Nadia sat.
Karadzic stalked back and forth before the steps, his knuckles white on his gun, his lips flecked with spittle.
“You feel bad for your pitiful Marie, is that it? Because she’s carrying this tiny cross on her back?”
He stopped in front of a group of three women huddling on the stairs and leaned toward them. “What is happening to Marie is nothing! Say it! Nothing!”
No one spoke.
Karadzic suddenly flipped his rifle to his shoulder and peered down its barrel at Sister Flouta. “Say it!”
A hard knot lodged in Father Michael’s throat. His vision blurred with tears. God, this could not be happening! They were a peaceful, loving people who served a risen God.
Father, do not abandon us! Do not! Do not!
The commander cocked the rifled to the sky with his right hand. His lips pressed white. “To the graveyard then! All of you! All the women.”
They only stared at him, unbelieving.
He shoved a thick, dirty finger toward the large cross at the cemetery’s entrance and fired into the air. “Go!”
They went. Like a flock of geese, pattering down the steps and across the courtyard, some whimpering, others setting their jaws firm. Marie kept slogging across the stone yard. She was slowing, Michael thought.
The commander turned to his men. “Load a cross on every woman and bring them back.”
The thin soldier with bright hazel eyes stepped forward in protest. “Sir—”
“Shut up!”
The soldiers jogged for the graveyard. Father Michael’s vision swam.
Father, you are abandoning us! They are playing with your children!
Several children moved close to him, tugging at his robe, embracing his leg. Blurred forms in uniform kicked at the headstone crosses and hoisted them to the backs of the women. They staggered back to the courtyard, bearing their heavy loads. It was impossible!
Father Michael watched his flock reduced to animals, bending under the weight of concrete crosses. He clenched his teeth. These were women, like Mary and Martha, with tender hearts full of love. Sweet, sweet women, who’d toiled in childbirth and nursed their babies through cold winters. He should rush the commander and smash his head against the rock! He should protect his sheep!
Michael saw the dove in his peripheral vision clucking on the roofline, stepping from one foot to the other. The comforting words seemed distant now, so very abstract.
Peace, my son
. But this was not peace! This was barbarism!
The twisted smile found Karadzic’s quivering lips again. “March,” he ordered. “March, you pathetic slugs! We’ll see how you like Christ’s cross. And the first one to drop the cross will be beaten with the Father!”
They walked with Marie, twenty-three of them, bowed under their loads, silent except for heavy breathing and padding feet, staggering.
Every bone in Michael’s body screamed in protest now.
Stop this! Stop this immediately! It’s insanity! Take me, you spineless cowards! I will carry their crosses. I will carry all of their crosses. You may bury me under their crosses if you wish, but leave these dear women alone! For the love of God!
His whole body trembled as the words rushed through his head.
But they did not reach his lips. They could not because his throat had seized shut in anguish. And either way, the insane commander might very well take the butt of his gun to one of them if he spoke.
A child whimpered at Michael’s knee. He bit his lower lip, closed his eyes, and rested a hand on the boy’s head.
Father, please.
His bones shook with the inward groan. Tears spilled down his cheeks now, and he felt one land on his hand, wet and warm. His humped shoulders begged to shake—to sob—to cry out for relief, but he refused to disintegrate before all of them. He was their shepherd, for heaven’s sake! He was not one of the women or one of the children, he was a man. God’s chosen vessel for this little village in a land savaged by war.
He breathed deep and closed his eyes.
Dearest Jesus . . . My dearest Jesus . . .
The world changed then, for the second time that day. A brilliant flash ignited in his mind, as if someone had taken a picture with one of those bulbs that popped and burned out. Father Michael’s body jerked and he snapped his eyes open. He might have gasped—he wasn’t sure because this world with all of its soldiers and trudging women was too distant to judge accurately.
In its place stretched a white horizon, flooded with streaming light.
And music.
Faint, but clear. Long, pure notes, the same as he’d heard earlier.
My beloved
. A song of love.
Michael shifted his gaze to the horizon and squinted. The landscape was endless and flat like a sprawling desert, but covered with white flowers. The light streamed several hundred feet above the ground toward him from the distant horizon.
A tiny wedge of alarm struck Michael. He was alone in this white field. Except for the light, of course. The light and the music.
He could suddenly hear more in the music. At first he thought it might be the spring, bubbling near the courtyard. But it wasn’t water. It was a sound made by a child. It was a child’s laughter, distant, but rushing toward him from that far horizon, carried on the swelling notes of music.
Gooseflesh rippled over Michael’s skin. He suddenly felt as thought he might be floating, swept off his feet by a deep note that resounded in his bones.
The music grew, and with it the children’s laughter. High peals of laughter and giggles, not from one child, but from a hundred children. Maybe a thousand children, or a million, swirling around him now from every direction. Laughter of delight, as though from a small boy being mercilessly tickled by his father. Then reprieves followed by sighs of contentment as others took up the laughing.
Michael could not help the giggle that bubbled in his own chest and slipped out in short bursts. The sound was thoroughly intoxicating. But where were the children?
A single melody reached through the music. A man’s voice, pure and clear, with the power to melt whatever it touched. Michael stared out at the field where the sound came from.
A man was walking his way, a shimmering figure, still only an inch tall on the horizon. The voice was his. He hummed a simple melody, but it flowed over Michael with intoxicating power. The melody started low and rose through the scale and then paused. Immediately the children’s laughter swelled, responding directly to the man’s song. He began again, and the giggles quieted a little and then swelled at the end of this simple refrain. It was like a game.
Michael couldn’t hold back his own laughter.
Oh, my God, what is happening to me? I’m losing my mind
. Who was this minstrel walking toward him? And what kind of song was this that made him want to fly with all those children he could not see?
Michael lifted his head and searched the skies. Come out, come out wherever you are, my children. Were they his children? He had no children.
But now he craved them.
These
children, laughing hysterically around him. He wanted these children—to hold them, to kiss them, to run his fingers through their hair and roll on the ground, laughing with them. To sing this song to them. Come out, my dear . . .
The flashbulb ignited again.
Pop!
The laughter evaporated. The song was gone.
It took only a moment for Father Michael to register the simple, undeniable fact that he was once again standing on the steps of his church, facing a courtyard filled with women who slumped under heavy crosses over cold, flat concrete. His mouth lay open, and he seemed to have forgotten how to use the muscles in his jaw.
The soldiers stood against the far wall, smirking at the women, except for the tall skinny man. He seemed awkward in his role. The commander looked on with a glint in his eyes. And Michael realized that they had not seen his awkward display of laughter then.
Above them the dove perched on Sister Flouta’s roof, still eyeing the scene below. To Michael’s right, the elderly still sat, as though dead in their seats, unbelieving of this nightmare unfolding before them. And at his fingertips, a head of hair. He quickly closed his mouth and looked down. Children. His children.
But these were not laughing. These were seated, or standing against his legs, some staring quietly to their mothers, others whimpering. Nadia the birthday girl sat stoically on the end, her jaw clenched, her hands on her knees.
When Father Michael looked up his eyes met Ivena’s as she trudged under her cross. They were bright and sorrowful at once. She seemed to understand something, but he could not know what. Perhaps she too had heard the song. Either way, he smiled, somehow less afraid than he had been just a minute ago.
Because he knew something now.
He knew there were two worlds in motion here.
He knew that behind the skin of this world, there was another. And in that world a man was singing and the children were laughing.
JANJIC LOOKED at the women shuffling across the courtyard and bit back his growing anger with this demented game of Karadzic’s.
He’d dutifully kicked over three gravestones and hefted them to the backs of terrified women. One of them was the birthday girl’s mother. Ivena, he heard someone call her.
Janjic could see that she’d taken care to dress for her daughter’s special day. Imitation pearls hung around her neck. She wore her hair in a meticulous bun and the dress she’d chosen was neatly pressed; a light pink dress with tiny yellow flowers so that she matched her daughter.
How long had they planned for this party? A week? A month? The thought brought nausea to his gut. These souls were innocent of anything deserving such humiliation. There was something obscene about forcing mothers to lug the ungainly religious symbols while their children looked on.
Ivena could easily be his own mother, holding him after his father’s death ten years earlier. Mother, dear Mother—Father’s death nearly killed her as well. At ten, Janjic became the man of the house. It was a tall calling. His mother died three days after his eighteenth birthday, leaving him with nothing but the war to join.
The women’s dresses were darkened with sweat now, their faces wrinkled with pain, their eyes casting furtive glances at their frightened children on the steps. Still they plodded, back and forth like old mules. Yes, it was obscene.
But then the whole war was obscene.
The priest stood still in his long black robe, hunched over. A dumb look of wonder had captured his face for a moment, then passed. Perhaps he had already fallen into the abyss, watching the women slog their way past him.
Pray to your God, Priest. Tell him to stop this madness before one of your women drops her cross. We have a march to make.
To his right the sound came, like the sickening crunch of bones, jerking Janjic out of his reverie. He turned his head. One of the women was on her knees, trembling, her hands limp on the ground, her face knotted in distress around clenched eyes.
Marie had dropped her cross.
Movement in the courtyard froze. The women stopped in their tracks as one. Every eye stared at the cement cross lying facedown on the stone beside the woman. Karadzic’s face lit up as though the contact of cross with ground completed a circuit that flooded his skull with electricity. A quiver had taken to his lower lip.
Janjic swallowed. The commander snorted once and took three long steps toward Marie. The priest also took a step toward his fallen sheep but stopped when Karadzic spun back to him.
“When your backs are up against the wall, you can no more follow the teachings of Christ than any of us. Perhaps that’s why the Jews butchered the man, eh, Paul? Maybe his teachings really were the rantings of a lunatic, impossible for any sane man.”
The priest’s head snapped up. “It’s
God
you speak of!”
Karadzic turned slowly to him. “
God
you say? The Jews killed
God
on a cross, then? You may not be a Franciscan, but you’re as stupid.”
Father Michael’s face flushed red. His eyes shone in shock. “It was for
love
that Christ walked to his death,” he said.
Janjic shifted on his feet and felt his pulse quicken. The man of cloth had found his backbone.
“Christ was a fool. Now he’s a dead fool,” Karadzic said. The words echoed through the courtyard. He paced before Father Michael, his face frozen in a frown.
“Christ lives. He is not dead,” the priest said.
“Then let him save you.”
The burly commander glared at the priest, who stood tall, soaking in the insults for his God. The sight unnerved Janjic.
Father Michael drew a deep breath. “Christ lives in me, sir. His spirit rages through my body. I feel it now. I can hear it. The only reason that you can’t is because your eyes and ears are clogged by this world. But there’s another world at work here. It’s Christ’s kingdom and it bristles with his power.”
Karadzic took a step back, blinking at the priest’s audacity. He suddenly ran for Marie, who was still crumpled on the cement. A dull thump resounded with each boot-fall. In seven long strides he reached her. He swung his rifle like a bat, slamming the wooden butt down on the woman’s shoulder. She grunted and fell to her belly.
Sharp gasps filled the air. Karadzic poised his rifle for another blow and twisted to face the priest. “You say you have power? Show me, then!” He landed another blow and the woman moaned.
“Please!” The priest took two steps forward and fell to his knees, his face wrinkled with grief. Tears streamed from his eyes. “Please, it’s me you said you would beat!” He clasped his hands together as if in prayer. “Leave her, I beg you. She’s innocent.”
The rifle butt landed twice on the woman’s head, and her body relaxed. Several children began to cry; a chorus of women groaned in shock, still bent under their own heavy loads. The sound grated on Janjic’s ears.
“Please . . . please,” Father Michael begged.
“Shut up! Janjic, beat him!”
Janjic barely heard the words. His eyes were fixed on the priest.