Books: The Little Hunchback Zia
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Frances Hodgson Burnett >> The Little Hunchback Zia
The light upon the hillside was so softly radiant and so clear that he
could
[Illustration with caption: "Zia's eyes grew wide with awe and wondering
as he gazed, scarce breathing"--Page 38]
see that the woman's robe was blue and that she lifted her face to the
stars as she rode. It was a young face, and pale with the pallor of
lilies, and her eyes were as stars of the morning. But this was not all.
A radiance shone from her pure pallor, and bordering her blue robe and
veil was a faint, steady glow of light. And as she passed the standing
and waiting sheep, they slowly bowed themselves upon their knees before
her, and so knelt until she had passed by and was out of sight. Then
they returned to their places, and slept as before.
When she was gone, Zia found that he also was kneeling. He did not know
when his knees had bent. He was faint with ecstasy.
"She goes to Bethlehem," he heard himself say as he had heard himself
speak before. "I, too; I, too."
He stood a moment listening to the sound of the ass's retreating feet as
it grew fainter in the distance. His breath came quick and soft. The
light had died away from the hillside, but the high-floating radiance
seemed to pass to and fro in the heavens, and now and again he thought
he heard the faint, far sound that was like music so distant that it was
as a thing heard in a dream.
"Perhaps I behold visions," he murmured. "It may be that I shall awake."
But he found himself making his way through the bushes and setting his
feet upon the road. He must follow, he must follow. Howsoever steep the
hill, he must climb to Bethlehem. But as he went on his way it did not
seem steep, and he did not waver or toil as he usually did when walking.
He felt no weariness or ache in his limbs, and the high radiance gently
lighted the path and dimly revealed that many white flowers he had never
seen before seemed to have sprung up by the roadside and to wave softly
to and fro, giving forth a fragrance so remote and faint, yet so clear,
that it did not seem of earth. It was perhaps part of the vision.
Of the distance he climbed his thought took no cognizance. There was in
this vision neither distance nor time. There was only faint radiance,
far, strange sounds, and the breathing of air which made him feel an
ecstasy of lightness as he moved. The other Zia had traveled painfully,
had stumbled and struck his feet against wayside stones. He seemed ten
thousand miles, ten thousand years away. It was not he who went to
Bethlehem, led as if by some power invisible. To Bethlehem! To
Bethlehem, where went the woman whose blue robe was bordered with a glow
of fair luminousness and whose face, like an uplifted lily, softly
shone. It was she he followed, knowing no reason but that his soul was
called.
When he reached the little town and stood at last near the gateway of
the khan in which the day-long procession of wayfarers had crowded to
take refuge for the night, he knew that he would find no place among the
multitude within its walls. Too many of the great Caesar's subjects had
been born in Bethlehem and had come back for their enrolment. The khan
was crowded to its utmost, and outside lingered many who had not been
able to gain admission and who consulted plaintively with one another as
to where they might find a place to sleep, and to eat the food they
carried with them.
Zia had made his way to the entrance-gate only because he knew the
travelers he had followed would seek shelter there, and that he might
chance to hear of them.
He stood a little apart from the gate and waited. Something would tell
him what he must do. Almost as this thought entered his mind he heard
voices speaking near him. Two women were talking together, and soon he
began to hear their words.
"Joseph of Nazareth and Mary his wife," one said. "Both of the line of
David. There was no room for them, even as there was no room for others
not of royal lineage. To the mangers in the cave they have gone, seeing
the woman had sore need of rest. She, thou knowest--"
Zia heard no more. He did not ask where the cave lay. He had not needed
to ask his way to Bethlehem. That which had led him again directed his
feet away from the entrance-gate of the khan, past the crowded court and
the long, low wall of stone within the inclosure of which the camels and
asses browsed and slept, on at last to a pathway leading to the gray of
rising rocks. Beneath them was the cave, he knew, though none had told
him so. Only a short distance, and he saw what drew him trembling
nearer. At the open entrance, through which he could see the rough
mangers of stone, the heaps of fodder, and the ass munching slowly in a
corner, the woman who wore the blue robe stood leaning wearily against
the heavy wooden post. And the soft light bordering her garments set her
in a frame of faint radiance and glowed in a halo about her head.
"The light! the light!" cried Zia in a breathless whisper. And he
crossed his hands upon his breast.
Her husband surely could not see it. He moved soberly about, unpacking
the burden the ass had carried and seeming to see naught else. He heaped
straw in a corner with care, and threw his mantle upon it.
"Come," he said. "Here thou canst rest, and I can watch by thy side. The
angels of the Lord be with thee!" The woman turned from the door and
went toward him, walking with slow steps. He gazed at her with mild,
unillumined eyes.
"Does he not see the light!" panted Zia. "Does he not see the light!"
Soon he himself no longer saw it. Joseph of Nazareth came to the wooden
doors and drew them together, and the boy stood alone on the mountain-
side, trembling still, and wet with the dew of the night; but not weary,
not hungered, not athirst or afraid, only quaking with wonder and joy--
he, the little hunchback Zia, who had known no joy before since the hour
of his birth.
He sank upon the earth slowly in an exquisite peace--a peace that
thrilled his whole being as it stole over his limbs, deepening moment by
moment. His head drooped softly upon a cushion of moss. As his eyelids
fell, he saw the splendor of whiteness floating in the height of the
purple vault above him.
The dawn was breaking and yet the stars had not faded away. This was his
thought when his eyes first opened on a great one, greater than any
other in the sky, and of so pure a brilliance that it seemed as if even
the sun would not be bright enough to put it out. It hung high in the
paling blue, high as the white radiance; and as he lay and gazed, he
thought it surely moved. What new star was it that in that one night had
been born? He had watched the stars through so many desolate hours that
he knew each great one as a friend, and this one he had never seen
before.
The morning was cold, and his clothes were wet with dew, but he felt no
chill. He remembered; yes, he remembered. If he had lived in a vision
the day before, he was surely living in one yet. The Zia who had been
starved and beaten and driven out naked into the world, who had clutched
his thin breast and sobbed, writhing upon the earth, where was he? He
looked down upon his hands and saw the cracked and scaling palms, and it
was as though they were not. He thrust back the covering from his chest
and saw the spots there. But there were no lepers, there were no
hunchbacks; there were only Zia and the light. He knelt and turned
himself toward the cave and prayed, and as he so knelt and prayed the
man Joseph rolled open the heavy wooden door.
Then Zia, still kneeling, beat himself softly upon the breast and prayed
again, not as before to Jehovah, but to that which he beheld.
The light was there, fair, radiant, wonderful. The cave was bathed in
it. The woman in the blue robe sat upon the straw, and in her arms she
held a new-born child. Zia touched his forehead to the earth again,
again, again, unknowing that he did so. The child was the light itself!
He must rise and draw near. That which had drawn him up the mountainside
drew him again. The child was the light itself! As he crept near the
cave's entrance, the woman's eyes rested upon him soft and wonderful.
She spoke to him--she spoke!
"Be not afraid," she said. "Draw nigh and behold!"
Her voice was not as the voice of other women; it was like her eyes, his
body, through his blood, through every limb and fleshy atom of him, he
felt it steal--new life, warming, thrilling, wakening in his veins new
life! As he felt it, he knelt quaking with rapture even as he had stood
the night before gazing at the light. The new-born hand lay still.
He did not know how long he knelt. He did not know that the woman leaned
toward him, scarce drawing breath, her wondrous eyes resting upon him as
if she waited for a sign. Even as she so gazed she beheld it, and spoke,
whispering as in awed prayer:
"Go forth and cleanse thy flesh in running water," she said. "Go forth."
He moved, he rose, he stood upright--the hunchback Zia who had never
stood upright before! His body was straight, his limbs were strong. He
looked upon his hands, and there was no blemish or spot to be seen!
"I am made whole!" he cried in ecstasy so wild that his boy's voice rang
and echoed in the cave's hollowed roof. "I am made whole!"
"Go forth," she said softly. "Go forth and give praise."
He turned and went into the dawning day. He stood swaying, and heard
himself sob forth a rapturous cry of prayer. His flesh was fresh and
pure; he stood erect and tall. He was as others whom God had not cursed.
The light! the light! He stretched forth his arms to the morning sky.
Some shepherds roughly clothed in the skins of lambs and kids were
climbing the hill toward the cave. They carried their crooks, and they
talked eagerly as though in wonderment at some strange thing which had
befallen them, looking up at the heavens, and one pointed with his
crook.
"Surely it draws nearer, the star!" he said. "Look!"
As they passed a thicket where a brook flowed through the trees a fair
boy came forth, cleansed, fresh, and radiant as if he had but just
bathed in its clear waters. It was the boy Zia.
"Who is this one?" said the oldest shepherd.
"How beautiful he is! How the light shines on him! He looks like a king's
son."
[Illustration with caption: "'How beautiful he is!'"--Page 54]
And as they passed, they made obeisance to him.