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throughout the night. They drank from the same rocky stream filled with winter’s water and ate those same apricots she smelled on his hands when she had first opened her eyes to life.
    On one such wander, they came upon a merchant and his camel. The poor beast knelt in the middle of the empty road, refusing to rise, burdened with bales of straw and baskets of goods too heavy even for its strong back. The merchant tugged at the camel’s halter, begged and urged it to rise, but the beast refused to budge. The camel’s reluctance only infuriated the merchant more, and as Eden and her master came upon them the man raised his whip to strike.
    â€œHelp me,” the camel said weakly to Eden. “I am old and this straw is too heavy.”
    When the merchant saw Eden and her master, he fell silent and lowered his crop. The dog watched her master approach the camel. Without speaking he took a rolled carpet from the camel’s back and put it aside. The merchant, suddenly afraid, said nothing.
    â€œDoes that help?” Eden asked.
    â€œYes,” the camel replied. “But not enough.”
    Indeed, the rolled carpet was not the only thing her master took from the weary camel. He removed also and set aside a basket of eggs and long bolts of leather. His eyes held the merchant fast; as if to say, these I shall carry, if you do the same .
    Then waited for the merchant’s reply.
    The merchantman, now more ashamed than ever, stared at his short crop, as if to wonder, what are you? Yet as Eden’s master steadfastly gazed, the crop seemed to burn the merchant’s hand and he dropped it on the ground. He reached across his camel’s back and removed two sacks of grain held together with loops of rope. The loops went over the merchant’s head and rested on his shoulders so that he now wore sacks of grain front and back. He looked to his camel, hoping this would be enough.
    â€œDoes that help?” Eden asked again.
    And the camel replied, “Yes. But not enough.”
    And this Eden’s master seemed to understand. Lastly he removed a dozen strings of dried figs from the camel’s back. The figs were strung together with cords. Eden brushed up against his legs and her master laid the strings of figs across her back. The dried fruit was not heavy and Eden wondered what little difference it would make, surely not enough.
    And so she asked the camel, “Is this enough?”
    But the camel did not reply.
    Clumsily her master lifted the rug to his own shoulders, then took the basket of eggs in one hand and the long bolts of leather in the other. They were ready to go. Yet the camel did not rise. The merchant stared at his beast still burdened with bales of hay. There were four bales, two on either side. At last he sighed … then removed half the burden, putting two of the four bales by the wayside.
    â€œPerhaps we shall return for them,” he said to no one. “Perhaps not …”
    And Eden saw the camel’s eyes had brightened. It struggled to its knees.
    â€œYes, it is enough.”

The Essene
    But more often than not those cool winter days found Eden outside the bare one-room temple where the village prayed. The old teacher with his white goat-like beard taught the young men in that single, dark room what he knew of scrolls and history, bleating in a high, dry voice the story of the known world and the ways of the Almighty’s mind:
    â€œI said in mine heart concerning sons of men that they might see that they themselves are beasts. For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity.”
    Yet like the beasts of the field and the beasts of burden in the street, and even like the women of the village, Eden was not allowed inside the temple but huddled out in the street during prayers and teachings. Yet here too, the