As Sapphira quickly translated, Elam pulled her close beside him. “Hide your eyes,” he whispered.
She jerked out her coif and tied it on, pushing her hair underneath and veiling her eyes.
“Two of you, eh? We can make room. Are you two married?”
Sapphira shook her head, then Elam did the same.
The man pointed at his face. “I was wondering, with the veil, you know, maybe she was a new bride. Are you brother and sister?”
Sapphira whispered the words to say. Elam tried to parrot them, but they came out skewed. “No,” Elam said in the man’s language. “We are just. . together.”
“Oh. . I 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 top to bottom. When the fire died away, the mining trench appeared. Competing shadows crisscrossed the dark furrow, some cast there by a column of purplish light spinning around her, the underworld exit point of the new portal. Dimmer shadows tripped around the flickers of the lantern Elam had left behind next to the corridor’s new dead end a stone wall the Ovulum had erected with its layers of crimson light, blocking Morgan’s entry into the girls’ home.
Sapphira tightened her grip on the smoldering cross and stepped out of the column. After picking up the lantern, she shuffled back toward the elevation platform, kicking black pebbles all along the way. Why hurry? She had all the time in the world to climb that long rope and rejoin her spawn sisters, then years and years to sit and wonder what Elam was doing up in the land of the living.
When she reached the platform, she stared at the rope and the black void above. Everything seemed so empty, so hopeless. Elam was far away up there, separated from her by much more than space. He was in a completely different dimension, probably happy now to be away from this God-forsaken hole in the ground.
She leaned against the wall and slid down to her seat, staring at the trench, the pathway back to the world above. Setting down the cross and lantern, she slid her hand into her pocket. She felt only her coif. The Ovulum was gone.
She grasped a handful of dust and threw it toward the trench. God-forsaken was right. Now everything and everyone from the living world had escaped, and they were all probably glad of it. This was a place of torture and sorrows, and those born here were destined to live here alone, separated from God forever.
Now she knew what Elam had meant. Having something and then losing it was a lot worse than never having it at all. At least now Elam could find new parents or maybe somebody else to show him love and care.
Sapphira pressed her trembling lips together. She had nothing, and what she had lost would never return.
She scrunched up her face, trying not to cry, but tears flowed anyway. Her voice quaking, she looked up at the dark, blank ceiling. “I guess you got what you wanted out of me, didn’t you? You destroyed the tower, you rescued Elam, but you left me here to rot.”
Lowering her head, she let her tears drip into the dust. “Why didn’t you just let me be Mara, the slave girl? Why did you have to show me so many wonders of the living world, only to trap me down here again?” She rose to her knees and, balling her fists, she screamed, “Why didn’t you just leave me alone?”
She fell prostrate and wept, sobbing and heaving, not caring how dirty, ugly, or ridiculous she looked. Who would ever come around to see her? Nobody cared. . nobody.
After a few minutes, something soft touched her head. “Sapphira?”
Sapphira jerked up and stared at the female form, a girl with white hair, sparkling sapphire pupils, and a burning torch in her hand. Sapphira rubbed her eyes with her filthy knuckles. “Acacia?”