The next morning after breakfast, Ethan stood by his family’s tent. He could still taste the manna in his mouth. Yuck, he thought. Will I be eating this every day for the rest of my life? He longed for the bread they’d had back in Egypt —puffy, golden loaves made with oil and poked full of holes, sending out a rich, fresh smell when his mother slid them from the brick oven. Even flatbread would taste good now, thin and chewy with a piece of roast lamb tucked inside . . .

Shaking his head and trying to forget, Ethan gazed at the mountain. There was something different about the lightning today. The flashes seemed to come more often. He could imagine himself with Melki, looking up through those clouds. We could see everything up close, he thought.

He turned to his father, who was shaking sand from one of the sleeping mats. “Do you think we’ll be allowed on the mountain after today?” Ethan asked. He tried to keep his voice casual, as though the question had just popped into his head. Picking up a rock, he tossed it on the sloped part of the tent roof and caught it when it rolled down.

His father tossed the mat inside the tent and then straightened up. “Why are you so curious about the mountain?” he asked. “Three times now I’ve told you that Mount Sinai is forbidden ground, yet you still ask me about it. What do you have in mind, son?”

Ethan froze. What could he say? He hated to lie to his father. But if he told him the truth about what he and Melki were planning, there would be a different kind of lightning storm to worry about.

“I was just —” Ethan started, but suddenly his words were drowned out by a sound unlike any that had ever met his ears.

It was a blare, a blast that seemed to come from the top of Mount Sinai. At first he thought it was thunder, but the noise was too shrill and high-pitched, a sort of squeal but more powerful. It echoed crazily throughout the valley, making it seem as though it were coming from ten directions at once.

“That’s it!” his father said excitedly. “Moses said a trumpet blast would be our signal.” He reached toward the rest of the family. “It’s time to go to the mountain! Stay together!”

A trumpet? Ethan wondered. What kind of trumpet makes a sound like that? It didn’t sound like any ram’s horn he’d ever heard.

But it didn’t matter. What counted was that he was going to the mountain. Maybe he could get closer this time. Maybe when it was over, he could go farther up the path, even to the plateau with Melki.

The walk to the mountain was too long, too slow. No one else seemed to be in a hurry. Most of the people acted nervous, even scared, as they made their way toward Sinai. Ethan had to match their trudging pace.

Worst of all, he wasn’t anywhere near the front of the crowd. I’ll never get to hear Moses, he thought. It was always like this when he was at the back of the crowd on the way to an important camp meeting. With about two million people in front of him, he could never tell what was going on.

Just as he’d feared, the journey ended about a quarter mile from the base of the mountain, near a small foothill. This was as close as they were going to get to Mount Sinai.

Ethan scrambled to the top of the foothill and looked around. Even though the hill was no more than eight feet high, he could see quite a distance across the Sinai Valley.

Not bad, he thought. I wonder if Melki can see me up here. He waved at the crowd around him, just in case Melki was watching. I hope so. He’d be so jealous.

People were pouring into the valley from all directions. The way they moved reminded Ethan of the waves on the Red Sea. “The Israelite Sea,” he said to himself.

“The Israelites see what?” came a voice right behind him. It was Leah.

“What are you doing up here?” Ethan cried. “This is my spot!”

“Father told us to stay together,” she explained. “That’s the rule, so that’s what I’m doing!”

Ethan gritted his teeth when he heard the word rule. For a moment he could see himself giving Leah a shove and watching her roll down the hill. Sure, there would be a couple million witnesses —but if they knew what Leah was like, he thought, they would probably cheer him on.

Just then he noticed that his sister was staring at something in the sky behind him. When he turned back toward the mountain, it took his brain a few seconds to register what he was seeing.

The clouds on top of Mount Sinai appeared to be . . . melting.

Dark wisps drifted slowly down the mountainside like a creeping fog. Even in the heat a chill ran down Ethan’s spine, and he felt the hair on the back of his neck begin to rise.

Soon he saw that the dark fog wasn’t a cloud at all —it was smoke. Within a minute it had blanketed the entire mountain in blackness.

The trumpet blasted again, this time so loudly his ears hurt. From his perch on the hill, Ethan noticed a ripple of movement at the front of the crowd. He guessed that people were trying to back away from the mountain. Cowards, he thought and then noticed that his own palms were getting sweaty.

In the midst of the smoke, just barely visible through the dark billows, he saw an orange glow and flickering yellow lights. It was as if the dead rock of the mountain had caught fire.

How can that be? Ethan wondered. And what does all this have to do with God coming down?

His head started to swim. The weird sights and sounds were starting to come a little too fast. He could hear Leah gasping behind him.

Trying to calm down, he looked away from the mountain and spotted movement out of the corner of his eye. About one hundred paces to the east, a lone figure stepped out of the crowd and walked toward the smoky mountain. Ethan’s breath caught in his throat as he recognized the long silver beard and the white cloak with up-and-down purple stripes.

“It’s Moses!” he called down to his parents.

“Moses?” a woman in the crowd asked. “What’s he doing?”

“He’s walking toward the mountain,” Ethan called out. “Now he’s standing still, looking up.”

The people around the foothill murmured expectantly. Ethan stood taller, proud to be the bearer of such important news. He’d never gotten closer than fifty feet to Moses, but this was almost as good as seeing him face-to-face.

Just then a new sound roared from the mountain, louder than the trumpet. It seemed to come from the fire at the middle of Mount Sinai. It started as a whoosh of wind, like the one Ethan remembered hearing when the waters of the Red Sea parted. Then came quick bursts of thunder like the pounding of giant drums. Each burst rattled the mountainside and shook the ground under Ethan’s feet. His knees started to buckle.

“The voice of God!” someone cried out. “The Lord is speaking to Moses!”

Ethan’s heart thumped wildly in his chest. Was it really God’s voice? For months his father had been telling him that the Lord was leading the Israelites across the wilderness. But Ethan had never seen the Lord nor heard Him speak.

The booming sound echoed throughout the valley. Ethan squeezed his eyes shut, straining to make out anything that might sound like words. But before he could, the sound stopped just as abruptly as it had started.

Opening his eyes, Ethan watched as the black smoke that encircled Mount Sinai rose like a curtain. Soon it vanished into the dark clouds on top of the mountain.

A lightning flash lit up the whole valley. Ethan could see that Moses was now facing the crowd, gesturing broadly.

Feeling dizzy, Ethan took a deep breath. “I think Moses is saying something,” he called down to the crowd below. But he was too far away to hear what Moses was saying. They would all have to wait for the message to be relayed back to them.

Whatever Moses said, it didn’t take very long. After a couple of minutes, he turned back toward the mountain and knelt. Ethan couldn’t tell for sure, but it looked like Moses was adjusting his sandals.

Leah grabbed Ethan’s arm. “Look,” she said, “the people closest to the mountain are starting to pass Moses’ message back.” Ethan watched as the message made its way through the crowd. As soon as one section of people heard it, a dozen or so of them would spread out to share it with other parts of the crowd.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, a short, chubby teenage boy in a green robe elbowed his way through the crowd to the foothill where Ethan and Leah were standing. Huffing and puffing his way to the top, the young man held out his hands for silence.

“This is what the Lord says,” he began in a high, raspy voice. “‘Be careful that you do not go up the mountain or touch the foot of it. Whoever touches the mountain shall surely be put to death. He shall surely be stoned or shot with arrows; not a hand is to be laid on him. Whether man or animal, he shall not be permitted to live.’”

Ethan frowned, remembering the guards at the boundary. Stoned or shot with arrows —just for setting foot on the mountain! he protested silently. It’s not fair!

Wondering how Melki was taking the news, he turned and noticed Leah whispering to herself: “Not a hand is to be laid on him . . . whether man or animal . . . not permitted to live.”

He groaned. She was memorizing the new rule the same way she memorized every new rule that God or Moses or Father or anyone else came up with. Before long she’d be reciting this new rule to him every time he walked within three hundred paces of Mount Sinai.

The teenage messenger finished his speech with one last piece of news: “The Lord has called his servant Moses to the top of the mountain.”

Ethan heard someone at the bottom of the foothill gasp, and he wondered why. I’d love to climb the mountain! he thought. Just think of all the great stuff Moses will get to see.

The young messenger brushed past Ethan and Leah and then hurried down the hill to spread the news to another part of camp.

Ethan turned back toward the mountain just in time to see Moses head slowly up the path. Ethan remembered Melki’s words about the boundary marker: “All we have to do is walk around it.”

Only if your name is Moses, Ethan thought, digging the front end of his sandal in the dirt.

A crash of thunder echoed across the valley. When the echo faded, Ethan heard the people around him talking. They sounded scared.

“Moses is an old man,” a woman said. “What if something happens to him on the mountain?”

“What if he gets struck by lightning?” a man asked. “Who would lead us then?”

“Where would we go?” another man joined in. “Back to Egypt? We would all be killed.”

Ethan looked around for his father, expecting him to say something comforting like, “The Lord will protect us.” But his father was gone.

Leah must have noticed him looking around. “Father went to tell the people behind us about the Lord’s new rule,” she said, putting extra emphasis on the last two words.

Ethan looked back at the jagged cliffs and steep slopes of Mount Sinai. Maybe those grown-ups are right, he thought. I’ll bet there are a lot of places where an old man could fall and hurt himself. He glanced around at the adults’ worried faces. What if something happens to Moses up there? If no one else is allowed on the mountain, he’d just lie there until he died.

The more Ethan thought about it, the more his stomach knotted. What if Moses does die? How will anyone know it? How long will we wait for him to come down? Until we all die of hunger or thirst?

He pictured himself lying at the base of Mount Sinai, too weak from hunger to move, his tongue swollen and dry in his mouth, while scorpions crawled over his sun-blistered body.

Why did God have to send us out here? he wondered. And why did He take away the only person who can get us out of the desert alive?

Then another thought struck him. Maybe it’s all because of those stupid rules. Maybe God is like Leah. Maybe He cares more about rules than He does about people.

“I hope you make it back, Moses,” Ethan said under his breath. “You’re all we’ve got, and I’m too young to die.”