Lamb The Gospel According to Biff Christs Childho - By Christopher Moore Page 0,9

tongue was brushing the girl's fingers. "This is definitely a cobra, little boy. And these two were probably leading it back to the fields where it would help the farmers by eating rats."

"Yep, that's what we were doing," I said.

"Absolutely," Joshua said.

The girl turned to Jakan and his friends. "A demon?"

Jakan stomped like an angry donkey. "You are in league with them."

"Don't be silly, my family has only just arrived from Magdala, I've never seen these two before, but it's obvious what they were doing. We do it all the time in Magdala. But then, this is a backwater village."

"We do it here too," Jakan said. "I was - well - these two make trouble."

"Trouble," his friends said.

"Why don't we let them get on with what they were doing."

Jakan, his eyes bouncing from the girl to the snake to the girl again, began to lead his friends away. "I will deal with you two another time."

As soon as they were around the corner, the girl jumped back from the snake and ran toward the door of her house.

"Wait," Joshua called.

"I have to go."

"What is your name?"

"I'm Mary of Magdala, daughter of Isaac," she said. "Call me Maggie."

"Come with us, Maggie."

"I can't, I have to go."

"Why?"

"Because I've peed myself."

She disappeared through the door.

Miracles.

Once we were back in the wheat field Sarah headed for her den. We watched from a distance as she slid down the hole.

"Josh. How did you do that?"

"I have no idea."

"Is this kind of thing going to keep happening?"

"Probably."

"We are going to get into a lot of trouble, aren't we?"

"What am I, a prophet?"

"I asked you first."

Joshua stared into the sky like a man in a trance. "Did you see her? She's afraid of nothing."

"She's a giant snake, what's to be afraid of?"

Joshua frowned. "Don't pretend to be simple, Biff. We were saved by a serpent and a girl, I don't know what to think about that."

"Why think about it at all? It just happened."

"Nothing happens but by God's will," Joshua said. "It doesn't fit with the testament of Moses."

"Maybe it's a new testament," I said.

"You aren't pretending, are you?" Joshua said. "You really are simple."

"I think she likes you better than she likes me," I said.

"The snake?"

"Right, I'm the simple one."

I don't know if now, having lived and died the life of a man, I can write about little-boy love, but remembering it now, it seems the cleanest pain I've known. Love without desire, or conditions, or limits - a pure and radiant glow in the heart that could make me giddy and sad and glorious all at once. Where does it go? Why, in all their experiments, did the Magi never try to capture that purity in a bottle? Perhaps they couldn't. Perhaps it is lost to us when we become sexual creatures, and no magic can bring it back. Perhaps I only remember it because I spent so long trying to understand the love that Joshua felt for everyone.

In the East they taught us that all suffering comes from desire, and that rough beast would stalk me through my life, but on that afternoon, and for a time after, I touched grace. At night I would lie awake, listening to my brothers' breathing against the silence of the house, and in my mind's eye I could see her eyes like blue fire in the dark. Exquisite torture. I wonder now if Joshua didn't make her whole life like that. Maggie, she was the strongest of us all.

After the miracle of the serpent, Joshua and I made up excuses to pass by the smith's shop where we might run into Maggie. Every morning we would rise early and go to Joseph, volunteering to run to the smith for some nails or the repair of a tool. Poor Joseph took this as enthusiasm for carpentry.

"Would you boys like to come to Sepphoris with me tomorrow?" Joseph asked us one day when we were badgering him about fetching nails. "Biff, would your father let you start learning the work of a carpenter?"

I was mortified. At ten a boy was expected to start learning his father's trade, but that was a year away - forever when you're nine. "I-I am still thinking about what I will do when I grow up," I said. My own father had made a similar offer to Joshua the day before.

"So you won't become a stonecutter?"

"I was thinking about becoming the village idiot, if my father will allow it."

"He has a God-given talent," Joshua