Dominic, Judith’s nephew, had sent the deacon to her.

She had just moved into a care facility and was struggling to surrender to a cancer which had lopped off both breasts and invaded her lungs. ‘I don’t recall putting do-gooding on my bucket list,’ she said.

‘No,’ Dominic, who was the Provincial General of his order, acknowledged. ‘But, he’s my top seminarian and he needs help with his homilies.’

‘What would I know about homilies? I haven’t heard one since your baptism.’

‘He’s Lun Bawang,’ Dominic continued. ‘You translated their scriptures.’

Judith had worked with obscure Bornean tribes once, recording their myths and translating the Old Testament into their language.  She had been very young then. So many years had passed since. She had distanced herself from that first love and moved on to study other tribes in other jungles. She had also abandoned that God whose salvation she had peddled. ‘That was just for my PhD,’ she said. It was unnecessary to confess other reasons. At this point in her life, it was water under a bridge. Best forgotten. ‘There’s a slew of Lun Bawang translators out there now. Send your deacon to one of them?’

Dominic winked. ‘You’re the best, a little bird told me.’

Birds… Mengui, the messengers of the spirits who came and went at the behest of the gods. And now, apparently, were coming back into Judith’s life. Appropriate, she supposed, now that her main concern was the manner of ...