Page 38 of Come Fly With Me

Dear God, had the kid been hanging above his head all this time?

“Shepherds were tending their sheep in a field, under the huge star,” Lorraine said.

Three kids popped up from inside the sheep pen. They were all dressed in bathrobes and wore tea towels on their heads. And yet again, David wondered if they’d been there all along.

“Hark,” a shepherd shouted. “I see a star up yonder.”

Strangled laughter came from behind David. Another glance in that direction told him that Josh had been joined by his friend Mitch, and both of them were trying to laugh quietly.

“That’s a very big star,” the shepherdess shouted. “It can’t be normal.”

“No,” the star yelled back. “I’m not normal.”

“A sheep peed on my feet,” the third shepherd wailed.

“Shut up,” snapped the first shepherd.

“I’m not a normal star,” the star called over the wailing. “I’m a messenger star.”

“Yes,” Lorraine said as the child with the pee-covered feet kept crying. “Long ago, before there was the internet, God spoke to lots of people at once through big stars that everyone could see.”

At a tap on his shoulder, David looked back to find Caroline. “The biblical teaching around here has been lacking for quite some time. Reverend Morrison usually spent his sermon time shouting at people who annoyed him.”

“Behold,” the star called. “There’s a baby coming to Bethlehem. Right now, he’s still inside his mum, but soon, he’ll be in a stable. You need to find the stable baby and tell everyone he’s really a king. Take him a sheep. You can’t go to see him empty-handed.”

The shepherds nodded at each other before one of them took hold of a sheep—wearing a collar and lead—and they all walked up the center aisle to the doors then down the aisle at the wall to get back to the front of the church. Meanwhile, the main doors crashed open, and a pantomime donkey trotted in. Beside the donkey walked Mary and Joseph.

“Shouldn’t Mary be on the donkey?” Josh whispered.

Obviously, Mary didn’t want to ride when she could show off her pregnancy walk. She waddled down the church, her hands on her belly, moaning as she went. “The baby’s coming,” she wailed. “It wants out. Argh, the pain. The pain! I need to lie down. I need a midwife. I need painkillers.”

As the congregation giggled, the front half of the donkey appeared to be trying to tap dance his way down the aisle.

“Behold,” Joseph shouted. “A big star. That must mean something.”

“I hope it means there’s a hospital nearby,” Mary wailed.

“The young couple were on their way to Bethlehem,” Lorraine said through the speakers. “To register to vote.”

David groaned.Vote?Listening to this was agony!

“The star was very bright,” Lorraine said, “and it helped them find their way in the dark.”

At the front of the church, a cardboard hut with the word ‘Hotel’ painted on it was dragged onto the stage, and a little girl appeared through the small door cut out of it.

“I am the innkeeper,” she told Mary and Joseph. “My hotel is fully booked. There are no free rooms. All the town is booked because of the voting. This is a very bad time of year to come to Bethlehem. You should have booked in advance.”

“There must be somewhere we can stay,” Joseph said. “My woman is about to pop.”

The innkeeper let out a heavy sigh. “I suppose you could stay in my barn.” She pointed to the pulpit, where bales of hay had been piled up. “It has hay, which will keep you warm, but I’m charging double because this is a sellers’ market. And you can’t annoy my animals.” At her words, several tiny kids dressed in random animal costumes popped out from behind the hay.

“Is that an elephant?” Mitch said, sounding strangled.

“This is totally unfair,” Joseph grumbled as he paid.

As Joseph helped a groaning Mary up the steps to the hay, another spotlight came on—this one pointed at the back of the church. It focused on a table, which had a chair on top of it, and on top of the chair, stood an angel.

“Oh, that isn’t safe,” Caroline said.