Immortal (24 page)

“What makes you think he'd be here?”

“He's a climber,” Nicholas said. “He likes to be in high places. My uncle says he's part mountain goat. I think he'd go uphill, that's all.”

Agios thought that the boy should know his own sheep well enough to be right about that. He said, “We'll start here, then, and look a little harder. Are you hungry?”

“No,” the boy said, but his voice was hesitant.

“You can't go hunting on an empty stomach.”

“I have nothing to pay you with.”

Agios shook his head at that and gave him some food anyway, a small bowl full of a cold stew of goat's meat, lentils, and onions, and Nicholas wolfed it down as Brave Dog ate his own meal. When he finished, Agios said, “Let's go. Stay, Brave Dog.”

“Can't he go with us?”

“He's old and tired and it's better for him to guard the cave,” Agios said, not mentioning the fact that the dog had accepted Nicholas without trying to frighten him off.

They looked through three of the small, high meadows and saw only a few wild goats, a hare or two, and the soaring eagles that nested in the mountains. Nicholas clearly felt discouraged, but Agios said, “Oh, don't lose hope, young fellow. The lamb's had a lot of time to climb, and we have to go slower. We'll find him, I think.”

In fact Agios, the old hunter, had spotted some signs of the lamb that the boy missed: a little pile of dark greenish droppings, and then later some strands of white wool caught on a briar. Finally he imitated the bleat of a ewe, and they heard a faint, weak voice replying from some way off. “That will be your lamb,” he told Nicholas.

“Why doesn't he come to us?”

“Maybe he can't. This way.”

They talked as they searched, and Agios learned a little about the boy: He lived in Patara. His father was Epiphanius and his mother Johanna. Nicholas seemed surprised when Agios gave no sign of recognition. “My parents are well known in town.”

“Why aren't you with them, then?” Agios asked. The boy squared his narrow shoulders. “In the spring I live with my uncle. He's my father's older brother. He's training me to be a priest. He taught me how to read and write, and I'm studying the scrolls my family owns. It's really my uncle's lamb I'm looking for, but he said if I'd raise it I could have it.”

That brought Agios back to the task. He pointed uphill. “From the way he bleats and doesn't come, I suspect he's caught in a thicket I know about.”

The ravine would be a torrent in times of flood, but on a dry day it was a crooked gully floored with loose pebbles and tough grass. At the upper end stood a stubborn growth of camelthorn, a snarl more than chest-high to Agios. From inside the thicket came the lamb's weak, hoarse bleats. The animal had tangled its wool in so many briars that it couldn't tear loose.

Agios drew his knife from its scabbard and cut the vines, working them free from the lamb's pelt. “Let him eat and drink and I'll see you back to your people.”

“You've scratched up your hands,” Nicholas said.

The backs of Agios's hands were crisscrossed with bloody streaks, but they didn't hurt. The scars he had earned over the long years had been some protection. “They'll heal,” Agios told Nicholas. “Let's see if this little fellow can walk.”

The lamb seemed exhausted, staggering and falling to its knees, so Agios picked it up and shouldered it, the animal's hind legs on his left side and the forelegs on the right, its belly warm against the back of his neck. They reached a trickling stream of good water, and the lamb drank and seemed a little better. Lower still, it grazed for a while on tender new grass, and then Agios picked him up again.

The sun had slipped halfway down the sky by the time they reached the lower meadows. Nicholas was nimble-footed, and they went far down the slopes until Agios saw the blue drift of smoke from a campfire in a green clearing a mile or so away. He set the lamb down, and after its rest on his shoulders, it began to frisk around.

“Watch him closer in the future,” Agios advised.

“Come into our camp,” Nicholas said. “I'm sure my uncle will want to reward you. He'll feed you, at least.”

The boy's kindness stabbed Agios, hurting him more than the sharp thorns had. “No, I don't have good luck among people,” Agios said with a secretly bitter smile.
Or among priests
, he added mentally.

“Could I come and visit you again?”

“That wouldn't be wise,” Agios said, trying to sound discouraging. “I'm a hermit, you see, living all by myself. I don't like company.” When the boy looked disappointed, he relented a little: “Well, I won't forbid you, but don't come often. Visiting me can be very dangerous—for reasons you can't know. Take your lamb and get back to your flocks and your uncle now.”

He turned and walked away with a quick pace and did not pause or look back for a long way. When he scaled a high ridge and stared back down the mountain, he could barely make out the thin wisp of smoke from the shepherds' campfire, and he saw no sign of Nicholas or his lamb.

A
gios hoped—though he wouldn't have admitted it—that he would see Nicholas again. That night he began carving another gift for this boy who was the closest thing to a friend that he had encountered in too many weary years. Something inside Agios had awakened in the presence of the child. Maybe it was his memory of Philos, or Krampus, or even Jesus. No matter. Agios bitterly reminded himself that those he let himself care for always died.

Still, he set to work carving a trio of camels, one bending to drink at an invisible oasis, a second arching its neck proudly, and the third with legs splayed in a wild, desert run.
Why these?
he wondered, and the answer came from somewhere:
Because Nicholas seems to be a seeker, like Caspar, Balthasar, and Melchior. But like them and all men, he is doomed to disappointment
.

Two months later, near the end of the grazing season, Agios walked by moonlight to the same place where he had left the carved ewe and set down the camels. Let the boy find them and play. Growing up would gradually rob him of the wonder and joy that Agios had heard in his voice. Let him at least have pleasant times to remember.

The shepherds and their flocks returned the following spring, and Agios felt his heart lift at the sight of sheep once again in the valley. It was the third year that they had graced his mountain, and if Agios remembered correctly, Nicholas would be twelve years old— or almost.

Agios didn't approach them, but he couldn't help hoping against his will—and his warning—that maybe his path would cross Nicholas's again.

A morning came when Agios sat outside the cave, in the shade of a dwarfish fig tree, carving a fisherman who would, when finished, hold and cast a small net woven of woolen strands. He was working on the figure's face, which demanded concentration and a steady hand. In the same moment he became aware of someone watching him, he also realized that the boy, standing quiet on the edge of his vision, had probably been there for a long time.

He glanced up, his white beard barely concealing a smile. “Hello, Nicholas.”

“Hello,” the boy said. He stood to one side, silent as a stone, and he carried a bundle tied with crisscrossing twine. He held it out. “This is for you. Because you helped me that time when the lamb ran off.”

“Oh, that was nothing. I didn't want any reward for that,” Agios said, but now he couldn't stop himself from smiling at the boy's earnest face and serious voice.

Nicholas looked a little downcast at Agios's refusal. He held the bundle out farther and said more softly, “Please, take it. I meant it for you.”

“Well, well, let's see what it is.” Agios carefully set aside his knife and the figure he was carving and took the bundle. Someone had done an expert job of binding it with the tied twine, and he quickly undid the knot. He shook it out and found it was a knee-length jacket, woven of wool and dyed red, trimmed with white. Agios smiled and shook his head. “Nicholas, I just took a short walk up the mountain with you. This is too much to repay such a small favor.”

“No,” Nicholas insisted. “It was my grandfather's, but it was too big for my father to wear and it's just been folded in a chest for years. My mother said I could give it away to someone who needed it. I thought you—might get cold in the winter sometimes.”

Agios stood and tried on the garment. It was a perfect fit. He took it off again and held it out, admiring it. “Well. Sometimes the winter winds are sharp here. It's a very good coat. Thank you, and thank your mother for me. I can't go hunting in this, though. The quarry would spot me from miles off, this red color against the brown of the mountains.” When Nicholas looked disappointed, Agios added, “I'll always wear it when I'm not hunting, though, and the north wind is blowing cold. It'll be welcome then. How is your lamb?”

“He's a yearling now,” Nicholas said, looking happier. He sat on a stone near Agios, his face lit up with enthusiasm. Brave Dog, feeling his years, came halting out of the cave—he must have scented or heard Nicholas—and settled at the boy's feet. Nicholas leaned to pat him as he continued: “He's a lot bigger than he was. His horns are coming in nicely and he's already butting heads with other little rams. What are you making now?”

Agios picked up the little figurine he'd been working on. “This will be a fisherman. When I finish, he'll be able to hold on to a fishing net. You can flick a lever in his back and he'll toss the net out. I mean to carve three little fish that he can catch, too.”

“I will make you fishers of men,” Nicholas said absently, studying Agios's fine handiwork.

Agios felt as if he had been struck. Something about those words was a blow to his soul. “What did you say?” he asked, but his breath was gone in his chest and he barely wheezed the words.

Nicholas looked up and wrinkled his nose impishly. “Just something my uncle read to me,” he said. Then, oblivious to Agios's discomfort, he prattled on, “I've seen fishermen. Every day they go out in boats from the port. I've never fished, though. Have you?”

“Not in the ocean,” Agios managed. He forced himself to focus on the carving in his hands. He sighed and added, “I'm pretty good at spearing them in the mountain pools, though.”

“I've never done that, either,” Nicholas told him. “Some of the other shepherds do, but not me.”

“Anyone could teach you.”

The boy thought about this. “I don't think so,” he said at last. “I don't think I'd like killing things, even if they're just fish. I don't help out when the sheep have to be slaughtered because I don't like it. But I eat fish and mutton. Is that wrong?”

“I wouldn't say so,” Agios told him. “Their purpose in life is to be food.”

They were silent for a few moments while Agios picked up his tools again and resumed careful work on the fisherman. He let Nicholas crane his neck and watch, and tilted his hands so that the boy could see the fine detail, the razor-sharp tip of the tiny pick he used to create wrinkles and features in a face as small as his thumb.

“You're really good at that,” Nicholas said after a while.

Agios didn't respond. True, he was very skilled. But he had had a very long time to practice. After a while he asked, carefully, “Do you like learning from your uncle?”

He felt rather than saw Nicholas nod. “He's a good man. I'm named after him, you know.”

Agios didn't know, but he didn't point that out.

“Uncle Nicholas says that God has a plan for me.”

Agios caught Nicholas's eye and smiled. It didn't matter what he personally believed or didn't believe about God. This child was a wonder. “I'm sure he does. A magnificent plan.”
He just doesn't have one for me
. The thought came unbidden and Agios had to fight the wave of sadness that washed over him.