ADVENT'S SHADOW——MY GLOBE SOUP CONTEST ENTRY

Wow. I was long-listed in Globe Soup's 7 Day Challenge for the second time. It was the first time I'd written in my assigned genre (historical fiction), and I am thrilled from my eyebrows to my toenails! Thank you, Globe Soup peeps! Congrats to winner, Dr. Bethan Charles, for her edgy sci-fi piece. Loved it. 

Here is the link for contest winners: Globe Soup 7 Day Contest Winners

Here is the piece I wrote in only seven days—

Assigned Genre: HISTORICAL FICTION

THEME: A CHRISTMAS LIKE NO OTHER

 

ADVENT’S SHADOW

 

The 4^th Century port city of Myra, Lycia, was a brutal place for Christians, but Bishop Nicholas was undaunted by threats and persecutions. The bishop was in his study, leaning over the open window, his gnarled knuckles locked onto the sill like vice grips. His curly gray beard whipped like a widow’s scarf in the high winds, refracting his thoughts to his beloved parents who had died too long ago. The view from the study window overlooked the cliff above the bay and the Mediterranean Sea’s briny mineral scent clung to his nostrils. The bishop stepped back and struggled to shut the window door. He sat in meditation, preparing to absorb the barrage of prayers that would soon invade his conscious and electrify every cell in his body until it became a phantom limb. His reputation of performing virtuous, miraculous acts was well-known and endangered souls occasionally prayed to him directly.

 

Myra’s craggy coastline coveted vessels, lying in wait to masticate their keels as if it were an orca stalking seals. Nature was pitiless and without malicious intent, when its razor-sharp teeth severed the throats of men tossed into its mouth. The metallic flavor of bleeding men would be regurgitated into the abyss without a care. As the tempestuous sea whooshed the fishing smack towards imminent doom, its crew of twelve prayed for salvation. Their gullets raw from hacking up salty sea spray, they prayed first to God and then to Bishop Nicholas. Many of the fishermen had seen a comrade’s head crushed by a falling mast. Or their shipmate’s neck strangled by a snapped halyard. The gurgling fear of slowly drowning, entangled in a fishing net, added piercing volume to the sailors’ pleas.

Bishop Nicholas’s chest throbbed in response to the sailors’ hellbent prayers. His lips parted with a long slow exhalation, as Eldar and his mates’ screams for help penetrated deep into his awareness.

“Bishop Nicholas, we know God performs miracles through you…save us, save us for our unborn children. God have mercy on our souls.”

A haze of light engulfed Nicholas when a candle spontaneously ignited from an adjacent wall sconce. Echoing Jesus’s supplication posture, Nicholas beseeched God’s intervention on behalf of the sailors in fatal peril—

Sea mist stung his eyes and his boots slid across the slick wooden boat deck. Nicholas lashed himself to the railing near Eldar, utilizing his woolen omophorion as a tether. Drenched, his beard glazed with saltwater, Nicholas prayed for salvation while helping to push the boat into deeper waters with sculling oars. His calming essence, directing the path of the storm back into the clouds of thunder, where he disappeared.

Beneath clearing skies, the boat drifted to shore and the weary, confused sailors disembarked on pairs of legs as wobbly as those of a newborn colt.

A crowd gathered as Eldar led his fellows into town. Eldar said, “Listen to our story. Our ship was headed for disaster. Your Bishop Nicholas, to whom we prayed, appeared on the deck of our boat. He shouted prayers and aided our navigation out of the treacherous bay. He quieted the storm. Was there not a tempest less than two hours past? Your bishop is a wonderworker. I shall take a collection for the church and deliver it at first light.”

The following morning, Eldar entered the church. Standing before him in the church nave, was Bishop Nicholas. Eldar dropped to his knees, kissed the feet of his savior and said, “We would have been ripped to shreds without your presence aboard.”

Nicholas assured Eldar that he’d been in his study the day of the storm; yet, had heard the prayers of Eldar and his comrades. “It was God who manifested my bilocation to your ship, through the power of our prayers to Him. It was not my doing.” Indeed, his omophorion was clean and dry. The bishop appeared rested and peaceful.

Eldar said, “Bishop Nicholas, could it be, I wonder…if Christ Jesus then, is God who bilocated? Is that why some say Christ Jesus and God are one and the same? And Jesus is not merely God’s adopted son?”

Nicholas chuckled. He patted Eldar’s shoulder, bidding him to rise. “Eldar. I was imprisoned for punching that heretic Arius in the face for proposing Jesus was a separate being from God. You are very clever. I’ll consider your approach at the next Council of Nicea.”

“I am in your service, Bishop Nicholas. I renounce all but the one true God.”

 

Eldar spent the rest of his days fishing and serving the bishop and his church, until Nicholas insisted, he marry. The widower next door had a daughter. Vesile had been curious about Eldar, watching him go to and from the ocean with his stinky loads, always humming or praying aloud to God, as if they were brothers.

“Why do you pray so?” Vesile said as they walked a portion of the path together.

The sun blinded Eldar and he squinted. When he faced Vesile, the Son of God was in her cobalt eyes. He lost his voice in her gaze. And his hands in a tangled mass of shimmering black.

Eldar’s and Vesile’s tête-à-têtes became more frequent and intense. After Nicholas had secretly given Vesile’s father the money for her dowery, they married.

 

With a pure gaze, Bishop Nicholas lifted his voice to his third-ever Christmas congregation, “The Roman Emperor Constantine chose December 25, 336, to celebrate Christ’s birth for the first time. Christmas. Pagans had celebrated the ‘Unconquered Sun’ on December 25^th. In choosing the same date, the Church of Rome has successfully supplanted the pagan celebration. Let us give thanks, and pray to our Lord, who is with us, always.”

It was his last Christmas. Bishop Nicholas died December 6, 343.

 

The breezy December air flowing from the Mediterranean scoured Vesile’s disturbing thoughts as she awoke from yet another wraithlike dream. She’d grown up in a turbulent town by the sea. Poor. Hard working. Mother dead. Sisters to care for. Religious rules more daunting than life itself. But Christmas, despite her confinement and the reign of terror enveloping the world—she hoped would be a Revelation.

 

The labor pains were relentless. After thirty hours of labor, Vesile slipped in and out of consciousness. She was a wet rag that had been used to cleanse scores of filthy souls. Strange mutterings sliced through her painful moaning.

Vesile’s water broke on December 25^th; a full moon directly overhead, among a halo of stars, with planet Neptune hiding in the shadows. Nicholas, who had died months earlier, was aiding the passage of her baby through the birth canal, sliding the fetus out in a gush of icky burgundy. Before she succumbed to exhaustion, Nicholas draped the infant over her belly and said, “You and the Virgin Mary are now one.”

The sun was eclipsed for three hours as Vesile slept. The baby, his skin still covered in the creamy vernix caseosa, was nestled between Vesile and Eldar on the floor mattress and half-swaddled in a purple blanket. They named him Mustafa—One chosen by God. They would call him, “Tafa.”

Vesile awoke with Tafa suckling at her breast. Illumination from the world’s first Advent candle cast a shadow of mother and child upon the wall. Vesile’s tears flowed over the drying vernix pasted to Tafa’s skin, and trickled over his shoulders and down his back—a map to heaven? Or hell? She couldn’t tell. Her imagination reeled and pitched in concert with the churning curse of her heart—and then, she knew.

THE END