Unholy Night

I

The door opened, and there she was, as wickedly beautiful and dangerous as he remembered.

“Hello, Sela,” he said.

How long had it been, eight years? No, it has to be more. Could it be more? Balthazar was too tired to tax his mind with the math. Besides, it didn’t matter how long it’d been. Here they were, and here she was — a sight for six pairs of sore eyes. Here was the face they’d all crossed an ocean of sand to find, without food or rest, leaving Hebron with their camels in a full gallop, as day became freezing night became glaring morning and scorching day. Here was the reason they’d kept riding, half dead, toward the promised land of Beersheba, the last waypoint of note before the Judean Desert’s long march into Egypt. The last chance to replenish. Riding with nothing to guide them but the faint hope that Balthazar’s information was up to date. That the rumors he’d held on to were true. And always with the knowledge that the Romans weren’t far behind.

But on reaching the city walls, the fugitives had found the promised land of Beersheba a wasteland. At first they thought the Romans might’ve beaten them again, for there was hardly a man or woman to be seen on the streets. Fires had been left to burn themselves out, and malnourished dogs roamed the streets in search of scraps. But it was famine, not Roman swords, that had laid waste to Beersheba. For its crops had been decimated by the only thing farmers feared more than drought:

Locusts.

They’d come as a black cloud. A living storm, half the size of Judea, eating its way across North Africa. Tens of millions of soulless eyes and insatiable mouths, flying from field to field, leaf to leaf, consuming everything they touched. And though months had passed since they’d come through Beersheba, leaving ruin in their wake, the ground was still littered with their withered molts. The dead shells that each locust had cast off, renewing itself before moving on, leaving the city a dead shell, suddenly and totally transformed but not renewed.

The once-vibrant streets were now eerily quiet. Empty. With the crops had gone the traders and merchants, and with the traders and merchants had gone the slaveholders and their slaves. They’d all moved on in search of food and commerce, leaving only a skeleton crew of faithful denizens behind. Seeing all of this on their arrival, Balthazar’s faint hope had just about snuffed itself out:

She won’t be here. She’ll have moved on like the others.

But here she was.

Here she was, standing at the door of a two-story house, its smooth white walls and red-tiled roof distinctly Roman. Here she was, clearly stunned to see his face.

Of course she’s stunned. Here I am, after all this time, after what happened, after the way it ended.

Sela stared back at him for what seemed like ages, her expression unchanging. Her hair black as ink. Her body long and lean, with skin a polished copper, same as her eyes. Ten years. No, it’s definitely ten. She would be twenty-four now, give or take a year, but she looked almost exactly as he’d left her.

Balthazar smiled. That sad smile she used to love. The one she could never resist. Not for all her anger, not for all her sadness and distrust. Those things had never mattered when it came to Balthazar. They’d always just seemed to melt away when she looked at him. Back when they were young, and in the kind of love that only the young can be in. The first love. The sick-to-your-stomach, lying-awake-all-night-counting-the-hours-until-you-saw-each-other-next kind.

Did she ever think this day would come? Did she half expect to see me standing here every time she opened this door? Has she thought of me as often as I’ve thought of her? Has there ever been someone else? More than one someone? Is there someone now?

Balthazar opened his mouth to pay her a compliment. It wasn’t fully formed yet, but he was leaning in the direction of praising her beauty. Something like, “The years have been kind.”

No, that’s stupid. Of course they haven’t been kind.

“You haven’t aged a day” popped in next, but it lacked the poetry he was going for.

“You’re just like I remember?” No, that evokes the past, and we definitely don’t want to bring up the past.

With his mouth fully open and his time up, Balthazar settled on the innocuous but safe, “It’s good to see you.”

But before the words could roll off his tongue, a fist was in his mouth.

It was driven there with so much force that his own teeth were briefly weaponized and turned against him, cutting clean through his top and bottom lip from the inside. Balthazar nearly passed out as his brain rattled around in his skull, and he staggered backward into the cobblestone street, struggling to keep his balance.

At first he didn’t realize he’d been hit. There’d been no windup, no change of expression to warn him it was coming. One minute she’d been there, beautiful and clear, and the next, there’d been three of her — her faces floating behind a thick sheet of cloudy glass. By the time the first packets of pain began to arrive from his mouth, slicing their way through the fog, he’d been hit again. First with another fist, and then with the bottom of a sandal, as Sela kicked him square in the throat.

For a moment, it had all been beauty and reminiscence. The music of love’s long-delayed reunion. Now Balthazar was clutching his throat, gasping for breath and barely clinging to consciousness, fists and feet coming at him without mercy. His arms hung stupidly at his side as his face was struck again and again. Fist, sandal, sandal, fist. The only thing keeping him from passing out was curiosity. His mind was so wrapped up in trying to sort out just what the hell was happening, that it refused to shut down. Even as another kick found his chin, snapping his head back violently and sending Balthazar to the ground with a dull thud.

Somewhere, across a shapeless, cavernous space, the others were looking down at him, stunned and silent. One of them was yelling something. Something like “Wait!” or “Stop!” or “What are you doing?”

Is that the carpenter? Is that the carpenter telling her to stop? I can’t te — gahhhhhh, my face hurts…

With Balthazar rolling on his back, clutching at his already-swollen lips and nose, Sela finally stopped and got a good look at the other people outside her front door: three men, a girl, and an infant. All of their jaws hanging open. All of them looking at her, wondering if they were next. With her chest rising and falling with each heavy breath, Sela brushed aside the hair in her eyes, and said, “Come in.”

II

He was fourteen when he first saw her. Only two years older than he’d been when he’d robbed his first grave, but 100 years wiser.

He could remember the day, the hour, her clothes, the light. He’d been walking home from the forum, where he once picked pockets amid the noise and madness, risking so much for such paltry rewards. But not anymore. Things were different now. There was no need to pick pockets, to pay off accomplices and reward tips with part of the profits. These days, Balthazar visited the forum to spend, not earn. And there was plenty to spend, thanks to his stroke of genius, his realization that it was easier to steal from the dead than the living.

Nearly every night after that first plunder, Balthazar had waded through the dark water, returning to the shallow Roman graves on the far side of the Orontes. Nearly every night, so long as the moon hadn’t been too bright or the sentries too close, he’d dug up the freshly buried corpses of the condemned. He’d been frightened at first, yes, especially when he unearthed some of the more gruesome specimens. Those who’d been beheaded or stoned to death. Being so recently buried, their blood was often wet, the expressions on their faces still fresh. Alone in the dark, Balthazar’s young imagination had gotten the best of him in the early weeks: He’d seen their eyes pop open, felt their cold fingers grab at his arms. But as the months wore on, these hallucinations had grown less frequent, and the fear had grown weaker and weaker, until one day, he realized it had disappeared altogether.

In the two years since his stroke of genius, Balthazar had gotten so fast that he could process ten corpses in a single night, assuming the executioners had been that busy — digging them up, looting them, and returning them to the desert without the Romans ever knowing he’d been there. Filling his pockets with their rings and necklaces, with their silver and gold and silk. And all without a single accomplice. So much more reward, with only a fraction of the risk.

A month after he began operations, Balthazar had stolen enough to move his family into a new neighborhood. A year after that, he’d moved them again — this time into a house that had once belonged to a Roman nobleman. His sisters had new fabrics to sew. Abdi had new clothes and toys. And his mother had everything a mother could want: a new house to care for, plenty of food to cook, a new stove to cook it in, rugs to sit on, oil lamps to light her way. And while Balthazar knew she had her suspicions about their newfound wealth, she never asked him where the money came from or where he disappeared to each night. The closest she ever came was just before they moved into the nobleman’s house. Upon seeing it for the first time, Balthazar’s mother pulled him aside, looked him squarely in the eye, and said, “Before I sleep under this roof, promise me one thing.”

“Anything, Mama.”

“Promise me that our happiness doesn’t come at the expense of another’s.”

He looked at her for a moment, silently wrestling with the prospect of lying to his mother’s face. More specifically, wrestling with how he was going to do it convincingly. On one hand, their happiness was certainly coming at another’s expense. If you wanted to get right down to it, people had paid for their happiness with their lives. On the other hand, she’d left him a fairly sizable loophole. Technically speaking, he was taking valuables from people who no longer had any use for them. Having a necklace or a gold ring wasn’t going to change the fact that they were dead, was it? He wasn’t making them any less happy than they’d been when they died, was he? Therefore, he could technically say in all honesty, “I promise.”

Balthazar had been tempted to tell her, just as he’d been tempted to tell his fellow thieves. But he’d kept his mouth shut. He hadn’t spoken a word of his dealings with the dead. Not to his family and especially not to his fellow pickpockets. It wasn’t that he feared their condemnation, although he knew that some would surely condemn him for violating the old superstitions. What he really feared was their competition. Balthazar knew he wasn’t the only boy who’d be able to see his way past a few social mores and dead bodies. Not when there was that much money just sitting there in the sand, ready for the taking.

No, he’d stumbled onto a treasure vault that constantly replenished itself, and he wasn’t about to share it. Not when the Romans were sending so many men and their jewelry to the executioner. Not when everything was going so perfectly.

And then he saw her, and it all went to hell.

He’d been walking home from the forum, carrying a bag of grain along the cobblestone streets of his new neighborhood. A neighborhood that was home to the “better” families of Antioch. Families like ours. Typically, he spent these walks staring at his feet, his mind wandering through a series of disconnected thoughts and images.

Something funny Abdi said it’s cloudy out today bodies will there be tonight my feet are killing father felt anything when he died.

But on this day, at this moment, he decided to look up. And when he did, he was struck by an otherworldly image. At first he thought it was a ghost. The ghost of a beautiful girl, rendered as real as the hallucinations he used to have in the graves. She was sitting alone on the front stoop of a one-story brick villa — one of the nicer homes in the neighborhood.

She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, and she was crying her eyes out.

The most unlikely little sliver of sunlight had cut through the clouds and fallen on her back, making the edges of her black hair burn and giving her that ghostly, otherworldly look. She was a native Syrian, like him. But Balthazar knew at once that she wasn’t like him at all. This was a girl who hadn’t grown up stealing for a living. Who’d never known hunger.

But you haven’t had it easy, either. No, you’ve had a terrible time on this earth. And somehow that makes you twice as beautiful, although I’m not sure why, or even if it’s possible for you to be ANY more beautiful than you already are.

As it happened, Sela looked up at precisely the same time and found a boy standing in the middle of the street with a bag of grain over his shoulder, staring at her like a dumb animal. His body frozen, his mouth hanging open as he watched her cry.

“What are you looking at?”

“I… uh — ”

“You think it’s funny, standing there and looking at me?”

“No! No, I — ”

“Leave me alone!”

She turned away, crossed her arms, and waited for the boy to leave. And waited.

“No,” he said.

Later, Balthazar would only remember pieces of what happened next: Sela looking up and glaring at him through her tears, wickedly beautiful and dangerous. He remembered dropping his bag on the ground and working up the courage to sit beside her. He remembered asking her what was wrong. He remembered her resisting, then relenting. And once she began to tell him everything, he remembered that she didn’t stop until long after night had fallen. It was a variation of a story he’d heard so many times before. Another tale of woe at the hands of the Roman occupiers.

Sela was an only child, her mother having died when she was very young. Too young to remember her face, her voice, or her touch. But her father, a successful importer, was able to provide her with a comfortable upbringing. He was a quiet, kind man. And though he never spoke of his departed wife aloud, Sela knew that he never stopped mourning her. He doted on his only daughter, and, in turn, she devoted herself to his happiness — eschewing the usual childhood pursuits to be by his side. It was all very pleasant-sounding, Balthazar remembered now. Pleasant days passing pleasantly by, blending together until they formed a relatively pleasant, if uneventful childhood.

And then, like a scorpion stinging the foot of a passerby, Sela’s pleasant days had been suddenly and violently ended. Her father had found himself on the wrong side of a business dispute with a member of the Roman provincial authority. An assistant to an advisor to the Roman-appointed governor of Antioch. And while he couldn’t remember the details of the dispute — something about price promised versus price paid — Balthazar remembered the outcome:

Sela’s father had been roused from sleep that night by a banging on his door, dragged from his home as his daughter scratched and pulled at the faceless soldiers around her. That very night, he was sent to the executioner without trial, beheaded and tossed in a shallow desert grave. All on the whim of some nameless, middle-ranking foreign bureaucrat. All over a business dispute. Just like that. That’s how fast these things happened.

Balthazar remembered the chill that had gone from his toes to his fingertips when she’d told him this. And while he would never tell her of his dealings with the dead, not on that or any night, Balthazar would often wonder if her father had been among the bodies he’d dug up on the other side of the Orontes. If some small part of his happiness had come at her expense.

A year had passed since her father’s death, and here she was. Fourteen. All alone in a big house. Struggling to get by as best as an honest girl could, but not doing a very good job of it. Here she was, wiping away her tears and saying something to a boy she’d only just met. Saying it like she absolutely believed it: “I swear… before I die… I’ll watch all of Rome burn to the ground.”

Balthazar remembered thinking, Now, there’s a nice image… all of Rome in flames. A beautiful girl laughing as she watched it burn from a hill above the city — the warm winds kicked up by the fire below, making her hair dance around her face.

Balthazar said he believed her. Though silently he doubted that any army, let alone a single person, could pull off such a feat. But there was no doubting her resolve. He could feel the anger radiating off her body, just as heat radiates from the stones around a fire, long after the flames have died out. And it was intoxicating, that anger. Anger and beauty, sadness and loneliness, all mixed up in one face.

He remembered a kiss and knowing that he was hopelessly and forever in love.

Pleasant days had blended pleasantly together after that. Balthazar had chipped away at the honest, sheltered girl he’d found on the stoop, teaching her how to fight, how to steal, how to do a better job of getting by. Showing her a side of Antioch she’d never known in the comfort and isolation of her youth. He’d doted on her, provided for her, spending his every free moment by her side, often with Abdi tagging along. Sela, for her part, fell into a familiar role, devoting herself to his happiness. Forcing Balthazar to unfurrow his brow. Forcing him to laugh. Showing him a side of Antioch he’d only recently discovered but never really known.

They’d been the kind of days that shone golden in the memories of the old. Days when it had all been promise and forever ahead. Days spent confiding in each other, whispering things they’d never dared to whisper before. And nights, those impossibly warm nights, spent walking the Colonnaded Street, hand in hand. Sneaking off to the banks of the Orontes, disrobing by the light of the stars. Wading into the water and standing face-to-face, pressed against each other beneath the surface. Feeling each other’s nakedness in the black water. The same water Balthazar had waded through, back and forth between the living world and the dead. But these things were far away when he was with her. In these moments, it was just perfect, and it always would be, as if destiny had delivered them to exactly this place, if you believed in stupid things like destiny. Like he’d been sent to rescue her from being alone. To look after her. And like she’d been sent to rescue him back. And, God, it had been so stupidly giddy and erotic and perfect.

And then, like a scorpion stinging the foot of a passerby, it had all been brought crashing down in a single moment.

Just like that.

III

It was a big house by any measure, especially for a woman living alone. The first floor had two bedrooms, one where Sela had slept alone for the last five years and one where she’d worked when there was work to be found. They were centered on a large kitchen and common area, with a table and chairs and rugs covering every square inch of floor. There were three smaller bedrooms upstairs. The previous owner had filled them with children. But Sela had never had any use for them. Not until tonight.

Darkness had only just begun to fall outside, but most of the fugitives had excused themselves and disappeared upstairs for the night, eager to be rid of the strained silence that had hung over the house since their arrival. Balthazar sulked alone in one of the bedrooms, nursing wounds of the face and ego and quietly cursing all those giddy and erotic and perfect memories that had flooded into his rattled mind after their extended absence. He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling through a pair of black eyes. He could hear Gaspar and Melchyor’s muffled whispers through the wall on his right and Joseph’s deep, rhythmic snores on his left. He didn’t know which sound he hated more. Or if he hated them at all. Or if he just hated everything.

I shouldn’t have come. I should’ve known she’d react like this.

It was all so stupid, so juvenile. He was a killer. A thief. The Scourge of Rome. And look at him now. Caring for a baby and a couple of zealots. Beaten bloody by a woman. A hole in his chest. The Roman Army on his heels.

Of the six fugitives, only Mary and the baby remained downstairs after sunset. Sela sat with them at the table in the common area, watching the fifteen-year-old girl across from her — not much older than I was when I met him — bathe the tiny, wrinkled creature in a bowl of warm water. His blue eyes were wide open, darting around, looking at everything without really looking at anything. His head was propped against one shoulder to relieve the burden of his tiny neck, and the remnants of his umbilical cord had blackened and shriveled over his belly button, threatening to fall off at any moment.

Sela sat in silent fascination, watching him. Listening to the involuntary little hics and coos come out of his body as his mother gently washed the dust of the desert off his fragile scalp. She’d never had a sibling, never had cousins to care for. She’d never even held a baby, best as she could recall. Abdi was the closest thing I ever —

“Do you take boarders?” asked Mary.

It was a reasonable question, given that the house was much bigger than most single women would need or be able to afford without some form of income.

“No,” said Sela. “But I work. Down here… in one of the rooms.”

Mary was suddenly embarrassed that she’d brought it up. Of course. She knew what line of “work” Sela was in. A beautiful woman with no husband, no children? A beautiful, sophisticated woman who seems to have plenty of mon —

“I’m not a whore, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“What?” said Mary. “No! No, I didn’t think… I didn’t think that.”

Sela watched the girl’s cheeks turn bright red. No… of course you didn’t — that’s why you’re blushing and indignant.

“I read fortunes,” said Sela.

“Oh… ”

“Farmers pay me to predict the weather; women pay me to tell them how many children they’ll have. We sit, I conjure, they pay. Though business has been a little slow since the locusts came. Nobody needs a fortune-teller to tell them things in Beersheba are going to be bad for a long, long time.”

“And you… know these things? These answers they’re looking for?”

“I know what people want to hear.”

The blush drained out of Mary’s cheeks, and she tried to keep her face from betraying her disappointment. Fortune-telling wasn’t much better than prostitution, especially when the “telling” part was outright lying. Religiously speaking, it was worse. The Scriptures expressly forbade such things. In the eyes of God, Sela was a false prophet. And false prophets are heretics. And heretics, well —

“Are you all right?” asked Sela. “You look troubled.”

Mary continued to wash the baby’s skin, staring vacantly off into a dark corner of the room as Sela’s eternal damnation played out in her mind. She suddenly felt as though she were standing across the table from a leper. As if Sela’s sin was contagious. There was a palpable urge to snatch her baby up, to protect him from that sin. To wash it off his body. Given the circumstances, the least offensive thing she could think to say was, “It’s just… I couldn’t lie to people, I guess.”

“Why not? You lied to me.”

Mary looked up sharply. Visions of damnation gone in a flash.

“I did not.”

“Sure you did.”

“Why would you say — ”

“When I told you I wasn’t a whore, that’s exactly what you’d been thinking. But you insisted it wasn’t. ‘No, no, no — I would never think that!’”

Mary blushed again.

“Look at me and tell me I’m wrong.”

“I… I was trying to be polite.”

“Uh-huh. You do it to be polite. I do it to give hopeless people a little hope and make a little money while I’m at it. Either way, we’re both liars.”

Mary didn’t like this woman. She didn’t like being here. She didn’t like any of this. For the thousandth time since she and Joseph had left Nazareth, she felt the pangs of homesickness. She longed for the familiar faces of the village, the foods and sounds and smells. She longed for the comfort of family. For the spiritual lift that came with being surrounded by the fellow faithful. She and her husband were alone in the great big world. A terrible world, filled with murderers and heathens and famine, with bullying thieves and contagious sin. They were alone, and they were the bearers of an impossible burden: to protect the most important thing that had ever lived from the most powerful men in the world. And, God, he was so small.…

IV

Herod looked down at the deathly white body beneath him. Silent and still. Her eyes open and bulging. Spit drying on the corners of her mouth.

It wasn’t your fault, he thought. You were simply in the wrong place when the news reached me. You were simply there when I needed something to kill.

Herod supposed he regretted killing her, if only because he wouldn’t get to enjoy her again. Her wetness and warmth. But he’d done her a service, in a way. Think of all the misery she would be spared. Even if she didn’t eventually grow sick from his touch, think of all the disappointing years that lay ahead. Years of growing older, of taking a husband. Bearing his children. Her body betraying her, her beauty leaving her as she aged. But she would be spared all of that. This little one would be beautiful for all time.

Besides, who could blame him for reacting the way he did? It had been unwelcome news. They’d had them. The Romans had surrounded the Antioch Ghost and the child in Hebron, Herod had been told. They’d had archers lying in wait on the Street of Palms and men hidden on adjacent streets. But when the ambush was sprung, a riot had broken out. Zealots and pilgrims had attacked the Romans as they flooded in, holding them off before they could reach their targets.

Why didn’t they just take them in the open desert? Or arrest them quietly once they entered the city walls? Why do the Romans always have to make such a show of everything?

But as unwelcome as these developments were — as angry as they’d made him — they hadn’t made him kill. No. It was fear, not anger, that had cost this little girl her life. Fear that had summoned Herod’s hands to her throat and made them squeeze the life out, until her bulging eyes glazed over and foam ran red from her mouth. Herod had killed her because for the first time since these troubles began, he was frightened.

To any rational mind, the facts demanded fear. The Romans had been close enough to touch the Antioch Ghost. Close enough to touch the baby’s belly with the tip of their swords. All the might of the empire had descended on a single street, with a single purpose: to kill a wretched little thief and the helpless little infant he harbored. And what had happened? The impossible. One man — one injured, exhausted man — had slipped through their fingers.

When Herod had been told the details of Hebron, he’d known. This was no longer a simple matter of old prophecies and ancient superstitions. This was the God of Abraham taunting the King of Judea. Laughing in the face of Herod’s power. Of Rome’s might. There could be no more doubt: The child was indeed the Messiah. And if allowed to live — if allowed to reach Egypt and disappear beyond the eyes of Judea and Rome — then he would topple the kingdoms of the world. Perhaps even the empire itself.

The emperor won’t believe a word of it, of course. No matter what the evidence is, or how many miracles deliver the fugitives from the hands of his troops. But I know… and it’s time I got directly involved.

Herod thought about his next steps, lying beside a girl who would never know the miseries of age. He would honor her memory somehow. When this was all over, he would do something to make up for his outburst. Perhaps he would order a statue of her made and added to the collection in his courtyard so that he might enjoy her beauty again whenever he went for a stroll outside.

But first, he would enjoy her body one last time.

V

The cool light of early morning invited itself through the windows, the house still quiet and asleep. Balthazar sat alone at the large table downstairs, a knife in his hand. The wound on his chest had finally healed enough for his stitches to come out, and he was carefully cutting them one by one. Pulling the loose threads from his skin, until a shadow cut across the table in front of him, drawing his eyes up.

Sela was standing in the doorway of her bedroom, her hair a mess and her eyes half asleep. But still so beautiful it isn’t fair. She was quick to look away and continue in, as if she’d expected to find him sitting here so early, bare chested and knife in hand. Balthazar, for his part, had been quick to resume cutting his stitches out, pretending she wasn’t there at all.

It had been this way for three days. No words had passed between them since their painful reunion. Balthazar had made a point of avoiding her, keeping mostly to his room upstairs, nursing his swollen eyes and cut lips. Coming down only when he knew she was away or asleep and relying on Joseph to bring him his meals. But with today’s departure weighing heavy on his mind, he’d tossed and turned until it’d become useless to resist. And so he’d come downstairs, thinking he’d be the only one up at this hour.

She probably thought the same thing. And now here we are.

Balthazar had experienced these tense silences with other women. Silences where the air seemed to become flammable. Where a single spark could ignite it all. That’s why it was best to say nothing. No good could come of words. Not when a single misplaced syllable might spark, might light the air on fire and get you blown to pieces.

Balthazar watched as she walked to the opposite side of the room, toward a water jug that sat on the sill of an open window. Pretending to cut away at his chest, he stole little glances at her as she wet her hands, washed the sleep from her face, and smoothed her hair over her scalp — all in unfairly beautiful silhouette against the fluttering curtains.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her back to him. “You know… about your face.”

He was surprised to hear her voice at all. Let alone hear it issue what sounded like a genuine apology. But Balthazar said nothing in return. He just sat at the table, half stitched. No good can come of words.

“It’s just… seeing you was a little… ”

What, upsetting? Surprising? So unbelievable that you needed to kick and punch me a few times to make sure I was real? Wait, why are you talking? Don’t you know the air in here might catch fire and kill us both?

Sela shook the excess water from her hands, opened the drapes, and stared out into the empty streets of Beersheba.

“After you left,” she said, “there were days when I would go and stand on the banks of the river. Stand there for hours, looking out into the desert. Wondering if you were out there. Wondering where you were, what you were doing. If you were even alive. Sometimes… sometimes I would hold my hand out in front of my body… lean forward and close my eyes. My arm stiff, my palm facing out — listening for you. I would stand there… as if I could feel you with my body. As if I could send you a message. Send a thought through that outstretched hand and ask you to come home. And it was so stupid, all of it.”

She turned. He saw tears massing in the corners of her eyes, threatening to fall.

“It was so stupid and naïve, but I’d go out there, day after day, convincing myself that sooner or later one of those thoughts would reach you.”

They did… I thought of you every —

“You destroyed me, Balthazar.”

I know.

“You showed me how good life could be, and then you left.”

And you of all people should know why I had to.

“You left, and over time… I forgot. I forgot that feeling. I even forgot your face.”

What was there to say? How many times had he been over this in his mind? How many times had he imagined having this very conversation, on the remote chance he ever saw her again? And now, here he was, and there was nothing to say.

“Your mother is dead, Balthazar.”

It took him a moment to hear this. When he did, he swore he heard the hissssss of all that dangerous air seeping out of the room.

Oh, don’t be so surprised, Balthazar. Don’t you dare get all weepy eyed, as if you didn’t already know. Of course she’s dead. You knew she would be by now. You chose this, Balthazar. You knew you could never see her again — not after Abdi. Not after you left.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I should’ve told you sooner.”

Balthazar found tears threatening to fall nonetheless. He couldn’t help but think of his mother alone at the end of her life. All alone, with so many unanswered questions, so much grief over the things she’d lost. He couldn’t help but picture her face. “Promise me… promise me that our happiness doesn’t come at the expense of another’s.” But of course it had. It had come at a terrible expense. Her expense. And now I’ll never get to see her and tell her how sorry I —

Balthazar turned away, not wanting her to see the tears that had made good on their threats. Sela walked closer to the table, wiping away tears of her own. He half expected to feel her hand on his shoulder. Even a kiss of condolence on his forehead. He wanted those things more than he knew how to express, but only if she was willing to give them. They weren’t his to take.

“Balthazar… if you still care about me at all, you’ll promise me something.”

He wiped his eyes and looked up at her.

Anything.

“Promise me that after you leave, I’ll never see your face again.”

With that, she left him to pull the last few threads from his chest.

VI

Morning was giving way to midday, and still no sign of Gaspar or Melchyor. Balthazar paced back and forth, his face and lip almost completely healed now, his movement enough to stir the curtains that had been drawn to ward off the sun. Where the hell are they? They’d gone for food and supplies shortly after breakfast, leaving their fellow fugitives with Sela to pack up the camels and prepare for their departure. They had a long ride ahead. If they pressed themselves, stopping for only a few minutes at a time and making camp in the open desert, they could reach the Egyptian border in two days.

Mary was in the next room, feeding the baby beneath her shawl, while Sela topped off their canteens, taking care not to spill a single precious drop. Joseph was praying again. Kneeling in the corner of the room, muttering to himself. Though his words were barely above a whisper, they’d slowly built to a crescendo in Balthazar’s ears. We have real problems. Real problems here in the real world, and he sits there and mutters to God. Finally, it was all he could take.

“Could you just… not do that?”

Joseph stopped muttering, though his eyes remained closed.

“You pace when you’re anxious,” he said. “I pray. Of the two of us, I’d say my method was less annoying.”

“Of the two of us,” said Balthazar, “I’m the one with the sword, so I’d shut up and go do something useful before I cut your tongue out.”

Joseph’s eyes opened. He rose to face Balthazar. “Why does my prayer bother you?”

“Because! It goes on and on and on and on and on and on! I’ve never heard someone babble to God so much in my life!”

“Well… I have much to be thankful for.”

“Like what? The fact that the whole world wants your baby dead?”

“Like you.”

Joseph’s answer had the desired effect of stopping Balthazar’s rant in its tracks.

“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.