A.D. 33 by Ted Dekker Page A

sheikh, was master.
    As dusk gave way to night I left Judah by the fire and went to retrieve Zahwah, who’d wandered off in search of desert grass. By the time I found my she-camel and returned, it was dark. The fire smoldered, unattended.
    I dropped Zahwah’s lead rope. “Judah?”
    Zahwah folded herself to the ground near the hot coals as I scanned the sands.
    “Judah!”
    We were at the base of the red cliffs. Surely he hadn’t found it in himself to climb them. To the south, two dunes rose high, black against the sky.
    I spun around, wicked images of Kahil suddenly large in my mind. We had two blades, for there are many prowling beasts so close to an oasis. Both weapons still leaned against the rock where I’d left them.
    “Judah!” I cried.
    And then I saw him, outlined against the night sky on the dune behind our camp. Relief cascaded over me as I snatched up a sword and hurried up the slope.
    But when I reached him, his hands were up and his head tilted back, and I knew that Judah had found his stars.
    He was of the Kokobanu tribe—the stargazers who’d first been led to Yeshua when he was a child. The nights of our desert crossing flooded my mind. How many hours had he spent teaching me the constellations? How many songs had he sung about the lights in the sky?
    Indeed, these were the very stars that had led me into Judah’s arms, for I was the brightest star in his sky.
    “Look, Maviah,” he said, smiling wide. “Look at them all!”
    I stepped up beside him and let the sword slip from my fingers. “Yes. Look.”
    “I haven’t seen them for two years.”
    My heart broke for him—keeping Judah from the sun and stars was like keeping any other man from food and water both.
    “They are the lights of truth, which cannot lie,” he said. “It was these that drew us to Yeshua.”
    “And me to you,” I said.
    His arms were wide and high and he shook them at the sky, as if soaking in a powerful force. “Look at them, Maviah! Just look at them!” He laughed and turned slowly around, beaming like the moon. “Look at them!”
    I was smiling, delighted by his enthusiasm, and then laughing with him.
    He swept behind me and grabbed my arm, lifting my hand in his to point skyward.
    “There, remember? The hare. And there, the snake. When two point to a sign, forecast with hope; when three, forecast with confidence,” he said, reciting the rule of the stars’ foretelling. “Do you remember?”
    “I remember.”
    I could smell the scent of the spice he’d chewed to cleanse his mouth, borne on his hot breath against my neck.
    He placed an arm around my waist from behind and turned me to the northern sky. “There, the brightest. Do you remember?”
    “The north star,” I said.
    He said more, but my mind was consumed with his passion, returning to him like water rushing into a parched wadi after a sudden storm.
    I turned in his arms as he spoke, and I placed my hand behind his head and gently drew it down, as if he was one of those very stars, now for me to worship.
      
    FOR TWO DAYS Judah and I remained, caught up in the heavens, dancing among the stars rather than under them.
    With each passing hour, more of Judah’s strength returned. Not once did he talk about his time in the dungeons, and I did not press him. Only occasionally did the darkness rise in his face or words. But then it quickly vanished.
    “You will see, Maviah,” he would say, hurrying for more wood from our small pile. “All that is wrong in the world will be made right.”
    And I would laugh, for no reason other than to be full of joy by his side.
    “You will see, Maviah,” he said, pouring tea at noon. “We will one day own a thousand camels and give two thousand away.”
    And I would smile, for there was no heart greater than Judah’s.
    “You will see, Maviah,” he said softly, poking at the fire. “I will kill Kahil and return to bring Rome to ruin.”
    To this I had no reply.
    On the morning of the second full day,