opened one jaundiced eye. "Leave me alone. I am poisoned. I am dying," he rasped out in the feeblest whisper.
"I might have guessed that, Friend. You reek of it. Here."
The next thing he knew, Josh was lowered into warm water, sputtering and howling. He was soon parted from the fetid robe and his weary muscles lost their knots in the warmth of the water and Gabe's gentle ministerings.
All of Josh's protests could not prevent Gabe's spooning down his throat, first medicine, and then honey and then milk, in ever greater quantities. When the water cooled, Gabe lifted him up again and lowered him into a second bath.
After assuring himself Josh was alert enough not to drown, Gabe left him a moment. Josh heard a loud splash beyond the cave entrance.
Gabe returned and spooned something else down Josh's throat--more milk he thought. Then Gabe lifted him out of the second warm bath, swaddled him up in several layers of soft cloaks, and laid him down on a dry bedding of straw while he cleaned and aired the cave.
Josh drifted off wondering how it was possible to air a cave. But he had felt the fluttering breeze, smelled the clean air draft the stench away. Then, how did this desolate stone hollow own, not one bath, but two, and with warm water? He was deep in dreamless sleep before he was bothered by any other considerations.
"Gabe?" Josh opened both eyes and tried to sit up.
Gabe reached beneath Josh's back and held him, repacking the straw as a prop for him. "I should have come sooner, but I did not know. Drink this, Josh, and then tell me what happened."
Josh grabbed for the bowl. "I can feed myself," he grumbled.
Gabe relinquished the drink and waved his right hand in the air.
Josh groaned. "Not the comb trick again."
"I think you are feeling better, Josh." Gabe moved behind him and began picking through the damp tangles.
Josh drained the bowl and set it down. He closed his eyes and enjoyed his painless fatigue and the gentle tug on his scalp as Gabe combed his hair.
"Tell me, Josh," Gabe asked again.
Josh told him the whole tale of the trial, as well as he remembered it. Not until he neared the end and the part about the poison did he think of Mira. Josh jerked up and then bent over, hugging his sore belly. "Go to Mira!" he gasped. "She may be still alive!"
"Lie down, Josh." Gabe helped him back. "Mira is fine. She has not been ill."
"How?" Josh panted.
"Her son protected her," Gabe answered uncomfortably.
"You mean the baby died?" Josh closed his eyes against the burning tears. He had murdered another with this terrible business of delivering. The poison had been less foul than the pain he felt in that instant. Poor Mira.
"No, Josh. Mira is unharmed. The babe is well. Josh, what is it?"
Josh turn his face to the wall and wept bitterly. Gabe laid his hand on his friend's shoulder and waited quietly for the jerking sobs to end. Josh stopped weeping and scraped the tears from his hollow cheeks with a vicious swipe of his palms. He told Gabe to leave him alone.
Gabe brought him three large vessels of honeyed-milk and told him to finish them before he returned.
Josh spent the next several hours contemplating the unwelcome revelation that had caught him unaware on the crest of his extremity. Mira's being saved had only magnified his guilt over all the others who had been lost to him and for whom he had been useless, as he had been to Mira, no matter the outcome.
The first hour, he thought how unfair all of this was. He was too old to be dredging up such complicated emotions, too old to be this naked to himself.
The second hour, he decided it was all a dream from the poisoning, an added torment produced from the prolonged agony. He judged it meant nothing at all. He was a righteous man--most of the time. Eli had said so in court, the kindest man--well, he did erupt from time-to-time. He had broken his father-in-law's stiff jaw and his brother's nose in the past year. He could destroy, but he could not create, or creating, could not sustain and protect. Even his occupation of masonry reflected this. What did he do, but destroy all the stone that was superfluous to leave the form which the stone possessed all along, even without him to free it?
The third hour, he admitted his guilt to the indifferent rock of the cave walls. He conjured up the faces of those who had died because of him: his mother, his daughter, his beloved wife, and his tiny son, Jude's twin brother, the babe who could not be born. He tottered to his feet and staggered across the cave, beating the stone wall with the side of his fists, growling at himself like a mad lion.
In the fourth hour, he understood Lydia's hard words to him. Confronted with the awful Truth, he had run. For seven long years he had been trying to crawl into this cave and die. He was no more born than Jude's twin.
Be delivered. Be delivered.
He might not be able to create, but he would stop destroying. He would start with himself.
Josh dropped the cloaks off his shoulders and strode out into the bright sun of Judea, naked as the day he was born--this very day, in fact. He lifted his arms as if he were embracing the sky and he threw back his head and laughed until he was dizzy.
And he felt Lydia pass through him, a sudden flush of warmth round his heart which drove him backwards into Gabe's arms.
"You've been here all along?" he accused Gabe. Inwardly, he reminded himself to be truthful. Gabe did not anger him. Josh was embarrassed at his sudden and silly display, but he realized this as an artificial shame of his own contrivance. He swore to himself he would not betray the first true happiness he had felt for too long a time.
"I just returned with another bath," Gabe pointed.
Josh looked at the chiseled stone trough, long as a man was tall. He reentered the cave shaking his head and laughing again. He pawed through the cloaks, looking for one to wear--only because he was cold and not because he was ashamed. "And I suppose you levitated it up here, Gabe, all the way from the river, and then heated it by magery."
Gabe walked into the cave with the trough in his arms. He set it down easily. "The sun did the warming. I did the carrying."
Josh stared. He could not have lifted the granite manger at his brawniest. Gabe was not even breathing hard. "You carried that up from the river?" The river was several miles away.
"And down to the river as well," Gabe sighed. "Several times,' he added.
Josh crept up to the manger and tested it. It might have been bolted to the cave floor, or carved of the same rock. "How?"
Gabe indicated he should bathe before the water cooled. Josh slipped into the warm water. The question never left his mind or his face, though it went unanswered as Gabe washed him.
"I can do that myself," Josh complained unconvincingly.
"I know, but it pleases me to care for you, Josh," Gabe rubbed Josh's shoulders. "I think it pleases you a little also."
You are delivered, Josh thought. There is no sense in lying anymore. He admitted to himself that he liked being cared for, that it filled the dreadful gap of Lydia's dying. Josh worked his lips around the truth. This was going to be more difficult than he had imagined. He hoped that Gabe would not misunderstand. "You are a great comfort to me, Gabe. You more than please me. I love you, as a son, as a dear friend." He could not help qualifying the statement of affection.
The comb tumbled from Gabe's hand and splashed into the tub. Josh feared he had shocked his young friend, but he had been delivered and there was no sense in turning back now.
Gabe was silent as he helped Josh dry and dress, then he oiled Josh's hair and beard.
"How do you afford these extravagances?" Josh asked, trying to lighten the tension.
"I stole them," Gabe answered.
"Not from anyone I know, I trust," Josh laughed. So, Gabe was not above a little larceny.
"Not unless you have friends in Egypt."
"A few, but I have not seen them in a while. Are you going to tell me how you lifted that trough when it is ten times your own weight, Gabe?"
Gabe did not answer. He walked out of the cave and returned with a sumptuous dinner which he arranged on the floor. "Eat this, Josh. And when you are finished, I will tell you everything."
Josh eyed the meal suspiciously.
Gabe reassured him. "I know your law, Josh. The food is proper."
The food was more than proper, it was wonderful. Bread and grapes and a grain stew found their way in due course down Josh's famished throat. As his hunger abated, he felt his earlier revelation, his deliverance, swell into a fullness of spirit which he could not contain in silence.
"Gabe," Josh washed down the last mouthful with a swallow of milk. "I have discovered myself." He felt a desire to explain himself, but the words were inadequate to the joy he felt.
Gabe laid his own sorrow and fear aside and watched his friend come to terms with his new gladness. The mason from Date Home was still drawn and pale from the terrible poisoning, but his eyes flashed like fired iron.
"Oh, Gabe." Josh's hands lifted sideways, describing excited arcs in the dim light of the cave. "I am such a stupid old donkey. I had to nearly die before I realized how dead I have been all along. I never worked a stone that was harder than myself. What impossible pride to think I could have saved my mother or Anna or Lydia or the baby. What arrogance to think that Mira would benefit by my senseless sacrifice, or that any other would profit from my guilt, which I hoarded like a miser. Eli said I was kind and giving, but I had no kindness for myself, so all the rest was shameful lying, blind denial." Josh ran his fingers through his hair.
"No, Gabe, these are only words. How can I say this? I was cowardly. As simple as that. I was afraid and my fear bound me up and locked me away. I was afraid of my helplessness, afraid of my pain, and so I pretended to power and to invulnerability, though I was impotent and wounded. At the trial, I made the truth with my own words, with my own life, and with the poisonous curse."
Josh leaned over the empty bowls and grabbed Gabe by his shoulders. His voice rang with his fervor, "I made the Truth, and so I had to see the Truth. It battered me without mercy for my fear, without concern for my fragile stubbornness. I have been delivered of the Truth, Gabe. And so has the Truth delivered me." Josh listened to the sound he made and wondered how else he could describe his feeling of abundance. "Be not afraid, Gabe. That is what I have learned."
Gabe slipped out of his grasp and pushed back. "Would that I were the twin in your delivery, Friend, but it is not that easy."
Josh's head tipped sideways. "I did not say it was easy, Gabe. It nearly killed me." Josh thought about explaining the attendant embarrassment that continued to subvert his new courage, but Gabe interrupted before he found the words.
"Well, I hope this does not finish the job, but I am ready to tell you the truth about me. Here," Gabe produced a thin blade in much the same manner as the comb trick.
Josh took the dagger, turning it over in his hands. The bone hilt was set with amethysts and the slender blade shone like silver. He looked at Gabe. "You stole this also?"
Gabe's solemn expression slacked. "No. That is a special knife. I may be killed with it."
"Why did you give it to me?" Josh feared Gabe's uncharacteristic gloominess resulted from Josh's over-exuberance. Perhaps he was over-doing the Truth. Was that possible?
"The knife's use will become apparent shortly. Where to begin?" Gabe inhaled. "You spoke the truth at the trial, that Mira had slept with no man."
Josh settled down on his elbow. He remembered he had also said Jake was the meanest man in Judea. He could hardly wait to present himself at Temple and prove that truth. "Yes?"
"You tried to lift the trough and said that no man could lift it." Gabe waited, but Josh was silent, picturing the look on Jake's face. "I lifted the trough easily, Josh. Mira did not lie to say no man is the father of her son. You did not lie to say this. I am no man, Josh."
Josh smiled. So Gabe was Mira's young man. Who else was always sneaking into the Annex? Who else but this golden-haired dreamer would have won fair Mira's sweet heart? Josh chided himself for not having guessed this sooner. How blind he had been to even the most obvious truths. "You might have returned sooner, Gabe. We could have settled this with less trouble. Surely you knew I would stand aside. Is it because you are not a Jew?"
Gabe doubled over laughing, but it was a frightening and bitter parody of mirth. "Not a Jew. Oh, Josh, if it were only that." He wiped his pale eyes. "I am not a mortal, Josh."
Josh's eyebrows knurled together, trenching his brow. Gabe was a little detached from reality, that had always been his charm. Despite his friendliness, Gabe had always seemed dispossessed royalty. Probably some displaced Roman or Greek family. They all claimed to be gods, to be immortals. "Whatever you are, Gabe, Mira loves you and will make you a fine wife. You will likewise be a fine husband and father."
"I cannot wed Mira," Gabe gasped as if Josh had suggested an entirely obscene act beyond all morality.
"You might have thought of that before you got her with child, son." Josh played with the bright blade. Did Gabe think Josh would kill him when he confessed his guilt in Mira's pregnancy?
"You do not understand, Josh. I can never marry her. She is a human!"
Josh wondered if part of Gabe's charming detachment were insanity.
"Do you remember we talked about the shepherd boy and how he loved the lamb? You said he would have to offer the lamb for sacrifice anyway, so what did it matter that he loved it? You also said something profane about him letting the lamb grow up and then--"
"I remember, Gabe. Calm yourself. I apologize for saying it." Josh had never seen Gabe in such a state. The young man trembled as if he would shake apart and his blue eyes burned feverishly.
"If the boy had done as you suggest--for whatever reason--would you then suggest he marry the sheep?"
Josh bounded up. "What unmitigated--! I know you think you are some princeling, but Mira is every bit the royalty you are and twice the majesty! No wonder you gave me this blade, you impossible--! Mira is not an animal! Whatever you think you are!" Josh felt the old stiffness creeping into his shoulders. No, he would be delivered. With great effort he forced himself to sit down again and to breathe deeply. He released his fist from the knife hilt and tucked the blade into the hem of his sleeve.
He tried to listen to the Truth. Gabe was frightened witless. He was trying to convey something for which he had no proper words. And? And, Josh shuddered himself, beneath the reason for his outburst. Josh's dark eyes widened. Damnation! Lydia forgive him--he never doubted she would--but somehow in all of this mess, Josh had fallen in love with Mira. As a daughter, he qualified, but he had to admit there was very little in him felt fatherly towards her anymore.
In Gabe's words of abandonment, Josh had felt the relief of his jealous heart, and he had flailed out at Gabe only because he did not want. the Truth. Oh, this was going to be a difficult business, this Truth, this deliverance. But he could see now the origin of his impossible temper, even as he understood the wellspring of his seemingly admirable charity. And Jake was only an excuse for him to protect Mira, while claiming no desire for her.
Gabe pulled open the upper part of his robe and he tipped his chin up. "Kill me now, Josh, or listen to me. This will be hard enough to say, without having to fight for the privilege of saying it."
"Forgive me, Gabe. I know this is hard for you. For me, also. I am very much in love with Mira. I did not understand that until now. I want her happiness, Gabe. If you are that happiness, I want you to go to her and to claim her your own. As much as I want her to love me, as much as it will hurt me to lose her, still I want Mira to have her desire." Josh felt racked by the conflicting and unaccustomed emotions, but he held firm and tried to own them, however uncomfortable they made him.
"You have nothing to fear from me, Josh. Mira does not love me in that way. I am as different from Mira as that boy from his lamb," Gabe's hands drifted down from the neck of his robe and settled stiffly on his lap. "I am a dragon."
Gabe's melancholy and madness touched Josh and he wondered if his friend's insanity would mark Mira's baby.
Gabe delivered his explanation in pious, sober tones, more fearsome than wild ravings. "The dragons used to hunt men, when men were still wild. As they became more biddable, we began to herd them, to walk among them in disguise. Our attitude towards Man changed, I think because some of us were spending time as men. In each millennium, new Guardians are chosen, and with each new group of herdsmen, our appreciation of Man and his works has magnified. We long ago stopped thinking of mankind as a food-beaste. Man's sacrifices have been stopped since Abraham, and the Drake Lords now only sacrifice mortals infrequently, and then with great reverence--much in the same way you do with lambs. You no longer take the scapegoat to Azazel each year, but then, Azazel is no longer Guardian of your flock."
And James had thought Jake was a djinn. Poor, poor Gabe, Josh thought. What grim wounding had driven his mind to this torment, so far from Truth?
"My four brothers and I are the Shepherds in this millennium. Mica is guardian in Persia, Rafe in the western lands, Peni in Egypt, and Samael was given the East. I watch the Judean herds, except for the half-century 1 spent in the lands beyond the West. That was during the Babylonian Exile. You made sport of me that I should take your people's plight so personally, but I was responsible. Had I been at Megiddo to guard King Josiah..."
Josh did not know whether reasoning would work in a situation like this, whether the Truth were as curative of the mind, as it was of the soul. "Gabe," he spoke cautiously, softly. "You said you were a djinn, and then a dragon and then you named your brothers as the five archangels of the Lord. Do you think that makes sense?"
Gabe's pale eyes narrowed. "You think this is not so. Don't you remember the discussion we had about Man's misperception of divine beings, seeing them both as the worst monsters and the holiest spirits?"
"You do not seem either at this moment, Friend," Josh said sorrowfully, trying not to deny his frustrating helplessness in Gabe's sad plight.
"You don't believe me!" Gabe was indignant. "As hard as this is for me to say and you think I am joking! No. You think I am crazy."
"I am exceedingly concerned about you. I think you are very upset and confused, Gabe," Josh replied carefully.
"Perhaps that is best," Gabe contemplated the old mason. "You can pity me until I am finished confessing. Then I will prove it to you. Then you can kill me if it pleases you to do so. Yes, that is probably for the best.
"I alone among my brothers feel that Man is not an animal. They have decreased the sacrifice of mortals to once each year, at Beltane. We were supposed to rotate through the herds, but each year it was my turn, I managed to escape killing one of my own, who were so precious to me...until now. Mira was chosen to be sacrificed this year. I, I rendered her unsuitable for sacrifice to spare her life, but I never imagined she would, she would--"
"End up with child?" Josh supplied. Maybe if the conversation turned back to Mira, these wild imaginings of Gabe's would lessen.
"I," Gabe lifted his hands to his temples. "Honestly, Josh, I do not know what she is with. I told you, I am not human. Our offspring are not as human babes."
Josh knew of a few hasidim in the north that were rumored to cast out such devils as Gabe had. Perhaps he could be persuaded...
Gabe folded his hands together and bowed his long neck forward. "So my brothers, deprived of their sacrifice, came into Judea and stole a classmate of Mira's as substitute. They found her alone in a house in Bread Home. Mica put her into a trance which seemed as death and she was buried. Then he stole her from her tomb." Gabe's face lifted and his high-boned cheeks were washed with tears. "They threatened to kill both you and Mira unless I took my part in the sacrifice. I had no choice but to kill the girl. I swear she was at peace and there was no pain. She expired as quietly and nobly as the moon setting."
This was the first suggestion that Gabe's insanity might be dangerous. Josh couched his question in tones of unconcern. "There was a girl who died? You saw this and it made you anxious?"
"Josh! Aren't you listening to me? I killed Anna!"
For an instant, Josh believed his words. Gabe surely did. But there had been no mark on Ann, no sign of violence, except that some ghoulish thief had taken her from the tomb. No, kind-hearted Gabe had taken all the tragedy of the past year upon his young shoulders, made himself the scapegoat, just as Josh had done.
"With this knife," Gabe gestured towards Josh's left sleeve, "I killed your daughter."
"I know what you are doing, Gabe. The Father knows I have done the same thing. Listen to me. You are making yourself ill with this false guilt of yours. You have perverted your innocent charity into senseless penitence. Let the dead bury their own. You are with the living, Gabe. Be delivered."
Gabe rubbed his eyes and exhaled so forcefully the air trembled. "There is nothing more I can say, Josh. Bring the knife with you. We are going outside. If I do this in the cave we are liable to asphyxiate on the brimstone."
Josh followed him to make sure he did not hurt himself. Gabe's words had lost even a semblance of intelligibility. The sun had set, but there was still enough light to see in the violet shades of dusk. Josh was disheartened to see Gabe tear off his robe and the rest, to stand naked in the falling night.
Gabe was more ill of spirit than even Josh had been. Josh would have thought himself exceptional in that at least. "Gabe, what are you doing?" The eerie electric spark of the twilight made Josh whisper. That, and he did not want to drive his friend farther into oblivion.
"I am centering, Josh. I am going to show you a truth you will remember all your days. I warn you, be afraid. Many have lost their minds seeing this. Ezekiel was never the same, nor Lot, nor--. Be careful that you do not perceive more of the truth than you can stand."Josh wanted to embrace him, to somehow give him the peace he felt, but Gabe was beyond him. Josh watched and prayed, and hoped Gabe would come to his senses.
Gabe drew his beautiful frame into perfect rectitude. Josh felt the tragedy that someone so fair of body could be so afflicted of mind.
Gabe lifted his arms towards the heavens as if he were harvesting the stars. As he reached directly over his head, there was an explosive report. His shoulders disarticulated and continued to rotate backward behind him.
Josh felt his gut roil and he put both his hands over his belly.
Fleshy projections erupted from Gabe's maimed and empty sockets, fingers and then hands and then a second set of arms emerged. From the sides of Gabe's neck a second shoulder girdle crawled beneath the skin towards the dislocated shoulders.
Josh's head reeled and his knees buckled to the ground of their own accord.
Gabe's sternum swelled forward into the gigantic wing keel for the original arms which were elongating rapidly into spiderish struts, each finger longer than his arms, except for the withered thumbs.
Josh reminded himself he should breathe. He watched Gabe's fair skin disappear beneath burnished gold leaf. Scales, he thought, just as they proceeded from scales to opalescent feathers and softest down, cloaking Gabe's shoulders in coverts, draping his hands in pinions and primary and secondary feathers. Gabe stood braced between the great white sails of his wings which spanned five strides on each side.
The sulfurous smell of the transfiguration made Josh's eyes water and his nose sting and run down his moustache into his beard, but he knelt transfixed as the Archangel Gabriel furled the glorious wings and came towards him.
"Gabe?" Josh asked warily. This vision was similar to his blonde-haired friend, but clearly this being was transcendent, of mortality, of reality, perhaps even of truth.
"Yes, Josh. It is me. Are you all right? I can stop here. I have no wish to harm you."
"I am not afraid," Josh replied. Hearing Gabe's familiar light tones helped orient him in the face of this impossibility, but Josh wondered if he had lost his appreciation of the Truth already. Was there such a thing as too much Truth?
"Very well, then." Gabe stepped back a few strides and continued to the highest level of Lithdrake, the Simurgh.
Josh saw the wings change color to flame-bright, sun-blinding reds and purples and oranges. He watched the legs and arms shrink beneath the burgeoning conflagration of the luminous plumage. He glanced up once or twice at Gabe's face, but that was the most he could stand. Gabe's fine features squirmed disgustingly, disappearing beneath the gild of the dragon masque and the onyx beak. The sky blue eyes rounded and ignited in blazing orbs of fascination.
Josh closed his eyes and wrapped himself in his arms, trying to lose the feeling he was falling at great speed down a bottomless pit. When he opened them again he saw the gigantic bird coming towards him on obsidian talons that tore the rocks as if they were turf.
Josh stood up and faced the monster. "What do you mean to do with me?"
The Lith turned its head sideways and stared at him with a single, baleful eye. It settled itself down on the ground like a hen roosting. The Simurgh nudged the fallen knife with the tip of its ebony beak.
Josh picked up the knife, and as he did so, the monster laid its head down on the ground, stretching out its neck.
"You mean me to kill you, Gabe?" There was no answer. Evidently, Gabe could not speak in this form, at least, not with mortals. "Oh," all the air went out of Josh in an agonal rush of insight and woe. Josh turned his back to the bird that was ten times his size and known to be carnivorous.
"I could say that you betrayed our friendship," Josh played with the knife. "But what friendship is there between a god and a man? You showed great restraint not to laugh louder when I suggested you and Mira should be wed. I should kill you, but then I would only be the animal you think me to be."
Josh whirled round, "And it is you who are the beaste!"
The great eyes blinked shut tightly.
"Truth!" Josh howled the word as if it were a malediction. "Phoenix! Hah! You are nothing but a common magpie! We are your shiny trinkets! How long have you been collecting us just because we glittered a moment in your bright eye? Do we amuse you, Lord? Do we please you to tend us? Does it warm your heart to be kind to a few of the dumb beastes, because we make such interesting pets?" Josh began to hear the Truth beneath the truth he spoke and it stopped him abruptly.
Now, if ever, was the time to prove his conversion, his turning in the dark cave towards the light. Gabe might answer to different Truths entirely, but still they were true. What was the proof of friendship, if it were not understanding? Had Gabe not revealed himself and offered his life in all honor for recompense? There was no possible price for Anna's life, for Mira's violation. Gabe’s death would not amend either tragedy. Gabe suffered. Gabe still lived. Josh loved Gabe. It was clear what he must do, but Josh found it difficult to surrender his anger.
He strode towards the Simurgh and touched its neck with his bare hand. Gabe shivered his feathers and opened his eyes.
The words mired in his throat, but Josh forced them out with as much sincerity as he could manage. "I forgive you, Gabe. We are both old magpies. Me with my lands and my houses and my widows. You with your sheep. How can I kill you for my own faults? If there were a way to save Anna I know you would have tried."
The Simurgh lifted its bright head to nod. A single crystalline tear rolled down the golden filigree of the awesome masque.
"I will keep your knife, in honor of Anna's memory," Josh reached up to caress the soft down beneath the monster's chin. "And to remind myself of this moment, when I was more than a sheep.
"I do not want your life, but you can do me a favor."
The Simurgh curled its long neck around and cocked its noble head.
"Take me aloft, Gabe, high over Jerusalem. Show me what The Father sees when he looks down upon us."