Story Blog: Forgotten, Part Four

Continued from: Part Three

Josiah awoke some time later, as lost and confused as awaking to darkness always left him. Without the girl-voice to startle him and send his world spinning, he groped for his guiding stick and found it easily. He sighed with relief then launched into his prayers.

Perhaps an hour or so later, the smells in the room shifted and his instincts tensed his muscles and pricked his ears for any sound, revealing a faint shuffling noise, then a bang like someone stumbling into something, followed by a thud and a whispered oath.

He sat rigid a moment then reached for his guiding stick. Brushing it back and forth in front of him, he inched across the room, then stopped as the stick struck something. He swung the stick at it harder to brush the object out of his way.

It yelped. “Hey!”

His heartbeat sped up to his annoyance. “What? Who’s there?”

A disoriented girl-voice said, “Josiah? Wow, I’m really lost then!”

He relaxed. “Oh, it’s you. Get out.”

“Well, excuse me! What was that I stumbled over, anyway?” The girl-voice paused. “Hey! That’s a fine place to put your breakfast! What else have you thrown about?”

He leaned on the guiding stick. “I don’t remember now, a bunch of stuff.”

“Well! That wasn’t so smart! How do you expect not to trip over anything? At least I’ve learned one thing from this: Don’t move anything out of it’s place. Josiah will trip over it.” She laughed. “Of course, you have your stick. I never thought of that.”

He settled onto the floor, astounded. “You silly little lamb! What have you done?”

“I wanted to better understand what you’re going through. I didn’t mean for anyone to see me doing this or to stumble into your room and scare you. The others are all out.” She added shyly, “I’m sorry about earlier. I took some low blows.”

He sat stunned, trying to comprehend what she had done. “You’ve blindfolded yourself?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I suppose I haven’t been gracious, but you ought to respect my decision to fast and I don’t need a baby-sitter. I can take care of myself. I always have.”

“And how long have you been blind?”

He lowered his head, but then it dawned on him with her blindfold, she couldn’t see him, either. Embarrassed and not knowing what to do with himself, he sat up straighter. “A month, two at most. We’re not sure how much time went by before my brothers found me.”

A brief touch on his knee startled him. The silly lamb must’ve been looking for his hand, but he pretended not to notice.

“Now I understand,” the girl-voice said. “In your heart, you’re still a shepherd.”

“I am a shepherd. I have no intention of accepting this.”

“The sooner you do, the sooner you will heal.” The girl paused. “How old are you?”

“I’ll be twenty in the spring, why do you ask?”

“Just curious, is all.” The girl paused. “You’re hardly older than me, then. When did you start shepherding?”

“I first went out at seven with my father and my brother Simeon. My mother’s fear then was only dwarfed by her fear when my father let me go alone with my own flock at thirteen.”

“Oh.”

The personal questions annoyed him, so he asked, “Why haven’t you been betrothed? My sister Sharon is 13 and Father is already receiving offers for her.”

A long silence followed. The girl-voice said, too quickly, “I am the youngest of seven daughters. My father didn’t have a dowry for me, so he sent me to tend Benjamin’s house when Abigail died.”

He felt guilty—her questions hardly merited his. “I think we must have met once or twice as children at the Passover feast here in the City, but I hardly remember.”

Fingers snapped. “Of course! You were the cousin with the green eyes! I was so curious because I’d never seen that eye color before. Everyone teased me about it for days.”

Pain flooded him at this bitter reminder. From her embarrassed gasp, it donned on her too late the green eyes she remembered were gone. She asked softly, “Will you ever let me see it?”

“No.” He got up and managed to find his way back to the couch-bed.
Just when he thought she’d taken the hint, a probing hand on his leg startled him. He grabbed it by reflex. She sat beside him. He dropped the hand. “You can’t take a hint, can you? Take the stupid blindfold off and get out of here.”

“I’ve tried. I can’t get the knot out and it’s too tight to slip off. Can you….”

“I would rather not.”

“Why? Afraid to touch a girl?”

“I have four sisters and several nieces. I’m not afraid to interact with girls when necessary.”

“Then why?”

He swallowed. “I am unclean.”

She laughed. “If you are unclean, so am I. We are both condemned by the elders.”

“What did you—”

“I was born a girl. I really don’t feel like explaining.”

A feminine hand brushed his and took hold of it.

Too startled to yank free, he said, “What…”

The grip on his hand moved down to his wrist. “There is something else I
have learned about blindness. It cuts you off from the world, but I do not want to be cut off from you, I want to be real to you. And I think this will help.”

“What are you….” He gasped as she placed his fingertips on her cheek. He tried to pull his hand away, but she held him fast, surprisingly strong for a girl, and he hesitated to use force.

“It’s okay, Josiah,” she said. “You think you have only your ears to connect you to the world, but that is not true. There is much your hands can tell you that your ears cannot. Don’t allow them to take away your sense of touch as well as sight. You need it now more than ever.”

“This isn’t right,” he whispered even as his disobedient fingers traced her face.

“It is better to do good than to mindlessly obey tradition.”

As his fingers finished painting Rachel’s portrait, he reached behind her head, found the knot in the cloth covering her eyes, and untied it with both hands, doubting her story she couldn’t get it untied.

She sighed with relief. “Thank you.”

Before he could stop her, she removed the cloth from his eyes. He blinked in the darkness, smiling sadly at her. “Are you happy now, Rachel? You see the difference between us, is, you could remove your blindfold and see again just fine, but it doesn’t work that way for me.”

In the distance, his uncle called, “Rachel!”

She laid the cloth in Josiah’s hands and kissed his cheek. “I’m coming!”

After her footsteps had retreated, Josiah put the cloth back on, fighting back tears and the sad revelation he could have loved Rachel in a different world.

Then again, Josiah the Shepherd only had enough love for his sheep.

To Be Continued….

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