Astiza
Life has its own symmetries. Sometimes things are meant to happen. Sometimes deeds bring their own rewards. And so it was that Gideon Dray saved my husband yet again, saved me, saved my son—with a stone hurled with biblical vengeance.
One moment Auric Nachash was going to shoot us; the next he was brained with a rock the size of a pigeon egg, hurled by a sling that Ethan’s Jew had fashioned from a strip of old leather. It was David and Goliath all over again, except this Goliath was a considerably smaller target. And it was the back of his head, not the front, that shattered into pieces.
The pistols fell into the snow.
Hate had kept the dwarf alive after my explosion, but whatever Auric had once meant to be had died long, long ago.
We were shocked, of course. Our executioner had been slain by an agency as sudden and unexpected as a lightning bolt. Neither of us quite knew what had happened, but then Gideon called out cautiously, “Ethan?” When my husband managed a wheezing bark in reply, he emerged from the trees and came toward us.
Dray let his sling trail in one hand and hefted the rock up and down in the other, contemplatively. He kicked his victim to make sure he was dead, then stepped forward to hug us.
“By what miracle?” my husband managed.
“I’ve been trailing the little ogre since yesterday afternoon. I’d no weapon to help in the castle gun battle, but I was appalled Auric had survived. I decided to track him, since the dwarf seemed to have a very certain plan of his own. I used a dead monk’s belt to fashion a makeshift sling.”
“Where did you learn to wield it?”
“Jews are prohibited weapons. It’s why we needed a golem. And without one, we learn to fight with fists, teeth, rocks, and slings. I’ve practiced all my life, even after joining the army. I was determined not to be helpless if the regiment ever ran out of ammunition.”
“Thank the gods,” Ethan said. “Or goddess,” he added, with a nod to me.
“I believe it is simply ‘God,’ ” replied Gideon. “You owe Yahweh allegiance if you keep calling on me for rescue.” He looked around. “Are there others?”
“Some may emerge from the castle and hunt for us.”
“Ah. I sent that bunch flying in the other direction. Pulling a cowl over my head, I pretended to be a simple priest, telling them I saw a fugitive family run the opposite way in the snow. It will be some hours before they realize my deception.”
“We owe you for all time,” I said with fervor.
“No, madame, a good deed does not require repayment, or it is not truly good. Yet someday perhaps you can do your own good deed for me or my people, and that will be payment more proper.” He squatted. “And you, Harry, are you all right?”
My boy looked at our friend solemnly, his tears dried. “The bad man is finally dead.”
“So he is.” Gideon stood, looked about, and looked back at Ethan. “And where is it? I trust you found it?”
“Found what?”
“The Brazen Head.”
As strange as it seems, we actually needed to be reminded of what he was talking about, so traumatic was our encounter with the dwarf. Then we hesitated. Should we admit to its existence? We were embarrassed at its loss, but also protective of its watery grave. It would never be found by anyone. Except, perhaps, by us.
“It turned out not to be useful,” Ethan finally said. “It spoke in riddles.”
“What kind of riddles?”
“Nonsense things. Catherine destroyed it.”
He doubted us, as any intelligent man would, but he also didn’t seem to lust for the machine. The Jews already had a golem, and wisely left it in an attic.
He inventoried our condition. “Every time we meet, you are soaked. Do you like being coated in ice?”
“I think we are done with swimming.”
“I doubt it. But you need shelter and a fire. And rest. And food. Here are some crusts of bread.”
We ate like the starving animals we were.
Then we began a slow, weary walk—keeping to the trees, our eyes wary of more surprises—toward a wisp of smoke in the distance that might mark a friendly farm. The scraps of food warmed us sufficiently to keep going.
“And are they riddles, Ethan?” I murmured to my husband as we walked along, talking turns carrying an exhausted Harry, who’d lapsed into sleep. “Do you think the Brazen Head was useless? Is that why Albertus let Rosenkreutz take it? Or was it evil and brought here to be locked away? Was it too powerful a seer?”
“Not a seer so much as a repository of wisdom,” my husband said to me.
“You found wisdom in its answers?”
“Certainly all men are successful for a time but are ultimately defeated, every one. By death if nothing else.”
“Yes,” I said. “And surely the truest gold is within our hearts. The only gold you can never lose, and never spend without it being replenished.”
“Richter will stay in his little hell forever. He and Rosenkreutz together, eternal in their own way. The Brazen Head predicted that.”
“But the purpose of death is life?” I asked. “And the purpose of life is death?”
“I spent several weeks dead while in search of you,” Ethan said. “I shared a coffin, heard the dirt thrown on, and wondered the meaning many times in the thunder of navies and tramp of armies.”
“And?”
“Look at these winter woods. A graveyard of leaf and fern, but death that is necessary to bring forth the next round of life. An eternal cycle, as reassuring as a rainbow or calendar or clock. We all die, Astiza. But in that death, we become immortal. Not just supernaturally, but in nourishing and making way for the next round of life.”
I smiled at his conversion. “Ethan, you sound like a priestess.”
“Catherine would finally call me a realist.”
“We make life, too.” I nodded toward our soggy son, on his shoulder.
“It’s too bad we can’t relax like the animals do,” Ethan mused, “and accept the cycle. We’re forever dissatisfied.”
“If we didn’t strive and worry, we wouldn’t be human, would we? We’d be an android, like the Brazen Head.”
“So what do we strive for now, my dear wife?”
“Rest. Refuge. Renewal. To finally stay together as a family.”
He smiled. “To be common for a change.”
But neither of us is. That is our blessing. That is our curse.