The Christmas Epiphany
written by: John Christopher
By well-established custom, saddle riders never named a foal until they were certain it was viable, lest one grow too attached.
In the early hours, a brilliant full moon birthed formless shadows through a veil of misting clouds stretched thin across the up like a lap of cotton, twining in a ritual dance of life, a hazy expression of the one playing out in the barn below. Nothing unusual marked the event. The charcoal gray jennet lay on the straw, her breath short quick puffs in the chill night air. Abruptly, her foal twisted in the foaling funnel, and the saddle riders had to yank her through the gate with their iron birth-bringers. Before an hour had passed, the newborn, sniffing for her mother’s swollen udder, struggled to her hooves to nurse. With a piercing bray, she wobbled and fell, her leg throbbing with pain. Only then did they discover they’d torn something in her fetlock.
For several weeks, the saddle riders did what they could to repair the tear, even strapping miniature fenceposts from knee to hoof to strengthen it. The other animals avoided the young foal. To shield her anxious colt, her mother said, “They just want to give you space to heal.”
Foal knew it was something more, something she wasn’t yet old enough to understand. As the days wore on, they’d trot past the stall where she’d been confined, taunting her. “Mangy no-name,” they’d snort. “Useless grunt!”
Through the barn window, the moon was once again full and round in the up when the saddle riders whispered of sending Foal to the pasture. “She’ll never take to the saddle,” they said. “We can’t risk it.”
Foal secretly hoped she could go and see the pasture and graze in peace and not have to listen to the taunts of the other animals. But her mother grunted and brayed until the saddle riders backed away.
One morning, a furry-faced saddle rider came into Foal’s stall. “There’s a family takin’ young foals an’ lambs an’ calves an’ such,” he said, adding with a mild chuckle, “Even a lame foal can find a purpose, I s’pose. I’m thinkin’ maybe that’s a place for you. An’ since you’ll be our gift, we’ll call you Liora.”
A name! Liora thought. At last, a name.
She glanced at the saddle rider, then her mother. Something in her mother’s grass-green eyes differed from when they’d talked about the pasture. There was a peaceful gloss, like it’d be okay if she went. And so, she didn’t bray as the furry-faced saddle rider slung her across his shoulders, and off they went.
Liora had never been off the down before, and it was dizzying not to have at least three hooves planted firmly upon it. As he strode from the stable, the up was a canvas of black with clusters of tiny torches sprinkled across it. One was big and round as the mouth of a bucket. Another, like the cross on a donkey’s back, beamed brighter still.
As the saddle rider’s hooves crunched the pebbly path, Liora’s eyelids drooped to his rhythmic pace, and she dozed off for a time. She was jostled awake amid clusters of stables for the animals and the saddle riders. The crowds were frenzied, and there were many animals. Veering from the multitude, the saddle rider ducked into a sagging stable. Liora wondered, is this where she’d see the saddle riders accepting foals who’d been rejected, like her?
As they entered, other animals caught Liora’s attention. A draft horse chomped hay from a trough. Several dairy cows lay, swatting gnats with their fly-shoos. A lamb on the shoulders of another saddle rider asked Liora’s name with a gleeful “Baa!” Her enthusiasm was contagious.
“Liora,” she wuffled as softly as she could to avoid getting cropped or shushed, with all the saddle riders nearby, but how grateful she felt to be able to share her name.
The lamb, less restrained, released a chortling snort. “I’m Cotton Cloud.”
The one open window in the rickety stable caught Liora’s eye. Through it, in the up she saw the tail of the milky donkey cross she’d seen along the road, reaching down into the stable. Its pearly luminescence caressed the hair of the two saddle riders she’d been brought here for—no, three, actually, because the saddle rider had foaled among the animals, and there was her infant, swaddled and lying in a manger. As Liora looked in wonder, she realized she was not the only outcast. Others, perhaps all kinds, could be outcasts just like her.
Liora released a heavy sigh. In that moment, she’d never felt more… accepted. She resolved that, no matter the taunts of others, she was not a useless grunt, and she wouldn’t let others treat her as if she were. And so, she dedicated herself to showing how valuable any life (even that of a grunt) could be.
The saddle rider’s foal grew up alongside Liora and Cotton Cloud. He was always kind-hearted. They’d play, and he’d find fresh grasses for them to munch. As Liora’s leg strengthened, she pulled the cart with the saddle rider’s tools and the wood they used in their trade.
Years later, metal-clad saddle riders came on thundering chargers demanding payment of something they called taxes. When the saddle riders couldn’t pay, they confiscated Liora, Cotton Cloud and the other animals. As the metal-clad saddle riders led them away, the saddle rider’s foal threw his arms around Liora’s neck and whispered into her ear, “I’ll need you someday – you, and your son. You’ll be there when I call?”
Liora didn’t understand, but she nodded, and he said, “Zechariah saw the greatness in your line.”
Gritting teeth, Liora wuffled. All her life, with her lame leg, she’d hoped simply to be ordinary, and she would have been content passing her days believing she’d risen to that.
***
The village streets bustled with the sounds and smells of the busy morning, baking bread, creaking cartwheels, and saddle riders rushing here and there, seemingly without purpose. Save for that night when she’d been given her name, Liora had never observed such a commotion even in the marketplace, where she’d hauled loads of onions, leeks, and fava beans for so many years. Yet for reasons she could not quite discern, today was plainly different. From their treatment of one another, she sensed a new mood, one that was more animated, spontaneous, and…
As Liora paused to sniff the air, her ears flickered and her eyes darted from one saddle rider to the next. Marked by something else…
Absent were the harsh words, the shoving, the kneeing of other saddle riders with their dangly side legs as she’d often observed when the lines grew long.
Kindness? Liora wondered.
“Is today the day I get to pull the cart, Momma?” Blaze asked.
“Not today,” Liora said, wondering whether her saddle rider even intended to set up his trader’s nook this morning after bringing them into the village, where he’d tied them to a post and vanished into one of their stables. Beside her, Blaze stamped impatiently, and she knew her colt was growing restless.
“I’m sure I can do it,” Blaze insisted.
“I’m sure you can, also,” his mother said with a soft nicker. “When you’re old enough.”
Blaze brayed. “You say that every time. I’ll never do anything important.”
“I thought that once, Blaze,” she said, recalling he’d been so named for the pearl-white cross on his back, like the one she’d seen in the up those distant years past.
“I’m just too small. I’ll never be big, like you.”
“And, I wasn’t always a fully-grown jennet.”
Blaze glanced skeptically at her, ears twitching as if he’d misunderstood. “Everyone looks to you whenever there’s trouble,” he said. “Remember when the chickens—”
“It wasn’t always that way. Years ago, they abandoned me after my foaling because they said I’d never be useful.” Liora recalled how protective her mother had been, and how she’d yearned for the warmth of her hair, her gentle nickering. Those memories had dimmed with the long passage of time, but they’d never faded completely.
“No one ever said that.”
“Not in your lifetime, they haven’t.” With a glance into Blaze’s eyes, she knew his probing was sincere. Blowing a dismissive snort, she stamped the dirt. “Have you ever seen a saddle rider on my back? None risk their lives with my lame hoof.”
“You’ve always come through for us, though. When that bobcat broke into the stable, you sent her running.” Blaze lurched and would have reared, replicating his mother’s quick reaction, had he not been tied to the post.
Liora bobbed her head, chuckling a jolly hee-haw. “I sure chased her off, didn’t I?”
“More than that. You knocked her senseless. I wish I could’ve done that.”
“You’ll have your day. For now, just be satisfied knowing you’re my greatest joy.”
“But I’m so small,” Blaze brayed. “How can you not be disappointed?”
“Don’t say that again,” Liora nipped. “I waited for you well past my foaling years with hope in my heart. Then, just as he said, here you are. So much is ahead of—”
Saddle riders surged into the street, led by one who claimed he’d been sent into the village to find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her side. Liora glanced at Blaze, flattened ears signaling caution as the saddle rider approached.
“I was told to untie you,” the saddle rider said, “and to bring you to the Teacher.”
They followed the flow of the crowd, and when it parted before them, there stood one Liora would never forget – the saddle rider foal she’d been given to years ago. He’d called, and she’d answered. In his eyes she saw how deeply he’d been moved.
Rubbing her withers, he turned to Blaze as others threw cloaks over their backs. Then he climbed onto Blaze, and many led them through the streets. A throng larger than any Liora had encountered appeared along their route cutting branches from the trees to spread on the road.
And they shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
Awed by it all, Blaze, never again brayed over his small size.
Liora didn’t grasp the meaning of their words or that she and Blaze had been part of so astonishing a moment. But gone was her drive to prove her worth. She was content simply to be with the one who’d accepted unwanted foals and lambs and calves.
- The Christmas Epiphany - December 14, 2025
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