On the morning Elijah left Zarephath, Adella sat beside her cottage window looking out in the direction he had gone. “Do you miss him already, Mother?” Yashar asked.
“While it’s true I love Elijah,” Adella said, “and though I will forever be grateful for his kindnesses, I cannot long for one who belongs only to God.”
“Maybe you also long for God?” Yashar said.
“But he is here, boy” Adella said. “Surely you feel his presence.”
“Yes, I do,” Yashar said. “That’s why I feel free to leave you now.”
“Leave?” Adella said. “We have barely more to eat today than when the prophet arrived.”
“God told Elijah it will rain soon,” Yashar said. “I want to be there, wherever there is, when the rain comes again. Mother, I believe in the God of Israel now.”
“You have faith but no whiskers,” Adella said.
Yashar touched his chin.
“I will not allow you to board a ship. You cannot go wondering about on foot, roving bands are everywhere. Where is Elijah? You do not know. You could starve before you found him. You could be injured. You could lose your way.”
“Mother…”
“No!” Adella said. “We have neither food nor money for foolish adventures. You are a child and do not belong in the world.”
Yashar stepped beside her at the window. They looked out together toward the spur that separated the plains of Sidon from the slopes of Tyre. “I will find him,” he said. “These hills will green soon, deep green, and ships will return to port. There’ll be chickens in the market and fish from the sea and you…”
“And I,” Adella said, “having already lost a husband have also surely lost my boy.”
“Yes,” Yashar said, “because, when I return to you, I’ll be a man.”
Adella seemed unconvinced. In his heart of hearts, Yashar had doubts as well.
*
Yashar awoke early the next morning to start after Elijah. Adella prepared breakfast. Neither spoke while Yashar ate his last meal in his boyhood home. Something had surely ended. Something new had begun. For the first time in years, Yashar did not bother to check their water in the well, the meal in the barrel or the oil in the cruse. What had been an ongoing wonder had become only a reminder that Elijah had gone.
“I will be fine, son,” Adella said, answering the question he had been afraid to ask. “We remain in God’s hands so I will trust him. You will find the prophet and serve him, as seems to be your calling, and the Lord will provide for me.”
How brave she was. Yashar kissed her cheek, threw clothes in a sack then left home heading south, stopping only once to look back. Adella had remained by the gate, waving her hands and most likely whispering, goodbye.
*
It was child’s-play to find Elijah. Out from home for less than a day, Yashar stumbled upon the prophet standing like an ordinary man in the middle of the main coast road facing south. Yashar cackled as he closed the gap between them, tripping from bush to bush quickly so not to be seen or heard.
No sooner than Yashar had slipped into secret position, the prophet left the road and began walking east across dry gullies and thinning woods. Tracking Elijah was easy. The prophet walked in straight lines and left clear tracks. More good fortune, Yashar always found food in Elijah’s wake. Sometimes the prophet had abandoned whole chunks of bread. How Elijah came up with that bread and even an occasional cake was another question.
Yashar assumed that they came from God.
*
Early morning of the third day out on his own, Yashar squatted behind a shrub to observe Elijah sitting in the woods beside a path, not resting but seeming to wait for something. Not long after, an old man wearing splendid robes appeared before the prophet and fell upon his face, saying, “Is it you, my lord, Elijah?”
Elijah answered, “It is I. Now go and say to your lord, Elijah is here.”
Yashar crept closer. The old man rose and dusted off. “What sin have I done,” he asked, “that you would give up your servant into the hand of Ahab and be the cause of my death.”
“Tell me, Obadiah,” Elijah asked, “what is it that you fear?”
“Straight away, when I have gone from you,” the man called Obadiah said, “the Spirit of the Lord will take you away, I have no idea where. Then, when I give word to Ahab and he sees you not, he will put me to death though I, your servant, have been a worshipper of the Lord from my earliest years.”
Elijah chuckled.
“What is so amusing, sir?” Obadiah asked. “Has my lord not heard of my efforts when Jezebel sought to put all the Lord’s prophets to death? How I kept a hundred safe in holes in rocks, fifty at a time, and gave them bread and water?”
“I thank God,” Elijah said, “for your courage.”
“How nice for me that you are thankful,” Obadiah answered. “You say, Go and say to your lord, Elijah is here as though the king will not put me to death.”
“By the life of the Lord of hosts whose servant I am,” Elijah said, “I will certainly let Ahab see me today.”
Obadiah bowed. “If I cannot rely on the word of the Lord’s greatest prophet,” he said, “who then?” He stepped back and added, “I will tell the king and trust in you.”
“Rather trust in the Lord!” Elijah said as Obadiah hurried away.
Then something embarrassing happened.
“You, boy,” Elijah called out without bothering to look back, “how much longer will you be content to stumble behind me eating my scraps and thinking yourself a clever tracker?”
Yashar left his hiding place, not a very good one it seemed, and approached the great prophet with his head hung low. Elijah clasped Yashar’s shoulders and grinned. “Do not be defeated, boy,” he said. “Why, the best woodsman alive would be humbled in these dry times, easily heard from miles away. But I must hurry now to meet the king. I cannot meander while you keep up.”
“For how long, sir, have you known that I have been following you?” Yashar asked.
Elijah looked up as if working a number in his head. “Since we met over three years ago,” he said, “when you gathered sticks for your mother at the gates of Zarephath.”
*
Obadiah met Ahab in Samaria on a stone terrace where the air moved well. Even during the drought, the view from the king’s porch was breathtaking, mountain vistas all around. “So,” Ahab said, “did you find grass?”
“Not a blade, sir,” Obadiah said, “not one fountain or running stream. From here to the border north is barren fields, twisted briars and blowing dust.”
“I too found nothing,” the king sighed.
“But I did find someone, sir.”
Ahab looked up so quickly that Obadiah hesitated. The deck upon which they stood adjoined the royal bedchamber wall, one window of which had become famous throughout the land. “Is she…?” Obadiah began, inclining his head in that direction.
“My lady, the queen, sitting there?”
“Jezebel,” Obadiah whispered, “might she see us, O king? Might she hear?”
“You have seen Elijah!” Ahab guessed.
Obadiah answered quickly, in a hush. “He promised to meet with you, O king. He swore to me that the Spirit of God would not carry him away.”
Ahab clenched his fists. “You are right to speak low,” he said. “Jezebel sits at her window with hate in her heart, looking for a vision of him who brought this drought upon us.”
“If Elijah would meet with you and somehow make amends,” Obadiah said, “might the queen forgive him?”
“No,” Ahab said, “nor would I. He honors the wrong god.”
“The God of Israel brought us out of Egypt, sir, did he not?”
Ahab took a long look at Obadiah. “You’ve been my faithful steward for years,” he said. “I choose to look beyond your leanings but remember, there are no secrets at a king’s court. Many suspect that you keep to the old ways. I know it’s true but warn you, do not let it become common knowledge.”
“I cannot control what others say, O king,” Obadiah said, “just as I cannot bring rain. Elijah brought this drought in the name of the God of Israel. Does that not impress you?”
Ahab wrung his hands, torn between gods.
“And you, yourself, O king, consult the Lord’s prophets from time to time.”
“Do not measure me,” Ahab said. “I’ve a divided nation and a pagan queen. Simply remember that it’s unhealthy now to serve Israel and also discount Baal.”
“O king,” Obadiah said, “Let us focus on the moment. The prophet Elijah has come out of hiding. How can you refuse to meet with him if he might end our suffering?”
“Arrange it, then,” Ahab said, “and be quick.”
“But I cannot,” Obadiah said. “I suggest that you simply go about your business. It will happen in its time. That’s my entire understanding of how my God and prophets work.”
*
Ahab took Obadiah’s advice and simply headed down to a shaded lane in the city—a low spot dotted with olive trees and small homes just beyond the road that encircled his hill—as good as any place to wait for a prophet. Not long after, as Obadiah had suggested, there stood Elijah in the shade of a nearby tree, the same hairy fellow who had cursed the land years earlier.
How had he approached so closely without being seen?
“Is it you, you troubler of Israel?” Ahab asked.
“I have not troubled Israel,” Elijah answered, “but you and the house of Omri, your father, turning away from the Lord and whoring with the Baalim.”
Ahab pointed past Elijah and asked, “Are you aware, prophet, that a skinny boy watches us, bending awkwardly behind yonder struggling tree?”
“Pretend not to see him if you would, O king,” Elijah said. “It would do wonders for his self-esteem.”
“You know him?”
“He will serve me for a time.”
The air was hot and dry. Neither prophet nor king was in the mood to chat.
So Elijah challenged Jezebel’s priests to a showdown, he against them.
“And if you fail, Elijah,” Ahab asked, “how will you avoid my vengeance?”
“Be not concerned for my safety, O king,” Elijah said, “rather prepare yourself, your queen, and the long-suffering people of Israel for rain.”
Ahab drew breath to threaten but Elijah and the awkward boy had disappeared.