Unholy Night (23 page)

Some of them began to break ranks and run for cover, but it was too late. By the time they took a few steps of retreat, the leading edge of the cloud slammed into the Romans with enough force to knock men over. Pilate’s horse reared up in fright, throwing him to the street. Dazed and hurt, he covered his face with his arms and curled his body into a ball as the shrieking swarm washed over them. All around, men held their shields up to their faces to protect themselves from the onslaught, insects clanging against them like stones from a slingshot. Locusts flew into the mouths of those who’d had the misfortune to leave them open, lodging themselves in men’s throats twenty and thirty at a time, choking soldiers with their armored bodies, biting them from the inside until blood ran from their mouths and nostrils.

What had been an orderly siege was suddenly chaos. An endless swarm poured over the Romans, drowning them. Blinding them with their numbers, and in some cases, blinding soldiers by feasting on their eyes in groups. Men tried to swat them away, to crush the locusts in their fists. But for every bug killed, ten more seemed to take its place. The soldiers might as well have been swatting at boiling tar.

Still balled up on the ground, Pilate saw a man crawling past him, completely covered by locusts. The man pulled himself for a few feet, then stopped—and the locusts covering him flew away en masse, leaving behind a mess of ripped skin and exposed innards. His lips were gone, leaving his teeth exposed in a ghastly eternal grin, and his eye sockets were nothing more than empty holes in his face. His carcass looked like it had spent a week being picked apart by crows. But it had taken only seconds.

Pilate heard the crunching of winged bodies everywhere as soldiers ran for cover in adjacent houses or rolled around on the street, trying desperately to brush thousands of insects off their arms, legs, and faces. He saw one soldier sitting upright, his palms pressed to his temples and his body writhing as something feasted on the inside of his skull. The man let loose a muffled scream, then fell over, silent and still. A moment later, Pilate saw locusts crawl out of the soldier’s mouth and eyelids before rejoining the swarm. These weren’t the mindless, dead-eyed bugs that had eaten their way across half of Africa, leaf to random leaf. These had been possessed by something. Given orders.

Pilate turned toward a pair of nearby voices and found Gaspar and Melchyor pulling themselves along the ground, looking for refuge as locusts covered them like a blanket. It was strange…the bugs seemed to be targeting some of the men but avoiding others completely.
Like me—so far, anyway.
In Gaspar’s and Melchyor’s case, they seemed less interested in killing than torturing—biting at their flesh, feeding on them one microscopic bite at a time.

Pilate watched the thieves crawl along, wondering what all of this meant. Wondering if the magus or some other magic was behind it.
And if not the magus…who?
He might have kept watching and wondering forever, or at least until the locusts changed their mind and began eating his eyes, had one of his lieutenants not grabbed his arm and dragged him into one of the adjacent houses. As he was pulled inside, Pilate saw that the flames that had engulfed the front of the fugitives’ hideout had begun to retreat, beaten back by the bodies of locusts that willfully flew into the fire, sacrificing themselves to put it out, and in doing so, buying the people inside precious time.

Inside, Mary had turned away and buried her head in Joseph’s shoulder, terrified by the otherworldly shrieking and horrified by the sight of men being eaten alive. Balthazar turned away too—less horrified than dumbfounded, and found himself confronted by a smiling little face. Despite the chaos in the streets, despite the sounds of men having their skin torn away, the baby was back to his calm, curious self. Resting in his frightened mother’s arms, looking—
no, beaming—
at Balthazar. Sela hurried around the room, drawing the curtains over every window, as if the thin fabric would be enough to stop the swarm from entering.
But they won’t enter,
thought Balthazar.
They won’t even try…because they’re not here for us.

Somehow, he knew. The strange, almost blinding comet in the sky above Bethlehem. The clear, cool stream in the barren desert. A swarm of locusts, beating back the Roman Army. On their own, any one of these events was strange. Any two were nearly impossible. All three? Almost too much for even the staunchest realist to ignore. It was an interesting feeling, watching something that couldn’t possibly be real. And Balthazar reveled in it for a moment, watching the screaming Romans, before sense caught up with his senses, and a single word struck him with the force of a fist from the clouds above:

Go
.

10

“Dry bones…I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life.”

—Ezekiel 37:4–6

T
hey’d all lived through sandstorms, had all felt the stinging of fine grains against their skin, the dry desert blowing over squinting eyes. But this was unlike anything they could’ve imagined.

This storm was
alive
.

Each grain of sand had been replaced by a locust. Their eyes lifeless and black, their spindly legs and hard shells the color of desert sand. The bugs flew at them like debris in a tornado, their bodies forming a cloud that surrounded the fugitives, blinding in its density, deafening from the fluttering of its millions of wings. And while at a distance it seemed like the locusts were flying under their own power, in the cloud it was clear they were being blown along by something powerful. Something angry.

Balthazar’s hunch had proven right so far. The locusts didn’t seem interested in the five of them. Not directly, anyway. Not in the way they’d been interested in the Romans, choking them with their bodies, biting at their eyes and flesh. But while they weren’t the target of its wrath, the fugitives still had to contend with the millions upon millions of bugs flying past them toward Beersheba, pelting them like living hail and leaving marks on their arms and faces as they marched against its current. This continued until the darkness of the locusts around them began to give way to the darkness of the sky, and the cloud evaporated at last.

As the sun vanished behind the horizon, painting the last of itself in the pale sky, the fugitives stopped to rest and take stock of what they’d seen. Joseph cradled a bundled robe beneath his head, grabbing a few precious minutes of sleep on the ground. Mary, in turn, cradled the baby, feeding him beneath her robes.

Sela sat a stone’s throw from them, drinking from a canteen and looking at her arms and legs in the fading light. Examining the small bruises from the constant beating of tiny bodies against her skin, and examining the thoughts that had been beating against the inside of her skull for days now.

Here I am.

Once again, Balthazar had managed to turn her life upside down. The first time, he’d done it by leaving. This time, he’d done it by showing up.

She’d been perfectly unhappy in Beersheba. Perfectly alone. Now that her misery had company, she was worse off than ever: stuck in the desert without a possession left in the world. Stuck with two strangers, a baby, and an old flame she’d learned to hate in the absent years. Even if she
could
go back to Beersheba, what was there to go back to? Her home had been burned. Her city abandoned. If they were caught, the Romans would kill her just as quickly as the others. She was one of them now, like it or not. A fugitive. And while there’d been a time when she would’ve found that a romantic, adventurous notion, now it was only deeply annoying and troubling.

Sela took another drink, sifting through her limited options. She would go to Egypt with them, yes. Going south made sense, and besides, there was safety in numbers—even if they weren’t the numbers you would’ve picked if given the chance. But she wouldn’t linger there. She would continue on by herself. Maybe across the north of Africa to Carthage or across the sea to Greece.

You rebuilt your life once before; you can do it again.

She had no interest in playing odd woman out to a Jewish couple. Nor did she have much interest in hanging around with the man formerly known as the love of her life. From the looks of it, Balthazar had no interest in her, either. He was off on his own, watching—

A herd of ibex grazed in the distance. It was a smaller herd, only a dozen or so. Not the hundred or more they’d spotted outside Hebron as they walked into an ambush. Balthazar sat a good distance from the others, watching the ibex mindlessly, stupidly chew their cud. Taking comfort in it.

Blissful, simple little things.

They spent their abbreviated lives flitting around, moving from place to place, taking what they needed to survive. Always searching for the next little patch of green to keep them going, always running away when it got too dangerous, never stopping until they were either hunted down or simply faded into nothing. Forgotten.

Balthazar could think of a million explanations for what they’d seen in Beersheba, none of which made much sense. Just as he could think of a million reasons why a stream might appear out of nowhere in the desert or a riot might break out at exactly the moment they needed it to. But he could no longer outrun the nagging feeling that had been following him through the desert for days:

There’s something about that baby.

There had to be. Why else would all these people want him dead? A tiny, brand-new creature who had never so much as uttered a word. A creature who still bore the half-open eyes and misshapen head of his birth. And why did the child always seem so calm? Like it knew exactly what was going on? Why had the old man in his dream shown him an image of Egypt? Why did nature itself seem to come to their rescue when they were in need? And how?

Balthazar was filled with new questions. New doubts. Doubts of his old doubts. And this swirling pool of questions and doubts made him confused. And being confused made him angry. And here he was, sitting apart from the others, watching the sky slowly darken over the desert. Angry and alone.

Sela had been watching him sit there for some time, when a disembodied voice gave her misery more unwanted company:

“Why don’t you go and talk to him?”

She turned to her left and found Mary walking toward her. The baby still feeding beneath her robes.

“Sorry, what?”

“Why don’t you go over there?” said Mary, sitting beside her. “Sit with him. Talk to him.”

“And why would I do that?”

Mary looked confused.
Isn’t it obvious?

“Because…you love him.”

Sela was sure she’d gone cross-eyed.
Love him?

“Did you see the way I greeted him when he showed up at my door?”

“Yes. And if you didn’t care, you would’ve turned your back on him. Closed the door in his face. But the very sight of him made you angry. Violent. Those are passionate feelings. You don’t feel those things if you don’t care about someone.”

“It’s a little late for passion.”

“If there was love, real love, between you, who can say if it’s—”

“You know,” said Sela, cutting her off, “I think we have more urgent things to talk about, like the fact that we’re alone in the middle of the desert. Or that a whole army’s trying to find us and kill us.”

Mary realized she’d gone too far. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s fine.”

“No, you’re right. It isn’t my place.”

“Really, it’s fine. Let’s just leave it—”

“I was only trying to help. Give you a little advice,.”

Sela couldn’t help but smile.

“What?” asked Mary.

Just say “
nothing,
” Sela. Don’t insult her—just leave it alone.

“I just…I think it’s funny, that’s all.”

“Think what’s funny?”

Leave it alone, Sel—

“The fact that I’m getting relationship advice from a fifteen-year-old girl. And one who freely admits that her baby isn’t her husband’s.”

A considerable silence followed.

“It’s different,” said Mary at last. “It’s God’s child.”

Sela smiled again. “I thought we were all God’s children.”

And now another considerable silence, and a tinge of regret from Sela. She could see that she’d really wounded the girl with that one.

“You think I’m a joke,” said Mary at last.

Sela rolled her eyes.
Here we go.
This was exactly the conversation she didn’t feel like having. Not now. This wasn’t two girls talking about boys anymore.
Just move past it.

“I don’t think you’re a joke. I just…”
How to put it?

“You just don’t believe me,” said Mary.

Look at this face—this earnest face…this fifteen-year-old who thinks she knows everything.

“No,” said Sela. “I guess I don’t.”

Mary turned away, toward the ever-darkening visage of her sleeping husband. Her exhausted husband, bruised from shielding her through the storm.
Poor Joseph
, she thought.
Poor, noble Joseph.

“I understand,” Mary said. “Sometimes I ask myself, why, of all the girls in the whole world, did he choose me? Should I not love my baby as a mother is supposed to? Should I not hold him when he weeps? Comfort him when he is frightened? Scold him when he misbehaves? Or should I worship him, even now?”

“I can see how that might get a little complicated, sure.”

“I didn’t ask for this burden. I didn’t appeal to heaven or beg of God for any honor. But this is the path that’s been chosen for me by God, and I have to walk it.” She turned back to Sela. “I can either walk it alone,” said Mary, “or walk it holding the hands of the ones I love. Either way, it’s the same path.”

Sela looked at Mary intently and smiled. She supposed this fifteen-year-old knew more than she let on. Mary turned away from her and stared straight into the desert, toward the fading image of their broad-shouldered protector.

“He doesn’t believe me, either,” she said, looking at Balthazar.

“Yeah, well, don’t take it personally. He doesn’t believe in much of anything.”

“He’s a strange man. He’ll fight to protect my child, but he won’t so much as look at him, hold him. And I wonder how a man can be so angry—so cruel, so violent. And how this same man can risk his life for a child he hardly knows.”

Now it was Sela’s turn to sit in silence for a while, considering. Maybe it was the guilt of having insulted Mary, or the need to show a little girl who thought she knew everything how little she actually knew. Maybe it was the need to sort it all out in her own head, to remind herself of how this had all begun. Whatever the reason, Sela decided right then and there to tell Mary about the day Balthazar died.

“We were still in Antioch,” she said.