Blessed Child Read Free

we are hurrying. You think I walk with such haste every waking hour?”
    â€œYou knew they’d be coming? That’s not what Daal told me. He said this would be a simple in-and-out trip to collect the orphan and take him to safety. Somehow it isn’t feeling quite so simple.”
    â€œAh, Daal. He was always a bit smooth with the tongue. Rather like a lot of priests I know. It’s a case of humanity, I suspect; insisting on some brand of the truth altogether unclear, but made clearer with insistence.” He shuffled on and held up a finger, half turning. “What you cannot establish with wit you can always further with a little volume, don’t you think?”
    Ordinarily Jason would have chuckled at the old man’s own wit, but the image of those trucks plowing over the hills outside tempered his humor. The priest was muttering now, and his echoes sounded like a chuckle through the tunnel. They hurried deeper into the earth.
    â€œMaybe you could just bring the child out to the Jeep,” Jason said. He was having a hard time communicating his urgency to the old senile goat. “Maybe I should go back and—”
    â€œDo you believe in God?”
    They broke into a torch-lit room furnished with a single wooden table and two chairs. The priest turned to face him. His long eyes sagged in the surreal orange light.
    â€œDo I . . . yes, of course—”
    â€œOr do you just say that you believe in God to appease me? I see doubt in your eyes, young man.”
    Jason blinked, stunned. Father Matthew was clearly out of touch. Outside a war was looming and he wasted time philosophizing about God in the bowels of some lost monastery. The old man spoke hurriedly now.
    â€œDo you believe that Jesus Christ was a madman?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œDo you believe that when he announced that his disciples would do greater things than he had, he was delusional?”
    â€œWhat does this have to do with anything? We have to get out, man!”
    â€œI thought not,” the priest said. “You do not believe. And yes, we are short on time. But our lives are in God’s hands.”
    â€œThat’s fine, but if you wouldn’t mind I would like to get out of here before the bullets start flying. I’m not sure your God is quite so attentive to my interests.”
    â€œYes, I can see that you’re unsure.”
    â€œAnd why did you call me here in the first place, if you’re so confident that God will save you?”
    â€œYou are here, aren’t you? I will assume that he sent you. So then he is saving us. Or at least the child. Unless we are too late, of course.”
    Jason shoved the logic from his mind and tried to control his frustration. “Then please help your God along and get me the kid.”
    The priest studied Jason’s face. “I want your word. You will die before allowing Caleb to come to harm.”
    Jason balked at the man’s audacity.
    â€œSwear it.”
    It was an insane moment and he spoke quickly, to appease the man. “Of course, I promise you. Now get him please.”
    â€œWe found him at the gate when he was a baby, you know. Abandoned here by a retreating Eritrean commander who had just killed his mother during the last war. She was a European nurse. The soldier left a scrawled note with the boy seeking absolution for his sins.”
    Father Matthew stared unblinking, as if the revelation should explain some things. But the tale sounded rather par for the course in this mad place.
    â€œThe boy is no ordinary child. I think you will see that soon enough. Did you know that he has never seen beyond the gate? You will only be the fourth man he has ever laid eyes on in his ten years of life. He has never seen a woman.”
    â€œHe’s been in this monastery his whole life?”
    â€œI raised him as a son. Where I go he goes. Or in this case where I stay, he has stayed. Except now. Now God has sent you to