As soon as the angel had gone, Mary did not sit at home turning the news over in her mind. She got up and set out in haste for the hill country, towards a town of Judah. She carried very little: her cloak, some bread, a skin of water. And she carried in her heart a secret she had not yet told to anyone.

The road was long. From Nazareth to the hills of Judah is nearly a hundred miles, four or five days of walking. In those days people went down through the valley, followed the river, and then began to climb. They climbed a long way, because the towns of Judah sit high up among the rocks and the olive trees. Mary made that whole climb without complaining about the sun or the dust, because she was going to someone who needed help.

The one she was going to see was Elizabeth, her cousin. Elizabeth was already old and had never had children, and the neighbours, meaning no unkindness, had long ago stopped expecting any. Now Elizabeth was expecting a boy, and she was in her sixth month. Her husband, the priest Zechariah, moved about the house in silence, because he had been unable to speak since the day an angel talked to him inside the Temple.

Mary arrived dusty from the road, pushed the door open, and said only one thing.

— Peace be on this house, Elizabeth.

It was only her voice. The very moment Mary's greeting reached Elizabeth's ears, the child leapt inside her, the way you leap when you are glad. Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, opened her arms, and said aloud:

Elizabeth was the older of the two. She was the woman of the house, the one who had waited her whole life long. Even so, it was she who marveled at being the one receiving a visitor. And she told Mary that happy was the woman who had believed, for everything the Lord had said to her would come true.

And then Mary sang.

She did not sing about herself, or about the journey, or about her tired feet. She sang about God, who looks at little ones, lifts up the lowly, and never forgets a single old promise.

Mary stayed in that house about three months, and those three months held nothing spectacular at all. She fetched the morning water from the well, kneaded the bread, swept the yard, and helped Elizabeth up from the bench when her legs ached. In the late afternoon the two of them would sit in the doorway and watch the hills grow dark, slowly. Zechariah listened to it all in silence, and in his eyes there was already the beginning of gladness.

Then Mary went home again, along the same stony road she had come by. Nobody was waiting at her door with a celebration. And yet something had stayed for ever in that house in the hills: two ordinary women, one old and one young, had been the first people in the whole world to know who was coming.