Williams Niall - John

'Lemuel.' Papias places his hand on the bell ringer's back. 'Be careful.'

The other moves back from where he hangs overboard. He looks at the younger disciple and beams.

'It is dangerous, Lemuel.'

'I am filled with joy.'

'God is with us. He brings us out of exile.'

Lemuel smiles. He cannot keep a smile from his round features.

'We might best to sit,' Papias suggests, but Lemuel shakes his head. 'This flowing of the sea, it moves me, Papias. I have forgotten.' He smiles again and turns back to the slap and splash of the side, the fishing boat tilting now in meeting currents, angling over deep into a seam in the sea, then righting as it seals up beneath them. Lemuel stands and rocks, in the slow rhythm of the Aegean not imagining water sprites, sea serpents, or other of the vast population of mer-creatures mythic and storied, but only as it comes to him a memory he does not know he has remembered: in his mother's womb, the sea, and he a sail.

What we are.

What little we are, we are for you.

We who have remained and come now as witness.

In fellowship.

John prays. His prayers take mixed form, both the ancient texts of the psalms, scripture he has known since a child, and short simple phrases addressed to Jesus. He converses as though certain he is heard, though he hears no reply. He says all silently. He sits hunched down in the front of the boat, a small white form with blanket about him. Strands of his hair fly about. Spray saddles his shoulders darkly. The fisher captain offers him sea grass to suck, but he declines. In the blind dark where he is, John is far in contemplation. The physical world is gone. What is prayer and what is thought are not delineated. He has lived so long distant from the measure of time, the reality of the body, that he is as might be imagined a spirit, a portion of light in the corner of a fishing boat.

The sea moves past. Adjudging the spring currents treacherous, the fisher captain sails them northwesterly. They leave behind them the Dodekanisos, the twelve, heading in the direction of the island of Ikaria, where they will pass the first night out of exile. The fisherman has a cousin in Agios Kirykos. The small boat is borne swiftly, a ragged banner of the gulls of Patmos overhead. Other boats cross before them, fisherboys and men eyeing the strange crew of Christians who cast no nets. Lemuel waves to them. Wind flaps and cracks in the sewn sail.

'Are you well, Master?' Papias asks. 'I have water if you thirst.'

The pale face turns upward to the voice. 'Thank you, good Papias; no, I thirst not.'

'We are away from Patmos.'

'Yes.'

'I had forgotten what it feels to move freely.'

Though he has not indicated fear, the Apostle says to him, 'Be not afraid, Papias.'

The youngest disciple sits by John. He drinks the water himself. In the sea he feels still an unslaked thirst.

They sail on in silence, the disciples burdened each by fear and hope alike. Do they come in triumph now? Is this at last the time for salvation, the age of Jesus Christ the Lord and Saviour come now, and they its harbingers? It is long since they have walked in a busy street, had casual converse before a trader's stall, laughed at wit or anecdote, dwelled in the flux of everyday that the ordinary is to be extraordinary for them, and as such holds a fascinating terror. How shall it be?

As the boat puts Patmos behind them, with every moment the world draws nearer. Danil looks up at the sail, tight with wind, and wishes the breeze might lessen for a time. Might not the breath of the sky be stilled awhile? Sudden change in sea condition is not unheard of; wind as easily goes as comes. Why not now? Why not a brief respite, and they to be left adrift mid-sea, meandering the blue waters for a time until their hearts were ready? It has been too quick, Danil thinks. Three days to change a lifetime. To turn around to face the world. Would it have been so terrible to have waited a week? Even a month? What is a month to the Lord, who has all time unto eternity?

The wind does not lessen. It sits in the sail like a chest-proud athlete pressing forwards. Hunched against the creaking, salty timber, shut-eyed, Meletios rocks softly to the rise and fall of the southern Aegean. Next to him, Eli knots his fingers, knucklebones a rough bridge beneath his chin, and stares at nothing. Lemuel alone looks at the world approach.

In the proximate noon of the day, the bell ringer at last sits and then kneels in the bow, and the others do likewise. As has been their way for years, they pray the twelfth hour, and, bent in the boat travelling the sea waves, are as in the side gallery to an invisible altar.

The blue is unbroken above them.

Seeing them so the fisher captain is moved and steadies the sail. Abashed by the reverence and being witness to the peculiar intimacy, he looks away into the wake. In the trailing white water he sees a silver school offish. It glitters just below surface, a great wide V, following, fleet, as if pulled in undertow. In all his years of throwing nets he has never seen so great a number. He studies the waters about them, what might betoken this uncaught catch, what manner of thing is happening. But the sea on all sides is as ever and reveals nothing. He takes a step on to some wooden crating for a better view outwards and down. In the full scope of his vision, as far as the furthest ripple they have left in the sea, is this gleaming arrow of fish. It comes in their after-waters catching light, then shadow, then light again. Though the boat moves cross-current toward Ikaria, the fish follow, a silent suite, opaque as souls, profound as mystery. Such might last a moment, might in ordinary fish life be the happenstance of tide and timing, a brief meeting of man and creature in the sea hectic, but this is something other. The fish follow. While the disciples pray, bowed in the boat, the multitudinous school swims after and grows greater until it seems a portion of light itself fallen from above and by means unknown attached to this strange cargo of Christians.

They come ashore at Agios Kyrikos. The island of Ikaria is verdant and fertile, and it does not escape the disciples how barren and unforgiving was Patmos by comparison. Here are green arbours, olive groves, many freshwater wells to the single shallow, poor one in Patmos. The disciples step from the boat like innocents, heartened by the loveliness, by the ordinary that seems to them tender and full of marvel, even by the noisy movement of traders by the boat docking.

'What have you got?' a short, sour-faced trader calls to the fisher pilot.

'Travellers from Patmos,' he says, and looks behind to where the fish are no longer to be seen.

'From Patmos? What do they bring? What do you bring?' the trader asks, his head pressed forwards on his neck and his eyes narrowed, as if to scrutinise this puzzle.

'We bring the word of the Lord Jesus Christ,' says Papias with blunt innocence.

The puzzle revealed, the trader pulls back. 'Christians,' he scowls, 'you have nothing so.'

'We have. .'

'Papias, come,'John interrupts, lifting a hand toward the trader. 'God be with you.'

They move away, staying close together. They wait while the fisher captain visits his wife's cousin, brings the news that she is with child. They walk the unfamiliar way into a street of dwellings that seems to crowd toward the water. Outside dark open doors, men stand conversing in the shade. They stop to watch the strangers.

'God be with all,' John says quietly as he walks on, leaning to Papias's arm, progressing up the street and leaving behind them murmurs and whispers. Word of their arrival slips away into the open doorways of the village like a cat making rounds. When they are passing near the top of the street, a large man of heavy jowls salutes.