in a place where they could never be found, down in the tombs where he kept all the wretched things he’d seen and done. Rather, he was distressed by facts.
The fact that no road in Judea was safe to travel. The fact that he didn’t know the desert well enough to disappear into it or survive off of it. The fact that his best chance of escape was currently lying on the ground, dying. The fact that they would run out of water in a matter of hours.
And then what? The carpenter and his wife would only slow them down. The baby would die from exposure or dehydration within a day or two, followed by the girl, until all that was left were three madmen cupping mouthfuls of blood to their cracked lips — that was, assuming Herod’s men didn’t find and slaughter them first, which was more likely than any other scenario. It was hopeless. All of it.
It was Balthazar who finally broke the silence with a series of wheezing, unconscious coughs. When the fit was over, Joseph could see blood running from his mouth. His color was getting worse. He was beginning to shiver.
“Is he going to die?” asked Joseph.
“Yes,” said Gaspar.
Joseph was struck by his matter-of-factness. It was as if he’d asked about the color of Balthazar’s robes, and not his life.
“‘Yes’? That’s it?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t there something we can do?”
“I have seen men with this wound before. There is nothing that can be done. He will not live to see nightfall.”
“But he saved our lives. All of our lives. We’re in his debt.”
“And that is why I carry him with me, instead of leaving him to die alone.”
“Carrying him on the back of a camel isn’t going to help him. There has to be something we can — ”
“I told you he is DEAD!”
The word bounced off the walls of the ravine and into the unknown twists ahead. It was followed by another considerable silence. Only the sounds of the camels shifting their weight on their feet, of Melchyor scraping his sword through the dirt.
“After what we have done,” said Gaspar, “Herod will send all of Judea after us. He is dead, and we are alive. We still have a chance. He does not.”
“No,” said Mary.
Gaspar had almost forgotten the girl was there. He considered her with his deep-set eyes. She was so slight, so weak. He could break her arms and legs like pieces of charred firewood if he wanted to.
“He came back for us,” she said. “I won’t just sit here and watch him die.”
“I told you… there is nothing we can do for him.”
“Yes,” said Mary, “there is.”
Gaspar had no idea what she meant. Joseph wasn’t sure either, until she turned to him and said, “Zachariah.”
When Mary was very young, her uncle Zachariah had been a physician — sewing up wounds and treating coughs in the little village of Emmaus, ten miles northwest of Jerusalem. He was in his seventies now, enjoying a quiet life with his wife, Elizabeth, and their young son. To Mary’s knowledge, he hadn’t so much as wrapped a bandage in over ten years. And his own health had been in decline. But they had to try.
Mary turned back to Gaspar. “I know someone who might be able to help him. A physician. A relative who can be trusted.”
“Where is he?”
“In Emmaus.”
Gaspar shook his head.
“It is too far.”
“We can be there in two hours if we take the roads.”
“The roads? Have you not listened? Every soldier in the Judean Army will be on the roads looking for us.”
“The roads leading in and out of Bethlehem, yes. And when they don’t find us there, they’ll start looking on the other roads and in the desert. But not in a little village like Emmaus. Not yet.”
“We can stay out here until we’re dead, or we can try to reach Emmaus — where there’s food and water. Where there’s a place to hide and a chance to save him.”
“If we do not get killed first.”
“Just get us that far. Get us to Emmaus. We can take care of ourselves from there.”
Gaspar tried to think of a better option. But he knew she was right. If they hid in the desert, they’d all be dead in a matter of days. If they tried to reach the village, there was a very good chance they’d run into soldiers on the roads. But at least they’d have a fighting chance.
“You said it yourself,” said Mary. “You’re in his debt. We all are.”
Balthazar broke the silence with another fit of coughing. Gaspar looked at him. The mighty Antioch Ghost. The man who’d saved his neck.
II
Balthazar was suddenly aware of being carried. Held aloft by a pair of arms wrapped around his chest, held by a man with broad white wings that beat in a gentle rhythm above. A man whose face he couldn’t see but somehow
There was a city below them in the desert. A city of tents, gathered at the base of a great mountain. Tens of thousands — maybe hundreds of thousands of people — moving around in a circle, dancing. They danced around something large, something shining and gold. Balthazar wanted nothing more than to be one of them. To have a closer look at the large, shiny golden thing and see if there were pieces to be pulled off and hidden in his robes. But this wasn’t where the Man With Wings was taking him.
They flew past the great mountain and its dancing masses, descending closer to the desert’s surface, until sand became sea in the blink of an eye. Not the strange, endless sea of time and space that Balthazar had seen the universe reflected in, but an actual, earthly body of water. They moved over the face of this water, faster than Balthazar thought it possible for men to move without having their bodies ripped apart by the force of the wind.
They flew until the water became shore, and shore became desert, and desert became a gleaming city of the sun. A city of hieroglyphs and temples, of obelisks and pyramids. He’d seen this place with his living eyes, too. He’d looked up at these three sisters — these pyramids that made fools of empires with their splendor. But he never imagined he’d be looking at them from above as he did now.
The Man With Wings set Balthazar gently down on the top of one of these pyramids, the largest of the three. The tallest structure in the world, as it had been for more than 2,500 years. But the pyramid was falling apart, the white stones of its four sides having crumbled away over the centuries. Some sections were still perfectly smooth. Others had broken loose and tumbled into the sands below, exposing the darker stone blocks beneath.
When those white wings settled and tucked behind his back, Balthazar saw the man’s face for the first time. The strength in his legs left him at the sight. He wept, his body shuddering with his sobs. Balthazar couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried this hard. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen anything so beautiful.
“How?” he asked through his tears.
The Man With Wings extended his arms and held his hands out for Balthazar to see. The hands he’d been holding Balthazar with. They were stained red.
