Counted With the Stars

by Connilyn Cossette

  A shiver ran through me, and my mouth went dry. “The first time?”

  “Mmm. I looked up, and there you were, so furious at poor Liat.” He dropped a playful frown, but then sobered. “And all I wanted to do was fly over that table and—”

  His lips were on mine and his arms around me, pulling me closer—but it wasn’t close enough. He kissed me until I could not breathe, but I wanted more; his touch dulled the shattering grief. I snaked my arms behind his neck and tangled my fingers in his dark hair.

  “Here is what I wanted to do since the first time I met you,” I said against his lips and twisted my fingers deeper. “But mostly to shake all of that sawdust out of your hair.”

  He laughed and then kissed me again, softly, and then with a passion to equal my own. My heart thudded wildly, and the heat of his lips kindled a flame in my veins. Everything was Eben, all around me; I clung to him, lost in blissful disorientation.

  Suddenly, he pulled back, a reluctant move. “We need to go.” He pressed my shoulders gently, his voice hoarse and trembling.

  I nodded and dropped my eyes.

  He lifted my chin with his finger. “What is it?”

  I was not pure. I had given Akhum the part of me that should have belonged to Eben. If I told him, would that look of desire on his face change to disgust?

  A thought struck me. “What do you mean, the first time you saw me? I thought you hated me, along with every other Egyptian.”

  Now his eyes fell. “The strength of my attraction to you was—disconcerting, shall we say. What you saw in me was not anger at you but frustration with myself. You have to understand, Kiya, how much I loved my father. He was the greatest man I have ever known, will ever know . . . and I watched him die . . . did Shira tell you that?”

  I shook my head.

  “I was there in the square that day, when they tied him to that post and whipped him until he could not stand, until he could not breathe from the pain of it. I saw the light go out of his eyes.”

  My heart throbbed at the agony of his words.

  “All I wanted was vengeance. I spent every spare minute I had learning to throw that knife. Planning the day when I would slit an Egyptian throat with it, any Egyptian.”

  I winced.

  “But then you came along, with all your strength and fire and beauty, and I was undone. What you saw was my fight against myself to keep from loving you.” He stroked my hair, and I leaned into his hand. “Yahweh brought you to me, and instead of using my knife for vengeance, I used it to protect the woman I love.”

  My heart leapt at the declaration. He loves me.

  But again, shame flared in my throat. How could I feel such satisfaction in the face of the overwhelming pain of my mother’s loss? Could the two emotions live side by side?

  “Three times.” I smirked.

  “Yes. Three times. Two deadly snakes.”

  “And thanks to Yahweh for that.” I released a deep breath.

  “Have you finally decided to believe in our God?” He lifted a brow.

  “How could I not? He was with me in that tent. He guarded me until you came. He revealed himself, just like Mosheh told me he would.”

  Transient emotions crossed Eben’s face—disbelief, curiosity, and then confusion.

  “I will tell you about it later. But for now, you need to let go. I have to stand up.”

  He reluctantly released me, and I crept out of the cave to stretch.

  The dry wadi around me was breathtaking in the golden morning light. Colors lined the walls of the small canyon, different strata of rock carved and smoothed over time by the rush of early-spring floods, as if a painter had decorated the wadi with stripes of reds, yellows, and oranges with many brushes. Jumo would love it.

  Eben packed his bag and joined me out in the sunlight.

  “Fascinating, isn’t it?” He stretched out his arms.

  “Yes, I wonder how it happened.”

  “Yahweh is a master craftsman after all.” He gestured wide to the sky and the land all around us.

  “Are you saying that Yahweh made this, painted it, like Jumo paints his pots?”

  “Yes . . .” He lifted his brows, as though it were obvious. “Has Shira never told you the story of how the earth was made?”

  I shook my head. She’d told me many stories of her people but never the beginning.

  “I’ll tell you as we walk. The camp is not so far from here.”

  He took my hand, and as we walked back to the Hebrew encampment, he told me the story of how Yahweh made the world. How he spoke it into existence with just a word from his mouth. He also said that HaAdam, the first man, Yahweh had designed with his own hands from the dust of the earth and stirred him to life with his Ruach, his divine breath.

  “I think”— Eben began—“and this is only an idea out of my own mind, it could be true or not. You may think I am crazy.”

  His shy, uneven smile and the memory of his kiss warmed me head to toe.

  “I love music, as you well know, and our language is a musical one, one that lends itself to poetry and prose, rhythm and rhyme. I believe that Yahweh did not just speak creation into existence. I believe he sang it into existence. Sometimes when I am alone, playing the lyre and singing, I feel as though he is singing with me. I am working together with the One who made the stars to create something new.”

  “That is beautiful.” I squeezed his hand, which was rough and callused from hewing wood and carving instruments. I thrilled at the touch of it; silken skin could not compare. His hands told the story of his gifts and his past, and I wanted to never let go. I lifted his palm, still bearing three small scars from the acacia bush during the flash flood, and kissed each of them. They spoke of his courage and his love for my brother.

  “How did you find me? In all that confusion?”

  “It was the strangest thing. The Amalekites were ferocious. They were more than prepared for war with us, almost shockingly so. Even though we have a lot of men to fight, none of us is very skilled.”

  I raised my brows. Eben was more than skilled with a dagger.

  “Well, most of us. Anyhow, only a few minutes into the battle and we were losing. They attacked at dawn, and we feared that before the sun even fully rose, we would be crushed. But then Mosheh came.”

  “You saw Mosheh?” I had never told anyone of my brief encounter with our enigmatic leader, but I kept silent, saving my revelation for another day.

  “He was hard to miss up there on the ridge above the battle. When his arms and his staff rose high above his head, all of a sudden the enemy seemed to weaken.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sure. But then, whenever his arms seemed to tire and droop, we began losing the battle again. Then a few minutes later, he would regain strength and then we would be stronger, push the Amalekites back even farther.”

  I was so fascinated by his story that I stopped walking. “But the fighting went on for hours and hours.”

  “At one point it looked as if Mosheh could not hold up his arms anymore. We were close to defeat. But then, two men—I have no idea who—came to stand beside him. Mosheh sat on a boulder and each of the men held up an arm. We pushed the Amalekites back, almost to their camp, and it was then that I saw Sayaad. When he caught sight of me, he turned and ran, and that’s when I knew he had you.” He gritted his teeth. “It was as if Yahweh guided me to him.”

  Eben looked off toward the hills and said nothing for a while. I wondered what images were behind his eyes. It was the first time he had been in battle—who knew how many men he had been forced to kill in hand-to-hand combat yesterday? And then, Sayaad as well.

  All of us had lost so much in the past few days. How would any of us ever heal from these wounds? I wrapped my arms around his waist and laid my head on his shoulder.

  How could I return to that camp, when my mother was no longer there? Even with the comfort of Eben’s arms around me, the pit of my stomach ached. My beautiful mother, buried
beneath the sand, her golden eyes closed for all eternity. Panic seized me. All I had ever known about death was from the stories of my people. I knew little of Yahweh, but I suspected that my idea of the afterlife might be as warped as my understanding of the gods had been. I clutched Eben’s tunic, my breath coming quickly. It is my fault she is gone.

  With concern on his brow, he wiped my silent tears. He kissed my lips and then leaned his forehead against mine. “I am here,” he said.

  Our breath mingled, and his nearness gave me strength. I drank it in like elixir.

  Water gushed from an enormous rock on the side of the hill, tumbling down in an inexplicable torrent and creating a gentle river that split the camp in half. Eben explained to me how Mosheh had struck the rock with his staff to provide water for us—a response to the near rebellion that swelled when this valley was found to be completely dry. I wondered if the Amalekite attack had something to do with this miraculous gush of water in the desert, for surely their people and flocks were as thirsty as ours.

  Even more astounding was the vegetation that had already sprung to life along the path of the river. The parched ground had been awakened, long-dormant seeds joyfully pressing tentative shoots of green skyward.

  Many wounded men lay on pallets throughout the camps, and I knew that there were many other men who had met their end on the battlefield nearby. A rush of gratitude that Eben was walking next to me, unscathed, flooded through me.

  I did not fail to notice, however, some of the looks from the Hebrews we passed. Some tried to be covert about it, ducking heads down as we passed to whisper in each other’s ears. Many seemed to have no problem at all voicing their opinion of a Hebrew man escorting an Egyptian woman through camp.

  “Zonah . . .” accused one woman as I passed.

  Another flung the word traitor at Eben.

  Eben turned to defend us.

  “No.” I placed a hand on his shoulder. “Let it go. Let’s just get back to our family.” Shira, Zerah, the girls—they had become just as much my family as my own had been. I was as anxious to see their faces as I was to look into my own brother’s eyes.

  Shoshana was the first to spot us, perched as usual on the top of a wagon, her cry of happiness ringing out over the camp. “Eben! Kiya! They’re back!”

  A flurry of shouts, fierce hugs, and tears enveloped us. Zerah pushed everyone aside to wrap her arms around her son, her face stoic, but palpable relief flowing out of every pore. Then to my extreme surprise, she released him and turned to me, grasping me tightly and kissing my cheeks.

  “Welcome home.” Her eyes pooled, and I realized that she too grieved my mother.

  Shira hugged me so tightly I could hardly breathe, but Jumo was nowhere to be seen. I craned my neck to search him out.

  Shira whispered in my ear. “He is in his tent. He’s barely been outside in the last three days.”

  “Does he know I am here?”

  She shrugged. “Why don’t you take him some food? I tried earlier, but he refused it.”

  Jumo was sprawled on his back across his bedroll when I entered his tent. His eyes were closed and his arm slung across his forehead, but he was clearly not asleep.

  “Brother?”

  His eyes fluttered open.

  “Ya-ya.” His brown eyes glittered with tears. Visible grief weighted his gaze, and I knew my own echoed the sentiment. I put down the bowls of manna I had brought with me and lay down beside him, stretching my arm across his chest.

  “I’m home, brother.”

  Tears trickled down the sides of his face. I pressed my cheek to his, and they washed down my own face as well.

  I ached to tell him that it wasn’t his fault, but the memory of Eben’s warning silenced me. Isolated on the island of pain we were stranded on together, we cried.

  The odor of death lingered on the goat hide above me. I shivered. Sayaad’s tent had smelled just like this one. I tried to sleep, but memories of my mother gathered like ghosts around me in the howling void.

  Everything whispered of her: her empty pallet, her cosmetic box, Shefu’s amulet now back around my neck. Jumo had returned the precious treasure to me, and I was grateful that somehow her murderers had not stolen that as well. Yet I almost wished that the symbol of her love for Shefu had been buried with her in the unmarked grave that lay somewhere in this barren wilderness.

  Almond oil and frankincense permeated the dress I wore, one of her favorites. I prayed to Yahweh that the fragrance would never fade. I would wrap it inside other linens to preserve it, and place it inside the empty jar of Shefu’s wine she kept hidden among her clothing.

  I tossed back and forth on my pallet, the image of her unseeing eyes jeering me every time I closed my own.

  Why had I not checked on her earlier? Or gone with her upstream? What if the lookouts hadn’t been killed and had warned us? Would she now live? Question after question assaulted me, until I could no longer lie on my mat. I sat up, knees pulled to my chest and eyes blinking into the accusing dark.

  The tent flap flew open, and the outline of a body slipped inside. My heart pounded so loudly I almost missed the whisper of my name.

  “Shira! You startled me.”

  “I’m sorry.” She sat next to me on my mat. “I didn’t want you to sleep in this tent all alone.”

  I released a long, slow breath. “Thank you. I’d rather not.”

  She stammered. “Do you want to talk about—?”

  “No.”

  I regretted the harsh interruption as soon as it flew past my lips. Even in the darkness, I felt her shrink back.

  I cleared my throat. “Not right now.”

  “I understand.”

  “Thank you.” I found her hand and squeezed it. “You’ve always been kinder to me than I deserved. And I never apologized after my hateful words on the beach—”

  “There is nothing to forgive.”

  “Yes, there is. I was wrong. Wrong about everything.” My voice broke.

  “Kiya, I love you as my sister. Nothing you say or do will change that. Your hurt is my own. And . . .” Her voice softened. “I loved Nailah, too.”

  With nothing more to say, I lay back on my mother’s pallet. Breathing in what remained of her beautiful fragrance, I let my tears flow.

  Shira grasped my hand until I fell asleep.

  40

  Are you coming?”

  Eben crouched next to me. His hand brushed down my arm, bringing with it the heat of a lightning bolt across the night sky. His fingers entwined with mine, and I bathed in the indulgence of the obvious delight in his eyes before I answered.

  “Where to?”

  Mischief cocked his brow, and he pointed his bearded chin at my tent. “Not far, bring your lyre.”

  Jumo was seated across the Senet game box from me—one of the many gilded treasures given to Eben by Akensouris. We had been playing for hours, both of us trying to ignore our mother’s uninhabited seat by the campfire. Jumo was a master of the game, always quick to block me, as if he could predict which move I would play next. I had won only a couple of games so far.

  “G-Go.” Jumo waved a hand, as if to brush me away.

  I narrowed my eyes. “You just want me to go because I am winning.”

  Jumo unsuccessfully tried to smother a small smile, and a tiny spark of life, one I had not seen in days, glinted in his dark eyes.

  To my surprise, he seemed to simply accept Eben and me together, and by the hints he’d dropped all day, he’d known much more than he had let on all along. My brother—always perceiving so much more than he could vocalize. Once again, a pang of regret that he could never truly tell me all he wanted to say, stung my heart. What would my brother say if he had been born with the ability to freely express his deepest thoughts?

  I retrieved my precious lyre from the tent, and Eben led me to a place nearby where we could sit in the shade of a large oleander bush yet still within sight of the camp. The reminder of our last day together, before t
he attack, was acute, and I hesitated when he asked me to sit, overcome with memories and regrets.

  Compassion filled his gray-green eyes; he seemed to understand.

  I chewed the inside of my cheek to keep tears from forming, wishing there were not witnesses to my grief all around us.

  “Tell me.” Tenderly, he smoothed a hand down my hair.

  “My fault.” My voice hitched on gulps and sobs. “If we had not left Egypt . . . or if I had kept her in my sight . . . or . . .”

  “No. No. No.” His hand gently met my cheek. “Your mother is not gone because of you any more than my father is gone because of me.”

  Did Eben blame himself? “I thought Egyptians killed your father.”

  “They did.” He blinked slowly and released a shuddering breath. “But I had a hand in it as well.”

  He gestured for me to sit. I settled the lyre on the ground next to me and waited for Eben to sit as well.

  Instead, he stood, half turned away, as if he could not face me.

  “My father was the best of men. Twice the musician I am, able to hear and play anything without practice. He told me Elohim sang songs directly into his heart. They poured out of him. His stories were our bread; we lived on them, day to day.”

  He gazed toward the rock, which still gushed fresh cool water from the depths of the earth. “I loved my father, but I was young and foolish, more interested in running wild with my friends than sitting at his knee. I apprenticed with him but stayed at the shop only as long as was necessary before running off to find mischief with the other boys.”

  He stopped and smoothed his beard with his knuckles, seeming unsettled by the story he had to tell.

  “I was twelve, eager to prove myself as a man and angry with the overseers who took pleasure in humiliating us. Even more so with Hebrews who lightened their load by doing the overseers’ bidding.”

  Thoughts of Latikah flooded back, and again I wished that I had stayed with her that night, forgiven her, instead of leaving her to her fate.

  “One man was known to be a well-rewarded traitor and lived at the edge of the Hebrew quarter. My friends and I waited until he was gone and then broke into his home and vandalized it. We ripped his clothes, spilled his food onto the ground, and slashed his linens. And careless as I was, I dropped my knife.”