How did God speak to Abraham? Did he appear in a storm of lightning? Or perhaps he was subtle, a sudden hush of sand falling to dune. Perhaps the moon swelled three times, burnished copper on a holy horizon. Abraham does not say what happened that night. Maybe he merely dreamed the voice that said,Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, and make of him a burnt offering. When he woke he said nothing to Sarah. He didn’t ask his neighbors,Have you ever heard God speak in your dreams?No. He gathered the kindling and strapped it to Isaac’s back and led his child toward the mountain. Abraham didn’t question the voice in the night.
Aleys presses her troubled hands into the mantel above the fireplace to pin them to the wood. How did Abraham know it was God—and not the devil—who commanded him to kill the boy named laughter? She doesn’t dare look at Kat. Is it God in her head? Or Satan? It makes her angry. He granted Abraham certainty, the gift of patriarchs and prophets. Noah, Elijah, Isaiah. They knew.
Why, my beloved, when I give you everything, do you give me doubt?
Perhaps it’s not so simple. She has a resentful thought.Your descendants will form a great nation. Maybe Abraham already knew the ending. The test wasn’t real. Maybe it was all a wink and a nudge—Abraham, take your boy and bind him for sacrifice—and a whisper behind a palm—you know I’ll send an angel to spare him. Haven’t I already promised that you’ll father tribes?She pictures Abraham, swinging his knife high above Isaac, pausing at the peak, watching for the angel from the corner of his eye. And sure enough, here comes the winged creature, calling out:Abraham! Do not lay your hand on the boy. Do not do anything to him.
Was it fixed, this story?
She is exhausted to her marrow.My Lord, she begs,do not play games with me.You don’t need to make me promises or bribe me. Just ask.She forces herself to look at Kat, who half opens his eyes, sleepy. When she picks up her knife from the Bible, the pages of Abraham fan out, releasing their words into her cell. Aleys lays the blade flat across her open palms, raises her hands.If you show yourself to me, I will do it. Only this: Do not command me by subtle gesture and fleeting vision. Leave me without doubt, if you ask this of me. Use with me the voice that does not echo. Be plain with me, beloved. Do not let me confuse Satan’s voice for yours.
She listens.I’ll do it,she tells him.Come stay my hand. She reaches for Kat, pins him to the cot, feels his narrow spine beneath silky fur. He squirms and then panics, claws into her forearm; beads of crimson rise on her skin. She raises the knife. Kat hisses. She looks up, waits for the angel. But there is none. No voice. Only her own rapid heartbeat, and Kat’s fear beneath her hand. She looks down at Kat and sees the doe in the psalter.
The knife clatters to the floor, and she kicks it away. Aleys falls to her knees and drops her head on the cot and bites hard into the flesh of her own hand.
In the morning, Marte returns the blanket and the psalter. She says nothing, but her frown deepens. She takes the chamber pot to dump in the canal, and when she returns, passing it through, she asks, “Did you have another one of your visions, then? You don’t look well, miss.”
“No.” She can’t tell Marte that the whispers of the devil might be the commands of God and she’s no longer sure she knows the difference.
“Well, something kept you up. You look like you haven’t slept for days.”
“I was contemplating Abraham and Isaac.” I had the knife in my fist.
“The one where God tells Abraham to murder his own son?”
“That one.” Aleys feels tired just thinking of it. “God was testing him.”
“And he failed.”
“Abraham? Failed?” Surely Marte has misspoken.
“If that was God’s test, of course he failed. That man should have chosen his own child.”
It stops Aleys short. Is that possible?
Aleys is pacing the hold when Lukas knocks on the shutter. He’s come to explain the trial. He’s saying it would be helpful if God would speak to her while the delegation is here. She’s only half listening.
The last thing she needs now is to be interrogated about her faith. Not when it’s at its ebb, when the miracles are gone and her own visions feel like someone else’s stories. When the tests have no answers.
“Father, God no longer speaks to me. I feel like he’s disappeared.”
“That’s impossible.”
If only it were. “I tell you. I search for him, but I find nothing.” There’s only the emptiness of a sky with no birds, no clouds, neither sun nor moon nor star.
“Why? What have you done?”
Nothing, she considers telling him.I didn’t kill the cat. Should I have?
“It’s melancholia. I have warned you of this. You must pray.”
“What do you think I do in here? I’m a living prayer!” A working, crawling, living prayer. She glares at the black square. It’s so inadequate, his advice, it’s cruel. He has no idea how cruel it is. None of his prayers have ever been answered.
“Prayer requires patience.”
I can’t breathe, she wants to say.I’m drowning, my lungs are filling with dark water and I can’t see the surface and don’t know which way is up and you tell me to be patient?
“Our God is everlasting,” Lukas presses. He sounds resentful, like she’s reneging on a promise. “He is ever present.”
