Well, this afternoon Aviva had certainly been solving her own mystery, hadn't she!
With satisfaction, she cast her eyes for the fifteenth time over the golden mound rising from the table. She was just about to return to the story of the Two Sisters Whose Boyfriends Were Soldiers when she heard voices and footsteps outside. She closed the book. Her family was back, and it was time for the debut of her masterpiece!
***
"We're back! Shabbat shalom! So what's the surprise?" Shulamit prattled as she pushed open the door. The first thing she saw was Aviva, sitting at the table, her hands folded over a book and her face full of love and pride. Then she saw what was in front of Aviva—
"Challah? In here?" For a moment her face furrowed with confusion and her eyelashes blinked rapidly. Then she realized. "Wait—"
"It's wheatless," said the goddess behind the table, standing and holding out her hands to flank it in gracious display. "I did it. Well, we did it, anyway." She turned her head to grin at Isaac.
Shulamit could do nothing but blink, stupefied. "It—you—it's really wheatless?"
"No wheat has entered this building in over four years," Aviva affirmed.
"But it actually looks fluffy! I thought you couldn't—you always said the dough got—" Shulamit was so excited that the ends of her sentences were getting swallowed up in frantic and meaningless hand movements.
"Oh, it did," was Aviva's calm answer. "For a while there, it was wet, lumpy sand, just like all those other times."
"But how did you braid it, without the wheat to make it pull?"
Aviva nodded to the wizard behind Shulamit. The queen turned to him, full of curious wonder.
"I used my magic to elongate its—spirit—I don't know." His expression was an odd mix of self-satisfaction and bewilderment. "I pulled on it with my hands in the air, without touching it, using magic to turn it into the way challah dough ought to be."
"This would have been a hard cake without his help," Aviva added. "And it's actually not really braided. I cut furrows into it with a knife and made sure to paint the egg into the cracks. When it baked, well, you see what it did."
"I can eat the challah with the others," Shulamit realized out loud.
"Exactly," said Aviva.
"I can be part of the blessing." Her face grew hot as blood rushed to her cheeks, and she felt sweet tears sting into her eyes. "Oh, Aviva!"
She pounced on her, throwing both arms around her neck and kissing her square on the mouth. Aviva smelled like baking. Real baking. "I can barely believe I'm not going to get sick," Shulamit murmured into the soft skin of her partner's neck.
"It should work," said Aviva. "There wasn't any wheat in here. Just a little bit of everything else, really—chickpeas, rice, sorghum... the yeast is from wine, of course."
Still clinging to Aviva, Shulamit turned to face Isaac, who was bouncing Naomi around and still smirking at his own contribution. "Thank you too, Isaac. Wow. I can barely believe it."
"I can," he chuckled. "It took us long enough!"
"Aviva, I've got something for you too." Shulamit fished around in her bag for the scented oil. "I found your favorite."
"Ooh, ylang-ylang! Aww, thank you!" Aviva sniffed at it happily, then set it on the table. "So are we all ready for dinner? Can I carry this to the main dining hall?"
"I think so. Are my braids—"
"YES," barked Rivka.
Aviva patted the thick black ropes of hair. "They're fine." She kissed Shulamit on the cheek and then picked up the challah.
***
"Blessed are you, Milady, Queen of the World, who brings us bread from the earth." Shulamit had never before said this prayer with more triumph.
The introduction of a challah that Shulamit could actually eat caused quite the stir at the dinner table. Rivka's mother Mitzi, who like many people had never entirely believed the queen's claims of food-related sensitivities, asked the same questions over and over until everyone was relieved when Isaac just held up his hand and said, "Magic. It's magic."
"Oh, all right," she said vaguely. "It's not going to hurt me, is it?" She looked plaintively at Tivon, Rivka's second-in-command, who was also Mitzi's special gentleman friend.
"Mammeh, it's safe," Rivka reassured her. "Isaac would never hurt us."
The truth was that everybody knew Isaac would never hurt Riv, and that his umbrella of trust probably expanded to include the queen and her sweetheart and daughter, but outside that, nobody could really tell what he was thinking.
"So," said Aviva as she and everybody else tore into dinner, "where did the scented oil come from?"
"A woman called Dafna," replied Shulamit.
"Oh, Dafna?"
"We were at Gershom's looking at clasps, and her shop is right next door."
"I'm looking forward to trying it. I haven't washed in her rivers yet."
"Why not?" Shulamit's brow furrowed. Aviva knew much more about the market than she did. Had she made a mistake in her choice of gift? "Is it not well-made?"
"No, it's good quality... she just doesn't taste right." Aviva looked uncomfortable. "I don't want you to feel bad about your gift. As far as I'm concerned, it comes from you. But last week I saw her kick Micah in the head, just because she thought he was trying to steal soap."
Shulamit grimaced and shuddered. "She's not really the type of person I enjoyed being around. But I did want to pick up a present for you without having to go too far from the places I needed to visit on official business."
"I'm sure it's lovely oil," Aviva reassured her. "We can resanctify it later and take away any stink she's left in it with her attitude!"
Shulamit, who had some idea of what that might entail, felt warm inside, and also a flicker of arousal.
***
Esther sat inside her rented room, playing on her new kalimba in the flickering light of the two candles she'd lit in observance of Shabbat. Her fingers barely brushed the flat metal keys; she didn't want anyone else to hear. For now, the kalimba, like her uncomfortable, suppressed thoughts about Tzuriel, were going to be her secret.
A knock at her door made her shake violently with surprise. The instrument nearly fell out of her lap, and she fumbled to catch it and place it safely on the bed beside her. For a moment, she didn't respond.
The knock renewed itself, and then she heard Eli's voice. "Esther, it's me. I figured you didn't want to miss Shabbat, and at any rate I've brought you some food."
Esther slipped the kalimba under her pillow and then slowly slid off the bed and walked to the door. "I have a headache."
"That's because you haven't eaten." He paused. "I've got lemon chicken with artichokes. The innkeeper was worried about you too, and he let me save you a plate. I worried about you all day. I'm sorry that I said things that upset you, before."
Lemon and artichokes. Truthfully, Esther was starving. The walk at the lake had been a hearty one, grown faster as they argued, and she had skipped dinner. And lemon and artichokes were among her favorite foods. "That does sound good," she found herself admitting.
"I'm sorry I upset you," Eli repeated.
She opened the door. "Thank you for bringing me dinner."
"Of course I'd bring you dinner! See, what would you do without me looking after you? I have to take care of you because you don't do it yourself." He looked a little bit disheveled. Had worrying over her done that to him? She felt guilty.
He hung around as she ate. "I looked for you before, but I couldn't find you."
"Where did you look? I was a little bit of everywhere."
"I thought you might have gone to Tzuriel's."
A little piece of artichoke went down her windpipe and she began to cough. He handed her water, and as she drank, she heard him asking, "Did you?"
"Yes, for a little bit."
"That man scares me. He's so friendly—too easy to like. Something's got to be wrong."
It was the perfect way of describing the way she was feeling. "You think?"
"I'm just looking out for you, Esther." He ran his hand down her arm. "I care so much about you. I feel so badly that I haven't kept you safe here the way I should have."
She still heard the words he had said earlier, at the lake, about wanting her to put down her instrument for a while. But here they were, these two who had known each other from their home village, alone in the big city that was full of thieves and wizards and suspicious, friendly foreigners. And she knew she needed him.
But she still didn't tell him about the kalimba.
***
Riv Maror stole swiftly through the midnight-blackened streets. Others guarded the queen tonight; at Rivka's request, Shulamit had granted her permission to leave the palace and bring bits of Shabbat dinner to the youth Micah. She wished to draw nobody's attention and so she kept to the shadows, a bundle of food strapped to her back—inside the steel drum.
She had tracked Micah that morning and she could track him again, even if he'd found a different hiding place. For one thing, she had two years of experience as a bounty hunter—three, if you counted that first year guarding the bawdy house before she left her own land and became nomadic. For another, Home City had been her home for the past four years, so there was barely anywhere to hide a kitten, let alone a human teenager, without her having it on her mental list of alleys and attics.
Isaac wasn't riding along, even as a lizard on her shoulder. She wanted to respect Micah's need for privacy.
He had to be somewhere that he wouldn't be discovered and evicted.
He had to be somewhere without too much of an existing criminal element. They would have either turned him out or brought him under their wing by now—and he clearly wasn't under anybody's wing. Even the inn, who was feeding him from time to time, did so as one would feed a stray cat or dog, not as a protégée.
He probably moved around, but he probably had his regular places. And this was a kind of method to which she was well accustomed.
She found him at the fifth place she checked. Giving him the distance one gives a timid cat, she slipped into the alley but stayed where she was, not drawing any closer. "Micah, I brought dinner." Straight to the point, give him no reason to run.
"I'm not going back to the palace."
"I brought, well, it's sort of like challah, and there's lamb inside these pastries—"
"She thinks I'm a girl."
"I don't. And she won't," said Rivka gruffly. "But that's not important now. I've got food for you."
"That smells really good."
"That's the garlic." Rivka was smirking beneath her mask. Her own mouth watered as she remembered dinner, and she'd had a feeling he wouldn't be able to resist the smell. An unexpected sound came from the other end of the alley. "Is that a violin?"
"Yeah... I tried to play for money this morning, but Auntie Juice shooed me away."
"Maybe if we got you cleaned up people would be nicer to you and you could find a place to play without getting chased off."
"I'm not going back to the palace."
"I'm not trying to take you there. If I were, you'd know."
"Yeah?"
"I'm not the type to sit around trying to trick people. That's Isaac. I just grab."
He paused before speaking. "Yeah, I remember."
"See? I'm not grabbing now. Do you trust me?"
Another pause. "I guess so." There was a strange noise that Rivka figured was Micah setting the violin down carefully in the dirt, and then he came bounding up beside her. "What's the food in?"
"It's a drum from the Sugar Coast. I bought it from Tzuriel."
"You play?" Micah was starting to thaw, slightly.
"I guess I do now!"
"What's with this challah?" Micah asked through the gigantic mouthfuls he was wolfing.
Out of privacy for the queen, Rivka merely responded, "It was made without wheat as an experiment."
"It's not bad, just weird."
"Just different."
Then there was an awkward moment of silence before Micah finally responded, "Like us, huh?" He sounded bitter.
"I would assume you're made without wheat, like most humans," said Rivka.
"You know what I mean."
"Sure, although you pass better than the bread does," said Rivka. "You want to talk about it?"
"No," said Micah. "I mean—no."
"I'm not going to abandon you. I don't think I can," said Rivka. "Something won't let me."
The next noises told her, in the dark, that Micah was crying. They were tears of hot rage. "They act like I killed their daughter."
Rivka was a creature of instinct. "Your family?"
"I don't have a family."
"How can I help?"
There was more silence. "You wanna play?"
"Sure!"
The alley lay in between two workshops, so while they held back slightly, they didn't have to be as hushed as the hour might suggest. Micah scratched and scrawled on his fiddle, and Rivka tried to match his notes with the indented places on her steel drum.
"You know, in my country, some people don't even believe in playing instruments on Shabbos," Rivka commented after a while.
"That's stupid," said Micah, plucking a chord. "Don't they know that's where God goes to relax?"
Chapter 11: The Sabbath Bride
"He had a violin?" Ben stepped back, studying the hem of the dress Shulamit was trying on. Aviva was hopping around nearby doing stretching exercises, and in the corner sat Leah with Naomi in her lap.
"I know!" said Shulamit. "That's the first thing I thought when Riv was telling us about it over breakfast. But it can't—"
"Arms at your sides."
"Oh, whoops, sorry." Shulamit changed her position and tried not to fidget or gesticulate. It was unnatural for her, and of course her shoulder blades started to itch right when it was most inconvenient to move. "It can't be Esther's. I've been over it again and again and there's no way Micah could have gotten into the inn. I can't even blame magic, because if Micah had magic he wouldn't be living on the streets."
"Poor kid."
"Such a shame." Leah spoke in a hushed voice out of concern for the sleeping princess. "I gave him my last stuffed grape leaf the last time I saw him. I can't take everybody home, but sometimes I wish that I could."
"How's the length?" Ben held a piece of string to Shulamit's wrists, making sure the sleeves fell to the same level.
"It's good. I like how it cuts off a bit above my wrist, so I don't have to watch where I put my hands." Relief flooded her as she reached back, finally able to scratch her shoulder blades. "Micah... I wonder if his name used to be Michal."
"What's important now is that his name is Micah," said Aviva, both arms high in the air and her stomach stretched taut as if she were trying to touch the ceiling. "That's the boy who exists. Anything else is a story." Her arms came down to rest at her sides. "Let him write his own story, just as you had to."
Shulamit digested these ideas as she continued to model the new outfit for her de facto father-in-law and official palace tailor. Micah confused her, but she wanted very badly not to fail him as his sovereign queen—especially since she had grown up with her own differences. For years, she'd been the only girl she knew who looked upon other women as romantic partners, and it had baffled her further that such feelings could happen in someone who felt no drive to emulate a boy in other ways. She'd made peace with her own version of normal many years ago, but Micah was her first intimate encounter with someone of his configuration.
"I'll try harder to understand. He's gotten the short end of the stick already, and I definitely don't want to make it worse."
"Speaking of violins," Ben piped up, "pretend like you're playing one for a moment. I want to make sure you have full range of movement."
The new dress was splendid, in a dark, bluish lavender, with sheer sleeves of paler lavender. The trousers he'd made were white to match the white embroidery across the dress, and so was the matching scarf.
"This really is gorgeous," Shulamit couldn't help commenting. She lifted her arms and mimed playing a violin, making an awkward, self-conscious face because she knew she was probably doing it wrong.
"Everything is violins today," said Leah. "When we went to the public park this morning so we could eat a picnic breakfast on the lawn, Lady Liora was giving a surprise concert. Such wild and exciting music! That woman has a lot of energy."
"She said she was collecting donations so that Esther could replace her violin," said Ben as he rotated around Shulamit as if she were the center of a wheel and he its border.
"Mmmm," said Shulamit knowingly. "I bet plenty of people were saying that was just an excuse to get her name on everyone's ear."
"You know the public mind," Leah agreed.
"Would that matter?" asked Aviva. "Even if she was only doing it for attention, if someone's built a house, you can live in it even if they're strutting around on the sidewalk bragging."
"People talk like that whenever any woman wins notoriety," Shulamit groused. "They want us to be decorative and looking for attention, and then, if one of us is a little more blatant about going about it than the rest, she's blamed for being exactly the way they tell us we're supposed to be."
And for a brief moment, she was jealous of Riv.
"In any case, it was nice to listen to the music while we ate," said Ben.
"Feminism aside," Shulamit continued, countering her own outburst, "I do have to look at Liora's actions as potentially... convenient. She now has multiple motives for wanting Esther's instrument out of the way—not only does it silence Esther, but it gave her this excuse to—"
"It's Shabbat, Majesty the Workhorse!" Aviva wheedled, swinging her head from side to side. "You really should spend at least this morning relaxing. The whole reason God wants us to rest is so we'll be better to work once the rest is over."
Shulamit mock pouted and pointed to Ben. "He's working too..."
A Harvest of Ripe Figs Page 7
