I asked the Lord that I might grow in faith and love and every grace . . .

They stand assembled in a row, like dolls, their clothes tattered, skirts and sweaters, what mother dressed them in for school that morning or what they threw on to run out and play in afterward: a Fair Isle knit, knee socks and buckled shoes, a sports jersey, brand new sneakers, a sundress and red rubber rain boots, a pinafore, plaid and stripes, corduroys and blue jeans, bows and braids, a baseball cap, bare feet, candy bracelets, stick-on earrings shaped like pink hearts, a matching pajama set (too loved to be worn only at night), a cowboy hat and cut-offs. Knees bruised, arms scratched, summer freckles and chipped nailpolish, gap-toothed grins hovering unsmiled behind cracked lips, here or there a spate of healing chicken pox, or a recalcitrant wart, or a scratched and infected mosquito bite, or a scab picked too many times, or a rash from causes unknown—mother was going to get him to the doctor next week, it was on the schedule!

Always enough time until it's too late, until time has run out.

In their row, cheeks pale and waxen, fingernails crusted with the residue of a horror-film terror no longer plaguing their teddy-bear brains though it had, once, in a time uncertain and chronologically misplaced. Beginnings brought to ends that no one who loved them had ever imagined.

Might more of His salvation know and seek more earnestly His face . . .

No hunger, here. No thirst. The shepherd, he takes care of the little ones! Their parents need not worry, for their growing fangs have been pruned, their budding carnality curtailed, the opportunity for obsession and possession preempted, their years of grave and terrible crimes evaded altogether, sweet darlings. Forever they'll remain in this gentle embrace, free of stain, avoiding the puncture of age's needle, the injection of life's many poisons. Pure and simple, they reign over a kingdom of what they were before it all, the lambs of Limbo's meadows.

The eyes, they begin to turn inward, one in each dear and delicate head, rolling back and moldering away, binding retribution for what was lost. Fingers grasp at nothing, stiffening tips where the prints whorl, where the knuckles wrinkle, where the tender bones of the wrists make themselves known. The skin across the back and round the palms is soft and velveteen, the stuff of tiny rabbits. Who can say of the rest but that their souls are saved, for behold! As it is said, the wolf will live with the lamb. All is spoiled in this world; none can escape the sins of the father.

And the Angel of Death stalks in late hours, collecting those unwashed.

Instead of this He made me feel the hidden evils of my heart . . .

Decay grows old upon these walls, the deep sunken stagnancy of the swamp, thick braids of moss slick with black mold, the rills of mercury between the rocks bristling with translucent, sightless creatures, most too small for the naked eye in this bleak gloom. What life moves here moves in stunted growth, never birthed and never dying, always throbbing tiny organs in moist bodies made to withstand the illusory angles of such a place.

Sanctuary.

The word whispers between his trembling jaws, cuts through the silence, copulates in the shadows. He watches them, those umbrous patches, wary of what folds between their layers, but he knows, too, that whatever lingers in this place, it will not touch what he has saved.

How many times he's waited for the reawakening! And yet the moment never ceases to arouse him. For he did not desire this task, and yet it was required of him. So many years have come and gone—so many little lambs padding on wooly clacking hooves, candy-pink tongues, eyes rolling, nostrils steaming, so near the unavoidable cliffs from which no mortal who's leapt has ever managed to return.

He's saved them from their kind, offered them salvation, instead.

And let the angry powers of Hell assault my soul in every part . . .

What sorrows he holds are his alone, this wolf who tends the lambs. His lullabies haunt the hollow as he tousels tufts of crisp hair, kneels in contrition before innocence.

They haven't the mouths to pray for him, anymore; they have only one eye each to weep.

He's not always been this way, thick in fur, spiky toothed and foamy lipped—he'd asked for guidance, begged for goodness, for grace, for holiness. On swollen knees for hours he'd remained, scraped raw his grasping, groping fingertips (the remnants of which even now remain, dried along wall and ground, shrine and shrub). But in vain was this self-mortification, for his will was usurped, his unnaturalness only inflamed, and his purpose secured.

The lamb bleats for the shepherd when lost and alone, when its mother has gone and its father has fastened his doom, when danger draws nigh from the valley of the shadow of death. The lamb entrusts his fleecy heart, his spongy tongue, his black and glimmering eyes, his dainty hooves, his wearied form unto the hands and arms of the shepherd.

What a tragedy it would be, then, if the shepherd carves the soft flesh of his charge, if he makes a meal of his lamb.

For it is said that the wicked shall walk the earth and carry out their evil, and even that evil shall find its place. Again the time draws near, again the wolf must rise, and again . . .