Poof !
The courtyard vanished in a flash of light.
The white desert crashed into his world. Fingers of light streaked from the horizon. The ground was covered with the white flowers. And the music!
Oh, the music. The children's laughter rode the skies, playing off the man's song. His volume had grown, intensified, compelling Michael to join in the laughter. The same simple tune, but now others seemed to have joined in to form a chorus. Or maybe it just sounded like a chorus but was really just laughter.
Sing O son of Zion; Shout O child of mine
Rejoice with all your heart and soul and mind
Michael was vaguely aware of a crashing on the edge of his world. It was as if he lived in a Christmas ornament and a child had taken a stick to it. But it wasn't a stick, he knew that. It wasn't a child either. It was the soldier with a rifle, beating his bones.
He heard a loud snap.
I've got to hurry up before the roof caves in about me! I've got to hurry! My bones are breaking.
Hurry? Hurry where?
Hurry to meet this man. Hurry to find the children, of course. Problem was, he still couldn't see them. He could hear them, all right. Their laughter rippled over the field in long, uncontrolled strings that forced a smile to his mouth.
The figure was still far away, a foot high on the horizon now, walking straight toward Michael, singing his incredible song. He would have expected music to reach him through his ears, but this song didn't bother with the detour. It seemed to reach right through his chest and squeeze his heart. Love and hope and sorrow and laughter all rolled up in one.
He opened his mouth without thinking and sang a couple of the words.
O child of mine
. . . A silly grin spread his cheeks. What did he think he was doing? But he felt a growing desperation to sing with the man, to match the chorus with his own.
La da da, da la!
Mozart! An angel with the purest melody known to man. To God!
And he wanted to laugh! He almost did. He almost threw his head back and cackled. His chest felt as though it might explode with the desire. But he could not see the children. And that stick was making an awful racket about his bones.
Without ceremony, the world with all of its color and light and music was jerked from him. He was back in the village.
He heard himself gasp.
Uhhh!
It was like having a bucket of cold water thrown at him while taking a warm shower
.
He was standing now, facing Marie's fallen body. The spring gurgled on as if nothing at all had happened. The women were frozen in place. The children were crying.
And pain was spreading through his flesh like leaking acid.
Oh, God. What is happening? What are you doing to your children?
His shoulder did not feel right. Neither did his cheek.
He wanted to be back in the laughing world with the children. Marie stirred on the ground. The commander was screaming and now the women started to move, like ghosts in a dream.
No.
The colors of Father Michael's world brightened.
No, I do not belong with the laughing children. I belong here with my own children. These whom God has given me charge over. They need me.
But he didn't know what he should do. He wasn't even sure he could talk. So he prayed. He cried out to God to save them from this wicked man.
THE COURTYARD
had become a wasteland,
Janjic thought. A wasteland filled with frozen guards and whimpering children and moaning women. The ravens soared in an unbroken circle now, a dozen strong. A lone dove watched the scene from its perch on the house to his right.
Janjic swallowed, thinking that he might cry. But he would swallow his tongue before he allowed tears. He had humiliated himself enough.
Molosov and the others stood expressionless, drawing shallow breaths, waiting for Karadzic's next move in this absurd game. An hour ago Janjic was bored with the distraction of the village. Ten minutes ago, he found himself horrified at beating the priest. And now . . . now he was slipping into an odd state of anger and apathy drummed home by the plodding footfalls about him.
The girl with a flat face and frecklesâthe birthday girl dressed in pinkâsuddenly stood up.
She stood on the third step and stared at the commander for a few moments, as if gathering her resolve. She was going to do something. What had come over this girl? She was a
child
, for heaven's sake. A war child, not so innocent as most at such a tender age, but a child nonetheless. He'd never seen a young girl as brave as this one looked now, standing with arms at her side, staring at the commander across the courtyard.
“Nadia!” a woman called breathlessly. Her mother, Ivena, who had stopped beneath her heavy cross.
Without removing her eyes from the commander, the girl walked down the steps and limped for Karadzic.
“Nadia! Go back! Get back on the steps this minute!” Ivena cried.
The girl ignored her mother's order and walked right up to the commander. She stopped five feet from him and looked up at his face. Karadzic didn't return her wide stare, but kept his eyes fixed on some unseen point directly ahead. Nadia's eyes were misty, Janjic saw, but she wasn't crying.
It occurred to Janjic that he had stopped breathing. Sound and motion had been sucked from the courtyard as if by a vacuum. The children's whimpers fell silent. The women froze in their tracks. Not an eye blinked.
The girl spoke. “Father Michael has taught us that in the end only love matters. Love is giving, not taking. My friends were giving me gifts today because they love me. Now you've taken everything. Do you hate us?”
The commander spit at her. “Shut up, you ugly little wench! You have no respect?”
“I mean no disrespect, sir. But I can't stand to see you hurt our village.”
“Please, Nadia,” Ivena said.
The priest stood quivering, his face half off, his shoulders grotesquely slumped, staring at Nadia with his one good eye.
Karadzic blinked. Nadia turned to face her mother and spoke very quietly. “I'm sorry, Mother.”
She looked Karadzic in the eyes. “If you're good, sir, why are you hurting us? Father Michael has taught us that religion without God is foolishness. And God is love. But how is this love? Love isâ”
“Shut your hole!” Karadzic lifted a hand to strike her. “Shut your tiny hole, you insolentâ”
“Stop! Please stop!” Ivena staggered forward three steps from the far side, uttering little panicky guttural sounds.
Karadzic glared at Nadia, but he did not swing his hand.
Nadia never took her round blue eyes off the commander. Her lower lip quivered for a moment. Tears leaked down her cheek in long, silent streams. “But sir, how can I shut up if you make my mother carry that load on her back? She has only so much strength. She will drop the cross and then you'll beat her. I can't stand to watch this.”
Karadzic ignored the girl and looked around at the scattered women, bent, unmoving, staring at him. “March! Did I tell you to stop? March!”
But they did not.
Something had changed,
Janjic thought. They looked at Karadzic, their gazes fixed. Except for Ivena. She was bent like a pack mule, shaking, but slowly, ever so slowly, she began to straighten with the cross on her back.
Janjic wanted to scream out.
Stop, woman! Stop, you fool! Stay down!
Nadia spoke in a wavering tone now. “I beg you, sir. Please let these mothers put down their crosses. Please leave us. This would not please our Lord Jesus. It's not his love.”
“Shut up!” Karadzic thundered. He took a step toward Nadia, grabbed one of her pigtails and yanked.
She winced and stumbled after him, nearly falling except for his grip on her hair. Karadzic pulled the girl to the father, who looked on, tears running down his cheek now.
Ivena's cross slipped from her back then.
Janjic alone watched it, and he felt its impact through his boot when it landed.
Nadia's mother ran for Karadzic. She'd already taken three long strides when the dull thump jerked the commander's heads toward her. She took two more, half the distance to the commander, head bent and eyes fixed, before uttering a sound. And then her mouth snapped wide and she shrieked in fury. A full-throated roaring scream that met Janjic's mind like a dentist's drill meeting a raw nerve.
Karadzic whipped the girl behind him like a rag doll. He stepped forward and met the rushing woman's face with his fist. The blow sent her reeling, bleeding profusely from the nose. She slumped to her knees, silenced to a moan.
And then another cross fell.
And another, and another until they were slamming to the concrete in a rain of stone. The women struggled to stand tall, all of them.
A streak of fear crossed Karadzic's gray eyes, Janjic realized. But he wasn't thinking too clearly just now. He was trembling under the weight of the atmosphere. A thick air of insanity laced by the crazy notion that
he
should stop this. That he should scream out in protest, or maybe put a bullet in Karadzic's headâ anything to end this madness.
The commander jerked his pistol from his belt and shoved it against the priest's forehead. He spun the girl toward the priest and released her. “You think your dead Christ will save your priest now?”
“Sir . . .” The objection came from Janjic's throat before he could stop it.
Stop, Janjic! Shut up! Sit back!
But he did not. He took a single step forward. “Sir, please. This is enough. Please, we should leave these people alone.”
Karadzic shot him a furious stare, and Janjic saw hatred in those deep-set eyes. The commander looked back at the girl, who was staring up at the priest through the pools of tears that rimmed her eyes.
“I think I'll shoot your priest. Yes?”
Father Michael gazed into the little girl's face. There was a connection between their eyes, shafts of invisible energy.
The priest and the girl were speaking,
Janjic thought. Speaking with this look of love. Tears streamed down their cheeks.
Janjic felt a wedge of panic rise to his throat. “Please, sir. Please, show them kindness. They have done nothing.”
“Sometimes love is best spoken with a bullet,” Karadzic said.
The girl stared into the eyes of her priest, and her look gripped Janjic with terror. He wanted to tear his gaze away from the girl's face, but he couldn't. It was a look of love in its purest form, Janjic knew, a love he had never seen before.
Nadia spoke softly, still staring at the priest. “Don't kill my priest.” Her voice whispered across the courtyard. “If you have to kill someone, then kill me instead.”
A murmur ran though the crowd. The girl's mother clambered to unsteady legs, gulping for air. Her face twisted in anguish. “Oh, God! Nadia! Nadia!”
Nadia held up a hand, stopping her mother. “No, Mother. It will be okay. You will see. It's what Father Michael has taught us. Shh. It's okay. Don't cry.”
Oh, such words! From a child! Janjic felt hot tears on his cheek. He took another step forward. “Please, sir, I beg you!” It came out like a sob, but he no longer cared.
Karadzic's lips twitched once. Then again, to a grin. He lowered his gun from the priest. It hung by his waist.
He lifted it suddenly and pressed the barrel to the girl's head.
The mother's restraint snapped and she launched herself at the commander, arms forward, fingernails extended like claws, shrieking. This time the second in command, Molosov, anticipated her move. He was running from his position behind Janjic as soon as Ivena moved, and he landed a kick to her midsection before she reached Karadzic. She doubled over and retched. Molosov jerked the woman's arms behind her and dragged her back.
Nadia closed her eyes and her shoulders began to shake in a silent sob.
“Since your flock has failed to prove its faith, you will renounce your faith, Priest. Do that and I will let this little one live.” Karadzic's voice cut through the panic. He looked around at the women. “Renounce your dead Christ and I will leave you all.”
Ivena began to whimper with short squeaky sounds that forced their way past white lips. For a moment the rest seemed not to have heard. Father Michael stiffened. For several long seconds his face registered nothing.
And then it registered everything, knotting up impossibly around his shattered cheekbone. His tall frame began to shake with sobs and his limp arm bounced loosely.
“Speak, Priest! Renounce Christ!”
THE PHONE rang, and Ivena jerked upright. Her heart slammed in her chest.
Oh, Nadia! Oh, dear Nadia.
A teardrop darkened the page by her thumb. She closed her eyes and let the book close on one finger.
The phone rang again, from the kitchen.
Oh, Nadia, I love you so much. You were so brave. So very, very brave!
Ivena began to cry then; she just could not help it. Didn't want to help it. She bowed her head and sobbed.
She had done this a hundred times; a thousand times, and each time she reached this point it was the same. The hardest part of remembering. But it was also the most rewarding part. Because in moments like this she knew that her heart was breaking with her Father's, looking down at miserable man; at the leper; the whore; the common pedestrian in Atlanta; Nadia. The ache in her heart now was no different from the ache in God's heart for his stray creation. It was there only because of love.
And she did love Nadia. She really did.
The phone rang incessantly.
Ivena sniffed, twisted to stand, and then thought better of it. Whoever it was could wait. It was only ten o'clock and she had no deliveries today. They could call back. She was nearly finished here anyway; no use running off prematurely. Nothing mattered as much as remembering. Except for following.
Ivena took a gulp of cool tea and let the phone ring out. When it did, she adjusted herself on the chair, sniffed again, and then began to read.