Animals We Made

Consider Lily | Part 5

Dusk fell over the barrens like a veil. It arrived humble and thick and patient, easing the world into nothingness.

The men stoked fires that reminded the girl of her calamity. She'd lost so much to heat that she now doubted warmth. Quintus tried getting her to sit by the flames and she refused. Watching them blossom and crackle from a distance, she shivered where she knelt, praying for her abba.

Religion injured as it mended, the girl understood.

It was like picking at a scab and allowing the fresh blood to trickle and drip. Often she yearned to renounce her God. Lily couldn't, was too scared. Her faith was born of her deepest fears and yet it was her faith that kept her unafraid. What did it expect of her? Could she rest while it plagued her mind, wringing loyalty out of her like a rag once soaked, now merely damp?

Our hearts are only so strong, she thought, and aren't we only so sure that Adonai even exists at all?

She settled for his silence, tried to imagine what he might've been saying though he said nothing, and she wondered how long it'd be like this while the whole while her suspicions bothered her, premonitions and inklings, theories and hunches, the morbid possibility of living a full life in anticipation of heaven only to die and rot in the ground.

Encircling the Israelites like an inferno around a village—her village?—the field's yellow limbs jutted up from end to end of the growing night.

"He is present," she told Quintus.

"Who is?" He sat near enough to offer her a bit of his cape but far enough to remind her that she was not his daughter.

She wrapped herself in the rugged fabric. "Adonai."

Quintus rubbed at his thickening stubble. "Don't you believe he's everywhere?"

"Yes but he's more here than anywhere."

"How do you know?"

"Don't you feel him?"

Quintus probably didn't. "Sure I do."

Lily grinned, nuzzling his cape.

"Shalom!" Jesus approached her and the Roman. "You mustn't be hermits, eh?"

"We prefer isolation to indoctrination," grumbled Quintus.

The Rabbi stopped walking and merely observed. "You're both cold."

"I'm afraid of you." Lily hugged her knees.

Jesus nodded. "Well, I'm a scary man."

Others hurried to him, a group of twelve, including Peter. Encircling the Rabbi, they murmured and shot aggressive looks at Quintus.

"Be nice," Jesus warned.

Their grimaces curved up into twitching and forced smiles.

"I'm James." One of the disciples waved as he blushed.

"I'm also James," replied another.

"I'm the greater James," the first interrupted.

"Debatable," argued the second.

Quintus winced at the group of twelve. "You're all James?"

"No," a third disciple clarified. "Um, there are quite a few Marys with us."

"At least three," said the first James.

"Three Marys." Lily was counting fingers. "Two Jameses."

"I'm a John!" exclaimed another in the group.