The Fifth Mountain Page 0,65

summit.

"Let's go back," asked the boy.

Elijah decided not to insist; the boy had already experienced great difficulties and much fear in his short life. He did as he was asked; they came out from the fog and could once again discern the valley below.

"Someday, look in Akbar's library for what I wrote for you. It's called The Manual of the Warrior of Light."

"Am I a warrior of light?" replied the boy.

"Do you know what my name is?" asked Elijah.

"Liberation."

"Sit here beside me," said Elijah, pointing to a rock. "I cannot forget my name. I must continue with my task, even if at this moment all I desire is to be at your side. That was why Akbar was rebuilt, to teach us that it is necessary to go onward, however difficult it may appear."

"You're going away."

"How do you know?" he asked, surprised.

"I wrote it on a tablet, last night. Something told me; it may have been my mother, or an angel. But I already felt it in my heart."

Elijah caressed the boy's head.

"You have learned to read God's will," he said contentedly. "So there's nothing that I need to explain to you."

"What I read was the sadness in your eyes. It wasn't difficult. Other friends of mine noticed it too."

"This sadness you read in my eyes is part of my story. Only a small part that will last but a few days. Tomorrow, when I depart for Jerusalem, it will not have the strength it had before, and little by little it will disappear. Sadness does not last forever when we walk in the direction of that which we always desired."

"Is it always necessary to leave?"

"It's always necessary to know when a stage of one's life has ended. If you stubbornly cling to it after the need has passed, you lose the joy and meaning of the rest. And you risk being shaken to your senses by God."

"The Lord is stern."

"Only with those He has chosen."

ELIJAH LOOKED AT AKBAR below. Yes, God sometimes could be very stern, but never beyond a person's capacity: the boy was unaware that they were sitting where Elijah had received an angel of the Lord and learned how to bring him back from the dead.

"Are you going to miss me?" Elijah asked.

"You told me that sadness disappears if we press ahead. There's still much to do to leave Akbar as beautiful as my mother deserves. She walks in its streets."

"Come back to this place when you have need of me. And look toward Jerusalem: I shall be there, seeking to give meaning to my name, Liberation. Our hearts are linked forever."

"Was that why you brought me to the top of the Fifth Mountain? So I could see Israel?"

"So you could see the valley, the city, the other mountains, the rocks and clouds. The Lord often has his prophets climb mountains to converse with Him. I always wondered why He did that, and now I know the answer: when we are on high, we can see everything else as small.

"Our glory and our sadness lose their importance. Whatever we conquered or lost remains there below. From the heights of the mountain, you see how large the world is, and how wide its horizons."

The boy looked about him. From the top of the Fifth Mountain, he could smell the sea that bathed the beaches of Tyre. And he could hear the desert wind that blew from Egypt.

"Someday I'll govern Akbar," he told Elijah. "I know what's big. But I also know every corner of the city. I know what needs to be changed."

"Then change it. Don't let things remain idle."

"Couldn't God have chosen a better way of showing us all this? There was a time when I thought He was evil."

Elijah said nothing. He recalled a conversation, many years before, with a Levite prophet while the two awaited death at the hands of Jezebel's soldiers.

"Can God be evil?" the boy insisted.

"God is all-powerful," answered Elijah. "He can do anything, and nothing is forbidden to Him, for if it were, there would exist someone more powerful than He, to prevent His doing certain things. In that case, I should prefer to worship and revere that more powerful someone."

He paused for several instants to allow the boy to fathom the meaning of his words. Then he continued.

"Still, because of His infinite power, He chose to do only Good. If we reach the end of our story, we shall see that often Good is disguised as Evil, but it goes