see. Well, I can’t say that I approve, but I guess you foreigners have different customs. You’re welcome to stay the night, but I’m a Christian man, so we’ll have to separate you. The girl can sleep with my wife, and you and I can push some bedding together on the front room floor. It’s not the most comfortable place to sleep, but we’ll be warm and dry.” He extended his hand. “My name is Lazarus. What’s yours?”
Elam jerked his head around to Sapphira. “I didn’t understand any of that, but I thought I heard him say Lazarus.”
“He did.” Sapphira stepped up and curtsied. “His name is Elam, and mine is Sapphira.” She nodded toward the building. “What is this place, if I may be so bold?”
Lazarus gestured toward the boards on the wall. “See the cross?” he said, pulling a smaller wooden replica from under his belt. “It’s a church, dedicated to Michael.”
Sapphira translated for Elam, then asked Lazarus, “Michael, the archangel?”
“Yes, indeed.” The man leaned toward her and blinked his friendly old eyes. “Obviously you have heard of him in your country.”
Again, she translated, then, as she readied another reply, Elam pulled off her coif. Her hair spilled to her shoulders, and she stepped back, wincing at the lantern light.
“An angel!” Lazarus dropped to one knee and bowed his head. “What do you request of your humble servant? I am ready to do your bidding.”
Elam pointed at Lazarus. “Sapphira, tell him you’re a special messenger called an oracle of fire, and now that you have brought me here to his church, your work is done.”
Sapphira shielded her eyes with her arm. “But ”
“Tell him!” Elam ordered, stuffing the coif into her pocket.
Sapphira translated the words and lowered her arm. “What now?”
He pointed at Lazarus’s cross. “Ask him if I can use it.”
Sapphira asked.
Lazarus laid the cross in Elam’s palm. “By all means!”
Elam wrapped Sapphira’s fingers around the cross and covered them with his own. “Go home, now. We’ll see each other again. I know we will.” He helped Lazarus to his feet and stepped back, pulling him along.
Sapphira drew in her bottom lip and bit it hard. She yearned to be with Elam, but he was right. This world would never accept her. No matter how much love a precious few people showed to her, she would still be a freak of nature in the eyes of everyone else. And who was she to expect Elam to live buried in dark hopelessness, trapped in the dimension of the dead, with a bunch of plant girls, no less? He had a vision from Elohim, and she should spur him on, not drag him back.
As she gazed at Elam slowly climbing the hill with Lazarus, she looked past him and, with her sharpened vision, read a sign on the church’s wall. Jesus saith unto him, “Feed my sheep.” The riddle on the museum wall came back to her mind: “When a maid collects an egg, she passes it on, giving it to the one she feeds.” Sliding her hand into her pocket, she felt the Ovulum, now cold and lifeless. She knew it was time to obey.
“I’ll go,” she called, withdrawing the Ovulum, “but . . .”
Elam pivoted and stood on a flat terrace several paces up. “But what?”
She held the Ovulum in her palm. “But only if you take this. I think you’ll need it more than I will.” She tossed it to him, not wanting to give him a choice. He caught it with both hands and pressed it close to his chest.
Keeping her eyes fixed on his, she raised the cross high in the air. As tears blurred her vision, she shouted, “Give me light!” The cross ignited, burning with lively yellow flames from an inch above her hand to the very top. She began to swirl it in a slow orbit.
Lazarus lowered himself to his knees again and lifted his hands. “May God be praised. I have seen another miracle!”
Elam nodded at Sapphira, the glow of the cross shining in his eyes. “Go on, now,” he said softly. “I’ll learn the language soon enough.”
Swirling the cross faster, she steadied her voice and spoke as clearly as she could. “I love you, Elam, son of Shem.”
Tears rolled down Elam’s cheeks. “And I love you, Sapphira Adi, sparkling gem of perfection.”
As the flames danced in a curtain all around her, Elam, Lazarus, the grassy slope, and the church incinerated in her sight, like a painted canvas burning from