Worthy of Rain

by Elizaveta Fehr

  I screamed in terror as I heard the blue rocks falling around me, the sound of snapping branches and rustling leaves startling me as I tried to focus on where I was at. I blinked my eyes rapidly and felt rough bark beneath my hands. I was crouched up on a tree branch, just shy of a hundred yards away from the crumpling city of Jericho. Screams were still ripping into the air, and the earth shook violently. I gripped the branches around me and shut my eyes, trying to cover my head at the same time. Most of the canopy was protecting me from the raining rocks, but I didn’t want to take my chances.

  I had no idea when it was going to stop. I was so afraid I was going to fall, my knuckles turned white, and I braced my body against the trunk of the tree. Then, just as quickly as the earthquake had started, it stopped, jolting the ground with one last shake before the land settled as it was once before.

  I opened my eyes and looked around, keeping my body as still as possible. In the distance, I caught a glimpse of the Israelite soldiers appearing from beyond the hills. They were all heading—unscathed, by the looks of it—towards the ruins.

  I regained my footing and climbed down to the lowest limb and jumped down. I ripped the armor off and felt the weight release. I watched from the shadows the Israelite soldiers charging into the city with raised spears. When both layers of walls fell, it created a type of ramp, allowing them to parade right inside.

  I raced the several hundred yards across the grass to get to the base of the rubble without being seen. I didn’t have the armor to disguise me anymore. Then, I realized I wouldn’t need it anyway. The Israelites were too enveloped in their celebration to notice me.

  I climbed up over the base of the wall and followed them, making sure to watch my footing.

  The wreckage was incredible. There were parts of the structure that were ground almost to dust, while other sections of the city still lay in shattered chunks. Everything was completely destroyed.

  Except for one part.

  I could recognize Rahab’s house anywhere, especially with the scarlet rope hanging from the window. It swayed in the breeze, waving at me.

  So the Israelites kept their word. God kept His word. He didn’t destroy her along with everyone else.

  I had to find Jedidah to tell her the news.

  My step stumbled a little. Jedidah. I had lost sight of her when the earthquake started. She could be anywhere, and it wasn’t helping that I kept moving.

  I stopped and took a deep breath. By now, I was near where the outskirts of the city would be if the walls were still standing. The air was quiet except for the victorious shouts of the Israelites echoing in the distance as they headed towards the center of the city.

  I kicked a piece of rock and tried to get my bearings. Now what? The siege was over. All the Israelites had to do was rebuild the city or plunder it all. As for me, I had no idea where I was supposed to go next. Would I follow the Israelites? Maybe I should find Jedidah and travel with her for a while. I still had so many questions. I wanted to know the history of these people. How did they find God? And was He whom they say He was?

  I sighed. Everything kept coming back in circles. I would find out more about Him, and then I would lose whatever clarity I had as it all would drown beneath more questions and confusion. How were any of these stories helping me find out about God? They were stories. Nothing more than stories used to fill blank pages.

  I sat on a rock jutting out from the ruins. I shouldn’t have come. There was no point in any of this.

  “Pagejumping,” I said sarcastically, rubbing my aching temples. “Good one, Jace.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of a splash of color lurking in the shadows of a pile of stones sitting in front of me. I squinted, trying to make out what it was. I crawled forward on my knees and grabbed it, reaching underneath one of the rocks jutting out of the pile like a mini overhang.

  It was a stone. A stone the color of a robin’s egg.

  My heart skipped and I looked up, my stomach caving in on itself.

  The crack was still in the sky.

  “Genesis!”

  My heart jumped out of my chest. I stood up, watching Jedidah crash into me as she tried to stop herself from falling over entirely. Her chest was heaving and her words were coming out in short gasps.

  “Jedidah, slow down, okay? I can’t understand you.”

  She swallowed, bent over, took one last heave, and threw up on the dusty ground. I quickly moved behind her to push the hair away from her face as she heaved again. Her body was shaking uncontrollably, and almost immediately, the stench floated up to my nostrils.

  “They’re…going…to…kill him,” she cried, sobs wracking her body. She wiped a hand over her mouth.

  I grabbed her gently on both of her shoulders. “Who? Who is being killed?”

  “A man from one of the tribes. I saw him take it…I told him not to…he shouldn’t have done it…I told him, I told him,” her words ran together as she cried, hardly keeping the tears from flowing.

  “Show me,” I said urgently. She immediately took my hand and led me through the rubble, leaning on me for support. Her other hand alternated between pressing over her mouth and her stomach as we got closer to the entrance to the city.

  There, I saw the crowd gathering around. Some of the families must have been brought to Jericho after they heard the news that the Israelites had conquered the city. I could see the beginning of tent grounds being set up around the outskirts.

  From the back, the crowd looked normal, milling together and looking at something on the ground in the center of the mass. But as I got closer, I recognized the slouch in their shoulders. I could hear the muffled sobs buried beneath clothes. I could smell the stench of dead skin. The senses were familiar, as if I had relived them every day of my life.

  That was why I was not surprised when I saw the dead bodies lying on the ground in the middle of the crowd. That was why I barely noticed Jedidah crumpling on the dirt, dry heaving more vomit. That was why every part of the world around me went dark except for that one spot in the middle of the grass.

  After you experience a parent’s death, you learn to recognize what a funeral is supposed to look like.

  Chapter Sixty

  “‘Tell me what you have done; do not hide it from me.’”

  Joshua 7:19

  I couldn’t move.

  There was a woman on the ground. A man. A teenage boy. Her face wasn’t facing towards me, but she had wavy brown hair caked in blood. I kept imagining her head rolling back and forth, back and forth. She had my mother’s face every single time her head would roll towards me.

  Dead sheep and goats. Broken wagon wheels.

  The crowd just stood there. Some were crying. Some were somber. Some tried to pray. I could hear Jedidah weep behind me, still gagging.

  There were stones littered around them on the ground around the bodies. That was when everything clicked.

  I just walked in on a stoning.

  “Come on, come onnnnnnn,” I whispered into the phone, clasping and unclasping my left hand. I was afraid to shift my weight because I knew the attic floor would creak, letting my dad know I was up, trying to call Jace at 1:00 a.m.

  I heard the mechanical voice of his answering machine and groaned under my breath. I sat on my knees, defeated. The Bible sat a little way away from me, one of its top corners hiding in the shadows. I didn’t want to look at it. No, I couldn’t look at it.

  I needed Jace. He would explain everything. It would all make sense.

  I tried to call him again with no luck. I didn’t know what I was going to say. I didn’t know what more he could say. All I knew was I needed to hear his voice, even if he had been ignoring me for the past day.

  Suddenly, the screen of my phone lit up and it buzzed in my hand. I jumped, startled. I hesitated for a split second before I answered it, pressing the phone to my ear before I could back out. My heart had already started beating faster than I needed it to.

  �
��Genesis?” Jace’s voice was sleepy and muffled on the other end. I could be imagining the deep concern hidden in his voice.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but instead of words, a sob burst out. I could feel the tears already tracing hot fingers down my cheeks. I tried to cover my mouth, but I already knew I’d passed the point of no return, so it only made it worse.

  I didn’t realize I’d been trying to piece together a sentence this whole time until Jace interrupted me, trying to get me to calm down.

  “Genesis, what’s wrong? What happened?” His voice sounded less muffled now.

  I could hear a rustling sound on the other end, like he was moving the covers on his bed. I choked on a sob and shook my head, realizing that he couldn’t see me right now but not caring regardless. The rustling stopped abruptly, and I could hear Jace breathing on the other end.

  After a few heartbeats, he said, “You saw it, didn’t you.” He said it like it was a fact more than a question.

  I nodded even though he couldn’t see me, but I had the feeling he knew what I was doing. I had so many questions and accusations in my head, but none of them came out.

  “Where were you all day, Jace?” I choked out instead, trying to keep my voice as quiet as possible but failing miserably.

  I heard a long silence on the other end. I’d calmed down a little, wiping my runny nose with the back of my hand.

  Jace sighed, breathing into the phone. “I’ve been pagejumping,” he admitted. “We need more research. I thought I could find something that could help us. Some kind of clue…” he trailed off, lost in his own explanation.

  I shifted my legs that were folded under me. That explained why he looked so tired before and why he wasn’t at school or didn’t ride the bus with me.

  He was pagejumping this whole time.

  Now, more than ever, I understood the danger of what we were doing. The Bible was more real to us than it could ever be. It had love, it had families, it had wars, it had stories, but it also had darkness. A darkness that I understood on a deeper level.

  I thought of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, tempting an innocent human to become the evil she never knew could exist. The destruction of the flood flashed before my eyes, and for a moment, I was reliving the screams cut off by rushing water. Each one of Joseph’s brothers’ faces appeared at the top of the well. The city of Nineveh burned with hatred and loss. Sarina’s hand disappeared beyond my grasp. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego fell into a flaming furnace. Flames shaped like a lion’s mouth engulfed them, and I saw Daniel’s figure in the darkness. And finally, I saw my mother in her coffin. Her arms folded, her face something I didn’t recognize, before the last of her was shut away behind a barrier of earth.

  A darkness that I understood.

  “Why did they do it?” I barely whispered into the phone, a final tear escaping and rolling down to the corner of my mouth. “How could God let that happen? I just don’t understand. Why were they punished? If God is good, why is there so much hate in the world?”

  “I think you are talking about more than just the stoning…” Jace answered.

  I didn’t know what to say. I could feel the weight fall on my shoulders and a heaviness growing in my heart. I didn’t know how to stop it.

  “I think we should both get some sleep” Jace finally said. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you why I was gone,” he added, more quietly this time.

  “It’s okay,” I assured him, but I felt a pit in my stomach that I knew wasn’t going to go away for the rest of the night.

  “Are you going to be okay?” he asked me.

  “Yeah, thank you,” I said quickly, trying to put strength back into my voice that I hoped he wouldn’t recognize as fake. “Good night, Jace.”

  “See you soon.”

  I hit the end button first. I was exhausted from crying. I could already feel my eyelids start to droop. I didn’t even glance at the book. I just turned the lights off and crept down the stairs, leaving the book in the corner.

  None of it made sense. God was supposed to be an almighty, all-knowing God. But He didn’t save my mom from her accident. He didn’t save that family from being stoned to death. In fact, he was the one who punished them.

  Why?

  As I climbed into bed, I couldn’t help but notice that Jace didn’t seem to have an answer to my question either.

  Chapter Sixty-One

  “‘The stone the builders rejected

  has now become the cornerstone.’”

  Luke 20:17 NLT

  I waited for him at our usual spot. He was usually on the other side of the school by the end of the day, so I was always the first one to get there. I saw his mustard yellow shirt before I saw his face.

  “Hey,” I said distractedly as he walked up towards me.

  “Hey.” He gave me a half smile.

  I knew he was thinking about something. I couldn’t ever seem to read him all that much, but I usually knew when something was up. He was worried, and I knew why.

  Our project was due in a few days.

  We boarded the bus silently, both of us aware of the deadline hanging in the air above us. I decided before I waited for him that I wouldn’t mention last night. It was just a crazy random emotion, right? I was fine. I could go through with this. It was just one big mistake. There had to be some kind of universal answer to my question. Wasn’t there?

  But the pit in my stomach refused to go away.

  Jace said, sometimes a person could get inspiration just by working in a different atmosphere. That was why we ended up at the park somewhere back in the middle of the woods where there were only a few forgotten trails. The ground was still moist from yesterday’s rain, but we found a sunny clearing that seemed to be dry enough to sit down.

  “What if it doesn’t work?” I watched as he set his bag on the ground and pulled out a Bible. It was a dark navy blue, the color of the sky just after the sun had set, almost black. The lettering printed across it was a perfect sun-kissed hue. The letters blinded me as the sunlight hit it.

  “Is that yours?” I asked him, staring at it as he set it in his lap. He looked up and smiled at me, pain hidden behind his eyes.

  “It wasn’t always mine.” He looked down at it and ran his fingers along the cover, lost in thought. “And to answer your question, I don’t know if it will work again. That’s why I want to try.”

  I nodded. He was right. I sat across from him, setting my backpack next to me. We sat with our legs crisscrossed and faced each other.

  “Where do you want to go?” he asked me.

  I shrugged. “Surprise me.”

  Jace opened the Bible and flipped through it. The crisp pages rustled against one another, keeping in time with the cicadas buzzing somewhere in the forest. He looked up at me once he found the page he wanted.

  “You ready?”

  I nodded once. He then reached up and grabbed my hand, hovering above the page as he began to read. At first, nothing happened. Jace continued to read and glanced up at me at the end of one of the sentences. I nodded to tell him to continue.

  That was when the forest around the clearing started to spin ever so slowly. It spun faster and faster with each word, morphing into a green blur. I closed my eyes.

  When I opened them, the smell of a marketplace hit me square in the face before my mind registered where I was at.

  The streets were lively, colorful banners spread across the tops of the sandy-colored stone houses. The boxy buildings reached up higher as they climbed up the hill, winding with the street like scales on a serpent. Olive trees and palm trees pressed up against the homes. The variety of vendors took up the rest of the street, waving brightly colored scarves and setting out fresh fruits in their carts. The street was packed to the brim.

  I felt an elbow digging into my side as I was shoved out of the way. A group of people anxiously headed up the street, shoving past each other and talking loudly above the raucous of the marketplace.

  Attempting to
regain my bearings, I looked around.

  Where was Jace?

  I turned in circles and tried to look over the top of the crowd barreling through the streets. The vendors grumbled as their customers pushed past them, yelling louder at the pedestrians to try to get their attention. I covered my ears and tried to back away, but in my haste, I stepped into a stack of chicken cages. Feathers went flying.

  A man was speaking to me angrily, waving his hands frantically. I couldn’t understand a word he was saying because he was speaking in Hebrew. But the words used by an angry person were pretty much universal.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I held up one hand and used the other to push one of the cages. He continued to yell at me in Hebrew as I brushed the feathers off of me.

  “I’m leaving now, geez. Calm down,” I said as I walked away. He muttered under his breath as I left, then tried to snag another customer into his trap before I disappeared from view.

  I shook my head to clear it. I’d always been able to understand what others were saying. Why was it different now? It didn’t make sense.

  I didn’t realize I was following the crowd up the street until I was too far past the vendor to go back. I looked for Jace as I walked, hoping to locate his wavy brown hair in the frantic crowd. What were they so worked up about anyway?

  After a while, the street opened up into a bigger area, one with a few more trees, less money hungry vendors, and several majestic looking buildings decorated with pillars and massive doors. The city was thriving. There was already a crowd gathered. They left a thin trail where someone could pass through and laid down colorful blankets and palm branches in the middle of the street, almost like they were waiting for someone. Like a one-man parade.

  I pushed past the crowd, trying to gain some distance from the moving elbows and knees and feet. I had to find Jace. I had no idea what story I was in, and if something bad was about to happen, I had to be ready.