Lamb: the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

foot out of his sandal, and smacked a short bald man on the back of the head. “All better now.”
    The bald guy turned and looked back to see who had hit him. Josh was backing down the street. “How’s your toe?” Joshua asked in Latin.
    “Good,” the bald guy said, and he smiled, sorta goofy and dreamy, like his toe had just sent him a message that all was right with the world.
    “Go with God, and—” Josh spun, jumped, came down with each hand on a stranger’s shoulder and shouted, “Yes! Double healing! Go with God, friends, two times!”
    I was getting sort of uncomfortable. People had started to follow us through the crowd. Not a lot of people, but a few. Maybe five or six, each of them with that dreamy smile on his face.
    “Joshua, maybe you should, uh, calm down a little.”
    “Can you believe all of these people need healing? Healed him.” Josh leaned back and whispered in my ear. “That guy had the pox. He’ll pee without pain for the first time in years. ’Scuse me.” He turned back into the crowd. “Healed, healed, calmed, comforted.”
    “We’re strangers here, Josh. You’re attracting attention to us. This might not be safe…”
    “It’s not like they’re blind or missing limbs. We’ll have to stop if we run into something serious. Healed! God bless you. Oh, you no speak Latin? Uh—Greek? Hebrew? No?”
    “He’ll figure it out, Josh,” I said. “We should look for the old woman.”
    “Oh, right. Healed!” Josh slapped the pretty woman very hard in the face. Her husband, a large man in a leather tunic, didn’t look pleased. He pulled a dagger from his belt and started to advance on Joshua. “Sorry, sir,” Joshua said, not backing up. “Couldn’t be helped. Small demon, had to be banished from her. Sent it into that dog over there. Go with God. Thank you, thank you very much.”
    The woman grabbed her husband by the arm and swung him around. She still had Joshua’s handprint on her face, but she was smiling. “I’m back!” she said to her husband. “I’m back.” She shook him and the anger seemed to drain out of him. He looked back at Joshua with an expression of such dismay that I thought he might faint. He dropped his knife and threw his arms around his wife. Joshua ran forward and threw his arms around them both.
    “Would you stop it please?” I pleaded.
    “But I love these people,” Josh said.
    “You do, don’t you?”
    “Yeah.”
    “He was going to kill you.”
    “It happens. He just didn’t understand. He does now.”
    “Glad he caught on. Let’s find the old lady.”
    “Yes, then let’s go back and get another one of those hot drinks,” Joshua said.

    We found the hag selling a bouquet of monkey feet to a fat trader dressed in striped silks and a wide conical hat woven from some sort of tough grass.
    “But these are all back feet,” the trader protested.
    “Same magic, better price,” said the hag, pulling back a shawl she wore over one side of her face to reveal a milky white eye. This was obviously her intimidation move.
    The trader wasn’t having it. “It is a well-known fact that the front paw of a monkey is the best talisman for telling the future, but the back—”
    “You’d think the monkey would see something coming,” I said, and they both looked at me as if I’d just sneezed on their falafel. The old woman drew back as if to cast a spell, or maybe a rock, at me. “If that were true,” I continued, “I mean—about telling the future with a monkey paw—I mean—because he would have four of them—paws, that is—and, uh—never mind.”
    “How much are these?” said Joshua, holding up a handful of dried newts from the hag’s baskets. The old woman turned to Josh.
    “You can’t use that many,” the hag said.
    “I can’t?” asked Joshua.
    “These are useless,” said the merchant, waving the hind legs and feet of two and a half former monkeys, which looked like tiny people feet, except that they were furry and the toes were longer.
    “If you’re a monkey I’ll bet they come in handy to keep your butt from dragging on the ground,” I said, ever the peacemaker.
    “Well, how many do I need?” Joshua asked, wondering how his diversion to save me had turned into a negotiation for newt crispies.
    “How many of your camels are constipated?” asked the crone.
    Joshua dropped the dried newts back into their basket. “Well, uh…”
    “Do those work?” asked the merchant. “For plugged-up camels, I