A dog barked from somewhere in the shadowy streets to erratically sever the quiet, a canine or incisor ripping into the delicate fabric of the night cloth. Its vulpine howl spilling raspy and raw into the blackness that loitered beneath a voyeuristic moon shining down on Cana - a spotlight from heaven searching for recalcitrant and wayward angels. The stars above Galilee flickered frenetically as though gossip soaked rumors were being flung about between them, each one twinkling with nervous speculation from the corner of the eye and then whimperingly still when singled out. The night was maturing but history was young.

On the edge of town the muffled chatter and song from wedding guests wafted out through a back door and into a courtyard where Hamish sat, insignificantly perched upon a wooden crate that had  earlier been used to carry in supplies for the evenings celebration. His eyes which had long been glued to the venerable night sky, a sky infinitely cluttered with celestial flotsam and mystique, now scanned the moonlit desert and the dark empty road that ran west toward Nazareth. Strangely, no Roman soldiers could be seen or heard, their cacophonous marching and clamoring of military attire an unmistakable auditory intrusion to the ears of anyone not of Roman extraction. Another dog barked sparking of a series of repercussive barks, a domino effect of hound blather, an antagonizing auditory intrusion to the ears of any Roman soldier doing his rounds.

Hamish took a long deep breath to fill his lungs with the nights tranquility as his mind slowly wandered back toward the work which still needed to be done. His legs pained and his back ached from carrying all the sundries the wedding guests had required and expected in order to enjoy themselves, but fortunately the first coarse had just been served, offering him a small reprieve while tipsy invitees ingested the victuals prepared for the occasion.

With his thoughts meandering between the shadows of the still night, desultory like the echoes of the barking dogs, he slowly became aware of voices originating beyond the constraints of his own mind. A man and a women were standing just outside the backdoor, oblivious to him pondering on his wooden crate. Their whispers sliced through the still night making it impossible for him not to inadvertently stretch his ears and pry into their conversation.

“... but, but my son they have no more wine, and this on their wedding day... it is... it is surely the most embarrassing start to a marriage.” The women whispered with an undertone of urgency.

The man remained silent.

“There must be something we can do?”  She continued. “They have guests that have come as far Dothan and even as far as Bethlehem for this marriage.” She persisted.

“ Why djo you say thish to me mother? Why djo you involf me? I have told you this already that my time hash no yet come” The man responded with a subtly discernible slur, palpably he had had a hand in the depletion of the wine.

“But my son, surely there must be something we can do, can we not send for more wine, is there not someone you know who we can call upon.”

The man was silent.

“They themselves do not yet know and when the guests...” Her voice trailing of into a silent helpless void.

Hamish sat silent, dumbfounded by what he had just heard.

“It is not possible,” The woman continued, “that nothing can be done, can we not find a wine merchant that would open his doors in order to aid us?”

“It ish late mother, we are not from here, I know not who to ask.” The man replied slowly, clearly aware of his mothers distress.

“But we should at least ask, we can ask around without letting the guests know for were they to find out, as sure as they arrived they would leave. And what of...”

“Stop mother,” He interjected her firmly. “Stop for I hear you. Say nothing more to anyone and let us go inside, I will ask my father for his help.”  His voice suddenly sounding clean and strong, the slight hint of a slur had been washed away and it almost sounded to Hamish as though it were another man who had just then joined the conversation and spoken.

With his head stretching around a corner, Hamish was now trying to acquire a glimpse of who it was whispering in the darkness, but the two figures slipped in through the back door before he could even remotely identify either of them.

The thought of the wedding guests having depleted the wine so early in the festivities caused his tendons to cringe with embarrassment. The women was quite right, it certainly was the most embarrassing start to a marriage. To begin a life long communion with a partner and at the genesis of it all not being able to satisfy your guests, with even a couple of glasses of wine. Well that would be an omen predicting very little satisfaction for either party involved in such a union. Undoubtedly in the eyes of the guests that would be the case. It would be far less of a catastrophe were they to run out of food, the roof to collapse, the priest to be caught with his foreskin intact, or for the husband to confess to having had intimate and exhaustive relations with his neighbors prize ram. Of course all these scenarios would cause a scandal and a temporary disruption to the festivities, but none would be as scandalous as a premature depletion of alcohol. Almost any calamity could be remedied, for the present anyway, with a couple of glasses of wine. But how does one go about remedying the fact that there is no more wine? Do you eat more? Do you engage in deeper more meaningful conversation? Do you dance, sing or laugh more as a distraction? Impossible, for wine would be the ever missing compliment, the absent punch line to every joke told, and sadly, often the essential catalyst for those jokes to be told in the first place. The songs would sound bitter, the food would taste insipid and the guests would soon depart leaving the young couple to wallow in the humiliation of having been utterly unprepared. And all because the vats were now empty. Even to mourn the fact that there was no more wine one would need a good glass or two, for it is when the wine is finished that all celebrations are truly over and not when the fat lady sings. The fat lady can easily be made to look thinner and let it not be forgotten that it probably took the poor fat girl a couple of glasses to get up and perform, thus without the wine she might never have sing to be begin with. But probably the most distressing ingredient was the personal aspect, as knowing the guests that have been invited should clearly dictate how much wine is required. It should go without saying, that in knowing a man well, involuntarily you would know his intake, and to grossly underestimate the consumptive whole of your guests alcoholic ingestive wants is an error people tend to take rather personally. A social blunder and insult fated to expose the tenderest of tissue that even once healed, with much apologizing, affection and personal attention, will more often than not, still heal with a social scar.

The moon shifted a few inconspicuous degrees to the west as Hamish sat in silence wandering whether or not what he had overheard was true or merely wedding scandal.

“Gossip, drunken gossip.” He mused to himself. Just before he had left the kitchen to take his break he himself had seen nearly a dozen clay pots containing enough wine to quench the thirst of easily five hundred Roman soldiers returning from battle.

“Let me stop this rumor before it spreads to far.” He finally thought to himself.

Through the back door he hurried to find everything going on as should be expected. The guests were merrier than ever, the music bouncing from wall to wall as people danced and offered their blessings of goodwill and prosperity to the bride and groom being united. Not surprisingly, upon reaching the kitchen in front of him stood at least a dozen clay jars each looking like a sentinel on guard before the gates of drunken bliss.

“There must be wine in these.”

He murmured subconsciously as he stepped over to examine the contents of the jars. Lifting a lid from one of them, he showed a sudden gasp of surprise to see it filled to the brim with nothing but air. His hands shot to the next jar where his eyes were greeted by the same vacancy as the first. His heart rose in his chest, for ultimately, it would be his duty to inform the father of the groom that the wine stock had been exhausted.

“In the name of Philistine how can this be?” He blurted out to himself and the empty pot into which he stared. His voice sounding hollow as the sound from his mouth ricocheted recklessly inside the hollow vessel.

The next jar was equally empty, the following even emptier, and the next looked as though it had never even tasted wine.

“Stolen? Impossible.” He immediately retorted to his question.

Impossible that it could have all been consumed, it was as though everything had just evaporated into thin air, swallowed expeditiously by an invisible breeze. Simply vanished like the sweetness of the Dead Sea

His thoughts scattered in every direction possible to simultaneously think of a solution, a plausible reason for this mysterious disappearance, as well as an excuse that could salvage the night and the marriage. With a thumb nail nervously being chewed upon, no solution or explanation came to mind.

As he stood anxiously contemplating the implications to this horrid discovery and his inability to come up with even a moderate panacea, his eyes suddenly fell upon two more clay jars standing like banished lepers in a shadowy corner of the room.

“Please be wine!” His mind exclaimed as he rushed to inspect the jars before him.

His heart skipped a beat and his thumb nail breathed a sigh of relief to see a liquid that, given the corners less than superb candle light, vaguely fitted the description of wine. It certainly however did not smell like wine, but the fumes that hung over the pot were definitely alcoholic in nature and at this point that was what counted the most. With not a moment to waste Hamish reached for a ladle, dipped it into the jar and brought it up to introduce the liquid to his lips. The fluid had scarcely been swallowed when a spasm shot through his entire being, electrifying his core like only a lightning bolt could take credit for. Dropping the ladle and grabbing his head with both hands he fell to the floor, shut his eyes and tore his way into bedlam.  His skin  began to sizzle like deep fried chicken waiting to be nibbled on by a flock of carnivorous nymphean mermaids. Lights darted through the interior of his mind, illuminating uncharted corners and crevices. Exposing cracks, unveiling fissures, detonating shadows and plowing through interstices of colliding cells. Every iota of darkness felt as if it was being forced out through a pin hole in the back of his skull, fleeing before waves of the radiant light racing toward him. Negativity was being evacuated and in its place something else was flooding in. Light. Light, and more light. Light in its purest form, arriving from somewhere, going everywhere, chewing up everything, leaving nothing. An effulgent hurricane of swirling radiance spiraling ever faster like  incandescent plumes of chop suey flushed down a golden toilet, twisting, churning, orbiting around a fulcrum, and in the eye of it all, Hamish. He was still vaguely aware of the hard stone floor beneath him yet he felt ten thousand days travel away, and suddenly the notion of needing any surface beneath him seemed ludicrous and unnecessarily absurd.

Completely helpless and petrified he remained frozen, paralytically curled up in a ball on the floor. Moments, seconds, inexplicable things passed, until slowly, and then very suddenly, all the madness seemed to attain a degree of order and sensibility. Though still far beyond the borders of his reasoning, and undetectable on his radar of understanding, it appeared as though time had stopped and that his blood was swimming backward, a calm sensation echoing, reverberating, reversing its way through his veins.

Deep within the fluid filled labyrinth of his inner ears melodies began to pulse, soft and weightless, delicately elevating him above any fear or anxiety that still gnawed at his heals. Higher and higher he floated, rising up, a sickle moon silent and observantly climbing over a desolate prairie. Higher than mortal mans topographical peaks, high enough to forget about life below him, then higher still to where gravity coward. Where he was? Meant nothing. Who he was? Less than nothing, but what he believed, everything. A Voice, yes a voice was calling him, a voice that knew him  and knew everything about him. An almighty voice speaking a language that he simply could not deny from flowing through him, a voice that was the light. There was nothing to do but listen.

Then... thud. It him like a meteorite, like a dead relative popping round for tea, like a head wound from a stray bullet fired from miles down the track, an aneurism in slow motion. It hit home hard and it hit home clear. Something he had known his entire life, but now for the first time he truly felt it. Felt its purpose and its desires, felt its absolute power intertwined with its fragile existence.

Thud... it hit him again, splintering his bones and sending tremors through the ubiquitous light still glowing ferociously.

Thud again, harder this time and with a nearness that converted all private thought into a petrifying and quivering mass the size of a pin head.

Thud, it came once more but now from inside, resolute  and anchored to all that he possessed. His heart had woken, or had the voice woken to his heart. Whichever it was, pulsating and pounding it now held the spotlight, the microphone, center stage. Thud the beating continued, rhythmically and inexorable, each thud unveiling, shattering or undermining a nexus of truths. A thud to reawaken this, then one to give birth to that or dispel something else. Collapsing the pillars that supported inane fallacies. Demolishing beliefs that corroded the marrow of men. Strangling oppressive fears responsible for twisting innards and collapsing lungs. Reshuffling his deck of perception into an ethereal order that even a deity would salivate over. His heartbeat hammered on as a feeling of unassailability from anything negative roared within.

Then... ever so sedately... ever so steadily he felt himself floating back down to earth. Dropping slowly at first then gradually generating speed as gravity finally began to reclaim her risen child. Pulling him back down at an immeasurable pace. Faster and faster, until he began to overtake the light that shone all around him, even faster until he out raced thoughts that had not even yet been conceived. Hamish was ahead of everything that moved, not only ahead but out of site, heading faster than an irate atom back down to where he had come from - himself.

Thud....... thud...... thud..... thud ....thud... thud ..thud. whack!

Then darkness, and only darkness, everything temporarily still before his surroundings slowly made themselves known. Wedding music drifted surreally over him, over his skin that no longer sizzled like pork fat on a skillet, he could once more feel the ground on which he lay. Opening his eyes on a cold hard stone floor he slowly rose, the candles in the kitchen flickered softly His body seemed lighter, his peripheral vision wider, and his existence on the this earth impossible to refute. Remnants of the calmness he had just experienced still simmered serenely within him, while fumes from the rocket fuel he had used to breach the atmosphere disseminated through his body. His body that now possessed a heart revered by every organ, vein, and blood vessel.

Looking about the kitchen he suddenly realized that time had most certainly passed. All about him stood clay jars filled to the brim with wine, dirty dishes lay scattered everywhere, and the wax melted from each candle lay thick and heavy below the dying flames. But instead of questions rushing through his mind, Hamish only had orders.

Miraculously someone had managed to save the night with some of the finest wine ever tasted in Cana. The wedding continued unabated, the moon was shifting but still searched for her wayward messengers, and with a clarity that could cut diamonds Hamish followed his orders, disappearing with two clay jars of wine out through the back door, and into the night.