A Young Friend
As it turned out, the voice belonged to a young boy by the name of Ian Michael the Ten. He was thin, pale-faced, and brunette. On either side of his nose, the boy had freckles. He timidly had removed the locks in the back of the door and opened it after the dog had barked twice. He recognized the dog, threw his arms around his neck and started talking rapidly to David.
“I found this room two days ago and it is one of the Rebel safe-houses for sure on the Underground Trail because besides just food and drinks there are clothes and quilts here but not any guns or anything like that. Over here is a bed and it isn’t really dirty so I bet they’ve been here recently to change the sheets. I am too young to use matches so I didn’t start a fire in the fireplace over there so last night it was kind of cold but not too bad because I had quilts. Do you want some water? This barrel has fresh water in it and come over here and sit down and we can meet. Will you be my dad? Because you are old enough to but are still pretty young. And is this dog yours?”
David just smiled as he was ushered into the small room. It had once been a supply closet of some sort. Against one wall was the bed the boy had slept in. Opposite of it was a pot-belly iron stove, a wooden table, a chair, and an open trunk. In the trunk were the foodstuffs and some dry supplies left by the Rebels (people who David wanted to hear more about).
David sat down in the wooden chair and started to inventory the contents of the trunk as he asked Ian probing questions. This is what he found out:
Ian Michael was given the surname ‘the Ten’ because his father and eight of his older brothers had the same name. He had six older sisters. This Ian was seven years old. There were fifteen years separating him and his next older sibling and for this reason, he had always been left out. Although he had been born into one of the most powerful families in the city, Ian knew that he was not an heir with power. The family neglected him. He had run away from home.
The urban area in which David found himself was called the Gray Zone. It was in the country known as the Jordian Impur. The Gray Zone was run by two major factions, the Purps and the Golds. They were really street gangs, left in charge by the federal government after abandoning the city three generations earlier. Purps, of which Ian’s family belonged, dwelt on family lineage and succession when determining political control, while Golds took a very mercantile approach.
The Jordian Rebellion Army, or Rebels, was a semi-militaristic underground faction which sought justice for the country. It was an irregular army with the purpose of leading the people to eventually overthrow the Impur. It had safe-houses like this room scattered around Jordia. They were part of a network known as the Underground Trail, used for hiding ex-patriots and runaways from the government.
Ian really looked up to the Rebels with a kind of hero worship familiar to David. Only, when he had been young, that kind of idolatry had been reserved for baseball players; men that in the mind of a boy could do no wrong and who were much larger than life. Like David, Ian had never met one of the objects of his idolatry.
“Really, though, David, will you be my dad?” Ian added again, changing the subject yet again while the man asked questions aimed at gleaning more information about the country.
“I’ll be your friend, Ian.” He was crouched beside the cold stove, attempting to breathe life into the tender he’d sparked a match into. “You already have a family, and I’m sure they miss you.”
“Weren’t you listening? There are, like, a bajillion boys in my family and they will never notice me gone because I have so many cousins and nephews to take my place.” Ian shook his head. He had already told David that each of his older brothers was married and had children, as were each of his older sisters. “I see my real dad for dinner mostly and only see my real mom a couple times a day. I don’t even have a regular nanny. I’ve had four nannies this year. I just want you to be my new dad.”
“Have you ever heard the term ‘father figure?’” David deflected the request again while he put a pot on for water to boil on his new fire. Ian seemed like a good kid; he was inquisitive and smart as they come, but David hardly felt that adopting a child with no knowledge of his own identity would be a good idea.
After they breakfasted a little longer on toasted bread, bacon and coffee (dark as mud, but drinkable) David and Ian prepared to leave. David rummaged in the trunk and found a longer black overcoat to trade for the tux jacket and found a pair of boots that fit him fairly well. He made a bedroll from a couple of blankets and tied it with twine from the trunk. Ian packed some food, matches, and utensils in the rucksack he’d found next to the bed.
David took a charred stick out of the fire and wrote “Thanks” on the table in black lettering, and then the little group left the room and went up the stairs. Ian said he’d just been waiting to have someone go with him.
David and Ian talked as they walked. The dichotomy of Ian’s maturity and intelligence and his actual childishness amazed David. At street corners, Ian always held his hand up to David and stopped, “because children always have to hold a grown-up’s hand when crossing the street.” The boy talked incessantly, and not merely repeating sayings he’d heard from his nannies. He talked about books, music, and even politics.
He was definitely wise beyond his years. David marveled at how thoughtful the boy was; he had looked in the family library and copied onto a piece of paper the map that had been drawn by his uncle four years earlier. Unfortunately, there were no street signs on the corners indicating the street’s names that had been on the map, so they were as confused as if they didn’t have a map to follow at all.
David tried to figure out some of the landmarks that were mentioned. After about three hours and half a dozen turns up nearly identical cobblestone streets, David figured they were almost to the edge of the huge urban area.
When Timber suddenly stopped abruptly at David’s side and started growling, both the boy and the man knew something was wrong. Timber faced an open door-frame. It looked empty and the room inside was dark.
David stepped slowly into the doorway. He stood for a minute to let his eyes adjust.
Outside, Ian asked "What is it, David?"
There was a chair propped next to the boarded window. There was a three-inch hole in one of the boards. There were foot trails in the dust. Someone had been watching them. David peered deeper into the building. It was too dark to see into the next room.
Outside, Ian repeated "What is it, David?"
"Just an empty room, Ian," he responded over his shoulder.
When he got outside, he roughly scratched Timber's head. David smiled at Ian.
"We've got a couple hours 'til sunset. Let's go."
The rest of the day, David felt that they were being watched.
Near sun-down, they came to the edge of the city. The road ended abruptly at the edge of a rocky fall. There had apparently once been a bridge over this wide cement-lined river. David looked right and he looked left. The deep riverbed with its broken cement sides ran as far as the eye could see in either direction. There wasn’t much water at the bottom. It must have been a dry season.
“You didn’t tell me that the Gray Zone was an island,” David said to Ian. There were concrete pilings in front of them where a bridge had once been.
“I didn’t know it was. I just saw this word on the map—does ‘island’ have an ‘I’ in it?”
David chuckled. “I knew by lunchtime that you weren’t leading me to your home, so you didn’t need to lie.”
“I am running away from home you know. So, well, would you have brought me if you knew at first?”
“Yes, I’d still have stayed with you, Ian.” David tossed his bedroll on the ground. “This is as good a place as any to campout tonight. The sun is getting too low. It’ll be dark and we shouldn’t climb down those rocks at night. Tomorrow morning we can find a way across the little river at the bottom.”
“Can we make a campfire?”
After they had supped on a few items warmed over the little fire David had made, Ian cuddled up against the man on the bedroll and begged for a bedtime story. David searched his sparse memory and pulled out a story he could remember.
“A long time ago-- over two thousand years—there was a young girl,” David started.
“Was she my age?” Ian interjected.
“Older than you. So maybe I should start that she was a young woman, not a ‘girl.’” David paused to rethink the story again in his head. “She was older than a child, but not quite an adult. She lived with her parents still. Her name was Mary. She was going about her chores one day--”
“What is a ‘chore’?” Ian asked.
“A job around the house she had to do, like keep things picked up.”
“So they didn’t have a maid?”
“No, Ian, they did not. Cleaning house was one of her jobs, and one day an angel of the Lord came to her and said,” David felt Ian shift and said quickly before Ian could interrupt, “An ‘angel’ is a special messenger from God, who is also called ‘the Lord.’ Angels are larger than people and bright and shiney, like they glow usually.
“Anyway, this angel just appeared while Mary was sweeping the floor at home and said: ‘Greetings, precious woman, the Lord is with you!’ Mary fell to her knees because the angel was so special.
“’Don’t be afraid, Mary,’ the angel told her, “because you -- even you -- have found favor with God! You will conceive and give birth to a son, and he will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. And he will reign over Israel forever; his Kingdom will never end!’
“Mary asked the angel, “But how can this happen? I don’t know man.” Again, David sought to explain quickly what that meant. “That means that she did not have a husband yet.”
“My sister didn’t have a husband when she had a baby. Does this just mean that Mary had not done it and gotten pregnant?”
“Exactly, Ian, so she was confused about how she could have a baby.”
“And there is one God, right?”
“Right.”
“And he is called ‘Lord,’ too?”
“Yup,” David replied. He hoped Ian would fall asleep sooner than later and stop interrupting the story so frequently.
“The angel replied, ‘The Holy Spirit of God will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby to be born will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God. For nothing is impossible with God.’
“Mary responded, ‘I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.’ And then the angel left her.”
“Is this a real story, David?”
“It is.”
“Really real?”
“Yes.”
“Then how come the baby is your ancestor and this was a long time ago?”
“Different ‘David.’ This one was a king.”
“Oh.” Ian snuggled closer and yawned.
David fast-forwarded his story a little.
“Right before the baby was to be born, Mary got engaged to a man named Joseph and the ruler of the country said everyone had to go to their family’s hometown to be counted. Mary had to go with Joseph because she was going to be his wife soon. They couldn’t get a room in an inn in Bethlehem, David’s city–”
“That was Joseph’s hometown?”
“Yes, Ian, it was.”
“King David?”
“Yes.”
“Mmmm.” Ian snuggled closer and yawned again.
“They couldn’t get a room in an inn in Bethlehem and had to have a little campout in a stable that night. And Mary actually had her baby there. Mary swaddled him up in clean cloths and laid him in a manger for cows’ food.
“It just so happened that the same night there were men taking care of sheep nearby. All of a sudden, the same angel that appeared to Mary appeared to them. They were terrified, but like with Mary, the angel reassured them. ‘Don’t be afraid!’ he said. ‘I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. The Savior—yes, one who will save the people—has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David! And you will recognize him by this sign: You will find a baby swaddled snugly in strips of cloth, lying in a manger.’”
“That’s like us, David.”
“What do you mean, Ian?”
“We need a Savior in Jordia. We have the Rebels, though.” Ian snuggled closer and yawned yet again.
David continued: “Suddenly, the angel was joined by a vast host of other angels—the armies of heaven—praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in highest heaven, and peace on earth good will towards men.’ When the angels had returned to heaven, the shepherds said to each other, ‘Let’s go to Bethlehem! Let’s see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.’ They hurried to the village and found Mary and Joseph. And there was the baby, lying in the manger. After seeing him, the shepherds told everyone what had happened and what the angel had said to them about this child. All who heard the shepherds’ story were astonished, but Mary kept all these things in her heart and thought about them often."
David heard a small snore. Ian was asleep. He smiled, scratched Timber’s head, and fell asleep himself.
In the morning, after a breakfast of heated bacon strips and coffee, they started down the side of the stoney riverbank.
“Did the baby grow up?” Ian asked.
“He did, of course,” David started. “There aren’t a lot of stories about when he was young, though. The gospels – those are the holy books that are like biographies for him – only tell one major story from the time he is born until when he is thirty years old.”
“And now he is dead,” Ian said, matter-of-factly.
“Wrong, Ian,” David smiled. “It’s been a couple thousand years, so it seems odd, but he is still alive. I see the confusion on your face, but that is a totally different story.
“You asked about when he was growing up, so I’ll tell the story about when he was twelve in this story.” David was glad that Ian didn’t interrupt his story. He just talked as the climbed down the rocks leading to the narrow flow of water below. “Mary, Joseph and Jesus went to the big celebration in Jerusalem as they did every year. After the celebration was over, they started walking home to Nazareth, but Jesus stayed behind. His parents didn’t miss him at first, because they thought he was with his cousin. But when he didn’t show up that evening, they started looking for him. When they couldn’t find him, they went back to Jerusalem to search for him there. Three days later they finally discovered him in the Temple – God’s special building. He was sitting with the religious teachers, listening to them and asking questions. They were surprised that such a young person was so smart and gave such good answers. His parents didn’t know what to think. ‘Son,’ Mary said to him, ‘why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been frantic, searching for you everywhere.’ ‘But why did you need to search?’ he asked. ‘Didn’t you know that I must be in my Father’s house?’ But they didn’t understand what he meant. Then he returned to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. Still, Mary remembered all these things in her heart."
Ian stopped climbing and just stared at David.
“I have a question.”
”What is it, Ian?”
“Jesus he was the son of a god?” Ian asked.
“Not a god, Ian, the God.”
“I have heard of the Goddess but not the God,” Ian says. “He must be the Goddess’s husband.”
“Where I come from, there are different names for the one God. I don’t know much about this world’s spirituality, but I think the God and the Goddess are the same person.”
“How?”
“It’s a mystery, Ian, but remember how you are a brother, a son, and a nephew all at the same time? Well, God is like that. Different people to different people and still the same One Person. One Highest Being. One Deity.”
“I want you to be my father like Joseph was Jesus’ father. God was really really his Father, and Joseph was his father too.”
Before David had a chance to reply to this, a shout from their right cut him off.
“I know who you are!” a rough man’s voice shouted.
David and Ian turned to see a man dressed in a yellow suit lined with fur standing about thirty feet away. He looked out of place standing on the rocks. His hair was trimmed and combed. His shoes were not scuffed by the road at all. The smile on his face did not reach his eyes, though.
“I had a man watching you the last day. He told me about you. You are a son of Ian Michael. There is a reward for your return among the Purps. I could hold you for ransom.” The man casually walked towards them. David stepped in front of Ian and Timber growled slightly. The man looked at David, seemingly noticing him for the first time. “And who are you?”
“Just a man, travelling with this boy. He’s my charge and you can’t take him away.” David realized that this man must be a Gold leader, one from the faction opposed to the Purps.
“I have seen Purps go to the dedication to their colors as to dye their eyes, but never to this extent,” he said, matching David’s stare. The Gold had bluish-gray eyes and David’s were deep violet. “Yours look natural.”
David saw men coming towards them in his periphery. They were both carrying weapons. Over his shoulder he whispered to Ian, “Run. Hide.”
The next second seemed in fast-forward. Ian started to run towards a bush thirty yards away, the two rough Golds began running also, David tackled the closest, Timber jumped at the second, and the Gold leader shouted again: “Bounty for that man’s eyes! Twenty silvers! I want them in a jar!”
David knocked the club from the arms of the Gold as he brought the man to the ground. He was younger than David, taller and with powerful lean muscle. The Gold dug his knee upward and into David’s chest. David threw a punch into the younger man’s jaw, sending him falling to one side.
The call from the leader brought a half a dozen Golds from out of nowhere to attack David, and he was quickly overcome. He had been kicked twice in the legs and side and elbowed once in the face.
He was pinned to the ground by two men while a woman straddled his chest. Dirty bleached hair hung down around her face. She flashed a toothy grin and a thin fishing knife. “Your eyes are pretty, Purp. Worth twenty silvers to me mates and me.”
Before losing consciousness totally, David heard a shout of “Reds in!”
