They met at last, face to face on a sun-scorched hill overlooking the ancient city, as good a place as any for two such as they, bound together, the deadliest of enemies.

The sun did not touch him, could not, wrapped in shadow as he was, a void on the barren hill, a darkness no light could pierce.

Men raised his enemy before him, an enigma with outstretched arms atop this hill called Skull. He watched his enemy intently. He did not trust the man.

He watched the man’s eyes as they scanned the ancient city on the ridge, its white walls and roof-top pavilions, the invaders’ painted houses, the columned temple on the rock, the shabbier structures like children’s blocks tumbled around its base, the refuse dump outside the walls where the fire burned eternally.

He watched the man’s eyes as they caressed the crowd at his nailed feet: men, women, and children; some weeping, others taunting; some stunned, others exulting. The man loved them still despite what they had done to him, even the rulers, the chief priest and the teachers of the law. Even the soldiers with their hammers and spears! A senseless love! The man had forgiven them all. Perhaps he had gone mad. It did not matter.

For he had this man at last! There could be no doubt. (Could there?)

The man had tricked him before. More than once! At the man’s birth, the king had prepared a banquet of young male life, yet the infant had eluded his grasp. In the desert, starvation and thirst had failed to deliver him over. Forty days! Enough to claim the strongest! But not this man.

On the lake, when the storm should have carried his victim to his arms, the man had rebuked the wind itself, and the raging waters – nature that formerly had bowed to him alone. At the cliff’s edge, when the mob was about to hurl the man over, he had nonchalantly walked away, as though his life were his own to withhold or give. And again, most recently, in the city where the man foolishly claimed to be God and the Jews were about to stone him. Just walked away! Unmolested! Each time, he knew, he had had the man. Each time, the man had slipped through his fingers. Terrifying events to behold! But not the worst.

The man had cheated him of other lives. The centurion’s servant. The boy with the evil spirit. The royal official’s son, dying in Capernaum. More lepers than he cared to remember.

Most frightening of all, the man had snatched lives back. Jairus’ little girl. The widow’s son. Snatched them from his dark embrace. For the time being at least. Yes! Only for the time being. But Lazarus! That had shaken him worst of all. Lazarus had been dead over four days. The ramification of such authority was too devastating to contemplate.

But he had the man now! Surely, he had him now.

“He saved others,” someone else mocked. “But he cannot save himself.”

That was the consensus of opinion. By all calculation they were correct. How could it be otherwise? How could any man survive the Roman cross?

The sun stopped shining. No clouds. No eclipse. No explanation. A false night in day’s midst. The earth starless, moonless, blind. Could this man have caused it?

He watched the man intently. Watched and waited, wrapped in shadow, a darkness deeper than night.

Suddenly, the man was with him. “It is finished!” he said, and there he was, embracing the darkness that now embraced him, as the earth shook, rocks split, and tombs spilled open.

No less astonished were the soldiers, who came to hasten death by breaking the man’s legs, only to find him dead already. One of them pierced his side with a spear and was drenched with blood and water, confirming that the man, beyond doubt, had departed the body.

Of his own volition! How could this thing be?

As well ask how it was that deathly cold felt a chill.

And he could not hold him. On the third day, the man departed for the land of the living, returning to his own glorious body, giving many convincing proofs that he lived, his tomb left bare. Many of the man’s own who had died were raised to first-life, like Lazarus, and went also into the city.

“I am the resurrection and the life,” the man had said – words that returned now to haunt and convict. “He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.”

Wrapped in shadow, pierced by light, Death wept.

The End

(c) 2003
By G. K. Werner
All Rights Reserved

Geoffrey Keith Werner teaches eighth grade language arts and college English, as well as history and martial arts. He lives in rural Delaware with his wife and their two children. He writes genre fiction from a Biblical perspective.