Never Tell
"Don't tell. Anyone."
Short Story by Farrah Zahran
Maria doesn't look like her name. Oh, her skin is the right shade of brown, and her hair is the darkest brown possible without the domestics' utter, sleek blackness. But, her eyes are too wide, and too pointed. Her nose is too small, and her lips are pale pink. Something about her says to the world that she isn't what her name states, that she isn't from a Greek family, that she isn't some harmless child of immigrants to the dry, dusky plains of the Arab world.
Maria has an aura about her that says something is different, besides the obvious face that doesn't match her body. In a few too-short decades, people would have a logical reason to explain that. At least, logical for that time. But, it has been a long time since Iraq and Israel have been a paradise clinging to it's last breaths.
For now, her stomach is rounded, and the eyes that recognize her odd appearance look on with contempt. Yusef has married her, but no woman's stomach swells like that in only six weeks time. The child she bears is not his. But no one will say anything. She is a married woman now, harlot and whore though she once may have been. She is Yusef's property, and though he is is by no means a noblemen, it does not change the fact that she is safe from their words, if not their glares.
Maria still wonders, though the time between each musing grows longer, if the dream was true, or if something else, something less romantic happened. Even poor and a woman, Maria knew laying with another of Yhwh's daughters would not lead to this, and she had never been touch by any hands but those soft-skinned ones of women like herself.
Then night fell, it seems so long ago, and this time she had no others to lie with. But, loneliness did not strike her, their caresses were only games, in a way. Yet, in the dark of the sun's absence, her pallet warmed, and beside her was a radiant being. Pale, paler than even the Nordics that sometimes traveled the silk path to trade. And decked in great armor made all of gold and precious rocks. It bore a spear, shield and sword, looking imposingly as though it could wield them all, even the defensive article, with deadly force. Soft light surrounded the creature, and seemed to create iridescent wings of energy behind it.
She was so surprised by the warrior in her room that it took many silent moments before she realized a woman stood before her.
"I will be your bedmate, on behalf of your great god, this night." The angel declared, a deep but still feminine voice filled with authority and finality. Such a thing had never been heard by Maria before in a woman's tones, but she only nodded at the apparition and lay back on her cot. There was something impossible, and addictive, about the memory of that night. Even now, as Maria stares at the bulge in her abdomen, she wonders if she still really remembers it, if the details are still in the right places.
"In nine months time, when the strange Greeks and their pagan calendar begin a new year, you will give birth to the son of the all-powerful. A husband has been arranged for you by Michael." The name was spoken as though Maria was supposed to recognize it. "And the child is given to you as a gift by myself, Gabriel. Bear him well, and when he first cries, name him Kristo. Disregard your traditions, this is an order from Yhwh himself."
Maria remembers the speech, but only barely. She knows she isn't supposed to remember it. She was asleep, and it is only supposed to be a silent reminder in her thoughts. However, her strange memories are halted when Yusef returns.
"What is the news, husband?"
"We are called by my birth city to pay our dues. In a fortnight, we go to Bethlehem."
