The Bronze Bow - Elizabeth George Speare [41]
Suddenly words were echoing in his mind. "For each one of you is precious in His sight." Not scripture, but the words of the carpenter. That was what had confused him. Rosh looked at a man and saw a thing to be used, like a tool or a weapon. Jesus looked and saw a child of God. Even the old miser with his moneybag?
He hammered more violently, till the sparks flew wild and the iron squashed down on the stone like clay, and he had to heat it again and begin all over. Samson, kneading the bellows, watched him broodingly.
10
EBOL, THE SENTRY, brought the message to Daniel one sultry August morning, a single sentence scratched on a fragment of broken pottery, "Your grandmother is dying," and signed "Simon." The message had been in Ebol's pocket for three days; no knowing how many times it had changed hands before reaching him. Better if it had never reached him at all, Daniel thought fiercely, thrusting it deep into his girdle pocket. For half the day he carried it about with him, saying nothing, the bit of clay weighing heavier and heavier till it dragged at him like a stone. Finally he showed the message to Rosh and set off down the mountain to the village.
The door of his grandmother's house was bolted, and only silence answered his knock. As he stood uncertain in the road before the house, two women, and then a feeble old man came hurrying from the nearest house.
"About time you came," one of the women scolded. "They've been locked in there for ten days. We don't know whether the old woman is alive or dead."
"Why didn't you break in?" Daniel asked.
"The girl is possessed of devils," the old man answered. "She will let nobody come near her."
"We tossed bread through the window," a woman added. "But I'll have no more to do with it. Suppose the devils were let loose?"
"My sister is harmless," Daniel told them impatiently. "She could hurt no one."
But probably none of them had even glimpsed his sister in all these years. He could see that he could expect no help from them. He looked up at the small high window. Then he wrenched a portion of the ladder from the wall, braced it, and tried to peer into the house. He could see nothing but a patch of floor. There was no sound, but just as he turned away he thought he caught the flicker of a shadow.
"Leah," he called, softly at first, then insistently. "It's Daniel, your brother. Let me in." The shadow did not move again.
Panic crept over him. What horror did that room contain? With all his heart he longed to run from this silent house. Yet the fearful, demanding eyes of the three neighbors goaded him on. He had no choice. He would have to break down the door and go in.
At the second thrust of his powerful shoulders the hinges burst from the rotting frame and he fell forward into foul-smelling darkness. Sunlight poured in behind him, lighting up a crouching figure with a mass of tangled yellow hair. For an instant Leah's eyes stared wildly from an ashen face. Then she darted away and coiled into a tight ball of fear against the wall. Where the girl had crouched, on a pallet of straw, lay a shrunken gray shape. Dread froze Daniel on the threshold. Then, to his shattering relief, his grandmother slowly turned her head.
"Daniel—you've come," she whispered. They were the last words he was ever to hear from her.
Daniel drove away the two curious women and sent the old man for a doctor. He kicked the door all the way open and let fresh air into the damp, fetid room. He threw out the rat-gnawed loaves of bread that littered the floor.
The doctor bent over the old woman and shook his head. "Only her will has kept the life in her," he said. "She has waited till you came. Let her go now, poor soul. Look to your sister instead, and see that she eats."
Daniel had no knowledge of nursing. Clumsily he spread a fresh bed of rushes and shifted the