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if it would escape me. I do not want this shouting voice to come. It has not come at Heli’s before. Wildly, I look around—there is Salome, as surprised as I. There is Tata and Ananias and Addai and Heli and Dinah and Rhoda. There is the handsome young man. I close my eyes, grind down on my teeth. I will not speak again, I will not, will not.
    “ HEAR YE , SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF ISSA - RA - EL . FROM THE MOUTHS OF CHILDREN COME I . PREPARE FOR THE COMING DAY . I SHALL MAKE MYSELF KNOWN THROUGH ONE WHO APPEARS AS A SHEPHERD AMONG LAMBS , THROUGH ONE WHO STANDS FORTH AS A LION .”
    What am I saying? I do not want to hear.
    I look around me, the Voice of Voices strong in my throat, and I cannot move. “ DID ISSA NOT WALK WITH ME ? AND IS THE WORD NOT MY WORD ?”
    At that, I faint dead away. Later Salome, bathing my face and hands in aromatic oil, tells me that the first to reach my side was the handsome young man. He lifted me and took me to Dinah’s private room. His name is Seth, and she tells me he comes from Mount Carmel, which is far to the north. He is a Nazorean, who are not the Many but the Few. But no doubt, this is a play on words, a jest.
    As I am put into my own bed in Father’s house this night, I ask Tata what she makes of the shouting voice. “I think,” says Tata, fussing with my bedding, “that we shall have to find a new courtyard. Perhaps we might try Herod’s amphitheater.”

    P inning up my hair so that I might seem a boy is a tedious process. Still, Tata manages it. She and I are about to walk out a side entrance of Father’s house when I realize I have forgotten my stones. “Tata,” I say, “run back and fetch them.”
    Salome, bundled against the cold rain in a hooded Arabic burnoose, is already outside. As is Ananias, wearing his thick wool mantle and head shawl. They are near the door in the north wall of Father’s house, along which runs the side street that climbs up our steep and terraced hill to Herod’s palace and the Upper Market. I remember something else I have forgotten, but Tata is already gone. I poke my nose out the door so I might tell Salome and Ananias to wait just a few moments longer even though Ananias is made nervous by the night. Our merchant believes in demons, and demons come out after dark, especially the Queen of Demons, Agrath, daughter of Mahlath.
    Just then, a figure enters the street from below, to come striding up the hill, and oh, I would know Father anywhere. I am so terrified I think I might pee myself, but I cannot run away. Perhaps Father will not notice Salome and Ananias? But of course he notices them. What man of property would not take note of two robed figures lingering by his door as the night draws down? Father stops and confronts them. But neither Salome nor Ananias can answer him, for if they do he shall immediately know them. I feel Tata come up behind me; I feel her tremble with the same terror I know.
    Ananias is Father’s guest and he is standing in the street with Salome. Young females are not allowed out without escort, are not allowed out in the company of men other than their father or their brother or their husband. Father reaches out and violently jerks back the hood of Salome’s burnoose, pulling loose her pinned hair. Did he think it was me?
    I know what will happen now. What will happen is that my life will change forever. Salome’s life will change forever. Father is a proud man, and quick to judge. Ananias is already condemned. Salome is already banished. I am already bereft.
Eloi! Eloi!
I would rush into the street and plead for Salome if I thought Father would listen. I would do anything to stop what is about to happen. But there is nothing I can do, so I do nothing.
    “Defiler of children!” Father shouts. “Foul betrayer! Get away from my house. And take this, take this, this—” Father is so monumentally outraged he cannot find a word strong enough, bad enough. He spits, “this
female
with you before I kill you