18 Chalakim of Life
Oct. 7th, 2009 10:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretTitle: 18 Chalakim of Life
Rating: PG
Book/character: Kings: Elisha/the Shunamite Woman/Elijah
Warnings: The sort of subtle heresy I prefer to the obvious ones; A violent death which is not in the original story
Crossover: Pushing Daisies
Summary/notes: Tells the story of Elisha and the Shunamite Woman, if Elisha had the power of Ned from Pushing Daisies. Mostly derived from 2 Kings 4, but some sections based on 1 Kings 19. I don't believe it requires any foreknowledge of Pushing Daisies to make sense.
Wordcount~5000
Acknowledgments: Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sanguinity, thefieldsbeyond, best_ken_ever for their help with revision, and to roga for help with brainstorming.
18 Chalakim of Life
This is Elisha. One year, 36 days, 7 hours, and 43 chalakim ago, he was standing with his mentor Elijah when Elijah was taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire. Elisha was taken aback.
Elisha stands in a desert oasis near Shunem, tired and thirsty. He is tall, with the powerful, broad muscles of a farmer rather than a warrior. His beard has fourteen different shades of brown, from a straw color that recalls his days in the field to an iridescent golden brown that sparkles in the sunlight. His skin is dark. He is bald.
Next to him, beside the wiry palm trees, stand his ox and cart. His ox is also tired and thirsty. His cart is not.
Elisha stares off into the distance. If he squints, he thinks he can see some buildings off to the north. His ox pants loudly. Yes, northward will lead him to civilization. He nudges his ox and the beast lumbers forward. The worn desert path kicks up dust in their wake. The cartwheels creak noisily in the silence.
Two hours later, they are at the limits of the village of Shunem, accompanied by a couple of farmers who had come out to greet the great prophet. Rowdy conversation surrounds Elisha.
"Mooo."
"Baaaah."
"Mooooooo."
Humans were talking, also. Elisha greets village elders, blesses babies, and offers quick snippets of hope for the future as he tries to keep his face solemn and prophetic.
And then she is there. Her aura cuts through the crowd as sharply as his did, and suddenly he can't look away. Her piercing hazel eyes... the color of young cedarwood, she had imperiously informed him one evening nineteen years ago as they had stared at each other from across the bonfire. Her gently curved hips. She was 5'3" and wide for her height, but she moved with power. She was beautiful, still.
"Batya!" he calls out, trying for cheerful and overshooting his mark. "It's been years."
"16 years, 245 days, and 15 hours," she snips curtly. "My husband and I would be honored if you would accept the hospitality of our home." She turned and strode away, each step longer than the last, her pace quickening with each stride.
The boy he had been, 16 years ago, squirms inside him, eager to let her jump back into his life. But that was 16 years ago, and everything was different now. Now he had an ox.
It sniffs cautiously at a child that had crept up to it, then turns its head to focus on more important matters. The girl pinches his foreleg and he whines in complaint. Her mother quickly pulls her away from the large beast. Elisha puts his hand on the animal's back to steady him.
He bends over a bit and whispers into the ox's ear. "You heard her. Let's take the cart to Batya's house." Then he unbends and begins to steer the animal through the parting crowd.
Husband?
---
Elisha stands in the well-decorated room that Baruch and Batya have set aside for his stay. There is a bowl of water on a table for him to wash with, so he grabs the cloth from beside the bowl and starts to towel off the dust that encrusts his body.
He is shirtless, alone in his room, the top of his head glistening with sweat and water, slowly drying in the heat. He is alone with his thoughts and the voices in his head. Elisha knows his baldness is a sin, that he is commanded not to mourn for Elijah in this way. He doesn't care. He recites a quick prayer to his Creator, then towels himself off, puts his shirt back on, and goes out to talk to his hosts.
She sits on a low cushion, waiting for him, watching him carefully, gauging him. Does she have a little of the prophetic gift herself? He cannot tell. He doesn't know what she is thinking. He could know, Elisha reminds himself, but he is choosing not to. She is still lovely, even unsmiling. Once, he wanted her more than anything in the world. Now, there are demands on him more powerful than that. And demands on her, too, it seems.
He examines her husband now. He is black-haired, tall, handsome. Perhaps as powerfully muscled as Elisha, probably bulkier. A wrestling match between the two would be a fair fight in terms of body-type. Elisha hasn't wrestled since he was a teenager, though, and he never was an expert at the techniques involved.
"Thank you for welcoming me into your house..." he fumbles for a moment, remembering Batya's invitation. "Actually, I'm sorry. Your wife never told me your name."
The man's smile is genuine, easy. His eyes are more wary. "It's my pleasure, my Lord. I am Baruch ben Boaz, the Issacharite. This is my wife, Batya. You can thank her for the invitation. It was her suggestion, though of course I approved. But I have become aware that when I am in the fields, I am in charge. This house is my wife's." What game are you playing, Batya?
"Either way, I appreciate it, Baruch. Whatever blessings I can offer you, they are yours. May your house prosper." He reaches into his pouch and pulls out a carving, a cedarwood mezuzah with the star of the House of David on it. "I picked this up in Bethlehem. I'd like you to have it."
Baruch accepts the offered box, examining it with a careful eye. "This is fine work. Thank you, my Lord. I will go hang it up." He leaves the room purposefully, hunting for his toolbox.
And they are alone together, for the first time in sixteen years. Batya returns Elisha's expectant smile with a cold, curious stare. Finally, she breaks the silence.
"Where have you been?"
"All over the country. I warned you back then that I would follow Elijah wherever he took me. I've been a wandering man of God for sixteen years now, with no home but the Lord God."
She considered this. "And I have built my home here with Baruch, and haven't strayed farther than six thousand amot from here except for the Festivals. And I spend my days in one room, cooking and cleaning and sewing and making my one place in the world. Where did we separate?"
"The thing that brought us together was our modesty. Neither of us needs much out of the world, just one thing we can hold on to. We picked different things to hold onto."
And then Baruch is back in the room, hammer in hand, ready to mount the mezuzah. And Batya excuses herself to start the soup. And Elisha decides it's time to speak his message of repentance to the community. And once more, they are flung apart.
---
The next year, when Elisha shows up again in Shunem with ox and cart and a lad named Gehazi, he doesn't need an invitation. He heads straight for Batya's home and is pleased but not surprised to find a room already set aside for him. He sets Gehazi to tend to the ox's water and feed, then enters his room to wash up.
He is soon lost in the reverie of memory. Elisha is remembering what happened 18 years, 135 days, 21 hours and 11 chalakim ago a few towns away from Shunem. The boys had been fooling around in the hills on the edge of town, throwing a sheep's skull back and forth. Elisha, a year older than the rest, had thrown the skull a bit too high and far for Gadi to catch it, and he had tripped over a rock trying and fallen into a crack in the rocks. With the sound of that unexpected crack, all laughter ceased. Elisha had raced over to Gadi, lying some ten feet down in the crack, his body still as the brush in the becalmed wind.
Finding an inexplicable strength, Elisha climbed down into the ruddy gorge and examined Gadiel's bloodied body. "He's dead," he called up to his friends. "There's no way he's still alive." He'd bent down to lift up his friend's corpse when it happened. Gadi had sprung back to life, as lively as he'd been when he was last chasing that skull. In fact, he was still chasing the sheep's dried out skull bone. "What's going on? Where'd the skull go?" he asked jumpily, as Elisha stood agog.
"Gadi, you were dead."
Now Gadi looked incredulous.
"Are you joking with me, Elisha? I must have fallen, but I'm completely fine. Look at me." He turned a cartwheel.
Relieved, Elisha shrugged. "Well, I'm glad you're all right, Gadi. Let's get out of this crag." He extended a hand to help his friend up.
Their hands met.
Gadi collapsed to the ground again.
Stunned, Elisha fainted to the ground, right beside him.
There is a knock on the door of Elisha's room, and he stirs from his reverie.
"Master! Are you ready? The mistress of the house is ready to serve your dinner."
With the towel, Elisha wipes the tears from his eyes. "I'll be there in a moment, lad. Let Batya know I will be there."
"Yes, Master." The footsteps quickly fade into the distance.
---
The meal is delicious. People surround the table eating the hearty barley soup and then move on to a perfectly roasted mutton. There is Elisha seated between the town's chief, Yoel, and Paltiel the blacksmith, listening quietly to their conversation about trade and the harvest. There is Gehazi, at a less prestigious seat, telling extravagant travellers' stories to Yoel's young sons between bites. There is Baruch, watching the whole table carefully to make sure everyone is happy, quick to refill empty goblets with wine, ready to insert himself in the unlikely event that an argument breaks out.
And there is Batya, watching over the meal with the proprietary eye of a true mistress of the house, serving course after course to her celebrated guest. Elisha, even as he listens and participates in the chief's conversation, never takes his eye off of her for more than a few moments. Even now, he thinks, as she serves this amazing meal to me, she has not forgiven me. I don't think I will ever earn her forgiveness. The voices in his head do not argue.
It was the day after the incident with Gadi that he first heard the voices, the Call of God. The rules had been carefully explained to him. Touch once, and the dead are restored to life. Touch twice, dead forever. And if the body is restored for more than 18 chalakim, somebody else must die. And in time, with Elijah's mentorship, he would find other abilities that come from the service of the Lord. In the 18 years, 134 days, 18 hours and 42 chalakim since that conversation, Elisha had never used that particular ability again. With the Lord's help, he prayed, he never would.
But it was not the only gift Elisha had been given by the Lord God. After dinner, as the group gathers around the prophet to hear the word of God, he begins by thanking his gracious hosts. "This is not the first time you have overwhelmed me with your generosity. And if there is anything in my power that I may do for you in thanks, you have only but to ask. I have influence with the King, with figures of importance across the land."
Paltiel murmurs quietly to the chief. A prophet's blessing is not offered lightly.
Batya replies, "I have a home among my own people." And I too, once had a home, Elisha thinks. But I am still not forgiven.
"There must be something that I can do for you."
Gehazi interrupts. He has been told not to do this, but he hasn't learned yet. Elisha can see the future. He will not learn.
"Master, she has no son and her husband is old."
Baruch is but two years older than Elisha, but that makes no difference when you're seventeen years old and your whole life is ahead of you. Elisha wishes she had asked for anything but that, but Gehazi's words have set something powerful in motion.
"About this time next year," Elisha says, the words out of his mouth before he can think about them, before he can reject them, "you will hold a son in your arms."
"No, my lord," Batya objected. "Don't mislead your servant, O man of God!"
Once, they were as close as anyone in the world, Eli and Bati to each other. Now, he is the distant Man of God to her, the Prophet in Israel who has forfeited all claim to his own name. Who has forfeited all claim to his own life. But he cannot take back a prophecy. In a year, he can see with the clarity that he could never read her, she will cradle a son. She will name him Binyamin, as close as she can get to a sardonic joke. He will cry like a lion at night-time, and she will love him.
And I cannot be the father. Nay, I cannot even touch her.
---
Years pass. Years of miracles and wonders, sustained only by the Lord God. Years of despair and doubt, sustained only by the Lord God. Elisha sees Batya, Baruch, and Binyamin three or four times, stays at her house for a few days each time, then passes on in his journeys. Each time, the meals are exquisite, the room remarkably comfortable. She still hasn't forgiven him, not for abandoning her and not for the gift of a son. But she hasn't forgotten him, either, and he is not one to pass on small comforts.
Elisha brings gifts for Binyamin each time, first a little wooden toy to distract him in his crib, then a sheep's skull he can kick around in the fields. The changing gifts are one of the ways Elisha marks time.
There are other women, and other miracles. A destitute widow appeals for his help, and he conjures fragrant oils for her to sell. Gehazi asks him, if he can perform such things, why he lives such a modest life. Gehazi will never be a Man of God. It is more than the Call that does it. It's the calling one must have.
He never gets married. A prophetic comrade teases him that if he were to have gotten married, it would have been to Elijah. Elisha smiles sadly and doesn't dispute it. His love and devotion to Elijah never wavered. But then, neither did his devotion to Batya. There are choices in life, the voices tell him through complicated revelations he's never been able to share with the Children of Israel, that have no right answer. When that happens, all answers are right, if one walks with God. His prophetic duty isn't to teach the right answers. Merely to teach how to walk with God.
Elisha walks on. On the roads, he walks proudly. In the fields, he is comfortable with himself. In the cities, he is confronted with people. He is confronted with their shortcomings, and with his. The walls close in on him and there is no escape.
---
Elisha is prophesying in Har Carmel the next time he sees Batya. There is a small group of ascetics that have established a camp in the mountains, and every few years he comes to bring the word of the Lord to them. They are not particularly receptive of his message. They do not understand how to find joy in the Lord. They do not trust his bald head. But he does it anyway. He thinks it pleases the Lord that he keeps trying. If he has a purpose, it is trying to please the Lord.
The camp can be a bit claustrophobic, so when he's not speaking to the Nazirim, he likes to prowl the mountaintops. And in the distance, he sees her running toward the mountains. He wonders if it's a vision, but he knows the difference. After all the years of him coming to her home, she has sought him out. Somehow, she has found him.
"Gehazi!" Elisha calls out. "The Woman from Shunem is coming to see us. Go down the mountain and bring her to me. Make sure she's doing well, and ask after her husband and son."
"Master, how do you know she's coming?"
"I can see her, you fool. Run and get her, and give her any help she needs."
Two hours later, Gehazi has brought Batya up the mountain. He reports that she is fine, but as soon as she is in sight of him she starts screaming incoherently at him. Startled, Gehazi starts to lead her away.
"I'm sorry, Master. I'll bring her back when she's feeling better."
"Leave her alone, foolish boy! Can't you see that she is in distress, and needs to speak to me?"
Finally, she finds the words she's been searching for. "I told you not to get my hopes up. I did not ask for a son, Man of God." She is frighteningly female when she is enraged.
The vision that the Lord God has concealed from Elisha begins to appear. He drops his staff to the ground as the scene unfolds in his mind. Binyamin, out in the fields playing with Elisha's sheep skull. The heat, overwhelming his head. Binyamin, collapsing in pain.
Elisha grabs his staff from the place it has fallen. He hands it to Gehazi.
"Run, young fool, and bring this staff to Shunem. Place it on the face of the boy. I will follow, with the woman along with me. She is not capable of moving as quickly as you." Gehazi's face turns steely, determined. He seizes the staff from Elisha and takes off, sprinting.
If only I could hold her and tell her it will be okay. If only I could wipe the tears off her face.
---
After Elisha had gotten comfortable following Elijah around the land, he had asked him about the ability that had first introduced Elisha to his Call. They were camped out in the southern desert, the sun slowly fading beneath the sky. There wasn't a single soul around for thousands of amot. But it wasn't the privacy that drew Elisha out. It was the openness of the space. He had room to stretch out, and so he stretched.
"Master, may I ask you a question?"
"Of course, Eli."
Elijah's beard was prematurely white, but he wasn't an old man. He had the look of a man of about 40, but he'd looked that way since Elisha had met him. Elijah basked in a glow of secrecy, the possessor of secrets too deep to share even with his student. His mouth was thin, barely curved. It was the most prominent feature on an unremarkable face. Elijah's approaches were always stealthy, quiet. And then when he was there, he overwhelmed you.
"Before I met you, I spoke with the Lord God only once. He came to me to explain something that I had done the day before, but I still don't understand what happened."
"The boy you brought back to life... Gadiel, was his name?"
"Yes, Master. The Lord God shared the vision with you?"
"It's not a gift that should be handled lightly. When time is reversed, anyone who can see with the true vision sees it."
"Why did the Lord give me the warning only after I had wielded such power?"
Elijah shrugged, a small, expressive gesture etched into the dusky shadows. "I've told you before, Eli. All we can do is walk with God."
"Have you ever... is the tale of the Widow of Tzarefat true?"
Elijah kicked the sand in front of him, pushing it around like a child avoiding a hated vegetable. Elisha tried to make eye contact, but his master looked away, staring off into the setting sun until he must surely need to look away... and then continuing to stare.
"That was a mistake, Elisha. I hope you always remember that. I made a mistake. The Lord's punishment is just."
"What punishment?"
"I will never die, Elisha." His bitter laughter echoes through the emptiness.
They are silent as the sun fades beyond the horizon. They don't speak again, actually, until two days later, they finally encounter another Israelite near Beersheva.
---
The staff has no effect on the dead boy, who should have been buried by now. He didn't really expect it would. And now, as he stands over the body of the son he promised to the woman he loves, he is faced with one of those choices he has always feared. It's a choice with no right answer, a choice God has put squarely into his own hands.
"I can bring back your son," he tells Baruch and Batya, his solemn voice offering no uncertainty. "But I can only bring him back for a few chalakim. You will get a chance to say goodbye, but that is all I can offer you. Do you want it?"
The silence is pregnant with moment. It's like all of existence has narrowed to a bottleneck. Until they make a decision, they won't be able to squeeze through to the rest of their life. There is nothing Elisha can say to push them on. He doesn't know what to say. He has a bottleneck of his own.
"Don't mislead your servant," she had told him, those years ago when Gehazi had urged him on to the most disastrous prophecy of his life. It's in his power to do more than give her a farewell, but that decision is not one he can share with Batya. It's the moment he's prayed to avoid for years, and for his sins God has brought him to it. Is Binyamin's life and Batya's happiness more important than the life of another Shunamite? Of course it isn't. Of course he must send Binyamin's soul back to Shamayim before those 18 chalakim end. But she cannot know the truth. It is his burden, not hers. It's the reason they had to separate all those years ago, when Elijah came to him. He loved her too much to share this pain with her.
"Don't mislead your servant," she had said. But did she really mean it? Elisha thought she did, but if she knew what he did, he didn't know if she still would.
Baruch and Batya look at each other, exchange a silent conversation. 20 years of marriage give you that. Then he spoke for both of them. "If you can give it to us, we would like to be able to say goodbye."
Elisha waits until they are ready, then bends in and takes the boy's hand in his. He springs to life.
"Abba, Ima, what's going on? Where am I?"
Batya bursts into tears again. Baruch wraps his left arm tightly around his wife, willing himself to be strong enough for both of them. 2. "I have to tell you this, and I want you to be a good boy. You died, Binyamin. The prophet has brought you back so we could say goodbye." 4. 5.
Batya breaks free of her husband's arms and envelopes her son with a hug. Elisha, standing back and watching, resists the surprising urge to ask the boy if he has any last words. Time is short, and it would be inappropriate. 8. 9.
"I love you, Bibi," she wails.
"I love you, too, Ima." The boy looks overwhelmed, confused.
"And I will always be proud of you, son."
"I love you, Abba."
There is nothing more that can be said. How do you say goodbye to a son who is already dead? 13. 14. If only I could bring him back, Elisha thinks. But who knows who would die in his place? It could be Gehazi, or even Baruch or Batya, who take the place of Binyamin. Nobody should have that kind of choice in their hands. Elisha pushes it aside and walks, instead, with God.
The three have settled into a prolonged group hug. Batya's tears never cease to flow. Baruch, arms wrapped around his family, stares intently into his son's eyes. 15. 16. Elisha stops counting softly to himself and starts to move toward them. Once more, he takes Binyamin's hand in his. The boy's eyes close as all life drains out of him. In shock, Batya collapses to the floor beside him.
Baruch sets his son down on the bed and goes to examine his wife. "She is breathing," he says, "but she should relax." He lifts her up and carries her to their bedroom. Then he returns alone, to stand by his son's body.
"Thank you, my lord, for everything you've given us."
"Everything I do is the will of God." They shake hands, solemnly.
---
The day Elisha met Elijah was the third day of the week, a cool day in early Spring. Elisha was overseeing the plowing of his father's fields. With luck, in a couple seasons he would have earned enough to buy his own fields. For now, all he owned in the world were these dozen oxen, and his claim on Batya's heart.
It was cool, and a pleasant wind blew through the hills, but Elisha was hot, sweating with exhaustion from wrestling his stubborn beasts into submission. The noontime sun bore down on him with the timid passion of early spring. He paused for a moment, wiped the sweat from his brow, and then Elijah was upon him. No introduction was needed. Though the descriptions of Elijah that had passed through the land were vague enough to have described any Israelite, there was no mistaking the great Prophet, the Tishbi. Elijah's beard was prematurely white, but he wasn't an old man. Elisha guessed he wasn't more than 40 years old.
And Elijah went up to to the young man and placed his mantle over him. No words were exchanged, but the voices who spoke to Elisha told him what this meant. He was to be the next Elijah, the next Prophet in Israel. His life was to be dedicated to God's service.
"May I say goodbye to my mother and my father?" he asked. And Batya, of course. His heart sank as he considered saying goodbye to Batya to follow this peculiar and startling man around the Land.
Elijah snorted, and the first word Elisha heard out of the great man's mouth was virtually indistinguishable from a cough. Lech shuv. "Turn back," before it's too late. It is not too late to change your mind. You still have your oxen, after all. You can be a farmer, grow fat on your own lands, marry Batya, and bring offerings on the Three Festivals to thank God for the wonderful life he has given you. Lech shuv. "Turn back," if you can't offer enough commitment to follow me immediately, it's not worth my time to teach you. I came expecting great things, and you have already failed me.
And then Elisha realized that he'd misunderstood the prophet. Lech. Shuv. "Go and return," the man had said. Starting this new life can wait until you're ready, but it will start. This call is not something you can walk away from, but it is something you can approach on your own terms.
And Elisha had scrambled to make his hasty farewells, because as soon as he'd started to walk away from Elijah, it was clear to him that he was ready to start. His heart knew with aching certainty that everything he had known, from his parents' farm and his childhood friends to his beautiful, commanding, impossibly wonderful Batya, were all in his past.
Before he left, he had slaughtered his oxen and held a great feast. It was the only way he could think of to tell Batya that this was permanent, that there would be no farm.
---
Eli and Bati walk together down a scenic path on the outskirts of Shunem. Years have passed, and Elisha has taken his mentor's place in challenging the perversions of kings and queens. Other prophets walk his well-worn paths across the Land, spreading the word of the Lord God. Elisha is a less athletic defender of the Lord these days. The years of unspoken, unpayable debts have come to an end, without either of them knowing what changed.
He wishes he could hold her hand, but that boat had sailed long ago. His friend is happy in her marriage, and he is happy for her. Batya giggles softly at Elisha's stories from his journeys, knowing that unlike Gehazi's, his stories carry in them the powerful tonic of truth.
They had shared something, and now they could talk again like they were teenagers. Batya doesn't know what exactly it was they had shared. Was it the confrontation with the next world that they had so narrowly skirted? Was it the mutual grief of losing someone so central to their lives?
As if reading her mind, Elisha corrects her gently. "No, my dear. The difference now is just time. Time has finally healed us."
She looks him sharply for a moment, then smiles. "You knew that would happen, didn't you?"
"Sometimes the future is a burden God has placed on my shoulders," he tells her, "but not always." Elisha's ox moos softly in the distance.
He grabs his right hand with his left, behind his back, as she does the same. Without saying a word, Elisha and Batya imagine they are holding hands.
Rating: PG
Book/character: Kings: Elisha/the Shunamite Woman/Elijah
Warnings: The sort of subtle heresy I prefer to the obvious ones; A violent death which is not in the original story
Crossover: Pushing Daisies
Summary/notes: Tells the story of Elisha and the Shunamite Woman, if Elisha had the power of Ned from Pushing Daisies. Mostly derived from 2 Kings 4, but some sections based on 1 Kings 19. I don't believe it requires any foreknowledge of Pushing Daisies to make sense.
Wordcount~5000
Acknowledgments: Thanks to
sanguinity, thefieldsbeyond, best_ken_ever for their help with revision, and to roga for help with brainstorming.18 Chalakim of Life
This is Elisha. One year, 36 days, 7 hours, and 43 chalakim ago, he was standing with his mentor Elijah when Elijah was taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire. Elisha was taken aback.
Elisha stands in a desert oasis near Shunem, tired and thirsty. He is tall, with the powerful, broad muscles of a farmer rather than a warrior. His beard has fourteen different shades of brown, from a straw color that recalls his days in the field to an iridescent golden brown that sparkles in the sunlight. His skin is dark. He is bald.
Next to him, beside the wiry palm trees, stand his ox and cart. His ox is also tired and thirsty. His cart is not.
Elisha stares off into the distance. If he squints, he thinks he can see some buildings off to the north. His ox pants loudly. Yes, northward will lead him to civilization. He nudges his ox and the beast lumbers forward. The worn desert path kicks up dust in their wake. The cartwheels creak noisily in the silence.
Two hours later, they are at the limits of the village of Shunem, accompanied by a couple of farmers who had come out to greet the great prophet. Rowdy conversation surrounds Elisha.
"Mooo."
"Baaaah."
"Mooooooo."
Humans were talking, also. Elisha greets village elders, blesses babies, and offers quick snippets of hope for the future as he tries to keep his face solemn and prophetic.
And then she is there. Her aura cuts through the crowd as sharply as his did, and suddenly he can't look away. Her piercing hazel eyes... the color of young cedarwood, she had imperiously informed him one evening nineteen years ago as they had stared at each other from across the bonfire. Her gently curved hips. She was 5'3" and wide for her height, but she moved with power. She was beautiful, still.
"Batya!" he calls out, trying for cheerful and overshooting his mark. "It's been years."
"16 years, 245 days, and 15 hours," she snips curtly. "My husband and I would be honored if you would accept the hospitality of our home." She turned and strode away, each step longer than the last, her pace quickening with each stride.
The boy he had been, 16 years ago, squirms inside him, eager to let her jump back into his life. But that was 16 years ago, and everything was different now. Now he had an ox.
It sniffs cautiously at a child that had crept up to it, then turns its head to focus on more important matters. The girl pinches his foreleg and he whines in complaint. Her mother quickly pulls her away from the large beast. Elisha puts his hand on the animal's back to steady him.
He bends over a bit and whispers into the ox's ear. "You heard her. Let's take the cart to Batya's house." Then he unbends and begins to steer the animal through the parting crowd.
Husband?
---
Elisha stands in the well-decorated room that Baruch and Batya have set aside for his stay. There is a bowl of water on a table for him to wash with, so he grabs the cloth from beside the bowl and starts to towel off the dust that encrusts his body.
He is shirtless, alone in his room, the top of his head glistening with sweat and water, slowly drying in the heat. He is alone with his thoughts and the voices in his head. Elisha knows his baldness is a sin, that he is commanded not to mourn for Elijah in this way. He doesn't care. He recites a quick prayer to his Creator, then towels himself off, puts his shirt back on, and goes out to talk to his hosts.
She sits on a low cushion, waiting for him, watching him carefully, gauging him. Does she have a little of the prophetic gift herself? He cannot tell. He doesn't know what she is thinking. He could know, Elisha reminds himself, but he is choosing not to. She is still lovely, even unsmiling. Once, he wanted her more than anything in the world. Now, there are demands on him more powerful than that. And demands on her, too, it seems.
He examines her husband now. He is black-haired, tall, handsome. Perhaps as powerfully muscled as Elisha, probably bulkier. A wrestling match between the two would be a fair fight in terms of body-type. Elisha hasn't wrestled since he was a teenager, though, and he never was an expert at the techniques involved.
"Thank you for welcoming me into your house..." he fumbles for a moment, remembering Batya's invitation. "Actually, I'm sorry. Your wife never told me your name."
The man's smile is genuine, easy. His eyes are more wary. "It's my pleasure, my Lord. I am Baruch ben Boaz, the Issacharite. This is my wife, Batya. You can thank her for the invitation. It was her suggestion, though of course I approved. But I have become aware that when I am in the fields, I am in charge. This house is my wife's." What game are you playing, Batya?
"Either way, I appreciate it, Baruch. Whatever blessings I can offer you, they are yours. May your house prosper." He reaches into his pouch and pulls out a carving, a cedarwood mezuzah with the star of the House of David on it. "I picked this up in Bethlehem. I'd like you to have it."
Baruch accepts the offered box, examining it with a careful eye. "This is fine work. Thank you, my Lord. I will go hang it up." He leaves the room purposefully, hunting for his toolbox.
And they are alone together, for the first time in sixteen years. Batya returns Elisha's expectant smile with a cold, curious stare. Finally, she breaks the silence.
"Where have you been?"
"All over the country. I warned you back then that I would follow Elijah wherever he took me. I've been a wandering man of God for sixteen years now, with no home but the Lord God."
She considered this. "And I have built my home here with Baruch, and haven't strayed farther than six thousand amot from here except for the Festivals. And I spend my days in one room, cooking and cleaning and sewing and making my one place in the world. Where did we separate?"
"The thing that brought us together was our modesty. Neither of us needs much out of the world, just one thing we can hold on to. We picked different things to hold onto."
And then Baruch is back in the room, hammer in hand, ready to mount the mezuzah. And Batya excuses herself to start the soup. And Elisha decides it's time to speak his message of repentance to the community. And once more, they are flung apart.
---
The next year, when Elisha shows up again in Shunem with ox and cart and a lad named Gehazi, he doesn't need an invitation. He heads straight for Batya's home and is pleased but not surprised to find a room already set aside for him. He sets Gehazi to tend to the ox's water and feed, then enters his room to wash up.
He is soon lost in the reverie of memory. Elisha is remembering what happened 18 years, 135 days, 21 hours and 11 chalakim ago a few towns away from Shunem. The boys had been fooling around in the hills on the edge of town, throwing a sheep's skull back and forth. Elisha, a year older than the rest, had thrown the skull a bit too high and far for Gadi to catch it, and he had tripped over a rock trying and fallen into a crack in the rocks. With the sound of that unexpected crack, all laughter ceased. Elisha had raced over to Gadi, lying some ten feet down in the crack, his body still as the brush in the becalmed wind.
Finding an inexplicable strength, Elisha climbed down into the ruddy gorge and examined Gadiel's bloodied body. "He's dead," he called up to his friends. "There's no way he's still alive." He'd bent down to lift up his friend's corpse when it happened. Gadi had sprung back to life, as lively as he'd been when he was last chasing that skull. In fact, he was still chasing the sheep's dried out skull bone. "What's going on? Where'd the skull go?" he asked jumpily, as Elisha stood agog.
"Gadi, you were dead."
Now Gadi looked incredulous.
"Are you joking with me, Elisha? I must have fallen, but I'm completely fine. Look at me." He turned a cartwheel.
Relieved, Elisha shrugged. "Well, I'm glad you're all right, Gadi. Let's get out of this crag." He extended a hand to help his friend up.
Their hands met.
Gadi collapsed to the ground again.
Stunned, Elisha fainted to the ground, right beside him.
There is a knock on the door of Elisha's room, and he stirs from his reverie.
"Master! Are you ready? The mistress of the house is ready to serve your dinner."
With the towel, Elisha wipes the tears from his eyes. "I'll be there in a moment, lad. Let Batya know I will be there."
"Yes, Master." The footsteps quickly fade into the distance.
---
The meal is delicious. People surround the table eating the hearty barley soup and then move on to a perfectly roasted mutton. There is Elisha seated between the town's chief, Yoel, and Paltiel the blacksmith, listening quietly to their conversation about trade and the harvest. There is Gehazi, at a less prestigious seat, telling extravagant travellers' stories to Yoel's young sons between bites. There is Baruch, watching the whole table carefully to make sure everyone is happy, quick to refill empty goblets with wine, ready to insert himself in the unlikely event that an argument breaks out.
And there is Batya, watching over the meal with the proprietary eye of a true mistress of the house, serving course after course to her celebrated guest. Elisha, even as he listens and participates in the chief's conversation, never takes his eye off of her for more than a few moments. Even now, he thinks, as she serves this amazing meal to me, she has not forgiven me. I don't think I will ever earn her forgiveness. The voices in his head do not argue.
It was the day after the incident with Gadi that he first heard the voices, the Call of God. The rules had been carefully explained to him. Touch once, and the dead are restored to life. Touch twice, dead forever. And if the body is restored for more than 18 chalakim, somebody else must die. And in time, with Elijah's mentorship, he would find other abilities that come from the service of the Lord. In the 18 years, 134 days, 18 hours and 42 chalakim since that conversation, Elisha had never used that particular ability again. With the Lord's help, he prayed, he never would.
But it was not the only gift Elisha had been given by the Lord God. After dinner, as the group gathers around the prophet to hear the word of God, he begins by thanking his gracious hosts. "This is not the first time you have overwhelmed me with your generosity. And if there is anything in my power that I may do for you in thanks, you have only but to ask. I have influence with the King, with figures of importance across the land."
Paltiel murmurs quietly to the chief. A prophet's blessing is not offered lightly.
Batya replies, "I have a home among my own people." And I too, once had a home, Elisha thinks. But I am still not forgiven.
"There must be something that I can do for you."
Gehazi interrupts. He has been told not to do this, but he hasn't learned yet. Elisha can see the future. He will not learn.
"Master, she has no son and her husband is old."
Baruch is but two years older than Elisha, but that makes no difference when you're seventeen years old and your whole life is ahead of you. Elisha wishes she had asked for anything but that, but Gehazi's words have set something powerful in motion.
"About this time next year," Elisha says, the words out of his mouth before he can think about them, before he can reject them, "you will hold a son in your arms."
"No, my lord," Batya objected. "Don't mislead your servant, O man of God!"
Once, they were as close as anyone in the world, Eli and Bati to each other. Now, he is the distant Man of God to her, the Prophet in Israel who has forfeited all claim to his own name. Who has forfeited all claim to his own life. But he cannot take back a prophecy. In a year, he can see with the clarity that he could never read her, she will cradle a son. She will name him Binyamin, as close as she can get to a sardonic joke. He will cry like a lion at night-time, and she will love him.
And I cannot be the father. Nay, I cannot even touch her.
---
Years pass. Years of miracles and wonders, sustained only by the Lord God. Years of despair and doubt, sustained only by the Lord God. Elisha sees Batya, Baruch, and Binyamin three or four times, stays at her house for a few days each time, then passes on in his journeys. Each time, the meals are exquisite, the room remarkably comfortable. She still hasn't forgiven him, not for abandoning her and not for the gift of a son. But she hasn't forgotten him, either, and he is not one to pass on small comforts.
Elisha brings gifts for Binyamin each time, first a little wooden toy to distract him in his crib, then a sheep's skull he can kick around in the fields. The changing gifts are one of the ways Elisha marks time.
There are other women, and other miracles. A destitute widow appeals for his help, and he conjures fragrant oils for her to sell. Gehazi asks him, if he can perform such things, why he lives such a modest life. Gehazi will never be a Man of God. It is more than the Call that does it. It's the calling one must have.
He never gets married. A prophetic comrade teases him that if he were to have gotten married, it would have been to Elijah. Elisha smiles sadly and doesn't dispute it. His love and devotion to Elijah never wavered. But then, neither did his devotion to Batya. There are choices in life, the voices tell him through complicated revelations he's never been able to share with the Children of Israel, that have no right answer. When that happens, all answers are right, if one walks with God. His prophetic duty isn't to teach the right answers. Merely to teach how to walk with God.
Elisha walks on. On the roads, he walks proudly. In the fields, he is comfortable with himself. In the cities, he is confronted with people. He is confronted with their shortcomings, and with his. The walls close in on him and there is no escape.
---
Elisha is prophesying in Har Carmel the next time he sees Batya. There is a small group of ascetics that have established a camp in the mountains, and every few years he comes to bring the word of the Lord to them. They are not particularly receptive of his message. They do not understand how to find joy in the Lord. They do not trust his bald head. But he does it anyway. He thinks it pleases the Lord that he keeps trying. If he has a purpose, it is trying to please the Lord.
The camp can be a bit claustrophobic, so when he's not speaking to the Nazirim, he likes to prowl the mountaintops. And in the distance, he sees her running toward the mountains. He wonders if it's a vision, but he knows the difference. After all the years of him coming to her home, she has sought him out. Somehow, she has found him.
"Gehazi!" Elisha calls out. "The Woman from Shunem is coming to see us. Go down the mountain and bring her to me. Make sure she's doing well, and ask after her husband and son."
"Master, how do you know she's coming?"
"I can see her, you fool. Run and get her, and give her any help she needs."
Two hours later, Gehazi has brought Batya up the mountain. He reports that she is fine, but as soon as she is in sight of him she starts screaming incoherently at him. Startled, Gehazi starts to lead her away.
"I'm sorry, Master. I'll bring her back when she's feeling better."
"Leave her alone, foolish boy! Can't you see that she is in distress, and needs to speak to me?"
Finally, she finds the words she's been searching for. "I told you not to get my hopes up. I did not ask for a son, Man of God." She is frighteningly female when she is enraged.
The vision that the Lord God has concealed from Elisha begins to appear. He drops his staff to the ground as the scene unfolds in his mind. Binyamin, out in the fields playing with Elisha's sheep skull. The heat, overwhelming his head. Binyamin, collapsing in pain.
Elisha grabs his staff from the place it has fallen. He hands it to Gehazi.
"Run, young fool, and bring this staff to Shunem. Place it on the face of the boy. I will follow, with the woman along with me. She is not capable of moving as quickly as you." Gehazi's face turns steely, determined. He seizes the staff from Elisha and takes off, sprinting.
If only I could hold her and tell her it will be okay. If only I could wipe the tears off her face.
---
After Elisha had gotten comfortable following Elijah around the land, he had asked him about the ability that had first introduced Elisha to his Call. They were camped out in the southern desert, the sun slowly fading beneath the sky. There wasn't a single soul around for thousands of amot. But it wasn't the privacy that drew Elisha out. It was the openness of the space. He had room to stretch out, and so he stretched.
"Master, may I ask you a question?"
"Of course, Eli."
Elijah's beard was prematurely white, but he wasn't an old man. He had the look of a man of about 40, but he'd looked that way since Elisha had met him. Elijah basked in a glow of secrecy, the possessor of secrets too deep to share even with his student. His mouth was thin, barely curved. It was the most prominent feature on an unremarkable face. Elijah's approaches were always stealthy, quiet. And then when he was there, he overwhelmed you.
"Before I met you, I spoke with the Lord God only once. He came to me to explain something that I had done the day before, but I still don't understand what happened."
"The boy you brought back to life... Gadiel, was his name?"
"Yes, Master. The Lord God shared the vision with you?"
"It's not a gift that should be handled lightly. When time is reversed, anyone who can see with the true vision sees it."
"Why did the Lord give me the warning only after I had wielded such power?"
Elijah shrugged, a small, expressive gesture etched into the dusky shadows. "I've told you before, Eli. All we can do is walk with God."
"Have you ever... is the tale of the Widow of Tzarefat true?"
Elijah kicked the sand in front of him, pushing it around like a child avoiding a hated vegetable. Elisha tried to make eye contact, but his master looked away, staring off into the setting sun until he must surely need to look away... and then continuing to stare.
"That was a mistake, Elisha. I hope you always remember that. I made a mistake. The Lord's punishment is just."
"What punishment?"
"I will never die, Elisha." His bitter laughter echoes through the emptiness.
They are silent as the sun fades beyond the horizon. They don't speak again, actually, until two days later, they finally encounter another Israelite near Beersheva.
---
The staff has no effect on the dead boy, who should have been buried by now. He didn't really expect it would. And now, as he stands over the body of the son he promised to the woman he loves, he is faced with one of those choices he has always feared. It's a choice with no right answer, a choice God has put squarely into his own hands.
"I can bring back your son," he tells Baruch and Batya, his solemn voice offering no uncertainty. "But I can only bring him back for a few chalakim. You will get a chance to say goodbye, but that is all I can offer you. Do you want it?"
The silence is pregnant with moment. It's like all of existence has narrowed to a bottleneck. Until they make a decision, they won't be able to squeeze through to the rest of their life. There is nothing Elisha can say to push them on. He doesn't know what to say. He has a bottleneck of his own.
"Don't mislead your servant," she had told him, those years ago when Gehazi had urged him on to the most disastrous prophecy of his life. It's in his power to do more than give her a farewell, but that decision is not one he can share with Batya. It's the moment he's prayed to avoid for years, and for his sins God has brought him to it. Is Binyamin's life and Batya's happiness more important than the life of another Shunamite? Of course it isn't. Of course he must send Binyamin's soul back to Shamayim before those 18 chalakim end. But she cannot know the truth. It is his burden, not hers. It's the reason they had to separate all those years ago, when Elijah came to him. He loved her too much to share this pain with her.
"Don't mislead your servant," she had said. But did she really mean it? Elisha thought she did, but if she knew what he did, he didn't know if she still would.
Baruch and Batya look at each other, exchange a silent conversation. 20 years of marriage give you that. Then he spoke for both of them. "If you can give it to us, we would like to be able to say goodbye."
Elisha waits until they are ready, then bends in and takes the boy's hand in his. He springs to life.
"Abba, Ima, what's going on? Where am I?"
Batya bursts into tears again. Baruch wraps his left arm tightly around his wife, willing himself to be strong enough for both of them. 2. "I have to tell you this, and I want you to be a good boy. You died, Binyamin. The prophet has brought you back so we could say goodbye." 4. 5.
Batya breaks free of her husband's arms and envelopes her son with a hug. Elisha, standing back and watching, resists the surprising urge to ask the boy if he has any last words. Time is short, and it would be inappropriate. 8. 9.
"I love you, Bibi," she wails.
"I love you, too, Ima." The boy looks overwhelmed, confused.
"And I will always be proud of you, son."
"I love you, Abba."
There is nothing more that can be said. How do you say goodbye to a son who is already dead? 13. 14. If only I could bring him back, Elisha thinks. But who knows who would die in his place? It could be Gehazi, or even Baruch or Batya, who take the place of Binyamin. Nobody should have that kind of choice in their hands. Elisha pushes it aside and walks, instead, with God.
The three have settled into a prolonged group hug. Batya's tears never cease to flow. Baruch, arms wrapped around his family, stares intently into his son's eyes. 15. 16. Elisha stops counting softly to himself and starts to move toward them. Once more, he takes Binyamin's hand in his. The boy's eyes close as all life drains out of him. In shock, Batya collapses to the floor beside him.
Baruch sets his son down on the bed and goes to examine his wife. "She is breathing," he says, "but she should relax." He lifts her up and carries her to their bedroom. Then he returns alone, to stand by his son's body.
"Thank you, my lord, for everything you've given us."
"Everything I do is the will of God." They shake hands, solemnly.
---
The day Elisha met Elijah was the third day of the week, a cool day in early Spring. Elisha was overseeing the plowing of his father's fields. With luck, in a couple seasons he would have earned enough to buy his own fields. For now, all he owned in the world were these dozen oxen, and his claim on Batya's heart.
It was cool, and a pleasant wind blew through the hills, but Elisha was hot, sweating with exhaustion from wrestling his stubborn beasts into submission. The noontime sun bore down on him with the timid passion of early spring. He paused for a moment, wiped the sweat from his brow, and then Elijah was upon him. No introduction was needed. Though the descriptions of Elijah that had passed through the land were vague enough to have described any Israelite, there was no mistaking the great Prophet, the Tishbi. Elijah's beard was prematurely white, but he wasn't an old man. Elisha guessed he wasn't more than 40 years old.
And Elijah went up to to the young man and placed his mantle over him. No words were exchanged, but the voices who spoke to Elisha told him what this meant. He was to be the next Elijah, the next Prophet in Israel. His life was to be dedicated to God's service.
"May I say goodbye to my mother and my father?" he asked. And Batya, of course. His heart sank as he considered saying goodbye to Batya to follow this peculiar and startling man around the Land.
Elijah snorted, and the first word Elisha heard out of the great man's mouth was virtually indistinguishable from a cough. Lech shuv. "Turn back," before it's too late. It is not too late to change your mind. You still have your oxen, after all. You can be a farmer, grow fat on your own lands, marry Batya, and bring offerings on the Three Festivals to thank God for the wonderful life he has given you. Lech shuv. "Turn back," if you can't offer enough commitment to follow me immediately, it's not worth my time to teach you. I came expecting great things, and you have already failed me.
And then Elisha realized that he'd misunderstood the prophet. Lech. Shuv. "Go and return," the man had said. Starting this new life can wait until you're ready, but it will start. This call is not something you can walk away from, but it is something you can approach on your own terms.
And Elisha had scrambled to make his hasty farewells, because as soon as he'd started to walk away from Elijah, it was clear to him that he was ready to start. His heart knew with aching certainty that everything he had known, from his parents' farm and his childhood friends to his beautiful, commanding, impossibly wonderful Batya, were all in his past.
Before he left, he had slaughtered his oxen and held a great feast. It was the only way he could think of to tell Batya that this was permanent, that there would be no farm.
---
Eli and Bati walk together down a scenic path on the outskirts of Shunem. Years have passed, and Elisha has taken his mentor's place in challenging the perversions of kings and queens. Other prophets walk his well-worn paths across the Land, spreading the word of the Lord God. Elisha is a less athletic defender of the Lord these days. The years of unspoken, unpayable debts have come to an end, without either of them knowing what changed.
He wishes he could hold her hand, but that boat had sailed long ago. His friend is happy in her marriage, and he is happy for her. Batya giggles softly at Elisha's stories from his journeys, knowing that unlike Gehazi's, his stories carry in them the powerful tonic of truth.
They had shared something, and now they could talk again like they were teenagers. Batya doesn't know what exactly it was they had shared. Was it the confrontation with the next world that they had so narrowly skirted? Was it the mutual grief of losing someone so central to their lives?
As if reading her mind, Elisha corrects her gently. "No, my dear. The difference now is just time. Time has finally healed us."
She looks him sharply for a moment, then smiles. "You knew that would happen, didn't you?"
"Sometimes the future is a burden God has placed on my shoulders," he tells her, "but not always." Elisha's ox moos softly in the distance.
He grabs his right hand with his left, behind his back, as she does the same. Without saying a word, Elisha and Batya imagine they are holding hands.