Had God seen? Marek looked around. The wind stilled for a moment, then stirred again. There were no cliff birds, no nests on the cliffs. Marek had lured Jacob up for nothing. A joke, he’d thought. The only birds who lived up so high were vultures. He took a step toward the cliff and peered over the edge. Jacob had landed on a stone outcropping. He lay on his side, as if in a casual repose, but as Marek squinted down he saw that a sphere of blood was widening across the rock like a halo around the boy’s head.
‘Help!’ Jacob cried.
Marek couldn’t move. The blood was black as sap, and Marek felt his knees buckle and shake when Jacob cried again, ‘Help!’ as he rolled onto his back. Now he stared straight up at Marek. His face was split and flattened on the side that had hit, and an eyeball was hanging from its socket. Marek got down on his knees as though he would pray, and he did—‘God, forgive me!’—and curled up on the dry hot ground. He could hear Jacob crying out, ‘Help me!’ His voice was not clear and strong as it used to be, but gurgling and shortened, like a poor person’s voice, a beggar groveling in the shit and piss outside a rich man’s window. ‘Marek?’
Marek was quiet. He watched the sky fill with thin gray clouds.
‘Help?’
Marek was grateful that the sun had been subdued. His skin chilled, his heart slowed. Eventually he couldn’t hear Jacob crying out and wheezing anymore. He took another look over the edge of the cliff. A few birds had landed on the outcropping and were blithely sipping at the blood that had pooled in a shallow of rock. This turned Marek’s stomach. He stepped back from the edge and vomited into the dry dirt: clear saliva came out, like a fountain. He realized that he hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. It was now late afternoon. Jude would be wondering where he’d gone. If his father thought Marek had wasted the whole day at Ina’s, he would be angry again. And Marek knew Jude was already tired from the work of being enraged last night, so this new rage would be a passive rage, one that was too steely and cold to come out with the passion of violence, but would be pure evil. It was a feeling that left Marek alone and jumpy. And on a day like this, having killed Jacob, he did not want to be alone. So he decided to run down the mountain as best he could—despite the burning acid in his throat and his hunger and fatigue and the throbbing in his head coming from his jaw and the soreness of his broken ribs. He had left Jacob’s bow and arrows at the top of the mountain. Maybe he would come back and get them one day. If the bandits came to the pasture, he could protect the lambs and his father. Wouldn’t everyone be surprised if this small, twisted creature came to be their savior after all? These were his stupid thoughts as he ran.
In the prestorm air, Marek could smell violets blooming, their bitter perfume lifting from the low ground into the wind as it swirled around the mountain. And from the ground there was also a warm iron smell. The mixture was heady and made Marek feel woozy again. The caw of vultures careening overhead woke him up and he ran faster. By now Ina would have heard what he had done to Jacob: the birds were singing all about it. Would they tell Ina about the rock? Marek wondered. Or just that Jacob slipped and fell? He considered running back down to Ina’s to seek shelter from the coming storm instead of returning home to Jude. As he reached the bottom of the mountain, he turned and looked up. Clouds were already covering the sky. If he turned south, he’d go to Ina’s. If he turned west, he’d go home to Jude. Thunder struck then, and it made Marek’s decision for him. Jude had seen a lamb get struck by lightning once, he had told Marek. ‘The smell of its cooked flesh carried through the prickling air, a horror worse than death,’ Jude had said. ‘Don’t get hit by the light, son. It will cook you.’ So Marek turned west and ran down to the pasture through the tall grasses now slapping against him, wet with rain and churning in the wind.
* * *
*
Jude knew what kind of storm this was. Not a spring rain, but a reckoning. Maybe God was angry that he’d beaten his son so hard the night before. Or maybe this was the hanged bandit’s spirit come back to wreck the land. Either way, he smelled the iron stink of blood in the air and he knew it was vengeful. Something bad would happen. He herded the lambs inside the cottage through the front door. He counted them again and again, saying, ‘Get in! Go!’ The babes obeyed, ignorant of the threat of the storm, crushing up against each other and baaing with complete trust and faith in Jude as he pushed them in. The ram would be left in its prison outside. It was indestructible, Jude thought, but the ewes and babes were sensitive. He got them all inside and told them to hush. ‘Lie down and rest until this is over.’