Faith Like Wine

An original story by Rachel Caine, Aug 7, 2010

WARNING: ADULT LANGUAGE AND SITUATIONS

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

She was young yet, but I knew what she would become -- it was obvious from the first sight of her. One does not forget that sort of face, those extraordinary eyes.

Her name was Aimee Semple McPherson, and she was said to be a prophet.

The tent I stood beneath, waiting for her to speak, had taken laborers half a day to put up -- a new tent, astonishingly enough, and these days with the whole world at war there were no new tents of any size.

Tents were not the only scarcity. I stood quite near the front of a large and still-growing crowd, but as I looked around I saw only old men, women and children. I blended with them, as I meant to -- an older woman, to all appearances, gray-haired, not yet out of my prime. Well-dressed, I liked to think, though not ostentatious. Age and womanhood had granted me an automatic aristocracy, in such a crowd, and no one tried to push past me for a better view.

I had never been particularly well-mannered, but I certainly knew how to take advantage of it in others.

I had come all the way to the Philadelphia countryside on the strength of rumors, nothing more. Sister Aimee spoke with the voice of God, people said. She healed with His hands. I, doubting, had come expecting an evening of lukewarm platitudes. Such was the state of Christianity -- it had been raw, intoxicating wine when I was young, but now it was milk, suitable for children at their mothers' knees. I had walked with martyrs in the shadow of crosses, and I had never learned to love milk.

The buzz of conversation went on around me. A farmer to my left was worried for his daughter, taken ill with a fever -- not the dreaded and still-raging influenza, he hastened to add. He received medicinal advice from a young plump woman and her stick-thin husband. If anyone looked for me to join the conversation they were kind enough not to demand it; I watched the dais, and waited. Sister Aimee sat passive, eyes closed now, while her assistants whispered around her, measuring the crowd with piercing looks, checking the time against a battered pocket watch.

They could not wait much longer, not with safety. The crowd stretched to the limits of the tent, a swelling, murmuring beast with thousands of heads. So many years since the first such crowd I'd been part of -- I'd been far to the back, then, and the words had come faint but clear in the silence. Five thousand people, that day, crowded together, and I the least of them. Sometimes I could still hear the sound of his voice, smell the goaty stink of too many people crowded together. Nothing in my life had ever been the same again.

Sister Aimee rose and stepped forward, arms upraised, eyes still tightly shut. The crowd rippled into silence, responding to some electric presence gathering like lightning. I could feel its fire from where I stood. No fraud, this one. No false prophet.

She stood, arms upraised, quivering with tension as if held on an invisible rack, the torture of the Lord's favor. The room took on quiet, then a hush of dread. Were they afraid? I began to think I was. My life had become comfortable and routine, and here she was, fire in her eyes, to rip it apart again. It was what I craved, what I feared. A spark of light in a long, familiar darkness.

She wore a plain white dress, severely cut, well-used. Her hair was dark and worn in a conservative bun; she wore no jewelry except for a wedding band. A plain woman, except for her face, that radiant face.

It was blinding, now, as she gave herself to the ecstasy of God.

The effect of her still, silent prayer caused the crowd-beast to whisper prayers of its own. Next to me, an old woman carrying a photograph of her son wept into a ragged handkerchief. She'd come for a blessing on him.

An hour before I would have told her, kindly, that it would be useless. But --

But.

Sister Aimee lowered her arms; her eyes opened and they were the eyes of a savage saint, so full of love they were fatal.

And she began to speak.

I cannot remember what she said, it was not the words, the words have been said before and to little effect. It was the naked terrible beauty of her belief. Her voice was a sword, piercing every person in the tent, sending some to their knees in pain, driving most to tears. She burned so bright, the sun in my eyes, the pulse of her heart like a drum in my ears. As she spoke she ran with sweat and her white dress clung like a lover's hand, skin pink beneath. She paced the platform like an animal, screaming out her pain, God's pain, her love, God's love.

Likely the trouble had been going on for some time before the ripples of it reached me so far in the front, shaking me from my trance; Sister Aimee had stopped speaking and waited, staring toward the back. The world tasted flat and dusty after the glory I'd seen, the sound of screams and shouts harsh. A wedge of young men -- a shock to see so many together -- came driving through the crowd, heading for the stage.

Mrs. Dowd, the greengrocer's wife, had warned me of Catholic protesters at the revival meetings, but these young men looked more serious than that. They had the righteous look of men steeling themselves to violence. And they were heading directly toward me. I looked for an exit but escape seemed very far away; I would force a way through, if I must, anything to avoid being caught in the riot that must surely erupt any moment. The boys were taking their lives in their hands. They had no idea how certain Sister Aimee's control was of her people, or what those people might do to protect her.

A dark-haired, pink-cheeked boy leading them raised his hand and pointed at Sister Aimee, and shouted, "Whore!" The other boys took it up like a battle cry and began to lay about them with makeshift weapons -- knobby clubs, homemade blackjacks, boots, fists. The crowd surged back from them, pushing me into the arms of a thin old man with the pinched face of a banker.

Sister Aimee stood like a porcelain statue, illuminated with sweat and the halo of her passion, and watched the violence with unnerving eyes. Few of her audience scattered for the exits; there was a curious sense of waiting. Frustrated with their lack of success, one of the boys slammed his club into the ribs of the farmer near me who'd come to pray for his daughter; the old man went down, weeping. I stayed where I was, unwilling to flee but certain that I was watching the destruction of the glory I'd glimpsed. Prophets were fragile things, made and broken in a day.

And then Sister Aimee said, in a cold clear voice that carried to every ear, "Kneel and pray, brothers and sisters. Kneel and pray for our burdens to be lifted."

I remained standing, waiting, watching her face. Next to me, the weeping mother clutched the picture of her son and sank to the hard-packed earth. Behind me I heard rustles of cloth, creaks of protesting joints.

In ripples of obedience, the crowd kneeled. I lowered myself as the last few touched earth, and folded my hands in a position of piety. I turned my head so that I could watch the reaction of the ruffians from the corner of my eye.

They were the only ones left standing, and it clearly unnerved them. They spun in circles, looking for a fight. With a scream of rage, a boy farther off to my right brought his club down on the head of a middle-aged woman. She toppled against an elderly man in expensively cut clothes. The boy smashed him in the face and kicked him, turned on the woman, then on a young girl. No one rose to fight. He screamed his rage, over and over, cowards, cowards, cowards, and stopped, panting, in the destruction he'd done.

Sister Aimee closed her eyes and began to dance. I turned to watch her, riveted by surprise. Her hips swayed slowly, her shoulders followed the curve, her arms lifted and carried the motion above into the air. It was breathtakingly, frighteningly sensual, as if her body had given itself over to another power. She began to turn, slowly, deliberately, to the beat of her unheard song.

Her tormentors came to a standstill, staring, weapons forgotten in their hands. We were all her creatures, trapped in the sway of her body, the jut of her hip, the slow circle of her feet. I closed my eyes and still saw her, heard her, felt her as she moved.

For the first time in a hundred years or more, I took a breath. She had touched something within me that was fearfully strong, love and death and desire and pain all bound together, the dark wine of the faith I'd known in my youth when we were slaughtered by the thousands and kissed the knives that killed us.

She had discovered the secret of ecstasy. I had not been so close to the light in so long, felt its heat, heard the echo of his voice inside it. It was painful and glorious and horrifying. I had kept control of myself for so long, and now she offered -- no, demanded -- my surrender.

Someone cried out, and I heard myself crying too, lost in the bright vision, the knife-edged fear of falling. She was near the piano now, and, still dancing, reached out and struck a thunderous chord, chaotic and intense, a thunderstorm of music like the cries and prayers around me. And she continued beating the piano, punishing it, and we were all dancing now, swaying to the strange wonderful beat of her song. Someone touched my arm, feather-light, and the breath I'd taken in burst out in a rush. I was trembling, near to falling. Close, so close . . .

Sister Aimee turned from the piano and stepped down from the stage to dance with us, a silent striving of bodies toward God. Her eyes were dark as wells, promising salvation, promising a reunion with all that I'd lost so long ago, and before I could stop myself I reached out to her.

Our hands met, shock of her hot flesh on my cool. The clamor of her pulse was deafening.

"Dance with me," Sister Aimee whispered. "Oh, sister, dance with God."

My feet moved without me, drifting to the beat of her heart, and the tent spun in a glory of light and shadow, faces and eyes. I felt nothing but her skin pressed against mine and frantic hunger inside me, driving me on.

She had turned me to face the crowd, and as she stepped forward and I back I felt the smooth cool wood of the podium behind me. She stepped forward again, close, so close, God staring out of her eyes. I had forgotten so much, oh Lord, so much.

She placed her hands palm to palm with mine and pressed my arms back and up, toward the crossbars of an invisible cross. When she released them they stayed, I could not have moved them if I'd wished. She was too bright to be so close to me, and her heart raced like a deer, mad with ecstasy.

She drew back her right hand and brought it in a wide swinging circle up, fingers clasped around an invisible hammer, and her left hand held an invisible nail to my palm.

I opened my mouth to scream as she brought the hammer down, the pain was blinding and horrifying and ecstatic but there was no pain, only knowledge, only God. The doors had been thrown open, and the light, the light . . . I felt her fingers holding another invisible nail to my left palm, and as she drove it home she transfixed me in the agony of the lamb.

When I was able to scream I fell forward into her strong, warm arms. She held me while she fought for breath, while her heart raced and then quieted and, passion fading, she eased me to the cold ground. I lay helpless while she folded my hands, one over the other, on my breast.

She turned toward the crowd, but not before I saw the fevered bliss in her eyes.

"Thy busy feet that have walked the world must be nailed to the cross," she said. In the utter silence, one of the Catholic boys fled, then another. The rest followed. Watching their retreat, she said, "Thy heart that has beat for this world must be pierced for me."

I closed my eyes and wept silently, tears streaming away through my gray hair to drip on the hungry ground. Her warmth swept in again, and her fingers touched my tears.

"What's your name, sister?" she asked kindly. I gasped and gasped and finally, like some secret treasure from the depths of a well, brought out my true name.

"Joanna," I whispered. "Joanna, wife of Chuza, servant of Herod."

***

They kept her long into the night, but finally even the most ardent of her converts slipped away, toward home and bed. I sat outside on the cool grass, lit by the moon, and waited. Lanterns dimmed inside the tent. Her assistants and rough-dressed tent-pullers started back for town.

One light glowed inside the tent, a spot of emerald on black shadows. It moved toward the huge main opening and became the yellow halo of a lantern. She carried it casually, dangling from her right hand, and it cast a long golden path in front of her.

She turned and looked toward where I sat, though I was a shadow in shadow.

"Sister?" She tried to keep her tone quiet and reassuring, but I heard a tremor buried deep. "I hadn't thought you would wait so long."

"Not so long," I said, rose to my feet and brushed grass from my skirt. "By my standards."

She took a tentative step toward me and raised the lantern. The light flowed over the cool, serene lines of her face, made secrets of her dark eyes. Her lips parted as I stepped into the circle of light.

"I would not harm you," I said. "I would never do that. I only wanted -- wondered -- "

She was weary. The lamplight had given her a false color, but her arm trembled with the weight of the lantern and her shoulders sagged. Of course she was weary, He had been weary in the press of a crowd. So many hungering, needing, demanding.
And here I was, hungering too.

"If I could heal you," she finished for me. "Take away your thirst and give you peace."

She could not have known, not just looking at me. I was hearing the voice of God.

"No, sister, I'm not the one." Her arm was trembling so much she was forced to lower the lantern and set it beside her feet. "I'm so sorry, Sister Joanna."

I looked down at the light, glowing between us. "I had no hope, really. But I thank you for showing me my faith again."

I turned to walk off into the darkness that was my home. Before I could enter it completely, she called after me, and I turned and met her eyes.

"Joanna, wife of Chuza, servant of Herod." Sister Aimee's voice broke as she repeated my name. "You knew Him, didn't you?"

I closed my eyes against the radiance of the light.

"Yes," I said. A surge of wind blew the grass in billowing waves, a lapping silver lake in the moonlight. The tent sighed and groaned. "I knew them all."

***

I had come with the lepers, wrapped in layers of rags and castoffs. The crowd was still great, even at so late an hour, but no man held his place before lepers; we moved through solitude even here, in this sweating throng. Some of the faces knew me, another reason to veil myself. They would know me for a follower of Simon Magus, and stone me.

I saw him for a brief second as the crowd shifted, and his eyes were wonderful and terrible and knowing. The veils, the concealment, all that was useless. He recognized me for what I was.

I fell back, hoping to drift off quietly, but a hand closed around my arm. I turned, shocked that anyone would dared to touch a leper, and saw a stocky, bearded man with a kind face and smile.

"Quiet," he advised me. "I have been sent to bring you."

His name, I learned, was Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve who served. He took me to a small, ill-repaired house with blankets and packs spread out on the rough floor, and told me to sit. He offered food, not knowing how useless it was, and then wine and water. I took a little of the water to allay his suspicion.

"You should not drink after me," I said as he took the bowl back and raised it to his lips. He had an impudent grin.

"You are no leper," he said, and drank the rest.

At the doorway, a shadow, a confusion of movement. The shadow turned and spoke, and the protesting murmurs melted into silence. He ducked through the door and came to sit opposite me as Judas put an oil lamp between us.

For all the strength of his eyes, he was only a man, no taller than most, no more beautiful. He had the smell of the road on him, and the sweat of a hard day's work. No longer young, but not old. Not yet. He had lines of weariness in his face that had not been there when last I'd seen him, when last I'd believed his lovely words.

"Lord," I murmured, and bowed my head to the floor. When I looked up he was watching with a small, amused smile.

"Humility should come from the heart," he said. Judas came forward to clear a place for him to sit, and he lowered himself into it with a sigh of relief.

"Master, this is the one -- " Judas began, but his master lifted a hand to stop him.

"Joanna," he said. "Chuza's wife. I remember you well."

I sat upright, more afraid of him than ever. I had not unveiled, I was as anonymous as a thousand women outside his door. He had seen me before only once, and I'd been different then. So very different.

"I heard that Chuza died," he continued. "I am sorry. He was a good man."

"How -- "

"Did I know you would come here? Because I know." The amusement was closer to the surface now, but not cruel -- a child's gentle amusement, full of wonder. "Your road has been hard."

"I have not traveled far."

"I did not say you had." His smile faded. "You may take away the disguise now. I am not afraid."

I unwound the scarves to show him my unnatural pallor, my too-red lips, my too-green eyes. I smiled to show my sharp teeth.

"A long road," he said, unmoved. "It will be longer still, Joanna. Have you the strength?"

"I -- " I swallowed; begging did not come to me as easily as even mock humility. "Can you help me, master?"

"Did not Simon Magus promise to heal you?" I bowed my head, but he continued, kind and merciless. "My rival took you in when you were dying and promised you everlasting life. Are you happy with your bargain?"

"No." I felt tears welling up but they were mortal tears, and my body no longer knew them. "No, master, please, help me. I went to Simon Magus because I needed -- Master, I asked you for healing and you said my time was done."

"It was."

"He said he could -- give me -- "

He took the plate of figs that I had refused and chewed on one while I sat in silence, ashamed. He sipped from a bowl of wine Judas handed him.

"I only want to die," I said at last. Judas, wide-eyed, sank back on his haunches and shook his head. "I killed a man, master, because I was so thirsty. I can't bear it anymore. Please, give me rest."

His eyes were full of sorrow and pain, knifing through me and leaving ice in their path. I reached out to him and touched his hand. He did not draw it away.

"It is not my place to take your life," he said. "But I can give you rest, of a kind."

He reached into a pack leaning against a cracked wall and found a sturdy sharp knife. He held it out toward our joined hands and, before I knew what he would do, drew it across his own wrist. I cried out, and Judas lunged forward and grabbed for the knife. The master hissed a little with pain and held our joined hands over the empty bowl that had held his wine.

His blood dripped like jewels into the plain clay, fast at first, then slowing. When he turned his wounded wrist upward to show me, there was no cut at all.

"Drink," he said, and let go of my hand. I looked down at the bowl.

He'd only bled a little, but the bowl shimmered with blood, full to the brim. I raised it and sipped, the raw fire of it burning down my throat and into my veins. It tasted of honey and flowers and tears, and I drank until the bowl was empty.

"You will not need to kill," he said. I clutched the bowl to my breast and bowed, no mock humility this time, wishing I could weep for joy. Here was the water of life, in my body, and in my heart I felt the pulse of God. "When you hunger, the bowl will fill again."

"Master, what do you ask of me?" I whispered. Simon Magus had asked, everyone had always asked. There were no gifts, only exchanges.

His hand touched my graying hair, gentle as the wind.

"Walk your road," he said. "Walk to the end, where you will find your healing."

****

I waited at the train platform in the beating fury of the sun, protected by a hat and heavy clothes and a parasol topped with faded satin flowers. It was early morning, the sunrise an orange cream confection behind the unlovely black hissing box of the train. Passengers scuttled around me, bound here and there, clutching hats against the white steam and cool breeze.

I held a single suitcase in my left hand. The burden was too precious to set down, even for a minute.

Sister Aimee's party emerged from the station, a threadbare gaggle of white dresses and severely dressed, sober-faced men -- her roughnecks had passed through earlier, loading baggage and tents. Near the center of the crowd I saw the porcelain curve of her face, a lovely smile. She had her hand on the shoulder of a young girl who walked with her.

I did nothing, said nothing as the party passed me on the way to the train. Pride had always been my downfall, but I could not beg, not now, not ever. I watched them board, one by one, and no one so much as glanced in my direction.

Then Sister Aimee turned, one foot on the iron steps, and looked directly at me with a smile warmer than the furious sun.

"Sister Joanna," she said, and the sound of her voice silenced those around her. It woke tingles in my back; I fought them off with a straightening of my shoulders. "Come to see us off?"

No begging. Not now, not ever. I met her eyes.

"I come to join you," I said. Her smile faded. Perhaps she was thinking of what I was, what the presence of so much shadow might do in the midst of her light.

"Do you?" she asked. My hand tightened around the grip of my suitcase and I willed it to relax. Her assistants were frankly staring, whispering among themselves. There was doubt in Sister Aimee's eyes, moving like clouds over a clear sky. I was something old and unknown, something dark. I had a second's grave disquiet and thought, I should not have come. It's too late to go home.

She held out her hand to me. I moved forward, skirts brushing aside those who stood in my way, and realized as I arrived that I had no free hands to take hers. I must put down the suitcase, or put away the parasol.

I folded the parasol. The sun pressed on me with cruel, unforgiving hands, burning even through the layers of clothes, through the straw hat that shaded my face. I pressed the parasol into the crook of my arm and reached out to take Sister Aimee's hand. Her fingers folded warm around mine.

Only a moment of agony, and then the cool shadow of the train was around me, and Sister Aimee's fingers touched my face. I couldn't see her; even so small an exposure to the sun had turned my vision to grays and blacks. It would be minutes or even hours before I could see clearly again.

"Brave," she commented, a smile in her voice. "Come aboard, Joanna. We have a long way to go."

***

He had a huge, expansive house outside Jerusalem's walls, surrounded always by knots of people seeking blessings or miracles or just a good look. He also had disciples, rough men, ready with fists and knives. Two of them were on duty outside the door when I arrived in my leper's disguise; one reached down to find a rock to throw. I pulled the veil away and showed my face. The one with the rock grinned and shrugged and tossed the stone over his shoulder. The other just spat near my feet and settled back against the wall more comfortably.

No pauper's hut would have done for Simon Magus. Inside, soft lamplight glimmered on fine cedar tables, delicate pottery, gold lamps and jars. The floor was covered with soft carpets and furs. A doorway at the other end of the room was covered by a black drape that glittered with sewn gold coins; they chimed in the cool evening breeze. The air simmered with costly incense, gifts from rich benefactors.

"Simon?" I called. The coins chimed. Outside, the guards laughed coarsely.
"You used to call me 'master'," he observed. I whirled to find him standing quite near me in the shadows. As he came into the light I saw that he wore a new robe, no doubt another gift. The umber and gold of it put sparks in his large dark eyes, made his skin seem gilded. Beautiful Simon. Never a man born so beautiful. "I missed you, Joanna."

His voice sounded sad and fond, and it shamed me. I found myself looking away and knew that weakness would destroy me unless I was careful.

"I went to him," I said. He reached out to touch my cheek and it was like being touched by fire, beautiful and agonizing at once. Before I could recover he was gone past me to settle himself on a thick tasseled pillow -- master greeting servant.

"And how did you find the carpenter?" Simon made the word sound faintly scandalous. "Still working miracles, is he?"

I had the bowl hidden inside my robes. My hand brushed it before I could stop myself, like a woman betraying a disgraceful, ill-gotten child. He saw it, of course; I saw the delight flare in his eyes.

"What miracle did he work for you, my love?" he asked, voice low like a cat's purr. "Did he offer you forgiveness for your sins? Did he heal you? Oh, no, my apologies, I see he did not. Too bad, really. That would have been a miracle."

I stood silent, watching him, his beauty like a whip against my skin. Simon made a graceful gesture with his hands and produced from thin air a gilded bowl of wine, which he drank slow, measured mouthfuls.

"Thirsty?" he asked. I shook my head. "Liar. Joanna, I will forgive these indiscretions of you with my rival if you will sit and drink with me. Will you do that?"

I had lain there on those same soft pillows, fever burning me to ash, and he'd lifted my head and held a bowl to my lips and said, drink, woman, drink and live, and I had taken bitter mouthfuls, feeling the stain of it in my soul even as I swallowed. If I had been strong, I would have spit it out. Would have refused a second mouthful.

But I had drained the bowl, and now I had to pay the price for that selfishness.

"I believe in him. I am going to join him," I said quietly. "I came to tell you."

Silence. The curtain of coins tinkled like dreams broken. Simon held his bowl in both hands, mouth curled into a smile, and watched me.

"Then do that," he said, and shrugged. "What do I care? You are nothing, less than nothing. You served Herod, and betrayed him by skipping off to follow your carpenter when he crooked a finger; you turned your back on the carpenter when you sickened, and came to me for miracles. Now that you are well, you betray me. You are a whore of the spirit, Joanna."

It seemed impossible that he could still hurt me so deeply, but the casual chill in his voice, the sharp edges of the words, made me feel sick with grief. I looked down at my clenched hands. When I looked up again, Simon was gone. There was a hollow in the pillows where he'd sat. Outside, the guards laughed. Where had he --

His hand closed around my throat from behind me, dragged me into the heat of his embrace. He had strong hands, clever hands, and before I could fight he reached beneath my robes and pulled out the bowl.

"This?" He let me go, and I whirled to face him, terrified by the sight of my salvation in his casual grasp. He turned the bowl this way and that, looking at the poor quality of the clay, running his fingers across the uneven surface. "A miracle? Perhaps a miracle that the potter managed to give it away. Here."

He tossed it to me. I clutched it gently, like a newborn. Simon's smile was no longer beautiful, only wide.

"Or is it this one?" He snapped his fingers and another bowl appeared, identical to the one I held. He tossed it toward me; I caught it, fumbling, panicked. "Perhaps this one?"

He produced another bowl, and another. The fourth I could not catch; it fell against the corner of a cedarwood table and smashed. I went to my knees and scraped blindly at the mess.

When I looked up from gathering the fragments, distraught, I saw him looking down on me with rage in his eyes. Perhaps he knew then how completely he'd lost me.

"Put them down," he ordered. "Put them all down."

I tried to keep the bowls, tried desperately, but they writhed out of my fingers and thumped to the carpet, one after another.

"Simon -- " I could not beg, not even now. He raised his foot and brought it down on the first bowl. It shattered into a thousand dusty pieces.

"Come back," he invited, and put his sandaled foot over the second bowl. I shook my head, not knowing whether I was denying him or denying the moment's pain. "Come back to me and I'll forget all this foolishness."

Another bowl smashed into clay dust and shards. One left. I stared at it with fevered eyes.

"You don't belong with him, Joanna. You know that." He raised his foot. In his dark eyes, my reflection flickered and stretched into shadows. "I am doing you a favor, you know."

There was a film of red at the bottom of the last bowl. As I watched, it bubbled up, a magic spring of life. His foot came down toward it.

I leaped forward and knocked him away. He fell against a table and overset a lamp and jug; wine spilled over his robes and the carpets in a purple tide. I scooped up my bowl and drained it in two quick, guilty gulps and backed away, toward the doorway, as Simon turned on me.

He did not scream, he did not curse. He only stared. It was enough.

I lunged out into the darkness, between the two startled guards, and ran, leaving strips of leper's gauze flying on the wind as I ran toward the moonlit walls of Jerusalem.

Someone waited at the side of the road. The moonlight touched his face and his kindly smile.

"He said you'd come this way," Judas said. "It's not safe to walk alone."

I cast a look back at Simon's house. He was standing in the doorway, arms folded, watching me go.

***

It was a queer change, sitting behind Sister Aimee as she exploded into the fury of her belief; she directed it out, at all those hungry faces, those empty eyes. In the backwash, where I sat, there was only a tingle of power, nothing like the tide I'd been swept away on before. I was grateful, in a way. One should not know God so closely on a daily basis.

I learned quickly that every revival looked the same -- another empty field, sometimes dry, sometimes muddy, another town on the horizon. Sometimes the crowd was older, sometimes younger. The routine was grinding. Sister Aimee preached and prayed far into the night, rose with the sun and participated in the camp chores like anyone else. I did one-handed tasks, like fetching water or scrubbing clothes; everywhere I went in the sunlight, I carried my parasol. One acute young lady said that I must have a skin disorder, perhaps leprosy, that made my skin so white. They all thought it was highly appropriate that Sister Aimee should count a leper among her followers, though privately they must have wondered why I hadn't been healed.

I realized, as I knelt beside a lake in Idaho and scrubbed spots of mud from the hem of Sister Yancy's dress, that I had done such work before. I had only misplaced the memories, never forgotten. They loomed so close now that I could smell the dust of Jerusalem, feel the harsh fabric on my skin, see the heat shimmer from the stones of the courtyard where I had gone daily to fetch water. I had been shunned there, too, and had gone at odd hours to avoid the curses and thrown stones of the other women.

I pushed the painful, precious memory aside and scrubbed industriously. A cooling shadow fell over me, and I squinted up to see Sister Aimee dropping down next to me, a load of washing in her arms.

"I thought I might find you here," she said. She had not spoken to me -- to anyone -- for days now, lost in the routine of preaching, healing, sleeping, working. She was visibly worn, and had a tremble in her hands that had not been present before. "How are you, Joanna?"

"I am well," I said. "You're tired."

She gave a little laugh and lowered her head toward her work, soaking the clothes, wringing them, scrubbing them with soap. The water was very, very cold. Her fingers took on a more pronounced shiver and a bluish tint.

"Perhaps I am," she admitted. "Perhaps that's all it is."

I stopped working and watched her. I had been traveling with her for almost a year, though the time hadn't seemed so long. A year was nothing to me, but for her, burning so bright, a year was an eternity.

"Did you notice, last night?" she continued more slowly. "Something felt wrong. I felt -- lost. I called, but he didn't come, it was only me. Only me."

I had noticed, and not only last night. Some nights Sister Aimee seemed to be searching for that fire I'd always seen so clearly before; nurturing a spark, not a conflagration. Sometimes she'd fallen into a routine, like a salesman's patter. Perhaps that was to be expected, as weariness gutted her spirit. Even he had needed rest.

"I'm afraid," Sister Aimee said. She was staring down at the petticoat she was wringing, and there were tears coursing down her cheeks. "Oh, sister, what if he never comes back? They come looking for miracles, you know. For faith. What if I have nothing to give them?"

I took the petticoat from her and put it aside, dried her chilled hands in the folds of my skirt. She put her head on my shoulder and I rocked her gently, stroking her hair. My poor prophet, burning so bright.

What happens when the candle burns out?

I should have known better than to come here and destroy her faith.

***

He stepped out of the shadows like fog swirling, a simple trick he often used to impress his followers. I was carrying a jar of water across the courtyard, hurrying to get out of the burning sun, but I came to a breathless stop when I saw him. The sun pressed on me like the hands of a giant, and my arms tightened around the heavy jar. I was going blind, but he stood out like a brilliant stain on the dark.

"Fetching water?" Simon Magus asked, and leaned his shoulders negligently against the rough stone wall. He looked the part of a savior -- beautiful, wide eyes as gentle as an angel's. "Sweet Joanna, surely our misunderstanding didn't lead you to slavery to a Galilean carpenter? What will people say?"

"Go," I said, not loudly because I did not want the men inside to hear. "Go, please. You have no right to be here."

"I have every right." Simon Magus stood straight and tugged his robes into place. "Come into the shadows, my dear, before you burn yourself beyond repair. Such as you don't belong in the light."

The pain of the sun was intolerable; my arms shook violently, spilling water over the front of my robe. My eyes were fading, but I saw him hold out his hand to me. Beckoning. Commanding.

"No!" The jar slipped from my arms and shattered on the stones with a crash. "Simon, I left you! You have no right!"

"He's left you lost between light and dark," Simon continued. "Come back where you belong, where you are loved. Don't run any longer, Joanna."

I sank to my knees, gray hair a veil over my sweating face, and tried to find my faith. In Simon's presence it curdled and vanished.

And then Judas said, "You, what do you want here?"

I looked up but he was only a vague shape in the sun-blindness. He knew Simon Magus, of course, they all did. I thought he would call for help but he stepped out into the sunlight.
Alone.

"My property," Simon purred; I heard the gloating smile in his voice. "Little man, run tell your master that I've come to worship at his royal feet."

"He will not come."

"No? Then I'll take what is mine and go." He held his hand out to me again and snapped his fingers. "Up, Joanna."

A man's arms went around me, holding me close. Judas. He was trembling, though not enough that Simon would see; afraid, after all. But willing to risk everything in spite of that fear.

"In the name of God, go!" he shouted. His words brought a stir of movement from the house; I heard sandals scrape on the courtyard stones and knew others were joining us, ready to fight. Which? Peter, perhaps, good-hearted as ever. John, with his chilly, determined eyes, always ready for conflict.

"She must say it," Simon Magus said. His voice was as warm and sad as I remembered, and traitorous. I had believed once, so strongly, and been so vastly betrayed. "Joanna, my dear? Won't you come home?"

Home, I thought with a piercing grief. There was no home now, only Simon's fraudulent smiles or the harsher, more honest love of the Twelve and the One. I could never be one of them, even if I stepped out of shadow entirely.

But I could never go to Simon Magus. Never again.

"Go," I said. It did not sound as strong as I wished. "Leave me."

Judas' arms went around me as my knees buckled; as he picked me up to carry me inside, I sensed that the shadows were empty. Simon was gone, vanished like a nightmare.

My sight was entirely gone now; I knew that he carried me inside only because of the sudden relief on my skin and the babble of voices around us. Peter shouted for order and began telling of Simon Magus; the words drifted into distance as Judas carried me away into the room set aside for stores and my pallet. Someone followed us; I heard the scrape of his footsteps behind us. Judas lowered me to my blankets and smoothed sweaty hair back from my face.

"She is ill," he said over his shoulder toward whoever watched. "Get the master."

"No," I protested, and caught at his hand. "No, give me time, I am well. It's only the sun."

The other man made a disgusted sound deep in his throat, and I did not have to see him to know him; John would be staring with those chilled eyes that saw so much, so far away.

"Leave her," John said. "We must report what she did."

Judas' hand left my forehead as he turned. "What did she do, John, but renounce a false messiah? Don't bring this out again, it's an old argument. Joanna, would you like some water?"
I had spilled the water outside on the cobbles, but he'd forgotten it. I summoned up a smile and shook my head. After the dreadful punishment of the sun I felt languid and lost.

"Just rest, please," I said. He squeezed my hand gently and stood. "Judas, I -- I didn't bring him here. I would never want him to come here."

"I know," he said kindly. "Rest now."

I turned my face to the wall and listened to them go.

Hours passed, filled with the muted buzz of heated conversation outside. My vision lightened from black to gray. Colors returned dusty and bleached. I would be days recovering, but I could see well enough to move around, to straighten up the meager supplies kept in the room with me. While I ordered sealed jars of oil someone slapped the stone outside my door, asking entrance. I rose to pull the curtain aside and found James standing there, head down, avoiding my eyes. He was a small man, wiry and strong, quick to laugh. I had always liked him, had always believed he liked me, as well as a man could like a widow whose eyes had the taint of poisonous hunger.

"You are wanted," he said, and turned away. I watched him walk quickly away, shoulders hunched, and knew with a sinking heart that my welcome was ended.

It was not a very long walk, of course, only one short hallway, but the silence that greeted my approach made it seem longer. The twelve of them were present, seated in a rough circle. Judas had left a place open beside him and I took it, kneeling decorously on the hard packed floor.

"Brothers," I said, and bowed my head. It was only the Twelve, no sign of the master. I had seen little of him, lately, and when I did his eyes seemed unfathomably far away. Perhaps he was gone again. I could hardly imagine the Twelve meeting like this without him, but surely he would have come if he could. Surely.

"She is humble," Peter said, and he meant it as praise. "She knows her place. What harm can she do?"

I put my hands flat on my thighs and looked down at them. No pride, not now, Joanna. Pride is your enemy.

"She is causing rifts in our brotherhood," John said. Ah, John, I had known it was you, I had known. But it was not simple jealousy, or even simple fear. John was the protector, and he fought higher battles than that. "You all know what's being said. How can we teach truth when our enemies have such fertile ground for sowing lies? Surely it is true that we keep women in our house -- she and Mary Magdalene, women of uncertain virtue at best! How can we stop the lies if we do not eliminate the cause of them?"

"It would be different if she were a wife, or even a sister," Simon Peter offered. He was a big man, scarred from the years he'd spent working the sea, but his voice was strangely smooth and calm. He was not a man I cared to have arguing against me. "But a woman alone, even a widow, can hardly be above suspicion. We must be seen to be righteous. Sometimes truth alone is not enough."

"Are we speaking of Joanna or all women?" James asked, frowning. "Should we forbid the master's mother entrance? Should we turn away believers? He has never said so."

"Joanna is different." John's voice stopped James cold, stopped even the breeze traveling through the room. "We all know that. It is that difference that is at issue. She is not a creature of God. She cannot bear the light of day."

"Many of the sick cannot," Peter said.

"And many are possessed! But we should not lie down with devils, brother! Let us heal them and send them on their way." I felt John's eyes rake over me and suppressed a shiver. "I think her true master came for her today. Will she say differently?"

The silence that fell was deadly. Surely they were all looking to me. I kept my eyes down, kept my voice even as I said, "Simon Magus made me what I am. Do you think I am grateful for that? He is no master of mine. Not ever again."

"So you say now. What if you sicken? What if -- "

"Enough, John!" Judas stirred next to me; I looked up to see him staring across at John's rigid face. "You've accused enough. Joanna is not causing a rift here, you are. If the master wants her to leave, he will tell her. He will tell us all. Until he does -- "

I felt the surge of a presence suddenly, like a strike of lightning behind me. He had not been there before, I knew, and others knew it, too. I saw John's face go feverishly brilliant with worship. The master burned hotter as the days went by, a force of power and love that warmed us even in passing.

And he said, "You are right to be concerned. Joanna must leave us tomorrow."

I cried out, turned and threw myself full length on the floor at his feet. Such hardened, well-traveled feet, in dusty patched sandals, so different from Simon Magus' pampered, well-cared-for flesh. I laid my cheek on them and wished I could weep, wished I could wash his feet with my tears, wipe them clean with my hair. Instead I could only pray, silently, for mercy.

"It is my wish that you leave us," he said quietly. He sounded so sad, so final. I looked up into his face and saw bottomless sorrow in his eyes, a pain that had no human definition.

"Then I must go," I whispered, and kissed his feet and remained lying there until he reached down to lift me up. I had never been so close to him, face-to-face, near enough to feel God beneath his skin and see heaven in his eyes. Words burst out of me like blood. "Master, I would never betray you!"

It was as if the rest of them had vanished for us, as if he saw only me. I was no longer looking at a man, I knew. I was no longer speaking to a mortal. The light in his eyes reached deep inside me and woke something vast and fragile. Something more than love, more than devotion. Faith. Absolute faith.

"I know," he said, and smiled sadly. "That is why you must go, my faithful Joanna, before it is too late."

***

I shared a tent with Sister Tabitha, a sweet young girl with a voice like a songbird; she lead the hymns before and after Sister Aimee's service. Lately, Sister Tabitha had voiced her doubts to me about Sister Aimee. They were no longer doubts for me, but certainties.

In the two years in Sister Aimee's service I had watched the flame burn lower and lower, and now there were only fading sparks. Sister Aimee no longer paced the stage like a lion, she strode like an actor remembering marks. Her frenzies were carefully crafted, discussed at length with one or two of her close companions; Sister Aimee rarely spoke to me now, except during the service. She had asked me to dance with her once, in Indianapolis, but there had been nothing of God in her eyes, only a desperate hunger like lust. She had wanted me to give back her faith. I had become something to touch in place of God.

I had stepped away from her, grieving, and seen the trust die. I had been wrong to come, so wrong. There was no healing with Sister Aimee, and now I was watching my beloved prophet die, inch by inch, and I was helpless to prevent it.

I had come to a decision; I would leave when we reached the next stop. The decision soothed my grief, if not my conscience. A night's sleep, and then I would be gone. Simple enough.

I woke in agonizing hunger. Not the gentle hunger I was used to, but a painful, ripping hunger, a need for flesh and blood, a need to rend and tear and scream. It took me that way, sometimes -- not often, perhaps once in five or ten years. But when it came, it was like dying, mortally terrifying. I lay in my narrow bed and pressed trembling hands to my convulsing stomach and stared up at the tree-shadows waving on the roof of the tent. God, God, Sister Tabitha laid no more than two steps away, sweet young face upturned to the dim moonglow. Her heartbeat ached in my ears, a torment I would give all to stop.

Kill her, a whisper from the shadows said, but it was not Simon Magus, not after all these years. It was only my own darkness, subtle and powerful. I had to drink, must drink, before the tide of madness sucked me down.

I rose in the dark and found my bag, clawed aside layers of clothing and precious, ancient memories -- a Greek bible, bare scraps of words after all these centuries -- a newer Tyndale version, one of the few saved from burning in those dark days in England -- a single piece of silver. The tarnished coin rolled unevenly across the dirt floor and tilted to a stop.

I could not stop, not even for the coin, not even for that most precious memory. I found the smooth clay of the bowl and hugged it to my chest, careful, careful. There was some magic in it that had kept it unbroken all these ages, but still, I did not dare trust it too far.

The hunger rose like a living creature inside me, clawing, destroying. I gasped and heard Sister Tabitha move behind me, sitting up perhaps. The rustle of the sheet was as loud as a gunshot. Her heartbeat speeded faster.

"Sister Joanna?" she whispered. "Is everything all right?"

Oh, no, child, no, not all right. I could not do it here, not with her awake. The need to flee took me out of the tent, out into cold dewy grass, the chilly tingle of moonlight. I was wearing only my nightdress but I dared not stop for anything more; Tabitha was rising, calling after me. I forced myself to pause and turn back toward her.

"It's nothing, child," I whispered. So hard to speak, with the beast so close. "A call of nature."

She murmured something doubtful but I turned and strode away, through the cool chilling grass, scattering dew like diamonds where I stepped. Up the hill, then, toward the moon, toward safe solitude. Tabitha had not followed I clutched the bowl close and panted as I climbed, not for the air but to hold off the attack of the beast.

I gained the top of the hill and turned a quick circle -- the camp glimmered below me, one huge waving ocean of revival tent, the smaller ponds of camp tents where Aimee's faithful slept. The grass waved silver-green as the wind stroked it.

I went to my knees and took my bowl in both hands. Hunger beat at me with clenched, bruising fists and I waited for the red to collect at the bottom of the bowl, to bubble up like Moses' desert spring. It was slow, this time, or perhaps that was only my own desperation.

He would not betray me now. Could not.

I closed my eyes and whispered a prayer, first in Hebrew, then in Greek, then in every language I could call to mind.

Warmth cascaded over my fingers. I gasped and opened my eyes to see the bowl brimming with life, with light, with salvation. I could almost see his face, sad and worn, his hands welling with open wounds.

"Joanna?"

No, oh, no. It could not be, not now.

Sister Aimee came around to face me, face wild and white, hair loose. The wind teased it out into a veil of shadow. She was dressed, like me, only in a flickering white gown, feet bare and pale as marble. Tears tracked silver down her cheeks.

"Go," I whispered. "Go away."

My arms trembled with the strain of holding the beast back, the shadows were not whispering now, they screamed, kill her, kill her, kill her, and I was close, so very close. Sister Aimee knelt down opposite me, the bowl trembling between us, but she was not watching the bowl, only my face. Such desperation there. Such hunger.

"I have lost him," she said. More tears, spilling diamond bright. "Oh, Sister, help me. Only you can help me find what I've lost. I can't go on, I can't, so many hungry, feeding on me, I have nothing left, nothing, you understand, I can't feel him anywhere now."

I understood, had spent lonely years tending my few precious sparks of faith but none of that was important now, only the beast was important, only the shadows, the bowl that was my person, precious salvation.

Her eyes flared wide with dark grief, and before I could stop her, she struck the bowl out of my hands. It spun away, spilling a precious red ribbon over the grass, and disappeared into the shadows.

***

I woke from a nightmare to cry out, and found a man's hand across my lips, sealing in the noise. His skin felt fever-hot. I twisted away to sit up against the wall, blanket drawn over me, shivering.

"Shhh," Judas touched a trembling finger to his lips. I understood well enough; if he were discovered here the penalty would be grave. For me, it would be fatal. "You must go."
He turned away to start gathering my pitiful things, wrapping them together with trembling hands. I clasped his wrist to stop him.

"I have until tomorrow. The master said."

"Tonight. You must go tonight." Judas breathed in suddenly, a tormented gasp as though a knife had been driven into his side, and tears sheeted over his eyes. "If he asked you -- "

"Judas?"

"If he asked you for your life, would you give it?" he whispered. His voice seemed to echo off the stone, loud as a shout. "Would you?"

"Yes."

The tears spilled over, coursing down his face, catching in his beard like stars.

"He asked for my soul."

"Judas -- " I reached out for him, but he scrambled up and bolted away. I hurried after, but the outer room was empty, only the fluttering door curtain witness to his passage. I turned to go back to my pallet, my weary confusion.

The master stood in my way. I had never seen him look so weary, so worn.

"I have asked him for the greatest of gifts," he said, though I did not have the courage to ask. Had I thought Judas suffered? There was all the grief of the world in these eyes. "Of all of them, only he has the strength, the faith, and the love. The others could only do it out of hate."

"Master, please don't send me away," I whispered. Around us lay the sleeping forms of his disciplines, but somehow I knew they would not wake, not until he wished it.

"You must go. All roads branch from here. You cannot follow where I am going, none of them can. You have the longest road, and you must be sure of your course. I will not always be with you."

The dazzle of his love broke through, glowed like the sun on my skin, and I knew he was not turning me away, only lighting me to another path. Even so, I tasted ashes at the thought of walking away from him, from all of them.

"You will always be with me," I said, and touched my fingers over my heart. "Here."

He leaned close and kissed me on the forehead, a brief brush of light and love against my cool skin.

I thought about the horror in Judas' eyes, the desolation. Had he also received this kiss of peace?

"I'll go tomorrow," I said. He shook his head, frowning. "Tomorrow. I'll stay for Judas."

He looked at me for a moment, then smiled through the sorrow and said, "Yes. He will need you."

***

The pain of loss was so extreme that for a moment the world went gray, lifeless, and hunger was shocked into silence. I could only stare at the darkness, where the bowl had fallen.

Sister Aimee grabbed my shoulders and shook me, crying out. I wrapped my hands around her wrists and pressed. When I turned my eyes to her she saw the beast staring, and fell silent. Her face went the color of cold ash.

"Never do that again," I said, as calmly as I could. "It's not for you to touch. Ever. It is mine."

Her wrists pulsed with life under my crushing fingers -- red, warm, easy to find. How long had it been since I'd tasted mortal flesh? Long enough that it had been in that expensive, long-lost house outside the Jerusalem walls, among the cedarwood tables and gold lamps.

Simon Magus had stood watching while I'd fed, his smile gentle and protective. He'd loved the beast well. The memory of his beautiful smile sickened me, and I let her go and crawled slowly, painfully, into the shadows where the bowl had fallen.

It had struck a stone, but there was only a small chip on the rim, a raw, rough gouge in the ancient finish. I lifted it in both hands and closed my eyes, heard my beloved master's voice, felt his touch around me.

I lifted the bowl and drank until the beast was drowned in honey and flowers, only the taste left rich and heavy. I drank so much that it spilled red over my lips and down my chin to patter dark on the grass, and even then I could not stop taking it in. So close to him, so close.

This is my blood, which is shed for you. Only for me, this blood. None other.

I was senseless with the ecstasy and hardly felt the brush of Sister Aimee's hands against mine. When I blinked and the world came back in dusty blacks and shadows, she was holding the bowl and backing away from me. Her eyes had a dangerous shine. I tried to reach out, to tell her, but she stepped back and I was too weak to follow. As she cradled the bowl, her face came alight with understanding.

"His," she breathed. "Communion. This is my blood, he said. And it is. It is."

She did not understand. Miracles were personal. They could not be traded, like unused tokens at the county fair. That way lay defeat, and madness. That way lay Simon Magus, and the false glitter of easy faith. Her face took on the fever of passion, the hunger of lust, and behind her Simon Magus stepped out of the shadows, as if I'd somehow conjured him, shimmering with beauty and treachery, that sad smile, those angelic eyes.

"Drink," Simon whispered. His voice was the shadows, the wind, the leaves. "Drink, woman, and live. Live forever."

Impossible. It was not Simon's dark, poisoned bowl, it was holy, it was sacred. Surely she could take no harm from it.

But damnation, like miracles, was a personal thing, and I was not sure.

***

The house was cold, the fires all burned to ashes. I sat in the gray dawn and listened to the chaos outside on the street. Running feet, now, and screams in the distance. The house was deadly, deathly silent.

I heard his footsteps outside in the courtyard before he entered -- slow, clumsy, stumbling. He pushed aside the curtain to my room, gripping the fabric in one white-knuckled hand as he stared.

"I betrayed him," Judas said hoarsely. "They took him at the garden. I betrayed him."

He sank to his knees there in the doorway, all strength bled away. I took him in my arms and rocked him gently, back and forth. His skin was cold and gray, and he shivered. I put my blanket around him and held him in silence while the noise continued on the street. The followers of Simon Magus would be rejoicing. There might be rioting before the day was out. I could not guess where the rest of the Twelve had gone -- fled, most likely, before the devastating betrayal.

"I warned you to go," he said, and he sounded so tired. I rested my cheek against his and felt his tears run hot on my skin. "They will come here. They will kill you if they find you."

"He asked you for this."

"They'll show you no mercy."

"He asked you to betray him," I said again. Against my cold silent flesh, his heartbeat continued, a strong, desperate beat like fists on a wall. "You bear no shame."

"I love him," he answered, and turned his face against my neck and wept like a sick and grieving child. "I have never loved anyone so much."

I kissed his forehead, gently, as the master had kissed me. I had no tears, only a great hole in my heart where tears would have been. All roads branch from here, he had said. But he had not said the roads would be so short, or so bitter.
In the distance, a cock crowed.

"Time," Judas whispered. "Time to go."

I walked with him into the courtyard. He stripped off his robe in silence, folded it carefully and put it aside. Over his shoulder the sun rose, as glorious as the eye of God.

I knelt there on the hard stones while the sun burned me, and watched as he hung himself from the tree, with the silver coins scattered at his feet like a gleaming fallen halo. He never spoke, not even a prayer.

I had no prayers left in the ashes of my heart, only a vast, aching silence. I took one of the coins, only one, to remember him.

Oh, Judas, my love.

***

"She is already doomed," Simon said to me. Was he really there, or only my own doubt and fear given form? Did she see him? Sister Aimee only had eyes for the bowl, the ecstasy she had so loved and lost that glimmered dark in its depths. He only offered what we most wanted, of course. What we most had to have. "If you save her now, there will only be another time, and another. She is no carpenter from Galilee, Joanna. And people cannot bear so much arrogance without smearing mud on it. Eventually, she will fall."

"She is stronger than you know," I whispered. The beast had sapped every ounce of strength and left only the grief, only the pain. "Stronger than I was."

"You only wanted your life," he smiled, and walked a half-circle around her. His sandaled feet left no mark in the dewy grass. "Her pride is much greater. She thinks she can drag the whole world to heaven, if only she found a big enough net to fish them in."

Strange, but I had missed him, missed the casual cruelty of his smile, the graceful contempt in the way he looked at me. One needs enemies, I found, in order to feel alive. And he was my enemy, my last and truest one, closer than any lover, any friend.

Simon's smile turned deadly.

"You choose bad companions," he said. "Men of dishonor and treachery. Men so faithless their names become curses. Tell me, has the world forgiven him yet, your Judas?"

Trust him to strike at my weakest point, at my most precious, most hidden memory. It had not mattered, really, whether the world cursed Judas, or even whether the master had. It was Judas who had been unable to forgive himself.

Sister Aimee raised the bowl toward her lips, and I remembered a thousand things about her, good things, bad things, moments of pridefulness and arrogance, moments of love and kindness. She was strong, but he was subtle. It might destroy her.

All of us, trapped by our own greatest sins. Judas, unable to forgive. Aimee, too proud to admit her faith was incomplete. Me --

Me, too selfish to die. What had the master said, that evening when I'd sat so close to him? It is not my place to take your life. No.

I had stolen my life. Only I could give it back.

All these years I had looked for healing, believing that I deserved another chance at mortal life. All these years, and I had not learned from my errors.

Now my pride dragged her down. I knew where our healing lay, if only I had the courage.

He knew I did not.

I knew I did not.

"Mine," Simon sighed in satisfaction, as the bowl touched Sister Aimee's lips.

I stumbled to my feet and grabbed the bowl away. She stared at me dull-eyed, mouth dripping red, and I had no time for thought.

I found the rock that had chipped the edge of the bowl, my salvation, my precious miracle.

And I brought the bowl down on it.

The sound of it breaking was lost in Sister Aimee's cry, in my own gasp. Three sharp pieces. The edges slashed my fingers like steel. I smashed them again and again, mixing my own blood with the red clay.

When I was done, there was nothing but rubble left of my dream.

In the silence, Sister Aimee whimpered and dropped to her knees. Behind me, Simon Magus said, "I never thought you would have the courage. Welcome to the end of your road, Joanna."

The world was empty and quiet. Dawn blushed the horizon. I felt an easing in my chest, as if some long-tightened spring had begun to unwind.

"You have not saved her, you know," Simon continued. He sounded very far away, one of the fading shadows. "She cannot last."

"I know," I said. So quiet, the world. My cut hands ran ruby now, a thick continuous stream. My stolen life escaped. "None of us can last, Simon. That is the lesson."

When I looked back he was gone. As my strength bled away I curled on my side, where the grass was soft. The dew touched my cheek like teardrops.

For the first time, the sun warmed me without burning.

A hand stroked my cheek, and I opened drowsy eyes to see Judas' face, his kind, sweet smile.

"Time to go home," he said. I sat up and looked at Sister Aimee, lying asleep nearby. "She will be safe. Time to go home."

There was another man standing over me, holding out his hand. Luminous eyes, smiling now, no longer sad.

"Master," I said, and felt his fingers closed over mine. "It's good to be home."


- end -

ABOUT THE STORY:
Aimee Semple McPherson was a real person, although I’ve undoubtedly taken liberties with her here. She began as a preacher in the early 1900s and quickly progressed to a nationwide phenomenon as she led startling, charismatic tent revivals in cities all across the country. Her mission led to the founding of the Foursquare Baptist Church, which exists to this day.

In 1927, Sister Aimee disappeared for almost a month and was later found wandering alone. She insisted that she had been kidnapped and held for ransom, and managed to escape her abductors. Rumors claimed that she had run away with a lover, but though several inquiries were staged, nothing was ever proven. However, she was convicted in the court of public opinion, and that was enough.

Though she continued to preach until her death, Sister Aimee never lived down the scandal of that event.

Joanna, wife of Chuza, servant of Herod, is one of the women mentioned in Luke 8:3. Really. Any other heresies are entirely my own.

PUBLICATION HISTORY:
This story was originally published in 1996 in the anthology Time of the Vampires, edited by P.N. Elrod. It was later reprinted in the anthology Women of the Night.