9 Don't Know Why

 “Tomorrow we’ll be there. Can you believe it?” Beorn said, looking up at the stars the way he often did.

“I still don’t see why we have to go to the castle and ask directions,” Melzar complained; “why can’t we keep following the star?” He didn’t exactly like people.

“You want to tell him Hathach, or shall I?” Beorn said, still looking into the night sky.

“You do, Beorn; I’ve tried quite a few times, but he doesn’t seem to understand when I tell him. Maybe he’ll listen to you.”

“Oh…kay…” It looked like Beorn closed his eyes for a little bit. But when he spoke, it seemed in a completely different tone of voice.

“People can do the craziest things, don’t you think?”

“Wha-?” Melzar thought he was going to tell him about why they were going to the castle. But that’s okay. If Beorn wanted to tell a story, Melzar wanted to hear it. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you get real proud people together and find out they really can’t do the simplest things because of this stupid thing called “pride”! Sometimes, a simpleton, a fool can do more just because one ‘grand’ person isn’t willing to swallow his pride.”

“What do you mean?” Melzar asked, and even Tassie’s eyebrows seemed curled.

“Well,” again Beorn chuckled with the memory, like the time I carried that Babylonian officer’s daughter on my shoulder through the cesspool. “Okay, that’s an extreme example. But there are lots of things people won’t do for pride…and will let someone else do it. That wasn’t hard work, didn’t require any training or anything, but I GOT TO BECOME A PRINCE FOR IT! Some people won’t ask directions out of pride.”

“If it’ll look like I’m being proud for not wanting to go to the castle tomorrow to ask for directions, Beorn—and that’s not it at all—we can go, ok?”

“I never once thought you had that problem, Melzar, my friend.” Beorn continued, looking up at the sky as if there had been no interruption; “but people like that just do not know when to stop.”

Almost as if to himself, he added: “—but maybe it was conscience; they couldn’t help it?”

Then: “When they realized they had to reward me for a simple thing like walking through a few hundred feet of muck…well, they took it out on me by separating me from my mother, calling me “Prince,” and sending me to the Wilderness of Sarafi, calling it a “promotion” that I was supposed to thank them for thinking of and giving me.”

At this, Beorn began to cry. Loudly, unashamedly, bitterly. “Mother told me the sacred writings tell us ‘the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it?’ I see the anger of my own heart and don’t know what to do with it. Mother says Yahweh will send Messiah who will take care of all this one day.”

Melzar knew pain. His experiences had been such it would be an understatement to say he found it difficult to talk about them. When he tried, he would begin to tremble, sometimes have difficulty breathing. So when he saw Beorn’s tears, he could not help but go over and try to comfort him any way he could.

Tassie somehow felt the same thing, and cuddled and snuggled, somehow trying to help this one he knew was in distress…try to imagine a huge mountain lion acting like a baby kitten purring in your face. Beorn couldn’t help smiling in spite of himself. Oh Tassie.

“Melzar,…Melzar, I don’t often hear you talk about your mother…the one who gave you the love for astrology…is that all you remember about her?...Of course, you don’t have to say any more than you want…”

Hathach wanted to hear too. Melzar rarely spoke about his family. As soon as he had been born, his father had been taken away and made the king’s eunuch, so he never knew his father. Like Arla and Beorn, it was a slave-and-son unit, but it hurt Melzar too much to talk about it; so he never did. At first, Hathach thought it was something he needed to talk about and tried to make him do so, but then he saw the almost suffocating effect it had on him, and changed his mind. The stories of shame the eunuch must endure; and stories of service the eunuch must render—Hathach heard these stories, and they were heartbreaking,

   Melzar, for some reason, could not remember details about his mother but remembered two things: as previously stated, the teachings of astrology. Somehow, Melzar remembered her voice talking about the astrological signs and the beauty of their meanings in our lives. The only other thing about his mother that Melzar could remember was, for some reason, her smell. She smelled pretty. Call this a tender mercy of God that a child could not remember his father’s aloofness but he could remember his mother’s smell!

To Melzar’s mind, that fragrance and a mother’s love were the same.

Melzar’s mother had been a housekeeper in the temple grounds where there was expensive incense burning all day, and this fragrance was what was in her clothes.