It was nearly eleven when Avalon reached the nearest tram stop for her line. The night was cold, but Avalon felt colder than usual – perhaps because of the evil presence she had just been in or perhaps simply because she was wearing a light, sleeveless dress on a freezing cold night.
Fortunately, she’d thought to stuff a sweater in her bag before she left. She pulled it out and slipped it on. Ah, much better.
The tram came after ten minutes. Avalon paid the fare and sat down near the back. The concession cart didn’t run between ten and five, but Avalon wasn’t hungry anyway.
It was about half an hour to her apartment from this part of the city. Avalon pulled out her handheld computer. She had been perfectly satisfied with her computer at home, but someone had talked her into a handheld so she could have a backup for her master book. It did definitely help to have that.
She connected to the omnipresent UIIC Network. She checked her mail, checked the weather, the usual. Someone had e-mailed her about a concert that she’d forgotten was happening next week. Some great choir, greater than the Vienna Boys Choir, the person said (though Avalon doubted that).
Wait. Choir? Wasn’t that what she heard that one night? A church choir? What song had they sung again? Oh, right, “It is Well with My Soul,” or so Avalon guessed based on the refrain.
She typed it in – “It is Well with My Soul.”
A page of results came up. She clicked on the one for the general UIIC database, the best known compendium of knowledge on the network.
“’It is Well with My Soul,’” the entry read, “was written in 1873 by Horatio G. Spafford, after several personal tragedies.”
Tragedies? Avalon thought. He wrote that after tragedy?
She read on. Apparently, Spafford had first lost his son to illness. Then several of his properties burned down in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Avalon, knowing well the fires London had suffered, could relate to that. Lastly, when his wife and daughters were going by boat to London – he had been detained on business and planned to join them later – the ship sank and his daughters drowned. He had written the song on his trip alone across the ocean to reunite with his wife.
Avalon wanted to cry. What horrible things to have happen!
“Next stop! Bloomsbury, St. George’s Church!”
Her stop already? How time flew. She pressed the stop button and put her computer away. She slipped out the back door so as to be less noticed.
***
“Ah, much better.”
It was almost midnight. Avalon had taken a normal bath and changed into her pajamas. Her bed looked very inviting.
As she cleared some things off the bed, her eyes fell on something, a book with a worn leather cover.
Barnaby’s Bible.
Trust me, it’s a story you can’t be neutral about, deep down, Barnaby had said.
It was worth a shot, as late as it was. Otherwise, she’d probably dream about Jago.
She opened to the first highlighted part. The name of the book was highlighted with a note saying “Read the whole book, but esp. 2:8-12 and ch. 3 and 4.”
It was late, so Avalon decided just to read the key verses. The first was a conversation between a guy named Boaz and Ruth, the person the book appeared to be about. He was telling her to stay in his field, where she wouldn’t be harmed. Then, Ruth spoke:
“At this, she bowed down with her face to the ground. She exclaimed, ‘Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you notice me – a foreigner?’”
Avalon stopped. That was exactly how she felt – both here and on R Andromedae. A foreigner. She read on.
“Boaz replied, ‘I’ve been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband – how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with a people you did not know before. May the LORD repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have taken refuge.’”
How did Barnaby know? Just like Ruth, Avalon had left Earth – the only place she’d known – to live among her mother’s people on R Andromedae. Now she was back on Earth, but it felt foreign to her, as Israel must’ve felt for Ruth.
She read quickly through the next two chapters, which told how Naomi, Ruth’s mother-in-law, arranged for her to marry Boaz, how Boaz did so, and how Ruth had a son named Obed who was the ancestor of some guy named David. David was a king; Avalon remembered that from school. So this foreign woman had become the great-grandmother of a major Israelite king? That was a strange twist.
Some book called Romans was the next place there were highlights, in the fourth chapter:
“Is this blessedness only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? We have been saying that Abraham’s faith was credited to him as righteousness. Under what circumstances was it credited? Was it after he was circumcised, or before? It was not after, but before!”
Wait, what? Avalon thought. Circumcision? What was this about? Then she saw a note in the side, in Barnaby’s handwriting:
“Circumcised = Jews; uncircumcised = Gentiles (non-Jews)”
Oh. So that’s why this was highlighted. Avalon read on to the end, which expanded on the first two verses to say that Abraham – probably a patriarch, Avalon thought – had been called righteous, and that his righteousness extended to Gentiles, or non-Jews.
Several pages later, but in the same book, there were several verses highlighted, again about the “Gentiles.” The last one particularly struck Avalon:
“And again, Isaiah says, ‘The Root of Jesse will spring up, one who will arise to rule over the nations; the Gentiles will hope in him.’”
Barnaby had underlined “Root of Jesse” and written “Jesus” in English and next to it “Krintan” in crudely written Andromedean characters.
I get it, thought Avalon. So this Jesus came to save everybody. But what about all I’ve done as Nightshade?
The next highlighted passage was a long one in a book called Ephesians. Certain phrases stood out to her:
“Remember that at that time you were separate from Christ…without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.”
“His purpose was to create one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.”
“Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household.”
That’s what she was – separate, far away, without hope, a foreigner. But this passage said that through Jesus she could become even part of God’s household. Having grown up a noblewoman’s daughter, she knew the difference between a household and those outside it. The household servants got better treated than those who worked the plot of land her mother had hung onto for years. To be part of a household was much more desirable than not being so.
Avalon lifted her eyes for a moment. If this was what becoming a Christian could mean – becoming near to God by Jesus’s redemption – than what did she need to do? Would Jesus even want her?
Her eyes fell on yet another note from Barnaby.
“Romans 10:8-13”
She turned there, and found text that was both highlighted and underlined:
“But what does it say? ‘The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart.’ That is, the word of faith that we are proclaiming: That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
That’s all? Avalon thought, surprised. She read on, expecting a catch – there had to be one.
“As the Scripture says, ‘Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame.’ For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile – the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’”
There was no catch. It was that simple. In fact, Barnaby had scrawled nearby, in crude Andromedean again:
“Simple be the ways of seeking grace,
it is you mortals who strew the path with pointed rocks.”
Avalon smiled. It was not only a well-known line from an old Andromedean epic, but also a line of Amiran’s from their play.
She closed the Bible, sitting still for several minutes. Then she took in a deep breath and let it out again.
If it’s so simple to get and so great, I want it, thought Avalon. That sounded like a kid at Harrod’s who sees a toy he wants. But she knew it was true.
“Dear Kr-um, Jesus,” she began. “I-I don’t really know how to pray to you. I’m pretty sure you’re not like Ofelia, or Llednar, or Yushalie or Intara, who have prayer rituals. S-so I’ll do the best I can.”
She paused to exhale, then continued.
“I’ve known, somehow, my whole life that there had to be some other power there than the R Andromedean gods. I don’t know if that was you, but it probably was. Anyway, um, Barnaby told me – and the passages he highlighted say – that you died so that anyone who believes and accepts that death and the return from it can be saved. S-so, I’m hoping that, even with all the stuff I’ve done under this curse, totally against my will, that you still will save me.”
A tear rolled down her cheek. Was she crying?
“Please, Jesus, I believe you’re there and that you can save me. Please come into me and change me. I want to have the hope that Barnaby has! Please, save me!”
She collapsed into tears at that moment, as if all the pain of the six years of thievery and murder were coming back at once. She hadn’t cried like this since the first night, the night Seimon died.
The words of the song the choir sang came back to her:
My sin, oh the bliss of this glorious thought.
My sin, not the part but the whole
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more
Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord, oh my soul.
It is well, it is well
With my soul, with my soul
It is well, it is well with my soul
“Yes, Jesus, I want that,” she whispered amid the tears. “I want my sins taken away like that. I know only you can do that. Please come and do that in me.”
She broke into tears again, but she began feeling light inside, like she had felt when she heard the choir and when she’d resisted the curse. But it was a different kind of light – the kind she felt on a peaceful walk through Hyde Park, only magnified several hundred times.
“Ahme-hedd,” Avalon whispered, remembering an old word the Eirianian merchant had taught her one day as they settled accounts. “Soul-peace,” it meant, and those of Eirian still used it. That was the best word she could think of now to explain this feeling.
She looked up. The clock read 12:30. She should probably go to sleep.
She set the Bible on the nightstand and climbed into bed as usual. Tonight felt different, though. So she got up again, undressed, and rummaged in her dresser for a nightgown that Suiny’s wife had made for her coming-out party but that Avalon had never worn. She put it on. It still fit, somehow. Actually, it was a little too big, and Avalon figured this was more that Suiny’s wife thought Avalon would develop the bulky Andromedean figure than any effort of Avalon’s to maintain a reasonably-sized Earth figure.
She walked back to bed and climbed back in. In a shorter time than ever before, she was asleep. Tonight, she thought, my sleep will be sweet. Because…I have hope now.
