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

who was actively aging as we looked on.
    “He’s two hundred and sixty years old,” Joshua said. “With Catch gone, his age is catching up.”
    The wizard’s skin had gone ashen and the whites of his eyes were yellow. Joy sat on the floor and gently cradled the old man’s head in her lap.
    “Where’s the monster?” I asked.
    “Back in hell,” Joshua said. “Help me get Balthasar to his bed. I’ll explain later.”
    We carried Balthasar to his bedchamber, where Joy tried to pour some broth into him, but he fell asleep with the bowl at his lips.
    “Can you help him?” I asked no one in particular.
    Joy shook her head. “He’s not sick. He’s just old.”
    “It is written, ‘To every thing there is a season,’” Joshua said. “I can’t change the seasons. Balthasar’s time has come round at last.” Then he looked at Joy and raised his eyebrows. “You peed on the demon?”
    “He had no right to complain. Before I came here I knew a man in Hunan who’d pay good money for that.”

    Balthasar lingered for ten more days, toward the end looking more like a skeleton wrapped in old leather than a man. In his last days he begged Joshua to forgive him his vanity and he called us to his bedside over and over to tell us the same things, as he would forget what he’d told us only a few hours before.
    “You will find Gaspar in the Temple of the Celestial Buddha, in the mountains to the east. There is a map in the library. Gaspar will teach you. He is truly a wise man, not a charlatan like me. He will help you become the man you need to be to do what you must do, Joshua. And Biff, well, you might not turn out terrible. It’s cold where you are going. Buy furs along the way, and trade the camels for the woolly ones with two humps.”
    “He’s delirious,” I said.
    Joy said, “No, there really are woolly camels with two humps.”
    “Oh, sorry.”
    “Joshua,” Balthasar called. “If nothing else, remember the three jewels.” Then the old man closed his eyes and stopped breathing.
    “He dead?” I asked.
    Joshua put his ear to the old man’s heart. “He’s dead.”
    “What was that about three jewels?”
    “The three jewels of the Tao: compassion, moderation, and humility. Balthasar said compassion leads to courage, moderation leads to generosity, and humility leads to leadership.”
    “Sounds wonky,” I said.
    “Compassion,” Joshua whispered, nodding toward Joy, who was silently crying over Balthasar.
    I put my arm around her shoulders and she turned and sobbed into my chest. “What will I do now? Balthasar is dead. All of my friends are dead. And you two are leaving.”
    “Come with us,” Joshua said.
    “Uh, sure, come with us.”

    But Joy did not come with us. We stayed in Balthasar’s fortress for another six months, waiting for winter to pass before we went into the high mountains to the east. I cleaned the blood from the girls’ quarters while Joy helped Joshua to translate some of Balthasar’s ancient texts. The three of us shared our meals, and occasionally Joy and I would have a tumble for old times’ sake, but it felt as if the life had gone out of the place. When it came time for us to leave, Joy told us of her decision.
    “I can’t go with you to find Gaspar. Women are not allowed in the monastery, and I have no desire to live in the backwater village nearby. Balthasar has left me much gold, and everything in the library, but it does me no good out here in the mountains. I will not stay in this tomb with only the ghosts of my friends for company. Soon Ahmad will come, as he does every spring, and I will have him help me take the treasure and the scrolls to Kabul, where I will buy a large house and hire servants and I will have them bring me young boys to corrupt.”
    “I wish I had a plan,” I said.
    “Me too,” said Josh.
    The three of us celebrated Joshua’s eighteenth birthday with the traditional Chinese food, then the next morning Joshua and I packed up the camels and prepared to head east.
    “Are you sure you’ll be all right until Ahmad comes?” Joshua asked Joy.
    “Don’t worry about me, you go learn to be a Messiah.” She kissed him hard on the lips. He squirmed to get loose from her and he was still blushing as he climbed onto his camel.
    “And you,” she said to me, “you will come to see me in Kabul on your way back to Israel or I will put such a curse on you as you’ll never be free of it.” She took the little ying-yang vial full of