Another woman stepped forward, her face twisted in pity. “No. No, kill me instead. I will die for the boy. The priest has already suffered too much. And Ivena has lost her only child. I am childless. Take my life. I will join Nadia.”
“No, I will,” another said, taking two steps forward. “You are young, Kota. I am old. Please, this world holds no appeal to me. It would be good for me to pass on to be with our Lord.” The woman looked to be in her fifties.
Karadzic slashed the air with his pistol. “Silence! Perhaps I should kill
all
of you! I am killing here, not playing a game. You want me to kill you all?” Janjic had known the man long enough to recognize his faltering. But there was something else there as well. A glimmer of excitement that flashed through his gray eyes. Like a dog in heat.
“But it really should be me,” a voice said. Janjic looked to the steps where another girl stood facing them with her heels together. “Nadia was my best friend,” she said. “I should join her. Is there really music there, Father?”
The priest could not answer. He was weeping uncontrollably. Torn to shreds by this display of love.
The gun boomed and Janjic flinched.
Karadzic held the weapon above his head. He'd fired into the air. “Stop! Stop!” He shoved the boy sprawling to his seat. His thick lips glistened with spittle. The gun shook in his thick fingers, and above it all his eyes sparkled with rising excitement.
He stepped back and turned the pistol on Nadia's mother. She simply closed her eyes. Janjic understood her motivation to some degree: The woman's only child lay at her feet. She was stepping up to the bullet with a grief-ravaged mind.
He held his breath in anticipation of a shot.
Karadzic licked his wet lips and jerked the weapon to the younger woman who'd stepped forward. She too closed her eyes. But Karadzic did not shoot. He swiveled it to the older woman. Looking at them all now, Janjic thought that any one of the women might give their lives for the boy. It was a moment that could not be understood in the context of normal human experience. A great spiritual love had settled on them all. Karadzic was more than capable of killing; he was in fact eager for it. And yet the women stood square-shouldered now, daring him to pull the trigger.
Janjic swayed on weak legs, overcome by the display of self-sacrifice. The ravens cawed overhead and he glanced skyward, as much for a reprieve as in response to the bird's call. At first he thought the ravens had flown off; that a black cloud had drifted over the valley in their place. But then he saw the cloud ebb and flow and he knew it was a singular ring of birdsâa hundred or more, gliding overhead making their odd call. What was happening here? He lowered his eyes to the courtyard and blinked against the buzz that had overtaken the pounding in his skull.
For a long, silent minute Karadzic weighed his decision, his muscles strung to the snapping point, sweating profusely, breathing heavily.
The villagers did not move; they drilled him with steady stares. The priest seemed to float in and out of consciousness, swaying on his feet, opening and closing his eyes periodically. His face drifted through a range of expressionsâone moment his eyes open and his mouth sagged with grief, the next his eyes closed and his mouth opened in wonder. Janjic studied him, and his heart broke for the man. He wanted to take the gentle priest to a bed and dress his wounds. Bathe him in hot water and soothe his battered shoulder. His face would never be the same; the damage looked far too severe. He would probably be blind in his right eye, and eating would prove difficult for some time. Poor priest.
My poor, poor priest. I swear that I will care for you, my priest. I will come and serve . . .
What was this? What was he thinking? Janjic stopped himself. But it was true. He knew it then as much as he had known anything. He loved this man. He cherished this man. His heart felt sick over this man.
I will come and serve you, my priest.
A knot rose to Janjic's throat, suffocating him.
In you I have seen love, Priest. In you and your children and your women I have seen God. I will . . .
A chuckle interrupted his thoughts. The commander was chuckling. Looking around and chuckling. The sound engendered terror. The man was completely mad! He suddenly lowered his gun and studied the crowd, nodding slightly, tasting a new plan on his thick tongue.
“Haul this priest to the large cross,” he said. No one moved. Not even Molosov, who stood behind Ivena.
“Are you deaf, Molosov? Take him. Puzup, Paul, help Molosov.” He stared at the large stone cross facing the cemetery. “We will give them what they desire.”
FATHER MICHAEL remembered stumbling across the concrete, shoved from behind, tripping to his knees once and then being hauled up under his arms. He remembered the pain shooting through his shoulder and thinking someone had pulled his arm off. But it still swung ungainly by his side.
He remembered the cries of protest from the women. “Leave the Father! I beg you . . . He's a good man . . . Take one of us. We beg you!”
The world twisted topsy-turvy as they approached the cross. They left the girl lying on the concrete in pool of blood.
Nadia . . . Nadia, sweet child.
Ivena knelt by her daughter, weeping bitterly again, but a soldier jabbed her with his rifle, forcing her to follow the crowd to the cemetery.
The tall stone cross leaned against a white sky, gray and pitted. It had been erected one hundred years earlier. They called it stone, but the twelve-foot cross was actually cast of concrete, with etchings of rosebuds at the top and at the beams' intersection. Each end flared like a clover leaf, giving the instrument of death an incongruous sense of delicacy.
The pain on his right side reached to his bones. Some had been broken.
Oh, Father. Dear Father, give me strength
. The dove still sat on the roof peak and eyed them carefully. The spring bubbled without pause, oblivious of this treachery.
They reached the cross, and a sudden brutal pain shot through Michael's spine. His world faded.
When his mind crawled back into consciousness, a wailing greeted him. His head hung low, bowed from his shoulders, facing the dirt. His ribs stuck out like sticks beneath stretched skin. He was naked except for white boxer shorts, now stained in sweat and blood.
Michael blinked and struggled for orientation. He tried to lift his head, but pain sliced through his muscles. The women were singing, long mournful wails without tune. Mourning for whom?
For you. They're mourning you!
But why? It came back to him then. He had been marched to the cross. They had lashed him to the cross with a hemp rope around the midsection and shoulders, leaving his feet to dangle free.
He lifted his chin slowly and craned for a view, ignoring the shafts of pain down his right side. The commander stood to his left, the barrel of his pistol confronting Michael like a small black tunnel. The man looked at the women, most of whom had fallen to their knees, pleading with him.
A woman's words came to Michael. “He's our priest. He's a servant of God. You cannot kill him! You can not.” It was Ivena.
Oh, dear Ivena! Your heart is spun of gold!
The priest felt his body quiver as he slowly straightened his heavy head. He managed to lift it upright and let it flop backward. It struck the concrete cross with a dull thump.
The wailing ceased. They had heard. But now he stared up at the darkened sky. A white, overcast sky filled with black birds.
Goodness, there must be hundreds of birds flying around up there.
He tilted his head to his left and let it loll so that it rested on his good shoulder.
Now he saw them all. The kneeling women, the children staring with bulging eyes, the soldiers. The commander looked up at him and smiled. He was breathing heavily; his gray eyes were bloodshot. A long thin trail of spittle ran down his chin and hung suspended from a wet chin. He was certifiably mad, this one. Mad or possessed.
The lunatic turned back to the women. “One of you. That's all! One, one, one! A single stray sheep. If
one
of you will renounce Christ, I will leave you all!”
Father Michael felt his heart swell in his chest. He looked at the women and silently pleaded for them to remain quiet, yet he doubted his dismay showedâhis muscles had lost most of their control.
Do not renounce our Lord! Don't you dare speak out for me! You cannot take this from me!
He tried to speak, but only a faint groan came out. That and a string of saliva, which dripped to his chest. He moved his eyes to Ivena.
Don't let them, Ivena. I beg you!
“What's wrong with you? You can't hear? I said
one
of you! Surely you have a sinner in your pretty little town, willing to speak out to save your precious priest's miserable neck! Speak!”
Bright light filled Michael's mind, blinding him to the cemetery.
The field! But something had changed. Silence!
Absolute silence.
The man had stopped, thirty meters off, legs planted in the flowers, hands on his hips, dressed in a robe like a monk. Above his head the light still streaked in from the horizon. And silence.
Michael blinked. What . . .
Sing O son of Zion; Shout O child of mine
Rejoice with all your heart and soul and mind
The man's words echoed over the field.
Child of mine! Michael's lips twitched to a slight grin. Rejoice with all . . .
The man suddenly threw his arms out to either side lifted his head to the sky and sang.
Every tear you cried dried in the palm of my hand
Every lonely hour was by my side
Every loved one lost, every river crossed
Every moment, every hour was pointing to this day
Longing for this day . . .
For you are finally home
Michael felt as though he might faint for the sheer power of the melody. He wanted to run to the man. He wanted to throw out his own arms and tilt his head back and wail the same song from the bottom of his chest. A few notes dribbled past Michael's lips, uncontrolled. La da da da la . . .
A faint giggling sound came from his left. He turned.
She was skipping toward him in long bounds. Michael caught his breath. He could not see her face because the girl's chin was tilted back so that she stared at the sky. She leaped through the air, landing barefoot on the white petals every ten yards, her fists pumping with each footfall. Her pink dress fluttered in the wind.
She was echoing the man's melody now, not like Michael had done, but perfectly in tune and then in harmony.
Father Michael knew then that this girl hurtling toward him was Nadia. And in her wake followed a thousand others, bubbling with a laughter that swelled with the music.
The song swallowed him whole now. They were all singing it, led by the man. It was impossible to discern the laughter from the musicâthey were one and the same.
Nadia lowered her head and shot him a piercing stare as she flew by. Her blue eyes sparkled mischievously, as though daring him to give chase.
But there was a difference about Nadia. Something so startling that Michael's heart skipped a beat.
Nadia was beautiful!
She looked exactly as she had before her death. Same freckles, same pigtails, same plump facial features. But in this reality he found that those freckles and that thick face and all that had made her homely before, now looked . . .
Beautiful. Nearly intoxicating. His own perspective had changed!
He took an involuntary step forward, dumbfounded. And he knew in that moment that his pity for both Nadia's appearance and her death had been badly misplaced.
Nadia was beautiful all along. Physically beautiful. And her death held its own beauty as well.
Oh death, where is thy sting?
For the first time his eyes saw her as she truly was. Before, his sight had been masked by a preoccupation for the reality that now seemed foolish and distant by comparison. Like mud pies next to delicious mounds of ice cream.
A wind rushed by, filled with the laughter of a thousand souls. The white flower petals swirled in their wake. Michael couldn't hold back his chuckles now. They shook his chest.
“Nadia!” he called. “Nadia.”
She disappeared over the horizon. He looked out to the man.
Gone!
But the voice still filled the sky. Michael's bones felt like putty. Nothing else mattered now. Nothing.
They suddenly came at him again, streaking in from the left, led by this beautiful child he'd once thought was ugly. This time she had her head down. She drilled him with sparkling, mischievous eyes while she was still far off.
He wanted to join her train this time. To leap out in its wake and fly with her. He was planning to do just that. His whole body was quivering for this intoxicating ride that she was daring him to take. The desire flooded his veins and he staggered forward a step.
He staggered! He did not fly as she flew!
Nadia rushed up to him, then veered skyward with a single leap. His mouth dropped open. She shot for the streaking light above. Her giggles rose to a shrieking laughter and he heard her call, crystal clear.
“Come on, Father Michael! Come on! You think this is neat? This is
nothing!”
It reverberated across the desert.
This is nothing!
Nothing!
Desperation filled Michael. He took another step forward, but his foot seemed filled with lead. His heart slammed in his chest, flooding his veins with fear. “Nadia! Nadia!”
The white field turned off as if someone had pulled a plug.
Michael realized that he was crying. He was back in the village, hanging on a cross before his parishioners . . . crying like a baby.
JANJIC WATCHED the priest's body heaving with sobs up on that cross, and he pushed himself unsteadily to his feet. Nothing mattered to him now except that the priest be set free. If need be, he would die or kill or renounce Christ himself.