“An old man does not mean a lame man. The next time the physician comes from Damascus, see him”

“You are too busy with your sheep.”

Eliyahu straightens. He looks around, sees Yannai, panting, red-faced, struggling toward him.

When he nears, Eliyahu orders him to throw down his walking stick and take a few steps. He kneels down and watches.

“Your leg is still not healed.”

A cloud passes over Yannai’s face.

“What do you want of an old man?”

“An old man does not mean a lame man. The next time the physician comes from Damascus, see him.”

Behind him, the penned-up sheep, still waiting to be sheared, call out their protest. In the next tract of land, the sheared sheep spring across the grass, comfortable in their summer coats, contented to be rid of that great bale of wool they have been heaving along with them all winter.

Yannai is quick to move to the offensive. “If I have been neglecting my body, you have been neglecting your soul. What of our learning sessions?”

“Shearing season. We are late for it. The sheep will not be sheared by Rava and Abaye.”

He points to the great, gleaming shears on a flat rock a few steps away.

He started the shearing at the beginning of the week, and while each day he gets quicker, he is also more tired. This morning, the fatigue seemed to have settled in his bones, as well as an ache in his shoulder blades and the top of his arms. He is used to hauling water from the stream and bringing it the distance to his cave, but this: move the sheep from right to left, bending over them, forcing the strength through his shoulders and down into his arms, into the shears, both delicate and determined—

“It is not easy work, this,” Yannai says.

Eliyahu startles. The man must have read his mind.