Days Ten through Seventeen
What had been slow work the first few days was now excruciating. Every move was an act of the will as muscle broke down, devoured by its own traitor body in a voracious search for protein. He strove against Concession, who encouraged him to give himself the break he deserved.
The ground wavered in front of him, and often he heard the sounds of people. Heaven. His mother. Joseph. When he blinked, they were gone, and he returned to his slow digging.
The boulders under which he had sheltered the first night were arranged in a rough semicircle. The first hole he dug was nearest the large stone, and the second hole, connected by a trench, lay slightly downhill from the first. The other boulders crowded around the third water hole, which filled easily with water after Jesus broke through the hardened top layer of sand, rock and pebble.
Days Eighteen through Twenty-Seven
The wind, ever vigilant, aided the effort, once it realized the pools would not be easily eradicated. It blew across distant farmland and planted several small seeds in the water that germinated and took root in the space of a week. Jesus carefully built the excess soil into berms to protect the little plants, and himself lay near them at night to protect their fragile lives from birds which hopped around the water hole, bringing with them the seeds of the surrounding country in their feces.
When the digging was complete, Jesus took to wading in the topmost pool, deepening it by removing the bottom. The water loosened the soil, and he worked with his hands, pulling wet sand and dirt and with it building walls around the water. One day, a chunk of rock came loose in his hands and he felt the bubble and current of a spring, leaping upward.
Now there were birds, and a mouse, its oversize ears twisting this way and that, searching for danger as it drank. Lizards and snakes, too, came for water and the food it so conveniently attracted.
Jesus pretended Sick-Day was not swinging his feet in the pool, singing.