Chapter Text
Simon
The crowd is getting more bunched up. It feels like we’re trapped between the pillar of smoke on one side and the great sea on the other. We’re looking down at the sea, and I’ve never seen so much water all in one place. I can’t see past the pillar of smoke, but Peniah says we’re being pursued by Pharaoh and his army, and I think she’s right — I never really believed that he would just let us go.
I feel a tension building in the people around me, hear increasingly worried murmurs. Someone shouts, “Why bring us here to die? We could have died comfortably in Egypt!” The cry is met with sounds of frustration and agreement. Everyone is very uncertain. It feels like something is about to burst. Is this what a baby feels like when it’s about to be born?
Suddenly a great wind blasts over us. It comes from the smoke and goes over us, past us, towards the shore. It sounds like a desertful of sand being poured onto stone. As it rushes onward down the hill, I hear a gasp and a great stirring in the crowd. I look around to see what's happened, and I realize that everyone around us is turning to face downhill to the sea. The wind has split the sea in two and laid the ground bare — what was the bottom of the sea is like a broad road between two walls of water. The crowd begins, unbelievably, to flow down the hill and onto that road.
I look at Baz and Eb in astonishment. Nothing we have seen this year compares to this. We close up together so we’re shoulder to shoulder, and we walk forward, in the heart of the whole Hebrew people, towards the rift in the sea. There are so many Hebrews, and the path through the sea is so long, that day fades into night as we walk between the walls of water in our thousands. I look over my shoulder and see that the pillar of smoke has become a pillar of fire once again.
When it’s the turn of our little group (our family?) to pass through, I look at the water towering over our heads on either side. It’s very frightening — suppose the miracle fails and the water crashes down? But it doesn’t, and we pass through the sea — between the sea — and climb onto the high ground on the other side. We turn back to look at the sea, and we see our people continuing to stream through. As the final Hebrews climb onto the bank, the pillar of fire whips out of the way, and Pharaoh’s army, horses and men and chariots, comes storming down the hill and into the gap in the waters.
Fear is reaching a peak among the throng of Hebrews again, but we’re not moving up and away, just standing as if stuck to the ground, watching the army pour between the walls of water. I want to get out of here, but in the midst of so many people it’s not possible. And then, when the entire army is on the seabed, the thing I had feared happens — the water falls with a mighty crash and enormous waves. There’s whirlpools and chaos, the brief neighing of terrified horses, the shouts of terrified men, and then only the dying crash of the waves, spears and bows and nameless fragments being washed this way and that as the water settles back into its place as if it had never parted.
A mighty shout of relief, of freedom, of vindication goes up all around me, and I’m caught up in it for exactly one moment. And then I realize that Baz is crying out not in joy but in horror. He starts to run down towards the sea, and I understand. Those are Egyptians, drowned in the sea. And to him, that doesn’t mean freedom. I catch him around the shoulders and hold him still. He struggles with me as I say, “Baz! Stop! There’s nothing you can do. I’m sorry. I'm so sorry."
The cheers around us become singing — a song of joy and triumph, extolling our God and his might, praising him as a warrior who has cast the chariots into the sea. Women take out small drums and begin to dance with triumphant joy, a very different mood from the wistful melodies that Baz, Eb, and I sent around our little hut on our last evening in Rameses. “Who is like you among the gods, our Lord, who is like you, great in holiness, awesome in glory, doing wonders?” they sing. “Horse and rider He has cast into the sea,” all sung to joyful dancing.
Baz
After a moment, I stop fighting Simon and collapse against him. He starts leading me through the throng, up off the broad pathway onto the hillside. As he does, I realize what I’m hearing.
“They're singing, Simon, they're singing! And dancing. Look at all those bodies, those men, those horses, those chariots... My cousin Dev was a charioteer. My friend Nil was in the quartermaster's corps. The last time I saw Nil, I fought with him, and now they’re both dead, floating there or tangled in the wreckage, and these people are shouting their joy!”
He holds me tight and leans his head against mine, cradling the back of my head with his hands but saying nothing. Eb puts her arms around us both as she says “They're only human, Baz. They're not happy that those people are dead, not exactly. They're happy that they feel safe and free, for the first time ever. But I’m so sorry for what you’ve lost.” And she plants a kiss on my shoulder.
I think about the cost, all the costs. I think about Dev and Nil and thousands like them. I think about the baby I’ll never meet, about my mother, gone for many years, about my home. About people crushed by hail. About a nation without food. About a dead child in every family except mine, because I ran away. And like those walls of water crashing down, my tears rush out of me, storming wildly, leaving chaos in their wake, as Simon holds me.
He lowers me to sit on some of our bundles and then wraps himself back around me. We sit there for a long time, and I finally bury my face in my hands and blurt out, “I don’t know if I can do this, Simon. I want to be with you. But what has it brought me? Thousands of Egyptians dead. My cousin and my friend dead. For Osiris’ sake, you cut off part of my penis and it still hurts!”
I look at him. “You should keep going, Simon. You’ll get left behind.”
“Only if you come with me, Baz.” Simon swallows. (Even in my distraught state, I notice his swallow. It’s beautiful.) “You asked what this has brought you. It’s brought you to a place where you and I can be equals, where we can share a blanket under the stars, not alone, but in the midst of a nation. Where we can walk side by side and not have to skulk behind a storehouse to have a conversation.” He takes my hands. “I want to be with you. Wherever you are. Wherever we can have this. You’ve lost so much for it, and I’m so, so sorry. And I’m not leaving you.”
I rub the back of my hand against my eyes, smearing my tears. “We can’t go back to Egypt, Simon. Before, you couldn’t be there and be free. Now I don’t think they’d let you live. And besides, there’s a sea in the way.” We both laugh wetly (I think he’s crying too).
“Well then, we won’t go back to Egypt. What else have you got?”
“Well…” I think. “We can’t stay here. Three of us, in the wilderness? I doubt we’d live very long.” I throw my head back and sigh. “I’ve just proved it, haven’t I? We have no choice.”
“No choice other than…?” he asks, looking at me out of the side of his eyes. (Eb is tactfully facing away from us.)
“We have to carry on. Into the future, into the desert, side by side. Into the Hebrew future, whatever that looks like.”
“I think you’re right. And I hope you can find some happiness in that future. But we don’t have to set off this instant. It’s going to take everybody a long time to pass us by, and even after they do, the smoke and fire are visible for a long damn way. We can sit here until you’re really ready to move. Sleep here for a night or two, even, if you want.”
I slump against him, unspeakably grateful. We’ll carry on in a day or two, but for now, some grace for healing, some more time to cry and be held, is exactly what I need.
Epilogue
We stayed there by the path, up above the Sea of Reeds, for a day and a half in all. I cried, I rested. I told Eb and Simon about Dev and Nil and my few precious memories of my mother. About the cool green pool in the courtyard of the house, about Dafne’s baby and Father’s expectations. Finally, when I had said, if not everything, enough, we got up and walked again towards the pillar of smoke and fire. Simon was right — the mass of people didn’t move quickly. We caught up with them within three days.
We’ve had several new moons since then, and amazing things have happened. We all waited at the foot of a mountain as Moshe stood upon it in a fiery storm and brought back eternal laws from Adonai (yet another name for El Shaddai, our God). And yes, he is my God now, too, truly.
The food we brought with us is long gone, but we’re fed on amazing stuff that appears on the surface of the desert overnight.
I thought there would be no use for a scribe in the desert, but I was wrong. Moshe brought back two stone tablets with laws carved on them, but there’s far more to the law that he’s written down as well, as God told it to him. I’ve been learning Hebrew letters so I can help make further copies of the Law. And we need to reckon up and record the livestock for sacrifices, and the materials to build the portable temple that will house Adonai in our midst, and so many other things.
So I have a job, a way that I can contribute to my new people. I have a family. I have a future.
And I have Simon.
And he is all I need.