Ezra awoke late the next morning to the sound of a raven complaining loudly in an almond tree just outside his window. “Get up! Get up!” the rude bird seemed to say.

Somewhere out in the street, children were shouting and playing a game of Wedding and Funeral. He could tell by the sound of one of them piping on a little wooden flute. Beyond them, from someplace even farther away, came the faint notes of a harp. Shub’s already up and at it, he thought disgustedly.

He raised himself on one elbow and pushed the dark curls out of his eyes. Already the sun was high enough to dart sharp little javelins of light down through the spaces in the window lattice and straight into his face. Why did it have to be so bright? The light was offensive to him. It reflected off the ceiling and bounced off the walls. It revealed every crack, dip, and bump in the whitewashed mud plaster that covered the inside of his room. Ezra groaned and shoved his knuckles into his eye sockets. Then he lay down again and covered his head with his woolen blanket.

That’s when he heard another sound —a sound smaller and softer than any of the others, and much closer. It was the curtain at his door swishing aside. This was followed by the pad of footsteps crossing the stone-flagged floor of the room. Then came a tug at the blanket.

“Ezra —are you going to sleep the day away?” His father’s voice was gentle and quiet, but something about it made the boy jump inside. He threw off the blanket and sat straight up.

“I am up!” he said loudly. “I mean, I’ve been up for a while, only I just didn’t want to get up —that’s all.”

The amused twinkle in Tola’s eye was like a mirror in which Ezra was forced to look at the ridiculous image of his own confusion. There was the slightest hint of a smile playing at the corners of his father’s mouth. That bothered Ezra. He hated it when his father shouted at him, but it was that ironic smile of his that made him really angry.

“Here,” said Tola, reaching for Ezra’s rough-spun yellow-and-golden-brown tunic where it lay on a stool next to the wall —just where Ezra had left it when he came in during the small hours of the morning. “Get dressed, and we’ll have some breakfast.”

Tola picked up the garment. Beneath it lay the gray, woolen cloak Ezra had worn to the high place, the smeared grease and blood from the roasted calf shank clearly evident down its front side. Seeing it, his father stopped and stared for a brief moment with parted lips and raised eyebrows. Then he simply tossed the tunic to his son, saying, “Come on. The food’s waiting in the other room.”

Compared with Ezra’s cramped sleeping quarters, the main room of the house was spacious and airy. There were two arched windows looking out into the street. The floor was of stone and the walls were of whitewashed plaster. Overhead, the roof was supported by six bare rafter poles of oak. In the center of the room, Ezra’s father had spread out a mat of woven reeds. On the mat lay a wooden bowl of goat’s milk, a platter of disk-shaped barley loaves, and another bowl of leben, or soft white cheese.

“Sit. Eat,” said Tola. He himself sat cross-legged on the mat and reached for the platter of bread. Ezra followed his example, watching his father warily.

Then, with a sudden jolt, Ezra remembered something. “Where’s mother?” he asked.

“Still asleep,” his father answered, calmly breaking a circular loaf down the middle. “She came in even later than you did,” he added without looking up.

“Me?” cried Ezra, dropping his own loaf in his lap. He’d taken every precaution to make sure that no one heard him come home. “What do you mean? Are you accusing me —?”

“Ezra,” said Tola, looking straight at his son, “there’s no need to shout. Let’s reason together like men.”

“That’ll be the day,” scoffed Ezra. “To you I’m still a baby. To you I’ve got no life of my own . . . and neither does Mother!”

Ezra thought he saw his father wince. But all Tola said was, “I’ve been thinking about what you said the other night. I think I understand how you feel.”

“What I said?”

“Yes. About being yourself instead of an extension of me. And about your name. I know how hard it must be for you to . . . to be my son.”

Ezra took a bite of bread and chewed it slowly, staring up at his father’s bearded face. He didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t sure what was coming.

“The prophet feels very strongly . . .” Tola paused and then went on after a moment, “I feel very strongly, that we must raise up reminders for the coming generation . . . reminders that the Lord, He is God. Otherwise all is lost. We must be those reminders. Isaiah stated it so very clearly in one of the earliest speeches he ever gave in the temple courts. That was years and years ago, before you were born, but I remember it as if it were yesterday:

Bind up the testimony

and seal up the law among my disciples.

I will wait for the Lord,

who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob.

I will put my trust in him.

Here am I, and the children the Lord has given me. We are signs and symbols in Israel from the Lord Almighty, who dwells on Mount Zion.

“That, you see,” his father concluded, “is why we’ve given you names like ‘A Remnant Shall Return’ and ‘A Help Is Our God.’ We want the people to remember, every time they see you, that God is God and that He doesn’t change from one generation to the next!”

“That’s great for you, I guess,” said Ezra bitterly. “But what about us? What about me and Shub? What if we don’t want to be ‘signs and symbols’?”

“Ezra, it isn’t a question of what we want. As the prophet Isaiah says —”

“What do I care what Isaiah says?” shouted Ezra. “He’s just an old fanatic, that’s all! Remember when he walked around the city barefoot and in a loincloth for three years? Is that what you call sane?”

Tola laid the rest of his loaf on the mat and stared at it thoughtfully. After a pause he continued in an even quieter voice.

“A ‘fanatic,’ you say. Yes. Perhaps you have good reason to think so. But do you know what it is like for a man” —and at this he looked up and fixed his son with his calm, dark eyes —“to be owned by Another? To be no longer his own? Do you know what Isaiah saw in the temple while he was still a very young man?”

“How would I know?”

“It was the year King Uzziah died. Young Isaiah had gone in to pray before the altar. Suddenly the whole place was filled with wings and smoke and a living stream of blinding light. That light was like the flowing skirts of a great fiery royal robe, pouring, cascading down from the throne of God. Everything started shaking and trembling! And seraphim were shouting, ‘Holy! Holy! Holy!’”

Ezra stopped chewing and stared. “So what did he do?”

“He didn’t know what to do,” answered Tola. “He just said, ‘Woe to me! For I am a man of unclean lips!’ That’s how it made him feel. And then he saw one of the seraphs take a hot coal from the altar with a pair of tongs. The angel brought the coal over to Isaiah and reached out and touched his lips with it!”

“With a hot coal?”

“Yes! And the angel said, ‘See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.’ And then Isaiah heard the voice of the Lord Himself saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’ So Isaiah said, ‘Here am I. Send me!’

“So you see,” Tola concluded slowly after another pause, “Isaiah has a good reason for being a ‘fanatic,’ as you call him. He’s seen the Lord! He belongs to Him completely. And that’s not always easy . . . when a man has to think about the needs of his wife and children. I know,” he added, putting one hand to his forehead, “how difficult it can be.”

Ezra gazed at his father as he continued to eat. He had never seen him quite like this before. He wondered if he had ever really known his father. What was it like to be a prophet, to experience such strange events? Ezra felt as if his brain were too small to wrap itself around the things he’d been hearing. Could this really be what his father had been talking about all these years? Not rules and regulations and religious ceremonies, but wings and light and smoke and burning coals and flying creatures? And a God who really comes down and talks to people?

“Father,” he said after a moment, “where does Mother go when she . . . goes out?”

Again the lines in Tola’s face deepened. He shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. His mouth hardened into a straight line. Ezra wondered if he were about to cry. He thought his father looked very much as if he were fighting back tears. Then suddenly Tola braced himself, opened his eyes, and looked up.

“That,” he said to his son, “is something you’ll have to ask her. Only she can answer that. But I can tell you this: The matters we discussed the other night —Ahaz and his flirtation with the foreign gods —are very serious indeed. Believe me, my son, any man —or woman —who would play with strange fire must beware lest he —or she —be burned.”

There it was again! That same old recurring refrain. Serious consequences. Strange fire. “Oh, come on, Father!” said Ezra. He could feel the hot flush rising in his cheeks. “You don’t expect me to believe that about Mother, do you? What does it hurt if she goes out and has a little fun with . . . her friends?”

“I say nothing about your mother,” answered Tola. “I only say this: The Lord is a jealous God! He will not accept second place. And as for the gods of the Syrians and the Assyrians —the Baals and Asherahs, and worst of all the Red King Molech . . .” He paused and shuddered. “Well, all I can tell you is that people do abominable things in their names. Abominable things as part of their worship.”

“I don’t believe it!” said Ezra. “King Ahaz may be an old grouch sometimes, and he does drink too much, but he’s basically a good man. And he’s done good things for the country. Mother says so. I can’t picture him doing anything abominable!”

“Ezra,” said Tola looking straight at his son, “has Hezekiah ever told you about his brothers?”

“Hezekiah doesn’t have any brothers.”

For a moment Tola bowed his head and held it between his hands. Then he looked up and said, “Ezra, the Red King is the bloody king of all the kings of the nations. Molech doesn’t grant his favors for nothing. And so the kings of the earth make horrible offerings to him. Their own sons . . . they cause them to pass through the fire. Strange fire. Into the belly of the gruesome idol itself! I dare not speak of it further.”

“No!” shouted Ezra jumping to his feet. “I don’t believe any of that! King Ahaz wouldn’t do such a thing. Mother wouldn’t have anything to do with it. It’s all just a story told by that fanatical prophet to turn people away from the new gods!”

And with that he threw down what was left of his bread and ran out into the street to look for Shub.