Read Online Freda: Volume III in the New Eden series by Peter Dudley - Free Book Online
Authors: Peter Dudley
Ads: Link
him. ‘It is only possible for us to abandon The Lord.’ Timothy looked at the child, who was nearly dead from starvation and fever, and he stood. He knew then that he could not give up. Weak as he was, he lifted the child to his hip and forged onward. Before sunset his people crested a final ridge and gazed on the valley below, the valley that would come to be known as Southshaw.”
I finish the story and open my eyes to see that the children have abandoned the fire to gather around me, listening intently. They look up at me as if they expect me to say something else.
“That’s it,” I say as they stare. “That’s where the story ends.”
My mother pulls away from me and looks into my face with serene pride in her eyes.
But it’s Tom that speaks: “Is it?”
He looks around at the other people, the Southshawans who were born here and who expected to grow old and spend their entire lives here. Tom’s pale differentness stands out so stark in the dim, distant light of the fire. But it’s his difference that shows me what he’s trying to say.
“Is that really the end of the story?” he asks again.
My mother steps away from me now, leaving me facing the handful of little children and, behind them, a small group of young parents, all listening and waiting. Waiting for the First Wife to finish her lesson, to explain the meaning of the story she has just recited. As Judith used to do when I was little.
Judith would have spoken of the lessons of faith. That sometimes, when we are at the very edge of despair, The Lord is actually planning something better for us just around the next corner, or just over the next ridge. Faith is the difference between destruction and salvation. And perhaps these children are hearing that message in the story now, too. But in my mother’s eyes, I see the lesson she wanted me to remember, and it’s a different one.
“Yes,” I reply to Tom. “That is indeed where the story ends, as it was written.” I slip my hand into my pocket and draw forth the prayer book, and I hold it out for the children to see. “Later, when we are somewhere safe and warm, I will read the whole story to you.”
I crouch before them to speak to them at their level, but my words are as much for their parents, and for myself, as they are for the children.
“But that could also have been the end of Timothy and all the people,” I continue. “Can you imagine that? Southshaw would never have existed. We would not exist. All because a child helped Timothy remember what he really had faith in. He led his people forth because he knew that God loved them and would provide for them. But he faltered—”
One little boy, his eyes wide like dinner plates, cries out, “He lost his faith?”
“No, no,” I correct, smiling that these children could be so rapt with my story when their whole world is crumbling around them. “His faith was still strong. It just became... blurry. Confused.”
I stumble over the words, unsure exactly how to explain it.
“He began to think that God had put all these barriers before him because God wanted him to give up, that they were supposed to accept death, even perhaps welcome it as God’s will.”
I look up to my mother, whose smile is filled with gentleness and love.
“But that’s not how God is, and the little child in the story understood that. All of the people’s problems were caused by the War, right? And people caused the War. Wicked people who let hate and fear fill that place inside them where their faith should have been. All their difficulties made Timothy forget that.”
I look up at the parents who stand behind their children. For the moment, they’ve all forgotten I’m only sixteen and they’re so much older. For the moment, I really feel like First Wife.
“And that’s what’s happened now, to all the people who chose not to come with us. They’ve forgotten that God did not make all these problems. All these problems were caused by a wicked
I finish the story and open my eyes to see that the children have abandoned the fire to gather around me, listening intently. They look up at me as if they expect me to say something else.
“That’s it,” I say as they stare. “That’s where the story ends.”
My mother pulls away from me and looks into my face with serene pride in her eyes.
But it’s Tom that speaks: “Is it?”
He looks around at the other people, the Southshawans who were born here and who expected to grow old and spend their entire lives here. Tom’s pale differentness stands out so stark in the dim, distant light of the fire. But it’s his difference that shows me what he’s trying to say.
“Is that really the end of the story?” he asks again.
My mother steps away from me now, leaving me facing the handful of little children and, behind them, a small group of young parents, all listening and waiting. Waiting for the First Wife to finish her lesson, to explain the meaning of the story she has just recited. As Judith used to do when I was little.
Judith would have spoken of the lessons of faith. That sometimes, when we are at the very edge of despair, The Lord is actually planning something better for us just around the next corner, or just over the next ridge. Faith is the difference between destruction and salvation. And perhaps these children are hearing that message in the story now, too. But in my mother’s eyes, I see the lesson she wanted me to remember, and it’s a different one.
“Yes,” I reply to Tom. “That is indeed where the story ends, as it was written.” I slip my hand into my pocket and draw forth the prayer book, and I hold it out for the children to see. “Later, when we are somewhere safe and warm, I will read the whole story to you.”
I crouch before them to speak to them at their level, but my words are as much for their parents, and for myself, as they are for the children.
“But that could also have been the end of Timothy and all the people,” I continue. “Can you imagine that? Southshaw would never have existed. We would not exist. All because a child helped Timothy remember what he really had faith in. He led his people forth because he knew that God loved them and would provide for them. But he faltered—”
One little boy, his eyes wide like dinner plates, cries out, “He lost his faith?”
“No, no,” I correct, smiling that these children could be so rapt with my story when their whole world is crumbling around them. “His faith was still strong. It just became... blurry. Confused.”
I stumble over the words, unsure exactly how to explain it.
“He began to think that God had put all these barriers before him because God wanted him to give up, that they were supposed to accept death, even perhaps welcome it as God’s will.”
I look up to my mother, whose smile is filled with gentleness and love.
“But that’s not how God is, and the little child in the story understood that. All of the people’s problems were caused by the War, right? And people caused the War. Wicked people who let hate and fear fill that place inside them where their faith should have been. All their difficulties made Timothy forget that.”
I look up at the parents who stand behind their children. For the moment, they’ve all forgotten I’m only sixteen and they’re so much older. For the moment, I really feel like First Wife.
“And that’s what’s happened now, to all the people who chose not to come with us. They’ve forgotten that God did not make all these problems. All these problems were caused by a wicked
Similar Books
