In the morning, he was gone. And she was pregnant, although it took her a month to discover it.

“Any sensible girl would have been frightened or furious, but Mara had lost the capacity for facing life in its raw state of truth. She decided she was not pregnant; she had merely miscounted the days.

“By the time three more months had passed, even her capacity for invention could not explain away the thickening of her belly. But there were other inventions. Her man had been called away on a dangerous mission, or kidnapped by bandits. As the stories grew, she grew; and her parents grew angry with her fantasies. Now, too late, they demanded that she face the truth.

“As the months moved by, her parents turned away from her. The people of the village had been weary of her voice long before her downfall, and would have nothing to do with her fabrications. She withdrew into her room and into herself. There she stayed through the hot month of August, swollen huge with child and without one human soul who was willing to listen to her.

“She sought out the memory of her lover, but she could not recall his face. The man had faded, displaced by the fantasy she had made of him. Now that fantasy faded as well, displaced by a still greater fantasy.

“She had lain with God himself.

“All that burning August, she sprawled in misery on her narrow bed and told herself the story again and again until it blotted out her shame, blotted out her pain, blotted out the heat, blotted out her parents screaming disbelief, blotted out the disgust of the villagers.

“She bore a son and raised him alone in a small hut behind her father’s inn. All day long she rocked him in her arms, crooned to him, and told him of his impending greatness. She called him Isus, and she raised him to believe that the world would love him and believe in him.

“Isus went out to tell the world of his divinity, but the world was impatient. It turned on Isus and killed him. Mara stood at the foot of the scaffold where they hanged him, and the last words she heard him say were, ‘You foolish men, I have brought you a vision, and you have turned it aside.’

“Mara’s spirit was shattered — for a little while. Then she turned from the village where she had been born, and went out to raise up a religion in her Son’s name.”

*****

The Prince leaned back against a rock, content for the moment. He said, “An ugly story. Disjointed; lacking in balance.”

“The true ones often are.”

“Yes. I saw Mara recently, still up to her old tricks.”

The ragged stranger laughed and said, “Mother never learns.” more tomorrow