If there be no mercy left in the world,
the doors of heaven will never be barred.
-Im Nin'Alu
As Macalaurë Fëanorion traveled through Roman territories, he noticed the land felt different - where people made offerings to the genius loci, evil creatures like Orcs were kept away. Macalaurë had gotten so accustomed to letting his guard down that finally, in a long stretch of Judean wilderness where there were no shrines and spells, he met with a pack of Orcs. Outnumbered and weary from a great journey on foot, Macalaurë's mind's eye replayed his worst memory, that of his father Fëanor being ambushed by Balrogs, and he feared he would die an even more gruesome death.
But suddenly thunder rolled and lightning struck one of the Orcs upon the arse. The other Orcs ran off dragging their knuckles and howling, but one of them hissed in Macalaurë's face and bit his right arm on the way out.
Macalaurë tried his best to clean and dress the wound but the venom spread and he found himself collapsing at a riverbed when trying to calm the fever. He lay there with visions of his brothers and cousins and uncles, sure he would be joining them soon.
He woke some hours - or days - later in a small hut with cool damp cloths on his forehead and chest. There was a foul-smelling herbal paste on the bite wound... and an amulet around his neck, a stone on a leather cord. An elderly woman dressed in rags, but clean, was cooking a pot of soup or gruel over the fire, and an elderly man was mixing together more herbs in a mortar and pestle, singing.
"I am alive," Macalaurë said, the Song giving him a tongue his rescuers could understand.
"Hashem isn't through with you yet," the man replied.
"Who is... Hashem?" Macalaurë's hand instinctively reached for the stone amulet one of his rescuers had put on him. A stone shaped like a hand. His finger traced a letter carved into the stone, a letter in the alphabet of the Hebrews... a word. Macalaurë felt for it in the Song. Chai.
"The king of the universe, the maker of all." The man lowered his head reverently. Then he began to sing. Though his voice was raspy and it shook, Macalaurë nonetheless found the tune beautiful, deep from the heart. The man was singing to this Hashem - Adonai Eloheinu - and there was magic in the words and the melody, energy like the lightning that had struck the Orc, but sent a pleasant, tingling warmth from his spine through his feet and back up again. Cleansing fire.
The Valar were useless, but there was one Power who was not.
In gratitude, Macalaurë wanted to know Hashem better... and not merely learn of Him, but apply the knowledge to help others, the way he had been helped.
He also knew that, despite the kindness of the old couple who had found him and nursed him back to health, he would be seen as a threat - a spy, at best - if he showed up at the gates of a village as he was, much taller and stronger than most Men even though he was shorter than males of his kind, for he had started life as a daughter rather than a son. After much thought and prayer, he decided to expend a bit of his magic to create an illusion - he had done so many times to shrink his breasts and grow a penis, temporarily, but now his illusion went further, aging himself down to the appearance of a child.
He made his way to Sepphoris, and took the name Yochanan - for the man who had rescued him - and called himself bar Nappaha, son of the blacksmith.
He soon found one who would teach him Torah - Judah ha-Nasi. Despite Macalaurë's eagerness to learn the laws of Hashem's people, he had always had trouble with paying attention, often daydreaming and composing music in his mind. Nonetheless as he "grew" so did his knowledge - he was able to glean Torah from sages, especially Hanina bar Hama, who taught him medicine.
He learned until he was able to give lectures of his own. He lived in poverty, but his life was full, sharing Torah and watching it spread kindness into the world. He met a devout woman who shared a similar secret - she had a penis, as he had a vagina - and they were wed. Yet Macalaurë still desired men.
One in particular captured his heart. Reish Lakish, a gladiator turned bandit, found him bathing in the Jordan and quickly learned he was not female. Angered by his arousal, Lakish wrestled him. Macalaurë, amused rather than offended, told him, "Your strength would be better served studying the Law."
"And your beauty for women," Lakish retorted.
But Lakish still followed him - lured in part by Yochanan promising Lakish could marry "my sister, who looks just like me". That was in fact Macalaurë himself, illusions cast aside.
Macalaurë was pregnant many times and managed to hide it through yet more illusion magic, though it was harder and harder to maintain - not to mention going back and forth between households, raising two families - and after over two dozen children Macalaurë decided he was done and used herbs to close his womb.
It was enough. It was more than enough. Macalaurë was happy now, given a double portion like Job himself.
Unfortunately, though Yochanan had many blessings from Hashem, the Doom of the Noldor was still upon him, and not long after Macalaurë decided he was done having children, the Doom took some of his children away. His tenth and youngest son met with the worst fate, falling into a boiling cauldron. Macalaurë managed to preserve one of his bones, a relic not just of the bright little life that had been taken far too soon... but a representation of all the family he lost.
It was tempting, at that point, to curse Hashem and call his chosen people's Power as useless as the Valar. But Macalaurë thought of the story of Job - often, he reflected on the story, desperately trying to find meaning.
He had learned medicine to heal others as he had been healed from the Orc venom, but this was an even deeper medicine, going to those who had suffered similar or worse losses and using his words as a balm for the venom spreading in their souls. "This is the bone of my tenth son," he would say, carefully unwrapping the bone and showing it, letting people touch or hold it if they wanted. "I understand your grief."
Tears unnumbered ye shall shed.
It seemed the Doom was upon all Men... but unlike the Valar who seemed to delight in his and his family's torment, it seemed that Hashem wept with His people. When each of the children of Men died, a prayer was said to magnify Hashem for the spark of His light that was extinguished with the life going out from the world... comforting the Creator for His loss.
And yet, even with this knowledge, Macalaurë still continued to grieve for each person he loved and lost - especially his beloved Lakish, who in the end he had argued with so bitterly, like a cruel mirror of Fëanor and Fingolfin's falling out. The pain ate at him more and more and though he tried to keep on in his mission of healing and restoring others, it caught up with him and one day he could not get out of bed. He knew he was fading.
Rabbi Hanina went in to see him. "Is your suffering dear to you?"
Yochanan replied, "I welcome neither this suffering nor its reward."
"Then give me your hand."
Yochanan reached out his hand - the one that had been scarred by the Silmaril, so long ago - and with the Light radiating in blinding brilliance, Hanina stood him up, restored to health.
For a prisoner cannot generally free himself from prison, but depends on others to release him from his shackles.
When "Yochanan" had been alive for over a hundred years, before others could grow suspicious and cause him problems - it was already strange enough that he did not have a beard - Macalaurë knew it was time to move on. It was time to make new connections, and find new ways to live Torah.
After he faked his own death, he spent some time in the wilderness grieving, this time more productive than the grief that had caused him to fade. He remembered and prayed and wept until he was ready to begin again. To take a new name, to forge a different path, wherever Hashem would lead him.
And still, he kept the bone in his pocket, carefully wrapped in the same cloth that had brought down his fever from the Orc bite... keeping it like he could have kept the Silmaril. Keeping it like a living oath.