Erin dropped to a knee and traced the lines in the panel, picking out further details. “The boy is carrying a sling in his right hand, stones in his left. So he was hunting . . . or maybe playing. Acting out David’s fight with Goliath.”
Arella smiled, radiant with peace. “Just so. But there was no Goliath here in the desert. Just a small white dove with brilliant green eyes.”
Tommy let out a gasp, staring over at the woman. “I saw a dove like that in Masada . . . with a broken wing.”
Her smile wilted into sadness. “As did another long before you.”
“You’re talking about Judas . . .” Tommy dropped next to Erin, taking a closer look at the bird. “He said he saw one, too. When he was a boy. The morning he met Jesus.”
Erin glanced at Tommy, then Arella. “The dove has always been the symbol of the Holy Spirit for the Church.”
Rhun struggled to understand how this one bird could possibly bind the three boys together. And more important, why?
Arella simply turned away, her face impassive, moving to the next panel, making them follow.
On this square of glass, a stone flew from the boy’s sling and struck the bird, leaving one wing clearly broken.
“He hit the bird,” Erin said, sounding shocked.
“He had meant only to strike near it, to frighten it. But intentions are not enough.”
“What does that mean?” asked Tommy.
Erin explained. “Just because you want something to happen a certain way doesn’t necessarily mean that it does.”
Rhun heard the grief in the beat of Tommy’s heart. The boy had already learned that lesson well.
As did I.
The next panel told a grimmer end to this childish play. Here the curly-headed boy held the dove in his palms, its neck hanging limply.
“The stone did more than break its wing,” Erin said. “It killed it.”
“How he wished he could take back his action,” Arella said.
Rhun understood that sentiment, too, picturing Elisabeta’s face in sunshine.
Tommy turned to Arella, one eye narrowed. “How do you know what Jesus did, what he thought?”
“I could say that it is because I am old and wise, or that I am a prophetess. But I know these things because the child told them to me. He came rushing back from the desert, covered in sand and soot, and this was His story.”
Erin turned wide eyes upon the woman. “So you did more than lead the holy family to Siwa. You stayed here, looking after them.”
Arella bowed her head.
Christian crossed himself. Even Rhun’s hand went unbidden to the cross around his neck. This woman had known Christ, had shared His early triumphs and sorrows. She was far holier than Rhun could ever hope to be.
Arella waved her arm around the crater. “Jesus stood then where we stand now.”
Rhun pictured the well and the pool it must have once held. He imagined the bird and the boy along its banks. But what happened after that?
Arella moved along the ring of panels. The next revealed the boy casting his arms high. Rays, inscribed into the glass, shot upward from his palms. And amid those beams, the dove flew high, wings straight out.
“He healed it,” Erin said.
“No,” Arella said. “He restored it to life.”
“His first miracle,” Rhun breathed.
“It was.” She did not sound exulted by this act. “But the light of this miracle caught the dark eyes of another, someone who had been searching for him since the moment the angel came to Mary with his joyous message.”
“King Herod?” Jordan asked.
“No, a far greater enemy than Herod could ever be.”
“So not a man, I’m guessing?” Erin said.
Arella drew them to the next panel, where the boy faced a figure of smoke with eyes of fire. “It was indeed no man, but rather an implacable enemy, one who ambushed the boy not because of his hatred of the Christ child, but because he sought always to undo His father.”
“You’re talking about Lucifer,” Erin said, her voice hushed by dread.
Rhun stared at the glass, at the dark angel challenging the young Christ child—as Satan would do once again, when he would tempt Christ in the desert, when the Savior was a man.
“The Father of Lies came here, ready to do battle,” Arella explained. “But someone came to the boy’s defense.”
She stepped along the ring of art to reveal the boy now enfolded in the wings of an angel, just as the sibyl had enfolded Tommy that very morning.
“Another angel came to help him.” Erin turned to Arella. “Was it you?”
The other’s face softened. “Would that it had been, but it was not.”
Rhun understood the regret in her voice. What a privilege it would have been to have saved Christ.