The Sword of Ruth: The Story of Jesus' Little Sister

by V. M. Franck

The morning's clear skies greeted us as we eased off the lift and glided over to a group of snow-covered trees. Tad knelt at my feet and rechecked our bindings.

  "I can't believe how different I feel today," he said. "So different. I didn't think getting married would make me giddy."

  "It does feel...uh..."

  "Great. Say it. It feels great."

  "Yes, it feels great," I said, but those were not the right words. Something gnawed at me, a feeling I could not identify. Deciding I was being paranoid, I decided to ignore it. "I love you, Tad. I do love you so much."

  "Me too, you," he said, popping a kiss to my lips. "Let's hit it."

  He looked rakish, virile in his heather blue stretch pants and matching jacket. They hugged his form, accenting his accoutrements. Confident and mildly vain, with a touch of boyishness which transcended age, he pushed out into the middle of the run.

  Shaking the foreboding with threatened me again, I assigned it to the place I stored feelings about my brother, Demmy. So many times since the killings, I had known that all-hell was about to show up. Every time I had been wrong.

  With an umph and a slide I followed Tad down the slope. Grinning, he glanced back at me and disappeared into a dip. Mogul after mogul popped up in front of me. Tad's head, his body rose again. He whooshed back and forth, in sync with the hillside.

  Determined to match his mood, I swished after him. The biting breeze, the quick movement brought exhilaration. I came to the top of a rise in time to see him push off. The tip of his right ski caught on something. He yelled, tumbled and slid on his side for twenty or thirty feet, stopping at the base of a large mogul.

  Alarmed, I raced down to him.

  "Don't look so worried," he said, as he untangled his skis, planted the baskets on the end of his poles into the snow and struggled to stand. He patted my butt, bent forward racer-style and was again out on the machine-packed surface.

  I found him waiting for me at the bottom of the slope. We headed together to the lift. There were only a few other skiers in line. In moments we were gliding up the mountain through the early morning sky.

  "See, all that worry was for nothing," he said, draping a gloved hand over my thigh. He broke into an elated grin, a look, a feeling of happiness which seemed to originate at his core.

  "I didn't say anything about being worried."

  "You didn't have to. Look, babe, I know this is a big step for you. I know you don't trust things to turn out right, because of your brother. But I promise, they are going according to plan."

  He wore an expression of newly acquired wisdom, a quality beyond his usual confidence. It bewildered me.

  "Whose plan? Tad, what do you know? What aren't you telling me?"

  "The powers that be. You and I are together like we were meant to be. We had a few scrapes before we found each other, but that's over now. It's going to be good for us from now on. Trust me."

  "Demmy said never trust anyone who said, 'trust me.'"

  "Ah, Demmy. I wish I could have gotten to know him better. He was always off somewhere, doing something it would never have occurred to me to do. He was a good guy."

  "Even after what he did?"

  "All of us have moments of delusion. Mostly, we don't act on what they tell us to do."

  "They?"

  "The delusions. Once in a while things come together in such a way that we see no other option. To us it may seem wrong, but to him, he had no choice."

  "Because he was nuts," I said.

  "No, because he was doing what he had agreed to do eons ago."

  "That only works if reincarnation is true."

  "What's you're point?"

  "You suddenly believe in that stuff?"

  He shrugged. "There's no real way to know for certain what's real and what's not. That's why manipulation is so easy. If you say God said it, or some famous dead guy said it, come up with documents to corroborate it, suddenly, voila, it's true. Anyway, doll-face, stop worrying. Our life is good, very good. It couldn't get any better."

  Our chair reached the top. We eased off and over to the side. Tad faced me, slid his skis on the outside of mine and hugged me hard.

  "I love you," he whispered, "so much. We are doing what we chose to do, what we were meant to do, what we were born to do. Both of us. Please, don't ever doubt that."

  Instantly terrified, I clung to him. When he pulled away, an inner hollowness replaced him.

  "Tad?"

  "Don't worry, everything is going to be fine. Let's get going before that cloud gets here. Follow me, black bird, let me show you what I've got."

  Sporting twinkles, he raced out onto the run, hit a bump and hot-dogged into the air.

  "Wah ho," he yelled.

  Deciding to follow him into exuberance, I matched his hot-dog jump and raced to catch up.

  Seeing me approach he swished faster, a figure of grace, a superb athlete. Trees sped passed. One with All-That-Is, I slipped into his perfection.

  He reached a trail marker. It read that the trail was for skilled skiers only. He headed down it. It was a new run that had been completed a few months earlier. As I mimicked his movements around the first corner, I spotted a couple of teenage boys. They skied up the side of a bank and off a make-shift jump. The first landed face-first in powder. The second barely missed him.

  The narrow run twisted between a corridor of snow-glazed trees. At the next bend I spotted Tad waiting and slid to a stop next to him. The quiet of the mountain wilderness gathered around us. Peace slipped in.

  "I love you," he said, with a near giggle. "I just love you so much."

  "I love you, too."

  "Raven, there's one thing I want you to know."

  "What's that?"

  "Do it for me. If you can't muster enough strength to do it for yourself, do it all for me. Then you will remember why it has to be like this."

  "Like what? What are you talking about?"

  "You'll see. Like Henry said, this is a new beginning."

  Skiing side-by-side we headed down the trail. Protected by a canyon of trees, there was no wind, no falling snow, only the brilliance of morning. We came to a drift extending out into the trail. He swerved around it with me close behind. Ahead was a drop off, marked by a sign. He tried to stop, but instead flew off the edge. Sailing through sky, he tucked his skis to his body and hit the snow, heading at racer's speed straight down the steep slope. Managing to maintain control, I did the same.

  Coming to an unexpected rise, he hit a mound of snow. His legs bounced out of form. His arms and poles splayed outward. His body flipped and flew toward the edge of the run. Upside down, he smacked into a tree. A ski wedged between a couple of branches. He dangled awkwardly from the frozen fir.

  Stunned, not believing what I had witnessed, I reached him as quickly as I could.

  "Tad? Tad? Are you all right?"

  He said nothing.

  Trying not to sink into the powder beneath him I managed to touch the gloved fingers of his hand. The rest of him was above my reach.

  "Tad, can you hear me? Dear God, Tad, wake up."

  The two teenage boys skied up behind me.

  One of them pulled out his cell phone and said, "I'll call for help."

  The other tried to reach Tad. He sank into the powder beneath my new husband.

  My husband. He was my husband. He could not be dead. Not dead. Terror returned, along with full-blown disbelief.

  "Don't worry, lady. We'll get him down. He'll be okay. You'll see."

  Ten long frigid minutes later a rescue crew in a snow-cat arrived and parked beneath the man I loved. Two rescuers climbed on top of the cat, untangled Tad's skis and released the jammed bindings. He slumped into their arms. They laid him on the roof and began CPR. After a horrible amount of time, they lifted him from the roof and onto a sled.

  One of them came over to me. "I'm sorry, ma'am. I'm really sorry."


  "He's dead?" I whispered.

  "I'm afraid so."

  Chapter 3