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Page 8
The morning was cold, and his clothes were wet with dew, but he felt no
chill. He remembered; yes, he remembered. If he had lived in a vision
the day before, he was surely living in one yet. The Zia who had been
starved and beaten and driven out naked into the world, who had clutched
his thin breast and sobbed, writhing upon the earth, where was he? He
looked down upon his hands and saw the cracked and scaling palms, and it
was as though they were not. He thrust back the covering from his chest
and saw the spots there. But there were no lepers, there were no
hunchbacks; there were only Zia and the light. He knelt and turned
himself toward the cave and prayed, and as he so knelt and prayed the
man Joseph rolled open the heavy wooden door.
Then Zia, still kneeling, beat himself softly upon the breast and prayed
again, not as before to Jehovah, but to that which he beheld.
The light was there, fair, radiant, wonderful. The cave was bathed in
it. The woman in the blue robe sat upon the straw, and in her arms she
held a new-born child. Zia touched his forehead to the earth again,
again, again, unknowing that he did so. The child was the light itself!
He must rise and draw near. That which had drawn him up the mountainside
drew him again. The child was the light itself! As he crept near the
cave's entrance, the woman's eyes rested upon him soft and wonderful.
She spoke to him--she spoke!
"Be not afraid," she said. "Draw nigh and behold!"
Her voice was not as the voice of other women; it was like her eyes, his
body, through his blood, through every limb and fleshy atom of him, he
felt it steal--new life, warming, thrilling, wakening in his veins new
life! As he felt it, he knelt quaking with rapture even as he had stood
the night before gazing at the light. The new-born hand lay still.
He did not know how long he knelt. He did not know that the woman leaned
toward him, scarce drawing breath, her wondrous eyes resting upon him as
if she waited for a sign. Even as she so gazed she beheld it, and spoke,
whispering as in awed prayer:
"Go forth and cleanse thy flesh in running water," she said. "Go forth."
He moved, he rose, he stood upright--the hunchback Zia who had never
stood upright before! His body was straight, his limbs were strong. He
looked upon his hands, and there was no blemish or spot to be seen!
"I am made whole!" he cried in ecstasy so wild that his boy's voice rang
and echoed in the cave's hollowed roof. "I am made whole!"
"Go forth," she said softly. "Go forth and give praise."
He turned and went into the dawning day. He stood swaying, and heard
himself sob forth a rapturous cry of prayer. His flesh was fresh and
pure; he stood erect and tall. He was as others whom God had not cursed.
The light! the light! He stretched forth his arms to the morning sky.
Some shepherds roughly clothed in the skins of lambs and kids were
climbing the hill toward the cave. They carried their crooks, and they
talked eagerly as though in wonderment at some strange thing which had
befallen them, looking up at the heavens, and one pointed with his
crook.
"Surely it draws nearer, the star!" he said. "Look!"
As they passed a thicket where a brook flowed through the trees a fair
boy came forth, cleansed, fresh, and radiant as if he had but just
bathed in its clear waters. It was the boy Zia.
"Who is this one?" said the oldest shepherd.
"How beautiful he is! How the light shines on him! He looks like a king's
son."
[Illustration with caption: "'How beautiful he is!'"--Page 54]
And as they passed, they made obeisance to him.
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