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

nodded with her.
    “I don’t see why,” I said. “What trip?”
    “He says we’ll only be gone a couple of weeks. He wants to go to a temple at a city in the mountains. He believes that the temple was built by Solomon, it’s called the Temple of the Seal.”
    “And why do you have to go along?”
    “He wants to show me something.”
    “Uh-oh,” I said.
    “Uh-oh,” echoed the girls, not unlike a Greek chorus, except of course they were speaking Chinese.

    In the week leading up to Joshua and Balthasar’s departure, I managed to talk Pea Pods into taking on a huge risk during her shift in Balthasar’s bed. I picked Pea Pods not because she was the most athletic and nimble of the girls, which she was; nor because she was the lightest of foot and most stealthy, which she was also; but because she was the one who had taught me to make bronze castings of the Chinese characters that were the mark of my name (my chop), and she could be trusted to get the most accurate impression of the key that Balthasar wore on the chain around his neck. (Oh yes, there was a key to the ironclad door. Joy had let it slip where Balthasar kept it, but I was sure that she was too loyal to him to steal it. Pea Pods, on the other hand, was more fickle in her loyalties, and lately I had been spending a lot of time with her on and off.)
    “By the time you return, I’ll know what’s going on here,” I whispered to Joshua as he climbed onto his camel. “Find out what you can from Balthasar.”
    “I will. But be careful. Don’t do anything while I’m gone. I think this trip, whatever it is that we are going to see, has something to do with the house of doom.”
    “I’m just going to look around. You be careful.”
    The girls and I stood at the top of the plateau and waved until Joshua and the magus, leading the extra camel loaded with supplies, rode out of sight, then, one by one, we made our way down the rope ladder to the passageway in the cliff’s face. The entrance to the passageway, and the tunnel for perhaps thirty cubits, were just wide enough for one man to pass through if he stooped, and I always managed to bruise an elbow or a shoulder along the way, which allowed me to show off my ability to curse in four languages.
    By the time I got to the chamber of the elements, where we practiced the art of the Nine Elixirs, Pea Pods had the small furnace stoked to a red heat and was adding ingots of brass to a small stone crucible. From the wax impression we had made a wax duplicate of the key, from that we’d made a plaster mold, which we’d fired to melt out the wax. Now we’d have one chance to cast the key, because once the metal cooled in the plaster mold, the only way to release it was to break off the plaster.
    When we broke off the mold Pea Pods held the end of what looked like a brass dragon on a stick.
    “That’s some key,” I said. The only locks I’d ever seen were big bulky iron boys, nothing elegant enough for a key like this.
    “When are you going to use it?” asked Pea Pods. Her eyes went wide like those of an excited child. Times like that I almost fell in love with her, but fortunately I was always distracted by Joy’s sophistication, Pillow’s maternal fussing, Number Six’s dexterity, or any one of the other charms that were heaped upon me daily. I understood completely Balthasar’s strategy to keep from falling in love with any one of them. Joshua’s situation, on the other hand, was harder to figure, because he enjoyed spending time with the girls, trading stories from the Torah for legends of the storm dragons and the monkey king. He said that there was an innate kindness born in women that he’d never seen in a man, and he liked being around them. His strength in resisting their physical charms astounded me perhaps even more than the other miraculous things I’d seen him do over the years. I couldn’t relate to the act of raising someone from the dead, but turning down a beautiful woman, that took courage beyond my understanding.
    “I’ll take it from here,” I said to Pea Pods. I didn’t want her to be involved any further in case things didn’t turn out well.
    “When?” asked Pea Pods, meaning when would I attempt to open the door.
    “Tonight, when you have all gone to live in the world of pleasant dreams.” I tweaked her nose affectionately and she giggled. It was the last time I ever saw her in one piece.

    At night the halls of the fortress were lit by the ambient light