“So you see,” said Caspar, nodding.
Elisabet didn’t quite understand what he meant.
“So you see how easily clever ideas travel,” continued the Wise Man. “You’ve been with a Wise Man for only a short time, but you’ve already understood a tiny part of the heavenly wisdom. Bravo!”
Elisabet was glad she had said something clever. She felt so encouraged that she tried again. “And if the world was as small as the moon, nobody would complain that it hadn’t been made a little bit larger.”
Caspar put his hand on her head. “How true that is. Even if the world had been no larger than a pea, it would have been just as big a mystery. For where would the little pea have come from? That, too, would have had to be created by God. And it’s no easier to create a pea than to create a whole solar system.”
Elisabet thought the last statement a slight exaggeration. For if the world hadn’t been any larger than a pea, it wouldn’t have had room even for Adam and Eve.
It was as if the Wise Man was afraid she was going to protest. He quickly continued. “Even if there had been only one star in the sky, that one star would have aroused just as much wonder as all the other stars together. After all, nobody goes around complaining because there’s only one moon. On the contrary: if there had been a hundred moons, they would only have gotten in each other’s way. So the creation of billions of stars in the sky was a luxurious exaggeration. Whenever there’s too much of anything, you can stare at it without appreciating it. That’s how it’s possible to be out under a starry sky and fail to see a single star because of a shower of shooting stars.”
It was quite true, thought Elisabet. She had often looked at a sky full of stars without noticing any particular one.
Caspar continued. “In the opinion of the Kings of the Orient, God spoiled humans a little, because He created far too much at the same time. He created so many strange things to look at that many people don’t see God. But that’s how He managed to hide Himself, too. He wouldn’t have been able to do that it only four people, three trees, two sheep, and eight camels existed in the whole of creation. If only one fish could be found in the sea, people would probably have noticed how perfect it was. And then they might have started asking who had made it.”
For a while he stood there looking around him. Elisabet thought he was waiting for someone to clap. To be on the safe side, she clapped. Then the others clapped as well.
“There, there,” said Caspar. “That wasn’t so much to clap for.”
Then he seemed to change his mind. “Although it was infinitely more than nothing.”
The procession of pilgrims ran down toward a little town beside a narrow strip of water.
“This sound is called the Little Belt, and the name of the little town is Middelfart,” said Ephiriel. “The time is 1504 years after Christ.”
Before Elisabet was able to ask how they were going to cross the sound, Joshua was on his way toward a boat that lay moored to a little pier. In the boat sat a young man drawing up a fishing line. When he saw the angel Ephiriel, he dropped the line into the sea and threw himself down with his head on the deck.
“Be not afraid,” said Ephiriel. “We are pilgrims on our way to the Holy Land, where Jesus is to be born. Can you row us over the Little Belt?”
“Amen,” replied the ferryman. “Amen, amen…”
The angel knew his answer meant yes. The four sheep and the rest of the pilgrims climbed on board the boat.
As the ferryman rowed across the sound, he stared and stared at the angel Ephiriel. It was probably the first time he had seen a proper angel. He didn’t so much as glance at the black king, Caspar.
If the angel had not been with them, Elisabet thought, the ferryman would most certainly have had more than enough to do, staring at King Caspar, since it was also probably the first time he had seen a black man. Only if the King had not been with them either, would he perhaps have looked at her. She thought it was a little unfair that the world should be like that.
When they reached the other side and the sheep began jumping out of the boat, they said thank you and goodbye to the ferryman. As for the ferryman, he only repeated what he had said many, many times already. “Amen, amen…”
* * *
JOACHIM had just finished reading when Mama came into the room. He crumpled up the thin paper quickly, but Mama saw that he was hiding something.
“What are you holding in your hand?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Only air.”
“May I see it, then?”
But Joachim held the crumpled paper so hard that his knuckles went white.
“It’s a Christmas present,” he said.
The words “Christmas present” might have been magic. At any rate, they made Mama smile. “For me?”
Joachim nodded.
“Then I won’t look,” said Mama. “But it must be a very tiny Christmas present.”
“It’s infinitely bigger than nothing,” said Joachim.
Joachim thought it was strange that everything that had to do with Christmas was so special. It was one of the most secret things in the whole world.
But Mama was wrong about one thing. What he was holding in his hand wasn’t such a tiny Christmas present.
8
DECEMBER 8
… part of the glory of heaven that has strayed down to earth …
ON December 8, Joachim was woken by Mama. She ruffled his hair and said, “Time to get up, Joachim. It’s half past seven, and you start school early today.”
He sat up in bed. The first thing he thought of was the magic Advent calendar hanging above his head.
Mama seemed to read his mind. “But you have time to open the Advent calendar.”
Joachim thought quickly. He thought so quickly that there was room for an awful lot of thoughts before Mama went on. “Aren’t you going to open it? I’d like to see it, too.”
No! thought Joachim.
He couldn’t open the magic Advent calendar while Mama was watching.
“I don’t think you’re quite awake yet,” Mama said. “Perhaps you’ll let me open the Advent calendar today?”
“No!” said Joachim, so loud and clear that Mama jumped. “I’ll wait till I come home from school. Because … I’ll have more time then.”
He jumped out of bed quickly to be certain Mama wasn’t going to open the calendar.
“Of course you do whatever you want,” she said.
She went out to the kitchen while Joachim got dressed.
* * *
WHEN he came home from school, a man was standing outside the garden gate. Since he didn’t know the man, Joachim pretended he hadn’t seen him. He opened the gate and closed it after him. Then the stranger walked toward him.
“Is your name Joachim?” he asked.
Joachim stopped on the path that Papa had almost cleared of snow, and turned toward the man. He was very old; he looked very kind, too. All the same, Joachim didn’t like someone he didn’t know to know his name. But he had to answer.
“Yes,” he said. “That’s me.”
The man nodded. He came right up to the gate. He was wearing a green felt hat.
“I thought so.”
He had an odd accent. Perhaps he wasn’t Norwegian. “You’ve received a fine Advent calendar, haven’t you?”
Joachim gave a start. How did the man know that?
“A magic Advent calendar,” Joachim said.
“A magic Advent calendar, yes. Price: 75 øre. My name’s John. I sell flowers at the market.”
Joachim stood still. In his Advent calendar he had read about people who had suddenly seen an angel. Now it was almost as if he was being visited by an angel himself.
He knew this meeting with the flower seller was important and he wanted to say something serious, but he only managed, “How did you know where I lived?”
John chuckled. “Good question, my boy,” he said. “I often go into the bookshop, you see. I like it there. S
o I wanted to hear where the old calendar had ended up. It was a good thing your father forgot his driver’s license. If he hadn’t, it would have been much more difficult for me to find you. But I expect you’d have come to see me at the market sooner or later. Don’t you think?”
Joachim nodded. He had thought of it. “Did you know there were some mysterious pieces of paper in the Advent calendar?” he asked.
The old man smiled with an air of secrecy. “If there’s anyone in the whole world who does know, it must be me. Now you know, too.”
“Is it homemade?”
“Completely homemade, yes, and very old. But that’s an old story, too. Have you opened the calendar today?”
Joachim shook his head. “I have to do it when Mama and Papa aren’t looking, because I don’t want them to know about the pieces of paper. I’m going to wrap them up on Christmas Eve and put the package under the Christmas tree for them.”
“That’s a good idea,” said John. “But what about yesterday? Did the pilgrims take a sheep with them from the old castle on Fyn, and did the angel Ephiriel say ‘Fear not’ to the sentries at the castle?”
Joachim was almost scared, because John knew all about it. “Did you make the magic Advent calendar?” he asked.
“Yes and no…”
Joachim was afraid John might leave, so he quickly asked another question. “Has it all really happened, or have you made it up?”
John looked serious. “It’s all right to ask … but it isn’t always so easy to answer.”
Joachim said, “I wondered if Elisabet in the magic Advent calendar is the same as the Elisabet whose picture was in the bookstore.”
“So he told you about the old picture?” said John, sighing. “Well, I have nothing to hide anymore, I’m too old for that now. But it isn’t Christmas yet, so we’d better talk about Elisabet another time.”
He took a step back. “Sabet … Tebas…” he mumbled to himself. Joachim didn’t understand, but perhaps he hadn’t been meant to hear.
Finally John said, “I must go now. But we’ll meet again, for that old story links us human beings together.” He walked away at a brisk pace.
Joachim was annoyed that he hadn’t had time to ask more questions. He definitely should have asked whether the big calendar picture was gradually changing as he read the pieces of paper.
He hurried into the house and opened the calendar door with the number 8 on it. Today there was a picture of a shepherd carrying a lamb on his shoulders.
JACOB
On one of the last days of the year 1499 after Christ, four sheep, one shepherd, one King of the Orient, one angel, and a little girl from Norway jumped out of a boat that had brought them across the Little Belt to Jutland.
“Thank goodness!” exclaimed Caspar as they stepped on land.
“Yes, it’ll be a long time before we have to do that again,” said Joshua.
The angel Ephiriel nodded. “Verily I say unto you that we will cross the sea only one more time before we get to Bethlehem.”
Elisabet had no idea what they were talking about.
“Isn’t it still terribly far to Bethlehem?” she asked.
“Yes, indeed,” said the angel. “It is far, and many hundreds of years, too. But we have only one more sea to cross. That won’t happen until we get to the Black Sea.”
They came to a town on the inland end of a fjord. At one end of the town was a large fortress.
“This town is called Kolding and is in South Jutland,” said the angel Ephiriel. “It has been an important trading center for hundreds of years. The fortress is called Koldinghus and the kings of Denmark have often lived here. The time is 1488 years after Christ’s birth.”
Joshua struck the ground with his crook. “To Bethlehem! To Bethlehem!”
They came to the top of a ridge with a fine view over the countryside. Flowers grew everywhere, so it must be early summer.
Elisabet pointed down as she ran. “Look at the lovely wildflowers!” she said.
The angel nodded mysteriously. “They are part of the glory of heaven that has strayed down to earth,” he explained. “You see, there’s so much glory in heaven that it’s very easy for it to spill over.”
Elisabet pondered the angel’s words and hid them in her heart.
Suddenly the shepherd stopped and pointed at the little flock of sheep. “A lamb is missing!”
He needed to say no more, for they all saw that the earth had seemingly swallowed up the little lamb with the bell.
“Where is it?” asked Elisabet.
Joshua shook his head. “Usually they’re so sweet and their fleece is so white that they’re a delight to the eye, but they’re also so wild that they’re almost uncontrollable. It doesn’t always help to put a bell on them. If I’m watching one lamb, the other will suddenly vanish. And when I find the second lamb, all of a sudden the first lamb will decide to leave the flock. Shepherding is a difficult job, and it’s especially difficult to herd sheep all the way to Bethlehem. As it is written, now I must leave the other sheep to look for the one lamb that is missing.”
Elisabet felt her eyes fill with tears. But just then a man appeared over the crest of the ridge. He was wearing clothes exactly like Joshua’s. On his shoulders he was carrying the lamb with the bell.
“He is one of us,” said Ephiriel.
The man put the lamb down at Elisabet’s feet. He held out his hand to Joshua and said, “I am Jacob the shepherd and the second of the shepherds in the field. Now I’ll help to care for the flock that’s going to Bethlehem.”
Elisabet clapped her hands. Joshua struck the ground with his crook and said. “To Bethlehem! To Bethlehem!”
As they passed the old market town of Flensburg, the angel Ephiriel said, “The time is 1402 after the birth of Christ. We shall soon be crossing the border into Germany and diving into the depths of the Middle Ages.”
* * *
JOACHIM stood lost in thought. The angel Ephiriel had said that the wildflowers were a part of the glory of heaven that had strayed down to earth. Because there’s so much glory in heaven that it’s easy for it to spill over. Probably only a flower seller could write something like that.
He didn’t tell Mama and Papa that John had visited him. If he told them about that, he would have to give away the secret of the scraps of paper, too.
Joachim now had so many secrets to keep that his head might split at any moment.
9
DECEMBER 9
… they had broken a solemn promise …
NOW Joachim had met John, the old flower seller. John knew more about the Advent calendar than he wanted to share. He had said he would tell Joachim more about Elisabet another time, because it was not Christmas yet.
But what had he muttered to himself?
Joachim couldn’t stop thinking about it for the rest of the afternoon. “Sabet … Tebas.”
Who or what was Sabet and Tebas? Could those strange words have anything to do with the magic Advent calendar?
Before he went to bed he wrote the words down in a little notebook so as not to forget them by morning. Then he discovered something odd: SABET became TEBAS when he read it backward. So of course TEBAS turned into SABET, too.
This was so mysterious that he wrote down the two words like this:
Perhaps one day the magic words would help him to understand the old Advent calendar.
Suddenly he remembered something the bookseller had said. Hadn’t he said that the old flower seller was a little odd? Joachim didn’t think he seemed the least bit odd. Of course, it was unusual to pour water over people’s heads, but it was just the sort of thing that Joachim might suddenly decide to do himself.
* * *
WHEN he woke up on the ninth of December, he quickly opened the Advent calendar before Mama and Papa woke up and came into his room. It was a picture of a man playing a pipe. After the man came a long procession of children, some big and some small.
THE FIFTH SHEEP
r /> It was the year 1378 after Christ. Three godly sheep and a lamb with a bell stormed into the city of Hamburg. Behind the little flock ran two shepherds in light blue tunics. One of them was carrying the kind of shepherd’s crook you often see in southern countries. An elegantly dressed black king followed the shepherds. Behind the King, a little girl was running as fast as her short legs would carry her. After the girl, an angel hovered just above the ground.
It was Sunday and early in the morning. A few people were on their way to morning Mass in the old Church of St. Jacobi. As soon as they saw the procession of pilgrims, they began gesturing with their arms. Some of them shaded their eyes, and one of them exclaimed, “God be praised!”
Something similar had happened in the town of Hanover a few years earlier. It was 1351, immediately after the fearful Plague that had cost so many human lives, not only in Germany but in all of Europe. It was a Monday, and the stands on the great market square were about to open. Peasants in their worn homespun clothes and market women in coarse skirts had begun setting out their wares. All of them had lost some of their dear ones. It was just before the dawn of a new day.
It was then that a little flock of sheep suddenly ran into the market. One of the sheep overturned a table of vegetables. After the sheep there came a strange group. There were a couple of shepherds, and a black man in exotic clothes. The black man was followed by a white-clad figure with wings on its back. At the very end came a little girl. She stumbled over the shaft of a cart full of cabbages and lay there after the rest of the godly company had left the market.
Elisabet wept bitterly when she saw the angel Ephiriel and all the others disappearing. It was the second time on the long journey south that she had fallen and hurt herself. The first time, she had lost the lamb. Now she had lost the procession of pilgrims and was surrounded by people she didn’t know. Not only was she in a foreign country; she was in a foreign century, too.
The people in the market were terrified by what they had seen. They crowded around Elisabet, and a man poked her with his foot as if he was afraid to touch her. He wrinkled his nose and grunted horribly. But soon an old woman helped Elisabet back on her feet and tried to comfort her. She spoke a language Elisabet didn’t understand.