Eden (2 page)

Old Gray didn't know what to do. So he sat in the street by a merchant's stall to think matters through. Even under the awnings' shade, the sun beat the ground and the streets smelled of human stink. Old Gray sniffed at the canvas of a butcher's stand with its hanging meat; the surly merchant threw a handful of pebbles and cursed, “Lousy dog. Get lost.”

No one offered Old Gray water.

No one offered him food.

No one offered him a place to lie down.

This city was no place for him. And the Legion would always choose mutton over a marching dog. The garrison doors shut tight against camp followers.

Before sunset the Romans' watchdog no longer belonged to the Legion. Old Gray found another caravan of camels and mules heading from the city. And as he once came south, now he traveled north. The camels looked down their noses refusing to speak, but the poky mules let him walk in their shadow. One in particular sighed as he trotted along beside her. She'd been on this route before, complaining at the packs of bound wool on her truss, “Oh so heavy, so heavy. So many miles, so many.”

Old Gray knew this kind of work—march along during the day, sleep at night beside a fire. Wake the travelers at the first sign of trouble. But this caravan wasn't like the Romans' column; they didn't scavenge the countryside, and only ate what they brought with them. Food was scarce, and Old Gray rummaged the fire pits for burnt bones in the morning. After two days' march he was weary, hungry and parched. He'd lapped some muddy puddles, but no one gave him so much as a crust. And his fellow animals were no help at all.

The camels couldn't care less: “We carry our water with us. Get a hump so you can drink.” And the donkey no better: “Perhaps if you wear a truss to carry wool they'll give you water.” Hard to think such creatures were worse than soldiers. At least soldiers knew a dog's worth when they needed one.

Tongue hanging out, Old Gray stopped in his tracks.

There was something familiar about this stretch of hills, the scent of sweetness in the air, orange blossom, yes,
there
—bees flitting from flower to flower up the rocky slope. And boxes where the bees gathered, yes,
honey
. Deep in the pasture a fat ewe suckled a baby lamb. The mother lamb looked down at him with peaceful eyes, her infant at her teat. All was right with the world. And Old Gray knew where he was.

The shepherd's dog met him halfway up the slope. And Old Gray could see the mutt was even older than himself. Creaky on his legs and near toothless.

“Who goes there?” the Ancient growled. “Friend or foe?”

“I've been here before,” Old Gray told the Ancient.

“You!” The Ancient immediately knew the stranger. “You were the one who took poor Honey,” he growled. “
For shame
. You took her while I slept.”

Old Gray bowed his head. “I did. That was my job.”

But what was done was done; he met the Ancient's eyes and circled cautiously.

What now?

“I saw the bees,” Old Gray told him. “I'm done with marching.” He was close to exhaustion, and nearly wild with thirst. “Is there no place for me here?”

The Ancient looked Old Gray nose to nose; the two dogs were almost on equal footing, and a fight now might wound or kill them both. What then of the shepherd with no one to wake him or watch for danger's approach?

“Harrumph,” the Ancient grumbled, giving in. “If you know how to steal, maybe you can learn how to keep.”

“I kept the Legion,” Old Gray panted. “Right up till the garrison. Until they didn't need me. Now I keep it no more. Is keeping sheep more difficult?”

“Hah!” the Ancient laughed. “Only when a Legion camps nearby.”

The Ancient wearily wagged his tail and shrugged. “Come along then. There's water and a fire, and maybe something left to eat. Besides there are mice out at night in the fields, if you're very desperate. And very quick.”

So the two animals postponed their test of who would rule, and put their fate aside. Old Gray followed the Ancient to water in a clay bowl. That deep drink of water, the best he ever drank. There was fire and a bone. At last Old Gray closed his eyes, sinking into the lap of sleep. As the moon rose, the Legionaries' dog dreamt of poor Honey, with bees over her head and flower blossoms in her fleece. When dawn broke, the wind sighed across the pasture, a whisper of emptiness. The sheep stared silently, not one of them bending his head to graze.

“What?” Old Gray asked them. “What is it?” Then he saw the answer.

The wizened dog had gone in his sleep.

Old Gray nosed the dry, cracked muzzle, but there was no one left inside.

Time and fate had decided who would guard the flock, who would rule the pasture.

And Old Gray took the Ancient's place.

Three Kings

Some years and many lambs later, the sheep of the pasture still wandered the stony slopes and Old Gray's descendants still watched over their flocks by night.

The shepherds of the hills called Old Gray's great-grandson Noah—because he protected the flocks with relentless zeal. Herding them, moving them—guarding them with open eyes while they grazed or slept. Nothing escaped his notice; not a single lamb allowed to stray, nor a single old goat allowed to wander off.

Noah sniffed every scent, inspected every blade of grass, cocking his ears forward and then laying them back behind a furrowed, pensive brow. Always alert, even to the most harmless things: snuffing at the shape of a rock in the pasture, at the scents of the flowers over the hill—cocking his head at the buzz of bees in their honeycomb crates, at the little lamb bleating for its ewe. Staring up at the stars at night, Noah watched their passage across the great arc of heaven; a dog searching for any change in the wind.

Not far off in a cleft of hills stood a little town. Noah often accompanied his herdsman there, when the man went to sell his wool or sought food or drink or company. Naturally Noah noticed there had been much traffic down on the road of late. Events in the great wide world had stirred people from their homes. Day and night they marched along the road, in caravans or groups of two or three, or even singly. For weeks, throngs on their way from one place to another passed through the little town never to be seen again.

But why they traveled and where they were going, Noah did not know.

While hanging in the sky at night, one star seemed to travel above the endless stream of camel trains on the road, every night a little closer. Noah had watched the star move westward inch by inch all year, always brighter than the rest—until it hung nearly overhead. This night it seemed to pause motionless over the town.

For once the road below lay empty of men and mules except for one caravan, plodding wearily on. Not a very big caravan, only three camels, but the light of the star seemed to shine around them—a soft glow that enveloped the camels and their riders as they trudged along, a halo in the darkness.
What could this mean?

Who were these travelers?

Why had they come?

Listening hard, Noah heard the mice in the fields chattering away, “See! See! Look! See!” squeaking in their high little voices mouse to mouse all the way down to the road. Each and every one of them seemed to know something special about the caravan, as if they'd heard it on the wind. And suddenly Noah knew he must see for himself.

He padded quietly down the slope, leaving the sheep sleeping in their fields.

Oddly there was no dog in the caravan, but Noah still followed at a polite distance.

After a few paces he trotted to the front.

“What is your name?” Noah asked the lead camel. “Where do you come from?” And for a moment the lead camel, like camels everywhere, merely looked down his long nose. “My name is Sharif. I am the Lead Camel. And why should we tell you?”

The dog didn't know what to say. Noah padded on in silence until the camel, perhaps taking pity on the poor dog's ignorance, deigned to answer:

“I come from Babylon. A great city to the East.”

“Where else have you been?” Noah asked. This camel's hooves must have walked a mighty distance. What had he seen? Where had he been?

“Everywhere,” the camel said. “And now we're here in this godforsaken back alley of the Levant.” They had reached the little town. Sharif sniffed as he looked down the dusty street. Other caravans had already arrived, and camels stood or crouched uncomfortably everywhere. Merchants laid their bundles against any free wall, while other men sprawled about the paving stones, sleeping upon their goods so that none could steal them. Was there nowhere else to go?

Street after street, conditions were no better. The caravan stopped at the door of a stable. The three camels sighed with relief as their riders dismounted, and Noah shuffled out of the way. But there was no more room inside than outside. This was not a very large stable either, four stalls in all, but every stall filled. A large black donkey in one corner looked sympathetically at the newcomers.

“Oh you poor dears. My name is Mabel, but I do not think we can fit you in my stall.”

No, there was barely room for the camels' noses poking in the stable door.

A cow and her calf shared another stall, wedged in tight; Mama Cow shook her head, “And don't come begging here either.”

Lady Duck and her quacklings fluttered their wings in a pile of straw—while Lord Duck sat uncomfortably on a beam extremely annoyed, a scowl on his beak:

“No room!” called out Lord Duck. “No room!”

Sharif, the Lead Camel snorted. As though anyone would want to stay in their stuffy barn. “Do not fear, oh Quack, we shall not climb onto that beam with you.”

But Noah couldn't care less about snooty camels or silly quackers. The star hanging in the sky stared in the stable's narrow window. Its light fell on another animal, a She-Dog lying in a corner of the stall, nursing three suckling pups. Before Noah set a single paw inside the stall the She-Dog raised a lip to him, “No closer, Nosey. Stay where you are.”

“I will, I promise,” Noah told her. He snuffed the straw-strewn floor for any scent of a mate. No, nothing. No rival here. She-Dog left off nuzzling her little ones and looked heavily into the darkest corner. Moments passed as the star's light crawled across the barn floor. Still others had sought shelter in the stable. Noah breathed their scents: human woman, human pup. A woman and child huddled in a mound of straw. The star in the window touched the woman's face. Like She-Dog, the woman suckled her baby.

The three caravan travelers bowed their heads and entered. Noah noticed the camel riders were old men, clad in worn and dusty robes as if they had ridden far just like Sharif had said. The three elders crept further into the stable and knelt. Yet another man came in from the shadow, lit a lantern and hung it on a beam.

The lantern cast a pale light over the wooden stalls and the cow raised her head. “Is it time to milk?” the cow asked mildly confused. Her calf looked up in silent alarm, but when no one came with a milking stool she laid her head down and snuggled back into the thick straw. “There, there now,” the cow murmured to her calf as she fell back to sleep. “Nothing to worry about …”

The man with the lantern stared at the newcomers.

“These old men mean no harm,” the woman told her husband. “If only we had something to offer them after their long ride.”

“We left Babylon with gold and incense and myrrh,” the eldest of the elders said. “But all these we lost on the road.”

He held out his hand, “This only remains.” In his palm sat a wafer-thin coin. It might have been shiny once upon a time, but years of passing from hand to hand had rubbed it smooth and dark, the features of the face on the coin worn away by a thousand thumbs. For a second the coin caught the lantern's light and it glittered. Gold.

The next elder offered a scrap of cloth; carefully he unfolded the threadbare rag, showing only some meager crumbs. A few morsels of incense, no more than a few moments' worth of smoke, but its scent filled the stalls with wholesomeness and peace.

The last elder took from around his neck a string to which was tied a tiny glass vial no larger than his pinky and stoppered with a tiny plug of cork. The vial looked almost empty, but at the bottom were a few drops of oil, the dregs of myrrh, barely enough medicine to heal a bee sting.

Noah knew the look and scent of all these things. The shepherds used myrrh on their cuts and scrapes. When sheep were shorn and the fleece sold, they burned incense in their huts. And every animal knew men used coins to trade for food, to buy other animals and other men.

“Now we have nothing but what we wear,” the eldest of the elders said. “Still, it is for us to offer, not you to give. And all we offer is our company. We need no lantern to show us what we seek.”

“Then sit and rest the night with us,” the man said. “All are welcome here.”