The Seventh Ship

The night air was thick and humid. It lay heavily over the squalid camp of shacks and shanties that stretched beyond sight in every direction. Thunder rolled through the dark night sky, presaging a torrent of rain that began moments later. 

Walking briskly down muddy paths soaked in rain and sewage, a tall, mysterious figure drew the hood of a cloak over her head and pressed on, undeterred by the rain. Her business this night was urgent and clandestine. After searching through a labyrinth of poorly-constructed shelters, she stopped in front of an elderly man sitting under a tarp. He watched with detached interest as the woman approached through the pouring rain. They exchanged words, and he pointed down the muddy trail that served as a narrow street. 

The hooded figure turned and hurried off in the direction he had pointed. Before long she arrived at another structure. Save for a small piece of red cloth hastily tied to its exterior, it looked much the same as every other shanti in this hell-hole of a refugee camp. She rapped her knuckles on a large piece of plywood that served as a door. A moment later it was pulled aside by an old woman with a small lamp. The woman studied the figure at her door, and with a silent sigh of resignation, stepped aside to let her in. She turned and led the hooded figure through a series of cramped rooms, patchworked together in a maze of rotting particle board and scrap metal. 

They passed dozens of men, women, and children, seated or lying on the dirt floor, waiting out the storm. Their soulless eyes silently watched the two women pass, studying the contrast between them: one a tall, athletic woman that moved with feline grace despite the fact that she had to duck to avoid hitting her head on the structure’s low ceiling, and the other, an old and decrepit woman that walked with a hunch in awkward, uneven strides. It was obvious the tall one was an outsider. She was not of this place. Her clothes were too clean, her appearance too healthy, and her spirit unbroken. This place broke everyone’s spirit.  

From somewhere further back, a female voice cried out in pain. As the women rounded a sharp corner, a warm glow from lamps and candles could be seen coming from a small room. The two entered, parting a sheet that had been hung to provide a modicum of privacy. The room was filled with dirty blankets and pillows that made a bed to cover the dirt floor. On this tangle of filthy, soft objects that served as a bed, a young woman had just given birth. An old and craggy midwife wrapped the newborn in a small blanket, as the baby girl cried through healthy lungs. 

The exhausted mother began to weep gently as the midwife handed the wailing baby to the hooded figure. As the stranger took the infant, it suddenly stopped crying as a wave of peace washed over it. She tucked it under her cloak and turned to leave. At that moment, another contraction hit the mother.

“Wait!” the midwife announced in a raspy voice like an old witch. “There’s another.”

“I can only take one,” the hooded figure announced before turning to duck through the sheet-covered entrance. 

Stopping suddenly, she turned back. She approached the mother and leaned over her until she could see her face through the hood that shrouded her own. 

Through her labor and exhaustion, the mother looked up at the hooded figure with sorrow and confusion. Golden eyes looked down on her with compassion and an intangible quality that suggested a deep intelligence. 

“Your boy – the one that’s coming,” the stranger named Serapha said. “He will be strong and he will do great things. He will know great love and great pain. And he will suffer like few have ever suffered. In the end, before it is all over, he will hold in his hands the fate of all mankind, and that of nations that do not yet exist. Raise him well, Miriam Shiames. Teach him to be strong yet kind, resolute and just, but compassionate.” 

Serapha turned and disappeared the way she had come, as a contraction hit the young woman. Chased by the mother’s cries of physical pain and mental anguish, she hurried off into the rain-drenched night, the infant girl tucked safely under her cloak.