Arella.
But this simple leaf had ended the best century of his long life—the one that he shared with her. It had been in Crete, where their house looked over the ocean. She hated to be far from the sea. He had moved with her from Venice to Alexandria to Constantinople to other cities that looked out over other waves. He would have lived anywhere to see her happy. That particular decade she had wanted simplicity and quiet.
So he chose Crete.
He looked out his bedroom window now, staring at the dark waves. Since those days he, too, had never been far from the sea. But back then he had watched her more often than the endlessly changing water. That night she had stood by a window with the shutters thrown open to the night.
Judas cranked his own window now and breathed in the salt air, remembering the sounds and smells of that long-ago night.
From his bed, he watched her silhouette move against the starry sky.
The scent of the ocean filled their bedroom, along with the soft hush of the waves against the sand. Close at hand, an owl called to its mate and was answered in turn. A week before, he had seen the pair in an olive tree, each bird not much larger than two fists pressed together.
“Do you hear our owls?” she asked, turning toward him.
Moonlight glinted off her ebony hair, one wayward lock falling across her face. She reached her hand to push it away, a gesture he had seen thousands of times. But her hand stopped, her body going rigid in an all-too-familiar manner.
Judas smothered a curse and quickly stood.
As he came to her, he saw her beautiful eyes were empty.
This, too, was familiar.
The prophecies would now spill through her. Each time, he hated it, for in this state she was beyond his reach, and beyond her own, swept by the waves of time, those tidal pulls that could never be resisted.
As usual, he followed her instructions. He drew fresh leaves from a rush basket in the corner and pressed them into her warm left hand. Every day she gathered leaves for this purpose, although the prophecies came but once or twice a year.
He folded the fingers of her right hand around the ancient stone knife.
Then he left her alone.
He kept a silent vigil in front of her door. Sometimes the visions lasted for mere minutes, others for hours. No matter how long, she was not to be interrupted.
Thankfully this night she was spared.
After a single minute, she came to herself and bade him to return.
As he entered the room, she lay in their bed curled into a ball. He took her in his arms and stroked her long thick hair. She turned her face into his chest and wept. He rocked her from side to side and waited for the storm to pass. He knew better than to ask the source of her sorrow. This curse she must bear alone.
Usually the leaves on which she wrote her prophecies lay scattered across the floor, and he would gather them together while she slept and burn each in a fire.
It was as she wished, as she begged of him. No good had ever come from her gift, she had told him. The prophecies were mere shadows, holding no certainty, but the knowledge of them had driven many a man to force them into being, often in their most evil guise.
Still, in secret, he read each leaf before burning it, recording many of her words, even pictures she had drawn, in a thick leather journal that he used for the household accounts. She never read from that book, never concerned herself with financial details.
She trusted him.
This night, after her breaths slowed to sleep, he disentangled himself from her embrace and rose to pick up the single leaf that lay at the edge of the fire.
Only one prophecy tonight.
The leaf felt supple under his fingertips. The smell of green trees drifted up to his nose. The scribbled phrases beckoned him. Holding the leaf near the fire’s flames, he read the words that marched across its surface in uneven lines.
After His words, written in blood, are lifted from their prison of stone, the one who took Him from this world will serve in bringing Him back, sparking an era of fire and bloodshed, casting a pall over the earth and all its creatures.
Disbelieving, he traced each word with a trembling fingertip. He read them again and again, wishing that their meaning was not so plain. He already knew that Christ had written a Gospel in His own blood and imprisoned it in stone. Judas had recorded other prophecies concerning that book that she had written over the past century, but he had not thought them important. He had never thought that her prophecies might concern him until the line that read: the one who took Him from this world.
That could be none other than the one who had betrayed Christ.
Everyone else involved in the death of Jesus was long since turned to dust, but Judas endured. He had been spared for a purpose.
For this purpose.
So few words, but each one confirmed his worst fears about his curse. Once the lost Gospel was unearthed, Judas must seek to bring Christ back. To do that, it was Judas’s duty to start the end of days—a time of fire and blood.