Forty-two youths. Two bears. A morning one survivor will spend his life remembering. In Bethel, twelve-year-old Ithiel follows his older brother everywhere. Jehiel is broad-shouldered, loud with laughter, and certain of his place among the boys at the gate. Ithiel stands one step behind him. Along the road, Elisha is returning alone. Elijah has been taken from him, and the prophet now carries his master’s mantle into a future he barely understands. When the boys gather outside the town, their mockery becomes a chant. Elisha turns. A curse is spoken. Two bears emerge from the woods. Decades later, Ithiel keeps bees beneath that same bend in the road. His town has left the place unmarked. Now, before the last witness is gone, he begins to tell what he remembers. Drawn from 2 Kings 2:23–24, Forty-Two moves between a prophet bearing the weight of his calling and a boy caught among the voices on the road. It imagines the lives surrounding one of the Bible’s most unsettling passages, exploring brotherhood, belonging, grief, and the questions that survive long after the shouting stops. Part of D. Deckker’s Bible Stories for Adults series, this literary biblical novel gives human faces to a number, leaving readers to confront the silence the passage leaves behind.