Prologue

And on that day a monk of God and a Midianite woman sat together and the woman sang to him. Her voice was pleasing and the monk who knew many tongues listened and understood the song to its core, to his very soul she sang and his face wettened as if rain fell and the angel of God sat with them. A meal from the fruit of the garden she served but he refused to bring any thing to his mouth. Eat, said the angel, for the road is long before you. The monk ate but wine he did not drink and he lay down to sleep and woke and walked for three days neither eating nor drinking and at last he stopped there in the shadow of a plane tree and he sat and died.

Chapter 1

And the sons of Israel will do the wrong in the eyes of God and worship Ashtoret and Ashera and Ba’al and God shall bring upon them Eglon King of Moav and they will be slaves to him for eighteen years. And the Sons of Israel will cry out to God and He shall send to them Ehud son of Gera son of the Yemini to save them and Moav will surrender that day under the arm of Israel. A day will come and a day will go and the Sons of Israel will sin again before God and He shall punish them and send the Yevusi to raid them and again the Sons of Israel will cry and again He shall bring before them judges and again the seed of Israel will be tempered in war and again weakened in peace and worshipped the idols and return again.

And there lived a man named Yehushafat son of Utniel son of Kanaz, who was learned in battle and judged over the people who dwelt between Yerushalaim and Mevaseret. A cabin he had there, and he was aged fifty-five years.

And although he bore the title Judge he had in his heart no love for either war or judgement, for war was a fear that stalked him all the days of his life and held him in his grasp all his nights. Tall he was and his arms thicker than a man’s thighs, and although his palms remembered the weight of the sword and its ways, since the days of war his eyes had been blunt and his ears dull, and his speech quiet and tender.

Spring came and withered and summer came in its stead and one morning Yehushafat awoke from his bedding cold with sweat and left his cabin to let the light soothe his terrors. The sun had risen and shone fully in the sky before he came to greet it, and the heat was on his skin as if he were a cut of meat drying.

And Yehushafat saw a boy run up the hill, his breath short and steps stumbling. And though Yehushafat could not see his face he knew him by his height and the pace of his steps and the length of black hair and said unto him – Is it you, Gid’on son of Laish? I have told you once and shall again: I shan’t judge between you and your brother, no matter what words he said. Go to your father and let him be judge over you.

Not that, answered the boy when he was close enough for Yehushafat to hear, and stood there panting, his hair wet with sweat on his forehead. Yehushafat looked closely at his face and saw a fright that was not the result of a quarrel between boys. Yehushafat knelt before the boy and held him, and his hands wettened from the sweat soaking the little shirt.

We found a man, said the boy at last. He sits on the lip of the pond, by the shattered altar.

What of it? asked Yehushafat, yet in his heart he knew the answer.

He is dead. He sat by the pond and died.

The knees of the boy gave and Yehushafat caught him, and when the boy lay down to drain his guts Yehushafat turned him on his side lest he drown and held him until he was done.

And Kfir son of Eyal, Yehushafat’s deputy under him, climbed to the cabin who had been nearby and heard the boy’s shouts. Kfir was a man of war, seasoned and clever, yet when he saw the boy worry took him and he said – What ails him, the child?

And Yehushafat, though not knowing the answer, commanded – Bring him to his mother and ask him nothing. And order her to tie her tongue and ask no questions. If he saw a dead man, as he said, I shall find him.

And Kfir carried the boy in his arms and left Yehushafat with the wonderings of his heart.

By the shattered altar: the boy’s words. Yehushafat knew their meaning – the altar at the top of the hill, built by one generation to Ba’al and taken apart by their sons, whose stones were forbidden for any use, and among which unruly children played on summer days like this one.

And Yehushafat with a heavy step climbed the hill. Dried squills and thorny thistles swung stiffly in the wind to his left and right, gripping the earth with their dead roots. In his heart he cradled a hope that he would find nothing at the top, but the calls of crows frightened that hope from its hiding place. Even the growls of a little predator were loud enough for Yehushafat’s dull ears.

He followed these voices to the heap of stones where sacrifices were long ago made, and the little pond beside him where the idol-worshipers had created to wash themselves with water they carried up the hill. Now the pond was dry and empty but for the stones and branches the children threw, and the roots of a great plane tree that drank when it filled with rain. On the other side of the dry pond sat a man, his back to the stones, his head dropped. A cloud of flies hummed greedily about him and crows picked at his body and a red fox gnawed at his spilt guts.

The man’s mouth was open in the semblance of laughter and his eyes empty. His hair was dark and long, perhaps never shorn, and tangled in a single braid. He was wrapped in worn and soiled clothes, and around him were blankets, as if he had been preparing to sleep when suddenly someone came and killed him.

Yehushafat dropped to his knee and brought his hand to his chest and his breath cut short and sweat covered his forehead and back and arms. For a long moment he rested on his knee and breathed. Finally he rose, and with his sword drove away the crows and the fox, and the flies also, though those returned in instants with renewed fervour.

He decided in his heart to take the man away from there lest the wild animals desecrate him further, and then to his grave. But once he laid the deceased on the ground he erringly peered into his eyes and for a moment saw the reflection of the place where only the dead may look. He covered the man in his blankets and did not look again.

Yehushafat lifted the bags of the man and before he scrambled through them a sealed scroll fell into his hand. It was heavy in his palm and warm without reason. Of cheap make, like the training skins scribes used to practise at the temple. Yehushafat wondered– if he were to read the scroll of the dead, it would tarnish both their honours. And if he threw it in the fire to annihilate it, hints as to the murderer’s name might be lost. Around he went and could not decide until finally he placed the scroll by the stones of the altar and chose one so heavy that none but him could lift it and placed it over the scroll so that no man would ever find it.

A cool wind blew among the trees and their rustling calmed Yehushafat’s spirit and in the quiet he saw that blood and guts had soaked through his clothes. He went down the hill into a ravine where a river flowed and washed there, and returned to his cabin and called his deputies to him and commanded two to fetch the deceased and bury him and two more to run to the city and call the elders to fulfil the commandment of Beheaded Calf.

Chapter 2

And on the next day the Elders of Mevaseret came down and with them a brown cow that had not given birth to fulfil Beheaded Calf as God commanded and they met Yehushafat and patted his shoulder and gripped his arms with affection and said to him – Come and speak for us.

Speak louder, said Yehushafat. I must have heard wrong. I am not of the elders.

One answered him, a bony white-haired man with a sharp tongue - An elder you are not, but one you shall become, and the days they quickly pass. Speak now as one of the elders and be honoured as one.

Yehushafat agreed and drew his heavy sword and led the cow to the water without looking at her round eyes and with a confident hand he swung the blade and broke the bones of her neck and the blade went half the way to her throat. Her knees collapsed into the water and Yehushafat struck again, beheading her, and the cow did not cry out. He carried her head by the horn and cried to the heavens a great cry – Our hands have not spilt this blood! And our eyes did not see! Forgive for your people of Israel that you have salvaged, My Lord, and do not let pure blood spill among your people, Israel.

Yehushafat raised in one hand the blade and in the other the cow’s head and blood dripped on his torn clothes from both and he declared with his own words that were beyond the ritual’s demands – Here I swear before witnesses that the murderer will be found and brought to judgement. I shall ask person after person and overturn clod after clod of dirt until with an arm’s might justice will descend from the heavens to the earth.

Yehushafat washed his clothes while the elders and the people of the village gathered to sing, mourning the one they did not know.

Before they were done singing came The Teacher from the hill. His skin was wrinkled and stained with age yet his step was spry and a small hunting bow was strapped to his back. Yehushafat did not know him but the elders greeted him and treated him with respect as would a boy his uncle. A judge they called him, and to that he answered that the only judge is in the heavens and the earth has but servants. Yehushafat silently agreed.

One open eye he had, its glare speaking of wisdom and sorrow, and the other was closed and perhaps gone. His clothes were faded from the sun and his sandals worn thin and his calves knitted with muscle and tendon, for he was a nomad in the land. He presented himself to Yehushafat, giving his name and the name of his father, and gripped his hand, and though Yehushafat felt the bones of the fragile palm and could have crushed them in an instant he knew that he would learn a great lesson from this old man.

The elders of the city went to raise a fire for cooking their sacrifice and Yehushafat was left with The Teacher alone.

A grief in my heart for them, said The Teacher. Loudly and clearly he spoke, and Yehushafat was thankful, but still he did not understand his meaning.

Yehushafat asked - for whom?

For these people, no blood on their hands, and yet they atone.

And Yehushafat said – Why not? A Hebrew he was, God’s monk. Why did he find himself in these woods, if not because we failed to welcome him on our doorstep? As it is right to torment one for doing what is unworthy of doing, so it is right to torment those who neglected to do that which is worthy.

Truth in your words, agreed The Teacher. But who neglected, and who has been neglected? His guts were empty, as many days he had not eaten, but in his pockets were figs that had not yet dried. And where could you find fresh figs today if not far north?

And Yehushafat asked - Have you laid a hand on his body?

I asked Kfir for permission and he granted it. And whom did it disturb? Cadavers do not complain and the slayer peacefully rests while we take our revenge on cattle and honour empty chariots that have no driver.

Yehushafat was stunned and could not answer. The Teacher continued - Even though his sandals were of soft leather his feet were one great callus each, as if he walked and walked without resting or sleeping.

What matter his feet – said Yehushafat – if a blade was taken to his stomach?

The Teacher shook his head in the way of one who does not know how to answer so as to be understood, until at last he said: A lonely monk he was, whose name no one knew, and he started his journey three walking days northward of here. I shall go north to search for justice, and there I shall find the one responsible and bring him to judgement.

Why shall you venture northward? And why not search the slayer by the slain?

The Teacher gestured to the people that had crowded to share the feast of the sacrifice, whispering their doubts and discussing the verdict that was decided, and said – You know these people, their names and the ways of their hearts. Do you see blood on the hands of any of them?

Not in a single person did Yehushafat see the movement or spirit of one who wounds another. He said – And yet you claim that three days before he died the cut was made, and walked three days while the wound in his belly bled.

The Teacher shook his head again, barred from answering. He asked – Did he have scrolls?

Yehushafat flinched, and said - Only one. How did you guess?

A word-smith he seemed to me, one who swings quill like a sword, one who by putting one word after another finds pleasure and pain.

All that from a dead body?

From the ink stains on his fingers. But what is ink to a man without scrolls? What was its fate?

I put them to the fire, lied Yehushafat.

The Teacher sighed. Well you have done, Yehushafat.

And Yehushafat, who had not yet realised why his senses had hinted at him to annihilate the scroll and its memory, regretted not having listened to their wisdom. To The Teacher he said – Why was it a good deed?

The Teacher answered – It will take me many days to explain.

Good and proper: we have a long journey ahead.

And do you not have your dominion to judge over?

I’ve sworn to bring justice to he who sinned against Israel. What is a judge without his word?

The Teacher laughed and said – Join me if you will, but justice shall come even without you. Not once nor twice did I leave after such a ceremony, and did not return until there was word in my mouth for the elders that their justice has come.

And did you speak the truth?

I did.

And you took nothing but this bow on your back?

It escorted me on my second hunt.

And what did you take on your first?

A waterskin and blanket. said The Teacher but no pride shone in his eyes. For days I brought nearly no thing to my mouth as the path led me to my goal. Come with me if you will.

So I swore, said Yehushafat. We will gather horses and leave.

We will take no horses. For the path that was travelled by horse we would trace on the back of one, and the path marked by footsteps we will find with our feet.

And if the slayer evades us?

He will not. He will wait. All we must do is find him.

Yehushafat looked upon The Teacher and knew that a greater judge he had never met.

Yehushafat went to say his farewells and pack his provisions, and The Teacher followed. Few possessions did Yehushafat have, but many bonds and tight ones, and as soon as the people were done eating they went to their homes and came to his cabin to give to him and The Teacher from their own – Judean wool blankets that were thin and warm in the cold nights and deer meat and dried figs and nuts and thin dry bread that would not go bad and more waterskins than they could carry on their backs.

But Yehushafat could stride for a whole day without halting for food or water, and in the nights he would not cover himself for his size and burning vigour and so there was neither glee nor warmth in his heart for these gifts or the act of receiving them, but only a great desire to leave on his journey.

Yehushafat looked at The Teacher who was close by and speaking to the people of Mevaseret things he could not hear. One by one he held their hands and embraced them and brought laughter to their mouths. Even though The Teacher too had all he needed he thanked them, each woman and man who had given him these gifts, for he remembered that there are provisions that a man carries not on his back, and Yehushafat envied him.

Children came with their parents and played and laughed there, even Gid’on son of La’ish, whose fever was forgotten. Soon they came to argue one with the other about what Yehushafat would do once he found that which he sought. One said – They shall fight by the sword – and he raised a stick and swung it this way and that. He continued - For a moment it may seem to the Ba’al-spawn that he has won and only then will Yehushafat the Judge thrust the sword in his gut and say - Thus shall it be done to all who spill Hebrew blood!

A second said – Not so, for he is unworthy of dying by the sword. Yehushafat will find him in the night and place his hands on his throat! And the child practised the motion and howled – Press and press until his eyes fly out of their holes!

A third, a boy whose beard was only a hint about his lips, said – Both of you err. Not by the sword as equal against equal, and not in the night in the quiet, for he is no coward. He is a judge, and I have heard many stories about judges. Shimshon The Hero struck the Philistines with the cheekbone of an ass, and Shamgar son of Anat with an ox goad as if his enemies were cattle. Yehushafat will grip a rotten branch, or a horse whip, and strike the villain even if he brandishes the sharpest blade in all of Cna’an.

The children cheered for the great wise man, but Gid’eon son of La’ish who previously played like the other children and laughed with them now held to his mother’s skirt and said nothing.

Chapter 3

Night came and the judges slept in the cabin and in the morning strode north with their gifts on their backs. For half a day they walked a shadowed path among the hills and found no thing worthy of being said. It had been a long time since Yehushafat had spent even a quarter of a day without the quarrels and complaints of the people and he found his heart young again, dedicated to one thing and undisturbed by vanities.

After a time The Teacher without preamble asked him how he had come to be a judge.

I was but a boy when my father died and left me with his land to work, and in that time the Yevusis raided and killed among us every summer and we slept in fear and woke in fear. As soon as the seven days of grieving for my father passed, I went to harvest wheat in the field, and as I stood there a wind blew and a shiver rose in my back and all was silent but the sounds of leaves rustling and the angel of God was with me there. From above I saw this man called Yehushafat and thought in my heart – If he is to die, so be it.

And did you see the angel?

I did not, but I knew him. There was a great clarity, as if all were alight, and a fury so pure that only from the heavens themselves could it come. The words appeared as if another put them in my head and I knew what I would say to the Yevusis, and I crossed the border not far from here and went to their city with no companion but a good stone in my hand, and the men gathered tens and tens before me.

And what trade did you make with them?

Fractures in their skulls I gave them, one by one, and I left them there, and in return they gave me blood from their eyes and ears.

Yehushafat sighed, as if suddenly the burden of his days dropped back onto his shoulders.

The Teacher sighed as well and said – Do you long for the glory of battle again?

Indeed, said Yehushafat, and in that moment did not remember the pounding of his heart and choking in his throat when he’d found the monk’s body, but felt as if the truth in his words was not pure. I would not trade those days for these, he said, but these days are grey, each one like the one that has gone before, and nothing changes but the end nearing step by step. I do not long for battle, but its absence leaves a lack in me. Do you understand?

I do. And do you remember the speech you gave them?

Not one word, admitted Yehushafat.

The Teacher nodded and said no more.

At noon of that day they found a small pond full of cold green fountain-water and not a man near it. Let us dip, said The Teacher.

Yehushafat answered – It is one thing not to take horses, but to halt our walking to bathe in water? This is the land of the Yevusi.

The heat tires us, said The Teacher. And there are still long days to walk. Why should we hurry? We’ll cool and renew our vigour.

And were we to wet our clothes and continue? That would suffice to cool us.

Soon I shall entrust my body to the dirt, said The Teacher. And my spirit will fly where it may and never again will I be able to put my body in cold water on a day of smiting heat. We will find him whom we seek, as I swore: now come and dip.

Yehushafat sighed but loosened his clothes and uncovered his skin to the sun. The Teacher looked upon the scar on Yehushafat’s breast, the cut that had been sealed with boiling oil lest all his blood drain from him, a cleaving scar and a burn scar on top of it. The Teacher said nothing, but cried out with cheer as he slipped his fragile limbs into the cold water, and spoke his gratefulness for being alive still. Yehushafat followed him and let the cold water rinse his skin and silently professed that it was good.

Wasps hovered a hair’s breadth above the water, searching for a thing no one knows. The Teacher let out his finger and a wasp landed on it but did not sting him. He looked for a passing moment at her colours, one sombre and one bright, at her peculiar movements, and glee shone in his green eye. The wasp flew after her short rest and returned to travelling the face of the pond, as if searching for a hole through which to peer into the depths of the water and understand them.

The Teacher said – In those days, your back straight and your heart full, there was no dread or hesitation in you and all the armies of the world came down to you from the mountain and you were still unbeaten, for God was with you.

Yet He has not always stood with me, said Yehushafat, and saw that The Teacher understood.

Who gave you that scar?

One Yevusi, a sickle in hand, swinging with a speed that has no equal. My wife and I and my eldest son and my brother and my youngest daughter and a dozen more sat in the evening time and laughed and there came a boy from the border and struck us before we had even drawn our blades. The twelve he slaughtered, and my wife and my son and brother and daughter and me he cut and left to bleed alone.

The Teacher listened to Yehushafat, and knew the quiet voice men use to speak of the breaking of their lives, for he had heard it many times. After a long moment he said, sorrow in his single eye – Surely you have been very strong, to stand where others have fallen.

I would have been stronger to strike first, returned Yehushafat, and wondered that he did not sense the grief and sorrow that still hid somewhere in his heart.

And what was the boy’s fate?

His body was found among the woods, where he had sat and bled from a cut in his chest.

And how did that come to be?

Only The Sovereign of the World knows. Perhaps in the fury of battle he slit his own chest, by error or malice. Greatly fortunate he was, for my own vengeance would have been greater, had I found him.

They rose from the pond and put on their clothes and returned to their walking until the evening fell. Then they found a meadow in a valley and in it a dry brook and they unfolded their blankets and ate from the provisions the people had given them, sharing with each other nuts and dry fruits and meat before they lay down and slept there.

In the night Yehushafat woke to a hissing like a stream among the fallen leaves– only it was not water, but hooves, and many beyond number. He turned in his bedding and looked at the stampeders at the other side of the gorge, and lamented that even in moonlight he could not see more than shadows. He looked at The Teacher who was lying on his side, but whether his eye was open or closed Yehushafat could not see. Snorts came from among the trees and to Yehushafat’s dull ears they sounded as authoritative as those of a commander hurrying his troops.

A black shadow neared Yehushafat, smaller than the others, and even in darkness he could see the hesitation in her steps, her whelpish curiosity. Larger than a dog she was, but her movements were cumbersome and rigid. The beast feared Yehushafat but also longed to study him, and he lay unmoving, hoping she would overcome her fear and come close enough to smell him.

One shadow within the stream of beasts, larger than the rest, stood and snorted angrily, as if fearing her boarlet would gain some forbidden knowledge from the sons of Adam sleeping in their blankets. The boarlet flinched to hear her mother’s admonishment, retreated and returned to her tribe, and the shadow reunited with the flow whence she had come.

Eventually the meadow quieted and Yehushafat and his teacher, if he even awoke, returned to sleep. Yehushafat closed his eyes but soon he thought he heard sounds, as if a delicate but heavy creature was sneaking towards him across the meadow’s floor. He remained silent and listened as hard as he could for steps, staring up at the moon, almost full, that peered through the canopy of trees. He waited to see the snout of the boarlet, but instead he saw the glistening of a blade, and after the blade was placed on his throat, two eyes appeared also, at the edge of his sight.

Yehushafat turned his head slowly toward the man whose eyes shone with murder, bright and grey and very wide. Yehushafat did not know the man but these eyes were familiar to him. Neither man said a word. Yehushafat’s sword was in reach but its distance from his fingers was a thousandfold greater than the hair’s breadth between his throat and the blade waiting over him. He glanced sideways at The Teacher and said – Bad fortune has befallen us.

Another bandit leaned over The Teacher, who had risen to his elbows, and another one, sword in hand, stood behind him.

And The Teacher said – Neither good nor bad, for all is done by His will.

The fourth bandit, who stood farther away, said, as if he were their leader – Will these be your last words?

A heavy accent Yehushafat did not know was in the Yevusi the man spoke.

I’d rather my last words be a question, said the Teacher. What is your mother tongue?

The bandit laughed at The Teacher’s audacity and answered – Greek.

We are far from the Philistine’s dominion, said The Teacher in Greek, enunciating each word as if he had been born and lived his life on the Philistine shores on the other side of the sea. Yehushafat did not understand the meaning of the words, but he recognized The Teacher’s fluency, so natural that even the bandit guarding Yehushafat turned to look. That was an error Yehushafat could not forgive and he gripped the wrist of the bandit holding the sword with one hand, hard enough to bend the bones out of their joints, and with the other grabbed him by his neck and brought him down against a rock, and before he knew it Yehushafat was standing with a sword in each hand and the man was lying and did not move. All was silent but for the sound of the dead bandit’s excrement draining from his body.

The bandits whispered some thing to Yehushafat but they were like muted shadows in the dark and he could not hear them.

The Teacher said – My companion cannot hear.

The leader spoke louder, saying – That was my uncle’s son. Drop your swords and I might forgive you killing him, or refuse and I will avenge my cousin.

Yehushafat’s voice was flat and his grip secure and all that heard knew that he was speaking truth, even if his back dripped with sweat - If you kill my teacher nothing will stop me from killing the three of you. Leave now, so that you may remember this day.

Yehushafat, The Teacher said, stay your hand. We will solve this with words. He that leads, come to me. I will tell you one thing and then you will leave.

And why shall I come? said the bandit. Do you desire to put your teeth to my ear?

Never have I spilt blood from a living soul, said The Teacher, and Yehushafat heard the sound of truth in his words.

The bandit’s leader signalled the others to come nearer and their three swords flanked The Teacher’s neck from all sides. The Teacher said – Please, come nearer still: you will not want your men to hear.

Let them hear what they will, said the Philistine, I am close enough. Yet despite his words, he brought his ear an olive’s length closer to The Teacher’s mouth.

The Teacher’s good eye closed and for a moment both were closed, before the other opened. White it was and gleaming in the darkness like another moon under the one in the heavens, looking to and fro like it had just awoken. Yehushafat’s guts coiled at the glare of that furious eye and his heart halted as it met his.

The Philistines’ backs stiffened to see the eye but they governed their spirits enough to leave their swords by The Teacher’s neck. He turned his mouth to the closest ear, and his pale eye watched Yehushafat as he spoke. His voice was like a scroll torn, like leaves crushed under the weight of a body laid to rest, like the first crackles of a cabin kissed by a raider’s torch.

As soon as the whispers stopped the leader stood, as if frightened out of his crouching place, and his eyes turned to the earth. Yehushafat could not see The bandit’s expression, but the Teacher’s pale eye followed each of the Philistine’s movements and a wide and wild glee spread in the mouth beneath it. A tremor passed through the bandit’s body and perhaps his lips moved also and suddenly he looked up and his face lit with the light of a great understanding and before he could say that which he understood, his skull split in two as if struck by and axe, from forehead to chin, and he fell to his knees and died.

Yehushafat screamed for his fear was great and the Philistines screamed and carried their legs and ran, leaving their swords and sacks behind. They ran and ran until their last breath.

Yehushafat tried to remain standing but the woods revolved about him and his legs tangled and the earth rose to catch him but before he collapsed two strong arms came to hold him and halt his drop and finally he was laid on his back and saw one green eye look at him with compassion in it. He closed his eyes and slept again until morning came.

Chapter 4

Yehushafat opened his eyes and threw his blankets from him. His ears had filled with pus and become inflamed and red and his vision had darkened yet further. The sun had risen over the horizon and its light ignited the tree tops with dim stains of copper and gold. The Teacher was already on his feet, busy with the labour of packing, and the bodies of the Philistines were nowhere to be seen.

Yehushafat looked at the green eye and bent to fold his own blankets. The pale eye was bound, thought Yehushafat, and whatever possession had seized it now rested. He knew that if he waited for that eye to open on its own it would kill him or another, and that a Judge could not be allowed to walk the lands under a heathen curse like this. It was Yehushafat’s duty to kill him.

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For a long hour neither spoke while Yehushafat packed his sacks, his hands trembling and his eyes not leaving that closed lid.

At last they took to a low path, a cliff to their left and a steep hill to their right and thick-trunked oaks standing above them. An Osprey was already in the sky, looking for hidden snakes, and when The Teacher turned to watch it Yehushafat charged him with such fury that he forgot his sword.

The Teacher had not yet turned and spoke two words but Yehushafat’s damaged ears did not hear them and he was not killed by them and Yehushafat gripped The Teacher’s throat in his hand like a bird of prey would a rabbit, pressing him against a trunk so his legs were dangling beneath him and he could neither speak nor breathe. The Teacher’s arms flailed, clawing for Yehushafat’s throat, but could not reach him. He closed his eye and before the other opened something in his back changed, as if the bones of his spine were a snake. Yehushafat did not turn away as again the abomination opened and looked upon him. In the sun light it reminded him of the eye of a scapegoat that he had found in his boyhood days floating in the dead sea, looking into the abyss. When that eye looked at Yehushafat, his stomach clenched and his heart was pressed and his throat choked as if wrapped with rope. He was too slow to move away when the hardened foot of The Teacher was driven under his ribs up to his lungs, like the kick of a mule knocking him back and chasing the air out of him. He fell back and the throat of The Teacher he let go and by then the white eye was already hidden again.

The men both fell to the earth and coughed for a long time, fighting for their breath. The Teacher caught his sooner and went to Yehushafat and brought him to his feet with strength unfitting of an old man, for he was still a Judge of God.

I will not hurt you, he said, his green eye meeting Yehushafat’s, his face close enough that Yehushafat could see his mouth and understand the words he could not hear. I will teach you what it is you wish to learn, and not a droplet more. Please, do not lure the other from its hiding place again.

Tell me what I saw. What is this sorcery you have cast on the bandits? Is it the same spell that makes a man walk for three days and die on the edge of my domain?

Neither sorcery, he said, nor spell.

What then? Speak, and illuminate this darkness.

The Teacher resumed his walking, and Yehushafat slapped the dust away from his clothes and followed him. After a while, The Teacher spoke again, and his voice was loud.

Imagine in your heart a land that has never heard of copper or bronze, where war is made with stones and sticks and murder is a rare crime, done only in the truest of rages. If you travelled to that land with a sword, you could kill any son of Adam, but they would not understand the weapon in your hand, nor fear the shining of bronze.

There he stopped. Yehushafat did not understand the words spoken to him and asked - Is that the weapon your hand carried yesterday? A hidden blade?

The Teacher’s face fell. No, he said. What I swung is a heavier burden than any blade.

Then, for the first time, Yehushafat wondered if it would be better never to understand these things.

The Teacher continued.

Consider what is happening in your spirit when your ears hear a thing, any thing that is spoken. I speak, and you have no choice but to accommodate the words in your heart, even if they cause you disquiet. If I asked you to notice the resting of your tongue in your mouth, could you refuse, or would you now be bothered by the discomfort between your jaws? And if I asked you to notice your breathing, when it enters your chambers and when it leaves, could you notice it without controlling it?

The words floated in the wind as if they were leaves, bathed in the sunlight, from The Teacher’s mouth to Yehushafat’s ears. Yehushafat moved his tongue within his mouth and breathed heavily in and out as if he had forgotten how his breath felt in ordinary moments. He understood the meaning of the words, but not their importance.

The Teacher continued – And if I asked you about the colour of the skies when you say your farewell to them, would you not wonder? And their colour on the day after?

Yehushafat stopped where he stood and closed his eyes. Even in the days of war he would charge into battle with no thought in his heart nor hesitation in his limbs. At times he had thought of being killed, but more often of killing, and rarely about the days he might not witness after. The Teacher’s words grounded the question and bound it to his heart. Yehushafat looked at the skies. Would it be day or night? In winter, in old age and sickness, or in summer, on the battlefield? Afterward the skies would change their colour and he would not be there to see them.

Their colour will be red, Yehushafat said finally.

Maybe, said The Teacher. Perhaps every last day is a day when the skies are painted red, for the deceased. You have survived hearing this thing.

I survived. What of it? said Yehushafat in wonder. These are the words of the sons of Adam, nothing more.

And yet, The Teacher replied, there are words stronger than these. There are words with great power in them. Words will rip a tree from its roots, a wheel from its hinge. Shield and armour won’t stop them, and a sword cannot strike them down.

Yehushafat said – Am I to believe that words are the weapon? If so, why does not each and every bandit use words to shatter the hearts of men?

And how would you teach their use? Would that I have taught the Philistine his first lesson yesterday, but the burden outweighed his competence. Words are things - to give them they must first be received. A double-edged sword, and no son of Adam in this land swings it without his heart dripping with sorrow.

And Yehushafat, puzzled, asked – How is it possible that anyone who gives them must first be given them? Who gave them first?

The Teacher’s green eye looked at Yehushafat with curious surprise. That, he said, you must have already understood.

Yehushafat shook his head. Forgive me, my judge. I have heard in my days words that bring a man to his knees, words that deprive a man of sleep for long months, even words that turn a man to a broken vessel. But words that split a skull like a sword, I have neither seen nor heard of. If you are mocking me, desist.

The Teacher shook his head, a mirror. Do you remember the death of Eglon, the Moa’vi king?

Certainly. The tyrant ruled over my father’s father, until Ehud son of Gera killed him.

And how did he?

The judge was left-handed, and so Eglon’s guards did not notice his sword strapped to his right thigh under his robes, and not to his left like a right-handed man. It was a double-edged blade, and he slid it into Eglon’s abdomen beyond the hilt and it was never found. Why do you laugh?

The Teacher said – And how would the guards of a king not search Ehud’s two thighs? And how would he drive the blade so far that it was never found, if it were sharp on both edges? Do you remember what Ehud said to Eglon to make him call his guards away?

The word of God I have for you, said Yehushafat. Stop making riddles and speak clearly.

I am asking clearly: what was of the blade?

And how would I know?

Your eyes tell me what your wit suspects. Say that which is in your heart.

You wish me to say that there was never a blade.

Truth. Ehud did not lie. He truly did have the word of God to deliver.

And what was the word?

I have never heard it, but if I’d told it to you, you too would wallow in your own spilled guts.

Yehushafat swallowed his spittle and went silent.

And The Teacher said to Yehushafat – And how did Shamgar beat six hundred Philistines, and him alone? His weapon was no ox goad. And Shimshon did not grip a fresh ass’s jawbone – or if he did, he did not use it for striking. And have you seen with your own eyes a woman whose grasp of a handle is as sure as Yael’s was said to be, when she pierced Sisra’s skull? Her weapon was no mallet. These are the Hebrews’ tools of war. The Philistines have iron vehicles, and order and discipline; line by line they come, as if on a game board. A Philistine army could stand against a Hebrew army thrice as numerous. But judges come against them on the field of battle, whispering words to them, learning the other’s language and religion, all the better to sharpen truths to carve open their hearts.

And their own, said Yehushafat, and the source of the words he did not know.

Some times, agreed The Teacher.

Why would you tell me this? Do you need an apprentice for the sharpening?

No, but these blades were already turned against you, and you survived them. But they have scarred you, and you do not understand your own scars.

And if that is true?

If that is true, the same blade that dulled the light of your eyes and the singing of your ears should heal you, should you learn to wield it.

Yehushafat halted and sat down in the middle of the road and for a long time was silent. For long moments he could not move. His dream that his eyes could read again, that his ears could hear the singing of the birds and the soft speech of children; his dream to sleep in peace and wake in the morning in peace, and not to awake in the darkness of the night awash with sweat – all were before him and he burned to reach them. Did The Teacher speak the truth? If Yehushafat had known the weapon and been scarred by it, yet did not remember, what danger would that be? If he had already bitten the fruit and been banished, why not taste it again?

For a long time Yehushafat looked at the closed eye of The Teacher. If Yehushafat took the weapon and used it wrongly, perhaps this time he would lose the light of his eyes entirely, and his ears would be silent forever, and he would never speak a word.

I do not believe you, said Yehushafat, and this lie in his words rang so clear that even the mockingbirds on the pines and vipers under the rocks raised their heads in suspicion.

The Teacher pointed to his closed eye. Twice you have looked upon the other, he said. Shall I summon it again, so that you may trade words?

Dread caught Yehushafat but he did not shiver. He was a hero, and he conquered his fear, even if he did not vanquish it. It was not his teacher who had looked through that pale window. Yehushafat did not know if it was a man at all.

The eye remained closed and the mouth did not speak words of power, yet the power had been presented to him, and the proposal stood – to become a true apprentice, to sharpen a blade keener than any made of bronze.

No need there was to tell Yehushafat that which was clear to all, that the one who awaits them at the end of their path, the one who had slain the monk found dead by the altar, is also talented in the ways of blades made of words and knows them well. Would Yehushafat want to bring justice upon him, he should know them just as well. More than that - to spend his nights in fear, that he did not want, and gladly will he risk his life for a cure. But most of all, greater sevenfold was the truth that he could not deny - These poems of The Teacher, this sorrow that kills men, a great desire was in his heart for them. To hear them, to memorise, to recite them even when no one listens. To know them he desired, and the source of the desire he did not know.

The truth is already tied at your waist, said The Teacher. All you have to choose is whether to draw it from the sheath.

So be it, said Yehushafat and rose on his legs, and speaking these words dictated fate.

The green eye closed, and for a long moment The Teacher stood with both of his eyes hidden. Finally the green eye opened and The Teacher looked sadly at Yehushafat, as if he hoped, despite his efforts, that Yehushafat would leave. He went to the path, and Yehushafat after him. Yehushafat said – Our time is short. If you are to train me in this art, we should begin.

And how will I train you? Recite my poems, each one crueller and bitterer, as if I were training your tongue with wormwood? Were you a boy, I would train you – for an empty bowl can be filled with warm water. But you hold all the rains of your life, and what you know you know. Are you prepared to listen? That is enough.

For a long time they walked in silence. A warm dry wind blew in the gorge and patted their backs to encourage them. An Osprey was patrolling the skies, and Yehushafat did not know if it was the one they had seen in the morning or another. A pair of swallows flew below him, the blades of their wings slicing the wind this way and that, so quick that they could take cover under the talons of the prey-bird with no fear.

At noon they sat to eat beneath a fig tree whose roots dug into the base of a cliff, and whose trunk grew away from the cliff’s shadow to the light. Above their heads, the boulders leaned as if ready to fall, and all the way to the top, oak trees that lived their whole lives without soil clutched at cracks with their bare roots.

In a nook between the ground and wall were the remains of a fire that had once been lit where it would be safe from the wind and rain, and died out. Yehushafat touched with his fingers the web of a spider that was stretched across the rock ceiling of the nook but the spider who weaved it was not on it, only dust and the cadavers of moths. Weeds had grown in the cracks and dried.

While Yehushafat examined these things, The Teacher drew his hands across the bent fig tree. Yehushafat remembered one of the things The Teacher had first said to him – that the season of figs was over.

They ate a dry meal, the last of their dates and deer meat, chewing without haste, and returned to their walking. Clouds came from the west and arranged themselves into a great fire-coloured pillar, as large as all of creation, and the sun, as if tired, pulled behind the clouds like a man being dragged under the water by a great sea-beast to be drowned.

The Teacher stopped and looked at the clouds, and Yehushafat stopped also. The Teacher said – These are His words. Ours are mere shadows.

With the first rain drop a great sorrow and longing fell on Yehushafat and on The Teacher. In silence they walked until the clouds passed and the sun appeared large and orange at the horizon and a pleasant wind blew on their faces, like a mother soothing her child.

Finally Yehushafat lay on his blankets and looked at the dome of stars and wondered what colour the sky would be when his end came. Maybe it would be just like this, except that the moon would be full.

In the night Yehushafat awoke from dreadful dreams. His teacher was reading a scroll in the moonlight, seated on his blankets, and raised an eye to look at him and said - In the night, when none are awake but beasts of prey, that is the time to wander and wonder, the time when truths remove their bindings and run wild.

And what do these things mean?

That it is thoughtless of a man to ask his companion about his dreams, said The Teacher, and placed his scroll into his sack.

And yet, said Yehushafat.

A man cannot lie in his dreams, and we need the truth more than any other thing. Imagine that your heart is a pond of water. In the day, the waters are muddy and hard to see through. Things hide at the bottom and will not rise. But in these hours, whether we are asleep or awake, the dirt sinks and the water clears. We cannot see to the bottom of the pond, but seldom will we be awarded a glimpse of what hides in it. Some die like that, waking in the dead of night and looking deep into their own poems and being felled by them.

Surely you speak in allegory?

Why do you say that? Do you know what hides in the pond of your heart?

When I was a boy it seemed that, as you said, the waters were clear, or at least shallow, but with the years the waters have risen, and more mud and dirt have been thrown into them, and blood as well. And they cannot be cleaned. Every thing that enters will stay there until I die. All I can do is let them sink. And do you know what hides in your spirit?

I have two ponds, The Teacher said, and pointed at his closed eye. One has only muddy water, the other only clear. One sees only truth and desires no illusion, and the other will spend its day and night in blindness, caring not for the truth.

It would have been sensible if Yehushafat had asked, even to himself, which pond had the clear water and which the muddy, but he did not. Instead he asked The Teacher – Should I tell you the dream?

What you have dreamed, you have already seen. If you understood it on your own, that is also good. If not, tell me and will interpret it for you.

Again I was near my home in Mevaseret. In the same place where the Yevusi slashed my breast and left me in the mud of my own blood to die. But in my dream he had no weapon – in stammering Hebrew, in a heavy accent as if he himself did not understand the words, he came and whispered words, and my breast burst and blood erupted from it. In my memory, I had not had the strength to even press the fountaining blood. But in this dream, I acted. The blood spilled, and I knew that the sooner it drained and I collapsed, the sooner I could forget that which my ears heard. In my memory, the blood spilled and spilled, and by the time the healer came with the boiling oil in his cauldron my ears and eyes were ruined. But in my dream, my hearing and sight degenerated instantly, as if from their own volition, the moment the words were spoken.

And the Yevusi? asked The Teacher.

I saw as if from his eyes. His vision was blurred, and in pain he looked away from my convulsions.

They sat there for a long moment and had no companion but the moon, only a hair’s breadth from being full, and an owl that hooted as it killed in the meadow.

Finally Yehushafat said – Will you interpret this dream for me?

And The Teacher said – What is left to interpret?

Chapter 5

The next day they awoke and packed their blankets and walked for a long time without speaking, until Yehushafat’s courage rose in him and he began to enquire. He said - Avimelech son of Gideon ruled in Shchem but he was no judge, do you know what his true fate was? The story they tell is that a woman from Shchem shattered his skull with a chariot’s broken axle in the midst of a rebellion, and that as he lay there dying, he called to a boy to skewer him with a sword, lest word spread that a woman killed him.

The Teacher’s eye brow rose above the green eye as he looked at Yehushafat.

But what woman can shatter a skull with her hands, he continued, let alone one of a man like Avimelech? And how could a man with a fractured skull know with such confidence that his end was coming, and call a boy to kill him? I do not know such a woman, and I have never seen a man with an injured skull behave so lucidly. Did she carry the same blade as you?

That I do not know, said The Teacher. Though I heard the same story as you. And why not? The sons of Israel worship their gods: why would they not worship ours?

And Ehud Son of Gera that delivered us from Eglon the Moa’vi, was he truly left-handed?

The Teacher did not answer.

Did he speak the word of God with his own voice?

No, said The Teacher. I met him once. His left hand was his own, but on his right he had no sovereignty and it moved as if from its own will.

And it was this hand, Yehushafat said, that wrote the poem that killed Eglon.

Truth, truth you have spoken, said The Teacher, worry in his voice. From the moment you turn your face to the light everything reveals itself to you.

As The Teacher spoke, the familiar scent of blood and offal and flesh that has been left under the sun made its way to Yehushafat’s nose. They walked down the valley and found a man sitting with his back to a tree trunk, his hat on his face, flies and crows circling around him and his guts spread in front of him and his blood dry and blackened on the dirt.

Look, said Yehushafat but The Teacher’s white eye was open and his bow was in his hand. An arrow shot out of his bow and nailed one of the crows to the trunk and the others soared and flew far away, calling with horror and rage. The white eye shut and the other opened, and when The Teacher saw the crow skewered in torment his face fell. Shook his grief and turned to Yehushafat and said – Can you hear the echo of the words?

Yehushafat looked at the man, at the way he lay, at the way his belly had burst, at the agonised expression on his shadowed face, and it was as if he heard the recitation from far away, like a whisper in the woods where the wind blows and the leaves rustle and cover every sound.

The monk I found by the shattered altar, said Yahushafat. His belly was opened as if with a knife, like this one. But when little Gid’on looked at the body, he fell ill. I looked at it and could not hear anything. This person’s body is even more disturbed, yet I can hear the poem’s echo. Why is that?

Because you remember. Do not let pride take root in your heart. The Teacher raised his nose, as if tracking beyond the smell of blood.

Was this the deed of the man we are after? Yehushafat said, gesturing at the body.

The Teacher replied – Any whose words have such power, we are after.

They walked until the sun set, and set up camp in a clearing, but they no longer had provisions. Start a fire, said The Teacher, and took his bow and his arrows and left.

When he returned he carried a rabbit and a rooster and a partridge. The fire was already burning and Yehushafat was staring into it as if looking for some nameless thing.

That is much game, said Yehushafat.

The Teacher agreed – Too much.

They roasted the rabbit and cut the rooster into pieces to dry and Yehushafat tossed the partridge into the woods to satiate the jackals.

They made their supper in silence, and in silence ate and made their beds under the trees of the clearing and slept.

Chapter 6

Again Yehushafat dreamed and again he awoke in damp bedding in the dead of night. The Teacher was sitting with his back to him, reading a scroll by the full moon’s light, but which eye looked at the scroll Yehushafat did not know. When The Teacher turned to Yehushafat, his green eye was shining. He said –You dreamt again?

Yehushafat said – Yes. I dreamed that I climbed to the Yevusi with a stone in my hand, but I did not hit a single one of them, and the stone remained dry in my hand. I gave them words and no thing more, and when they heard them their ears split and they could not hear, and their eyes darkened and they could not see, and their blood spilt to the ground and they died there. And what I said I do not remember.

The Teacher gazed upon him until Yehushafat returned to talking, as if the silence seduced the words out of him. He said – In my dream I saw again the Yevusi who spoke to me and left me to die, but in my dream my ears and eyes turned dull by my own will, with words I whispered into them. These words maimed me so that I would never again hear their like.

The Teacher said – Neither hear, nor remember.

Yehushafat shook his head and said – It must have only been a dream, and those words were never said.

For a long time The Teacher said nothing, as if waiting for something to float in Yehushafat’s heart before reaching to fish it out. And then he said – You are close. All that is needed is for you to turn your gaze into the light and look at it, if you want it.

And if I do not want it?

Then again your ears will inflame and your eyesight dim and when asked you will make yourself a fool. There is no shame in that. That is the nature of every woman-born, just as flight is the nature of the bird, and crawling of the worm. The nature of the awake is to observe, and of the sleeper to dream, but sometimes things are reversed. Please restrain yourself. If you go too far too quickly, you will not be able to return.

Yehushafat felt a great understanding coming to him like a gale of wind and as if to escape it asked a question of some thing other – And what did you read before?

The journals of a monk of God whose body was found on the outskirts of your domain.

Again Yehushafat calmed his spirit and showed no surprise on his face or in his voice when he said – How did you find them?

The Teacher answered – The poems sang to me and led me to a scroll that was under a rock. Do not ask forgiveness for telling me you set it aflame. I envy you, Yehushafat, for not knowing how to lie. Those who do know get tangled in their own lies again and again until they cannot move. Those unskilled in lying might still live free in a world of truth.

What is written in the scroll?

Suddenly the pale eye opened in front of Yehushafat’s, and even though he wanted to flinch, he stilled himself and fixed his gaze on it as he would a beast of prey. The rough voice said – These poems do not fulfil their promise. Lukewarm, without sharpness. How could they kill a man?

Yesushafat said – I did not know that it could speak as a man does.

The white eye closed. In the nighttime, said The Teacher as he looked on Yehushafat with his green eye, the boundary between one and other is obscured. Crossing becomes easy.

Yehushafat looked upon this being in front of him. A man, he determined, but also not a man. He said – I have a question to ask.

Laughter was in the pale eye as it opened. You might not get to see another sunrise, the voice said. This is no time for manners. Ask.

And who will keep the sunrise from me?

The slayer that we sought is near. Such wisdom bears heavy on the air itself.

Why are you certain I will not survive? I have heard many poems and am not dead, said Yehushafat, and knew that he was speaking truth.

You have not heard even one of mine. You saw its reflection in the philistine’s face and could not stand on your feet, so how will you hear it and not die?

Some thing will survive, The Teacher said suddenly, his green eye open and the white one closed. Not as it was before, but some thing, yes.

A malice was in the white eye as it opened and looked upon Yehushafat and The Teacher said – Time will tell. Now ask.

Standing in front of this horror, it took Yehushafat a moment to fish the question out of the pond of his thoughts. At last he said – How did the one become two?

That is not a story worthy of hearing, said The Teacher softly.

And why not? Barked the rough voice from The Teacher’s throat. It is the only poem you have ever written. Have pride, and tell him.

The Teacher sighed and surrendered, saying – I was a hunter’s apprentice, and an orphan. For years I learned how to shoot a bow and hide in the woods, how to peel skin and clean guts, but I shot only at targets and cut only game that was already dead. One day I had to kill something with life, and I could not stand it. Even at a tender age the wrongness of it was clear to me. I could not, but I had a duty. The hunter would have banished me from his cabin, and I would have starved. So I strung together the words of my first poem, not knowing why, and recited them in my own ears.

To yourself? asked Yehushafat, stunned.

I did not know of poems, let alone their nature, The Teacher admitted. It was a boy’s error.

An error? The white eye popped open, and the green one hid from it. And what would you have done without me? An eye to look unblinkingly at the truth, so you said, and now I can look at the heavens like you never could. You are Lie, I am Truth. You are Profane, I am Holy. And you dare call my creation an error?

I understand, said Yehushafat. The poem cleaved you in two.

Yes. In a word it created me, and saw that it was good. And he called the poem The Cleaver. You have heard its first sentence. Would you like to hear the rest?

No! yelled The Teacher. It is too soon! There is no need for him to hear it now!

And why not? This broken judge, who can neither listen nor recite – to let him live is too cruel. An evil laughter glowed on The Teacher’s face.

But he might still heal, pleaded The Teacher, if he remembers his own words. For days now I have lured them to the surface: I beg of you – let him hear them.

Yehushafat thought to himself – To beg the merciless is as futile as speaking to a deaf man.

The white eye hollered, as bright and blinding as the sun – Listen! The time has come to share our poems, which will either kill or heal you. Will you listen to The Cleaver and finally know if you can stand it, or will you grace me with your own poem, the one that killed so many Yevusis and darkened your eyes and dulled your ears and mind? The choice is yours, and am I not as merciful as The Name Himself for giving it to you?

The Teacher’s hands pulled the straps of his sandals off his feet, and the eye that looked unblinkingly at the truth, as the poem said, gazed at Yehushafat and no thing else.

A clarity fell on Yehushafat, and his heart beat in his breast like the paw strikes of a charging wolf. All was quiet, and from above Yehushafat saw himself and thought – That fool strode for days beside this wild beast, this murderer who thirsts for blood, so occupied with riddles and birds that he chose to ignore the danger that was only an eye lid’s width away. If he dies, so be it. And the angel of God was with him.

Yehushafat took off his sandals and spoke, finding in the depths of his heart the first word of the deadly poem that had maimed him so many years ago: Blunt. The white eye watched and listened in silence. Then he found the second word: Stone. By then, like a man drawing a blade from his own flesh, he saw that though it did not become any less painful it must be drawn all the way out.

When Yehushafat was done a shiver of pleasure went through The Teacher’s body and his eyes and ears did not bleed and the mouth under the white eye repaid Yehushafat with a single word: Good.

And the white eye saw that Yehushafat was a judge, truly, and Yehushafat looked upon that eye and saw blood vessels and yellow and the black void in its centre and he turned from it to the moon and for the first in a years his eyes saw her for all her blemishes, as if she were a white eye fully opened, and his ears heard every leaf rustling and every beast that was moving in the woods, and even the sound of steps coming slowly towards them through the clearing.

He glanced to his left and saw a small woman walking among the trees, long in the days like The Teacher and her step light. Yehushafat wondered if she had heard his poem and would die for it, but as soon as she saw them she began to sing. Her voice was pleasing, and her manners without shame or fear.

How pleasing your voice is, said The Teacher, his green eye shining.

And she said – How pleasing your listening ear is. Welcome to my domain.

Yehushafat’s heart was still singing with clarity, and he did not wish to speak anything but pure truth.

The Teacher said – Is this your domain? Forgive us, we did not know.

All is forgiven. Yes, you are in my domain, but why should I forbid guests from sleeping in my clearing?

And did our fire disturb you earlier?

I walked the borders of my property and just now returned to smell embers, and saw my guests chatting pleasantly, though I have not blessed them as proper for a hostess.

Your domain must be very large.

Indeed, she answered. All of these hills are mine, and the plots and paths leading to the sea, and the sea is also my property, and although my guests do not ask my permission to sail it, I still receive them. Beyond the sea there is another land and that is also mine, and all guests take as they will from the sea and land.

The Teacher laughed a great laugh, and blessed the vagrant for tricking him. He gestured to a rock by the dying fire, and said - Will you sit with us to share in our game? We have taken beyond our need.

Yehushafat listened to the laughter of his teacher, who only a moment before had been in a dire struggle with his own shadow and wondered if it was true laughter, or if his teacher was as accustomed to pretence as a fish was to water.

Is that the truth? asked the vagrant. The one who strum the bow’s string, does he sit with us now?

The Teacher said – Wandering out there in the dark forest. Likely he will come soon, and you could trade words. The Teacher placed the meat above the embers to warm again, and the woman sang the same song in her pleasant voice, her eyes searching for stars.

What song is that? asked The Teacher when she was done.

And how is one song separate from another? she said, turning to him. All of the words in the world unite in a single song and all of the people of the world are its choir. In song they enter and in song they leave.

She turned to look at Yehushafat and said – And what is your role?

I am a judge, said Yehushafat, and so is he. We are pursuing a just sentence.

She laughed and asked – Is your wish to string a just word to its sister until a just sentence is formed?

I found a monk’s body in my domain, and gave oath to find his slayer and bring him to judgement. Did you meet the monk? His hair and beard were black and very long, and his eyelashes long over his bright eyes.

The vagrant looked at him with appreciation, as would a child-keeper praising a brave child, and it infuriated Yehushafat, an anger so-undimmed Yehushafat rejoiced in its return. I have seen many monks, she said, but I did not know how to tell them apart. From the moment they said the words - I am a monk – they were all the same to me.

So you cannot tell one man from the next?

An impairment of vision. From birth. I knew my mother from her paces and the length of her hair but I did not know her face. It is no great trouble. Sons of Adam are more similar than they are different. Tell me, how many days did you walk?

Three, answered Yehushafat.

And did you find hints?

Few, but clear.

The Teacher served her a piece of meat that had by then warmed and singed. The vagrant looked at him in his green eye and thanked him, saying – I will never forget this. She bit and chewed and swallowed and then looked at Yehushafat and said – Did you know that the work of a judge is much like that of a poet?

Yehushafat looked at her with a curiosity he had not known in years. What does that mean?

The vagrant looked upon the heavens and said – You try to put shards together from the fragments of the world and sometimes a piece fits with another and a grand truth is revealed to you. Could that a grand truth hides among profane details, and it is the nature of the whole universe. And if there were a grand truth, would we see it? Would we stand it, if it were told to us? Who is the man who eats all the fruits of the tree of knowledge and his gut not burst?

With that The Teacher’s white eye opened and whispered – Finally I have found you.

She looked without fear at the white eye and nodded. It was your fierce gaze I have felt looking for me, she said. What is his nature?

He will go where I will, and do as I shall command. He is too tender for our art, but a great use for daily things I do not care about.

And he? she said, and pointed at Yehushafat with her chin.

It is good to have an audience for our art, and he has art of his own, albeit weak. The green eyed slave tried to convince me not to take him, and said he might never take the shine, but I believe he can be a great poet.

She shrugged like that was a thing of no interest and said – That we will learn together. She turned to Yehushafat. You spoke of a monk.

I did.

And you found his scrolls as well?

Yes.

So you know the nature of the slayer.

She is sitting here in front of me, said Yehushafat, his voice as calm as that of a man watching armies riding down the hill for him, and knowing there is no saviour but Him.

Is that so? she answered. Your monk came to me willingly and asked for my songs. I warned him not to write them in his scrolls, but he insisted. Did I kill him, if he asked me to?

And why would he ask that of you?

The vagrant fell silent and looked at him as one does a child who’s fallen, waiting for them to pick themselves up. The Teacher’s white eye looked quietly at the vagrant, and turned to Yehushafat as The Teacher’s throat croaked – It was clear to you, Yehushafat, that we were searching for the person who had killed the monk, and now you see that we have been searching for what the monk did to bring about his own death. And here is what he did – dared to search for a lucid truth.

And he died for that? For failing to withstand it?

No! the woman cried. He did not fail! He laboured and laboured and found it and a great joy was in his heart for finally knowing it. And so you too laboured, and you too found. Believe this.

The white eye narrowed at her and said – Did we find the truth? He wrote the words you told him, but I read these words and know they have no sharpness to them. How could they have killed him?

He wrote the words of my song, but not their tune. Words are but words, but a song is a window to the divine.

And what is a song but its words? Sounds please the ear, no more, but words open the skies.

It is the opposite, she said. Words without melody are like flesh without blood. Like a moon without moonlight.

The white eye narrowed with hate. Poems are not flesh, and they are not the moon. They are blades, their only purpose is to carve through the thick cloud of ugly lies covering the world, and they have no need of blood or light.

She looked at him and her pity was so great that tears welled in her eyes and spilt. We will go to the field, she said, and with your own eye you shall see.

She rose, but The Teacher remained sitting. The white eye closed but the green one did not open in its stead, and for a moment each one trembled under its lid and sweat covered the forehead over both, as if they were locked in a colossal struggle. Finally the green eye opened a crack and he rose and stood in front of Yehushafat and said – Yehushafat. And Yehushafat said –Here I am. And The Teacher said – Run, Yehushafat, with your vision clear and your life free. Run to your home and be judge over it and never return to this place again.

A great calm fell over Yehushafat and wind rustled through the leaves and his dry clothes. And he said – No. I would like to listen.

The Teacher slapped him on his ear with all his might and Yehushafat fell off the log upon which he was sitting. The Teacher stood above him and offered his hand to help Yehushafat rise and he took it, and as he did The Teacher struck again with his other hand, trying to put Yehushafat to sleep, but his trick did not work and Yehushafat gripped his thin wrist and pressed until the bones bent.

And The Teacher said – Not a moment ago you dug into your own soul just so that I will not speak, and now you fight for the same words?

Words are things, answered Yehushafat. I have chosen to take yours, as I have chosen to unearth mine. Where is the other? Bring him.

The Teacher looked upon him with a heavy grief in his green eye. Then the pale one opened in its stead and his mouth filled with laughter as he crowed – Here I am.

Yehushafat let go of his teacher’s arms and the Midianite woman looked upon him with neither approval nor reproach, and went to the clearing. The Teacher’s white eye stalked the woman’s movements and his bare feet tracked her like a silent beast of prey. Yehushafat noticed that the Midianite’s feet, too, were bare.

Yehushafat rose, his feet bare also, and found them facing each other in the tall grass in the pale light. He listened. The woman gestured towards his teacher for him to begin, and with no pause the ripping-scroll voice emerged, loud and clear and measured. Yehushafat heard and remembered the first sentence, but after it more and more words came like rain, dropping into their places one after the other, from a source whose name no one knows. The Teacher’s hands gestured and his back bent and straightened and after several moments his palms pressed against one another and the poem was done.

For a long moment all stood like statues.

Joy blossomed on the Medianite’s face, and then The Teacher’s. Laughter swelled in her mouth, and then in his. She shook and hollered with glee, folding herself in two at the waist, and tears of laughter poured from the pale eye too.

Yehushafat stood silently, listening to the cries of exultation he did not comprehend. Little by little their laughter quieted like waves ebbing in a pond until their death, and their expressions flattened. An autumn wind blew as if the world itself prepared to listen.

The woman bowed, and for a moment her eyes met Yehushfat’s. She took a deep breath, her ribs expanding as far as her chest could bear. Then she opened her mouth and her voice claimed dominion over every thing.

It was a different voice from the pleasing one she had sung with before, haunted and seeping through the walls of Yehushafat’s being, and he knew that it might be too true for him to hear without dying. Only then did he understand the poem he had heard from his teacher’s mouth.

Chapter 8

Yehushafat awoke sprawled on the earth, his body aching. Hardly did he raise himself over his shaking legs. The moon that before had shone bright was now covered with clouds. Yehushafat’s vision was still sharp, even in darkness, but something about it was wrong and he did not know what it was. He searched for his teacher, turning his head left and right, and found him.

The Teacher sat with his back to a tree and for the first time Yehushafat saw both his eyes open, and his mouth open too, in laughter. Only when Yehushafat drew nearer did he see the gash in his teacher’s stomach, and the guts bursting forth like snakes in their escape. The woman he did not see.

The poetry was as embers that had not died, and Yehushafat fell to his knees and retched. He brought his gaze up to look again at The Teacher’s eyes and only then did he realise what was wrong with his own sight: he could see only from his right eye, and there was only darkness in his left. He put his hand to his face and touched his closed left eye lid and pressed it with great force and prayed that it would never open and that he would never have to see what that eye had learned to see. Tears fell from his open eye and dropped to the earth.

And Yehushafat was a great judge over Israel with his one open eye and one closed, until he commended his body to the dirt when he was aged seventy-seven years. And the Sons of Israel did the wrong in the eyes of God again and He sent another people to raid and slay them and they cried unto the heavens and so God brought to them a judge to deliver them like all of the judges that had come before.