Josh nodded, then climbed on his camel. “Go with God, Joy,” he said. As we rode through the gates of the palace the guards shot fire arrows that trailed long tails of sparks over us until they exploded above the road ahead: Joy’s last good-bye to us, a tribute to the friendship and arcane knowledge we had all shared. It scared the bejeezus out of the camels.

After we had been on the road awhile, Joshua asked, “Did you say goodbye to Vana?”

“I intended to, but when I went to the stable she was practicing her yoga and I didn’t want to disturb her.”

“No kidding?”

“Really, she was sitting in one of the postures you taught her.”

Joshua smiled. It didn’t hurt anything for him to believe that.

The journey on the Silk Road through the high deserts took us over a month, but it was fairly uneventful, except for one attack by a small group of bandits. When I caught the first two spears they flung at me and flung them right back, wounding the two who had thrown them, they turned and ran. The weather was mild, or as mild as one can expect in a deadly and brutal desert, but by now Joshua and I had traveled so much in this sort of harsh country that there was little that affected us. Just before we reached Antioch, however, a sandstorm whipped up out of the desert that left us hiding between our camels for two days, breathing through our shirts and washing the mud out of our mouths every time we took a drink. The storm settled enough to travel, and we were at a veritable gallop in the streets of Antioch when Joshua located an inn by impacting with its sign on his forehead. He was knocked back off his camel and sat up in the street with blood streaming down his face.

“Are you hurt badly?” I asked, kneeling beside him. I could barely see in the driving dust.

Joshua looked at the blood on his hands where he had touched his forehead. “I don’t know. It doesn’t hurt that badly, but I can’t tell.”

“Inside,” I said, helping him to his feet and through the door of the inn.

“Shut the door,” the innkeeper shouted as the wind whipped through the room. “Were you born in a barn?”

“Yeah,” said Joshua.

“He was,” I said. “Angels on the roof, though.”

“Shut the damn door,” said the innkeeper.

I left Joshua sitting there by the door while I went out and found shelter for the camels. When I returned Joshua was wiping his face with a linen cloth that someone had handed to him. A couple of men stood over him, eager to help. I handed the cloth to one of them and examined Josh’s wounds. “You’ll live. A big bump and two cuts, but you’ll live. You can’t do the healing thing on—”

Joshua shook his head.

“Hey, look at this,” one of the travelers who had helped Joshua said, holding up the piece of linen Joshua had used to wipe his face. The dust and blood from Josh’s face had left a perfect likeness on the linen, even handprints where he’d gotten blood from his head wound. “Can I keep this?” the fellow said. He was speaking Latin, but with a strange accent.

“Sure,” I said. “Where are you fellahs from?”

“We’re from the Ligurian tribe, from the territories north of Rome. A city on the Po river called Turin. Have you heard of it?”

“No, I haven’t. You know, you fellahs can do what you want with that cloth, but out on my camel I’ve got some erotic drawings from the East that are going to be worth something someday. I can let you have them for a very fair price.”

The Turinians went off holding their pathetic swath of muddy cloth like it was some kind of holy relic. Ignorant bastards wouldn’t know art if you nailed them to it. I bandaged Joshua’s wounds and we checked into the inn for the night.

In the morning we decided to keep our camels and take the land route home through Damascus. As we passed out of the gates of Damascus on the final leg home, Joshua started to worry.

“I’m not ready to be the Messiah, Biff. If I’m being called home to lead our people I don’t even know where to start. I understand the things I want to teach, but I don’t have the words yet. Melchior was right about that. Before anything you have to have the word.”

“Well it’s not just going to come to you in a flash here on the Damascus road, Josh. That sort of thing doesn’t happen. You’re obviously supposed to learn what you need to know in its own time. To everything a season, yada, yada, yada…”

“My father could have made learning all this easier. He could have just told me what I was supposed to do.”

“I wonder how Maggie’s doing. You think she got fat?”

“I’m trying to talk about God here, about the Divine Spark, about bringing the kingdom to our people.”

“I know you are, so am I. Do you want to do all of that without help?”

“I guess not.”

“Well, that’s why I was thinking about Maggie. She was smarter than us before we left, she’s probably smarter than us now.”

“She was smart, wasn’t she? She wanted to be a fisherman,” said Josh, grinning. I could tell that the thought of seeing Maggie tickled him.

“You can’t tell her about all the whores, Josh.”

“I won’t.”

“Or Joy and the girls. Or the old woman with no teeth.”

“I won’t tell her about any of them, not even the yak.”

“There was nothing with the yak. The yak and I weren’t even on speaking terms.”

“You know, she probably has a dozen children by now.”

“I know.” I sighed. “They should be mine.”

“And mine.” Joshua sighed back.

I looked at him as he rode beside me in a sea of gently loping camel waves. He was staring off at the horizon, looking forlorn. “Yours and mine? You think they should be yours and mine?”

“Sure, why not. You know I love all the little—”

“You are such a doofus sometimes.”

“Do you think she’ll remember us? I mean, how we all were back then?”

I thought about it and shuddered. “I hope not.”

No sooner did we pass into Galilee than we began to hear about what John the Baptist was doing in Judea.

“Hundreds have followed him into the desert,” we heard in Gischala.

“Some say he is the Messiah,” one man told us in Baca.

“Herod is afraid of him,” said a woman in Cana.

“He’s another crazy holy man,” said a Roman soldier in Sepphoris. “The Jews breed them like rabbits. I hear he drowns anyone who doesn’t agree with him. First sensible idea I’ve heard since I was sent to this accursed territory.”

“May I have your name, soldier?” I asked.

“Caius Junius, of the Sixth Legion.”

“Thank you. We’ll keep you in mind.” To Josh I said, “Caius Junius: front of the line when we start shoving Romans out of the kingdom into the fiery abyss.”

“What did you say?” said the Roman.

“No, no, don’t thank me, you earned it. Right at the front of the line you go, Caius.”

“Biff!” Josh barked, and once he had my attention he whispered, “Try not to get us thrown into prison before we get home, please.”

I nodded and waved to the legionnaire as we rode away. “Just crazy Jew talk. Pay no attention. Whimper Fidelis,” I said.

“We have to find John after we see our families,” Joshua said.

“Do you think that he’s really claiming to be the Messiah?”

“No, but it sounds like he knows how to get the word out.”

We rode into Nazareth a half hour later.

I suppose we expected more upon our arrival. Cheering maybe, little children running at our heels begging for tales of our great adventures, tears and laughter, kisses and hugs, strong shoulders to bear the conquering heroes through the streets. What we’d forgotten was that while we were traveling, having adventures, and experiencing wonders, the people of Nazareth had been living through the same old day-to-day crap—a lot of days had passed, and a lot of crap. When we rode up to Joshua’s old house, his brother James was working outside under the awning, shaving a piece of olive wood into a strut for a camel saddle. I knew it was James the moment I saw him. He had Joshua’s narrow hooked nose and wide eyes, but his face was more weathered than Josh’s, and his body heavier with muscle. He looked ten years older than Joshua rather than the two years younger that he was.