“She isn’t coming home.”

Ezra winced at his father’s words. He sat at the end of his sleeping pallet hugging his knees. In spite of his determination not to cry, his lower lip kept trembling, and there was a twitch under his right eye that he couldn’t control. Mother not coming home? Ezra couldn’t believe it. He rubbed his nose and reached up to straighten his leather headband.

Tola sat opposite him on a short three-legged stool, making no attempt to conceal his tears. “She says she doesn’t belong here anymore. She’s found someone who . . . understands her better . . . or believes as she does. More open-minded. Like King Ahaz. At least that’s the message I got.”

King Ahaz. Ezra would never again be able to think of King Ahaz in quite the same way. Banished forever was the image of the engaging, confident, persuasive leader of men. In its place was a picture of a shrunken, careworn, frightened child in an adult body, racked with anxiety and indecision, cowering before the horrible demands of the Red King.

“But Father, don’t you even know where to find her?”

Tola raised an eyebrow and gave his son a piercing look. “I was hoping you might have an idea,” he said significantly.

Ezra’s face burned with shame. He bowed his head. “I’m sorry, Father,” he said. “I told you she wasn’t there. I saw Hanun but not Mother. Not once. I looked for her —I looked hard! But it was dark, and the light of the flames distorted everything, and most of the women had their faces covered.”

Ezra paused. His vision blurred. Into his mind came a picture of the narrow alley off Mishneh Street, its striped awnings dirty and tattered and blowing in the night breeze. Distorted faces leered at him in the half light cast by oil lamps and charcoal grills. He saw baubled and bangled women stretching out their hands to him from shadowy nooks and stone archways. Again, in his imagination, he stared up at the Tower of Ophel and gaped open-mouthed at the high place, the altar, and the forest of Asherah poles, bright with little fluttering banners. A sudden idea struck him.

“Father,” he said, “I might know where to find her. I really might! Can I go out and look?”

“We’ve been over this,” his father said sternly. “You’re confined to this house for the next two weeks. No —make that a month! Do you understand me, young man? After last night’s little escapade, I’ve a good mind to put an iron ring in the wall and tie you to it like a donkey. You simply have no idea, Ezra. No idea. Why, for a while there I thought I’d lost both of you!” He paused, and for a brief moment the bearded face flushed red. “I suppose you’ll never know until you have children of your own.”

“I said I was sorry, Father,” Ezra replied, squeezing his eyes shut and pressing them against his knees until he saw stars. “You wouldn’t believe how sorry I really am!”

Then the tears came, and he made no further attempt to hold them back. Why had he never realized before how much his father cared about him and his mother? He knew now that he was something much more to him than a prophetic sign or wonder. He knew —and felt —that his father, like Isaiah, was a man possessed —by love. A man who would sooner die than buy peace or prosperity or personal achievement by sacrificing his own son. Why couldn’t he have recognized it sooner?

Tola got to his feet, wiping his face with the back of one hand. Then he reached down and ran his fingers through his son’s tangled black locks. “Do you know what?” he said. “I believe you this time. Somehow or other, I believe you really are sorry. But we don’t have time to mope about our troubles now. There’s another meeting of the Remnant tonight. We’d better have some supper before the prophet and the others arrive. Looks like lots more stale loaves and sour leben for you and me. At least until Old Hephzibah’s arm heals up. Oh, didn’t I tell you? She’s promised to stay and cook for us. For a while, anyway. Until your mother . . . changes her mind.”

Ezra looked up and saw him smile sadly as he turned to leave the room.

By the time the members of the Remnant began to gather, Ezra was feeling more like himself again. Maybe more like a new self, he thought as he watched them file through the door.

First came the slight young Elisabeth, one of the king’s servants, who blushed and smiled when Ezra caught her eye and then hurried in to sit beside Old Hephzibah. She was followed by Ira, the hunchbacked weaver. Then came Ben-Shimri, a hard-fisted, square-jawed silversmith who’d lost most of his business by refusing to make images of the Baals and Asherahs. Acsah, the round-faced wife of Ezra’s tutor, Mishael, was there too, and Maacah the baker’s daughter, and Pua, who served as a reserve member of the King’s Guard.

They weren’t the kind of people Ezra would have chosen as friends —not most of them, anyway. In the past he would have laughed at them and called them “losers” and “a bunch of nobodies.” But tonight he seemed to see them with new eyes. Tonight they felt like family. Somehow, in his mind, they glowed with a soft, warm light that was altogether different from the leaping flames in the idol’s belly. Signs and wonders in Israel were the words that popped into his head as members of the group passed him and went to find a place to sit on the floor of the main room.

Finally the prophet himself entered —stern-eyed, his dark brow furrowed with lines that reminded Ezra of the creases in his own father’s forehead. He was followed by his wife, the lively little Abigail. She flitted through the door on tiptoe, directing a few words at Ezra’s father before moving farther into the house. Trailing after her came fuzzy-haired, red-cheeked Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz. He raised an eyebrow at Ezra and gave him a knowing smirk before sweeping past on the hem of his mother’s skirts. Any other time Ezra would have felt like bashing him in the face. Tonight he just shook his head.

Last of all came a face Ezra hadn’t expected to see. “Shub!” he said. “What are you doing here?”

Shub looked sheepish. He put a finger to his lips and shuffled his big feet. “I had to come,” he said. “After last night, I . . . well, it’s just that everything has . . . changed somehow.”

Ezra nodded but said nothing.

“Besides,” Shub went on, “without my harp I don’t have anything to do at home. My father says the only way I’ll ever get another kinnor is if I build it myself or earn the money to buy one. And neither one of those is easy.” He bit his lip and frowned. “He’s really mad, Ezra.”

Ezra frowned too and nodded again.

“But mostly I came to talk to you. I keep thinking about last night. It still seems like some kind of weird dream. I keep remembering the things you said. Did you mean it?”

Ezra blushed and stared down at his feet. “Mean what?”

“You know. What you said to that priest in the big red robe and all those other people. About abominations and consequences and Yahweh, the God of Israel. You were like . . . like some kind of hero, Ezra! Like Moses or Joshua or Elijah. I couldn’t believe it! Did you mean it? Or was it just another one of your tricks?”

Ezra looked his friend in the face. “I’m not sure if I meant it then,” he said slowly. “But I think I do now.”

He glanced at the plain, humble faces of the people who sat on the floor of his father’s house. They spoke in low voices, waiting for the prophet to start the meeting. “I was wrong, Shub,” Ezra continued. “Something bad did happen. And it would have been much worse, except that . . . I don’t know . . . except that God, the real God, really was watching out for Hezekiah. Just like your father said He would. I was wrong, and Hezekiah was right. I should have known all along. I guess I’m just too stubborn.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear you say so,” said a voice at the door. Ezra and Shub wheeled around at the sound. There, draped in the same soiled and torn street-urchin’s cloak he’d worn to the pagan high places on the two previous nights, stood the stocky little prince. He was breathing hard, his round, ruddy face glistening with sweat.

“I came to join the Remnant,” said Hezekiah in answer to their blank stares. “Had to sneak out to do it too. Ran all the way here. You taught me well, Ezra,” he added with a grin. “Not that it was all that hard. My father has been trying to avoid me all day.”

From the inner room came the deep, melodic voice of the prophet, who had risen at last to address the gathering of the Remnant. “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God,” he chanted in slow and soothing tones.

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,

and proclaim to her

That her hard service has been completed,

That her sin has been paid for,

That she has received from the Lord’s hand

double for all her sins.

Ezra straightened his leather headband and smiled. Then he grabbed Hezekiah by the hand and pulled him into the house.

“Come on,” he said. “We’ll all join! And I’ve got a feeling that it’ll be the biggest and best adventure we’ve ever had. You’ll see!”