One of those believers was Adolph Hitler. Hitler murdered six million Jews.
If he himself had been Jewish, there would have been no reason for the genocide. My grandmother would not have suffered the loss of her siblings and other relatives, and she would have had a chance to have a happy life.
Killing Jesus might stop Hitler from killing so many innocent people.
Or maybe not. Maybe he would have found some other reason, but I needed to try. I could use Grandma’s Shelljah time machine to fix her life.
Walking felt therapeutic. One foot in front of the other, again and again. We kept a steady rhythm going, moving ever closer to my goal.
By noon, the sun was shining down with its full power, but it did not bother us. We wore a gray covering on our head, as did all the men from Judea. We did veer a little to the west of the river, because there was heavy vegetation, and the route to the west was easier.
That’s when we saw the dead woman.
From about a hundred feet away, we could see her lying on the ground, collapsed, blood splattered on her robe.
As we got closer, Adlai tried to rush our body, to keep walking past her. I couldn’t let him. He’d seen his share of abandoned women before, and I could feel his need to ignore her, as she was of no value, but my 21st century soul wouldn’t allow us to ignore her.
I stopped and stared.
She was flat on the ground, arms outstretched, her cheek plastered into the sand.
Her eyes were open, but she didn’t move. Her hair was black, as was true of almost all women of the region. Adlai had never seen a blonde woman and would have been shocked if he did.
I hesitated, not knowing what to do. I glanced around to be sure this wasn’t an ambush of some kind, which is why Adlai had wanted to rush past. It could easily be a Roman trick.
But, no. The entire area as far as we could see was empty.
“Hello?”
I leaned down and touched her hand. It was warm, and I could move her fingers easily, so if she really was dead, it hadn’t been for long.
I felt for a pulse, which was an action totally foreign to Adlai. He was surprised to hear the quiet bump of a heartbeat. I was too. She was alive, although I didn’t think she would be for long.
Her robe was white, of course, but there were streaks of blood covering her. I couldn’t see where it had come from.
We shook the woman, and I called to her again. Her eyes didn’t focus, and she didn’t reply.
There were still no other people around to help, not that they would have anyhow. It was clear that it was up to us to help her.
We picked her up in our arms and walked toward the Jordan.
I thought about taking off her robe, to see where the blood had come from, but that would have shocked Adlai to his core.
Adlai had spent some of his teen years in Qumran, a tiny outpost on the Dead Sea. It was where many Essenes lived. The Essenes were a Jewish sect who were very devoted and who later became famous for having written the Dead Sea Scrolls, which contained many writings, including the oldest copies of the Old Testament ever found.
They were a commune of celibates who wanted little to do with women. Adlai had grown to feel that way, and he resisted my attempts to help this unknown woman. I ignored his feelings.
Within a few minutes, we were by the river. We carried her body into the water and lowered her, allowing her to become refreshed. I splashed water onto her face and cupped some to drop into her mouth.
She drank and as I washed her hair back, her eyes fluttered and then focused on me.
The woman was fearful, which wasn’t a big surprise.
“Hello,” I said gently. “You’re going to be fine.”
She looked around as if expecting others to be present. Then, she swallowed and licked her lips. Her face was very pretty, and I realized how much I was enjoying looking at her.
She reminded me of Karen.
For the first time, I wondered if Karen Anderson also had past lives that could have converged with my own.
I almost laughed to think this girl could be carrying Karen’s soul. The chances of that happening were ridiculously small.
“Who are you?” she whispered.
The girl pushed herself from my arms and stood on her own. She wasn’t hurt as badly as she had appeared.
“I am Adlai. Who are you?”
“My name is Shonda.”
“What happened to you?”
Shonda lowered her head. “I am a water-girl, but I disappointed my master.”
“How?”
“I am barren. I was unable to provide him with children, so I am useless to him.”
My memories from Adlai made me believe Shonda’s words, but my David memories made me grow angry that somebody had treated this girl so badly.
“You’re just a girl.”
She stared at me, not knowing how to reply.
“Are you bleeding?” I asked her.
“No. He left me for dead in the desert, marking me with a jug of pig blood, so that everyone would stay away from me. I should be dead.”
Part of me wanted to hug her, to comfort her, and to let her know everything would be okay, but I hesitated. I had no idea what would happen to the girl when we parted ways, and I didn’t want to give her false hope.
“Are you hungry?”
She nodded. I offered her my hand and led her to shore. We found a sheltered area, where she could sit, and then I went back to catch her some food. It wasn’t long before I had another musht. I prepared it for her and she ate it greedily.
I watched, having no idea what to do next.
Chapter 13
Two days later, I met Jesus.
Regardless of my views on religion, and my belief that there’s no such thing as supernatural deities, it was still a gut-wrenching and inspiring moment to meet the man who would inspire billions of people to follow him.
Chapter 14
I got ahead of myself, but I hope you understand. Let me go back a bit.
The day I found Shonda, she was quite weak, even after being in the river and having a couple of fish to eat. There was no reason to rush, and I didn’t want to abandon her, so we stayed where we were and relaxed for the rest of the day.
Shonda told me a bit about her life. She was born in a tiny village where only about a hundred people lived. Her parents took her to Bethel when she was still a child, and they sold her to a man who already had eight other women in his harem. When she was twelve, she was old enough, as far as he was concerned.
She never used the man’s name, and I could feel the hate seeping out as she spoke of him. Hard to blame her, although in my own mind, I thought her parents were really the despicable people in her life.
Now, seven years had passed without Shonda producing a baby. She was deemed useless.
“He was going to kill me by strangling me,” she said. As she told me that, she subconsciously felt her neck, as if trying to reassure herself that she hadn’t been murdered after all.
“I just stared at him, knowing anything I said would only make matters worse. The rest of his harem were there with him, each of which had given him at least one child. The children were hidden away. I don’t know why he even cared about children, because he never spent any time with them. But, he did care. Deeply. He wanted me dead, but he decided not to do it himself.”
I could see tears in her eyes as she told me her story. As far as I could tell, she was a sweet girl, who should have had a happy life. I wanted to kill the fucker who treated her so badly.
“In the end, he said I wasn’t worth his killing me. He called for his protectors and told them to abandon me in the desert and let me die on my own.”
She moved closer to me until her face was only a foot away from my own. She really was a pretty girl.