Free Blessed Child by Ted Dekker Page B

the ceremony conducted by Father Nikolous, who Jason immediately recognized from his picture. Had a stray sheep in the flock turned to take note of the slight disturbance, they would’ve seen three sadly underdressed strangers who looked as if they’d just entered the wrong facility by mistake.
    Fortunately, it wasn’t the kind of atmosphere that invited the sheep to turn and stare. Un fortunately, the Father didn’t need to turn to see them. His eyes held Jason’s for a long moment before dropping back to the large book in his hands.
    Jason tugged on Leiah’s arm and sidestepped into the last pew. She followed quickly, slipping in beside him.
    But the boy stood staring ahead, transfixed by the sight.
    Leiah reached out and gently laid her hand on his shoulder. “Caleb,” she whispered softly.
    Caleb was not listening. He stepped forward and Leiah’s hand fell off his shoulder. It was a small, slow step, but it was away from them, up the aisle.
    Caleb had taken three more steps forward before Jason realized that the boy actually intended on walking to the front. His heart skipped a beat, and he let his instincts take over for one terrible moment.
    â€œCaleb!”
    His harsh whisper might as well have been a yell. A dozen parishioners near the back turned and dipped their heads to offer stern stares.
    But Caleb walked on, slow and frail, with his arms hanging by his sides. Leiah had buttoned his white shirt up to the last button and combed his hair so that it parted in the middle and fell neatly to his shoulders. He stared directly ahead and moved as if lost in a world beyond the one captured under this gold dome.
    On the platform Father Nikolous came to the end of a stanza. One of the priests next to him began to sing in a high warbly voice and the congregation joined him like a well-practiced choir. A bowl of smoking incense hung from a chain in the priest’s right hand and swung like a pendulum at his knees, keeping surreal time with his chant.
    Caleb walked on, and Jason stood, as if doing so might stop the boy. What was he going to do now? Leiah rose slowly beside him. Jason made a move to exit the pew, but Leiah held out her hand.
    â€œLeave him,” she whispered.
    Of the five hundred faithful gathered that day, roughly twenty-five had lost their focus on the liturgy and now watched the strange boy slowly gliding up the aisle. He was halfway to the front, a stray child whose head hardly reached the top of the pews, when the congregation seemed to sense wholesale that something unusual was happening in the aisle. A hush settled over the crowd, beginning at the back and spreading up the thirty or so rows, until only the most devout, seated up front, boldly continued their liturgy.
    And then it was only the priest beside Father Nikolous, in a voice that echoed loudly through the auditorium. He caught himself, pried his eyes from the book in his hands, and stopped on the word and . . .
    Father Nikolous frowned and stared at the boy, but he did not speak. The service at Holy Ascension Greek Orthodox Church in Burbank, California, had come to a dead stop.
    All eyes were fixed on this one small child who walked up the aisle, seemingly unaware of his boldness, his large eyes fixated on the podium.
    Jason moved quietly down the pew to the outer aisle and eased closer to the front, where Leiah joined him. From his vantage point he could see the boy clearly. He scanned the platform and once again met Father Nikolous’s disapproving glare. He shifted his eyes and saw then what the boy was staring at. Behind the priest stood a tall wooden cross, with the naked form of Christ hanging in death. Caleb was fixated on the one icon that could easily have been transported here from his monastery at Debra Damarro for its similarity.
    The poor child was grasping for a root to his motherland and he had found it here, in this cross with the dead Christ. “He’s staring at the