Deborah Calling

by Avraham Azrieli

  The eagle’s eyes radiated kindness. “Have you known any men who treated women kindly?”

  Deborah thought of her father, how kind he had been to her mother, making her happy every day. And Barac, who had waited for her with his father at Palm Homestead on the night of Tamara’s death, risking their lives. And Zariz, who had treated her as his equal, teaching her how to shoot arrows and learning from her about throwing rocks at targets.

  “There was a Moabite boy,” she said. “His name is Zariz.”

  “The one we visited at his grandfather’s house in Moab?”

  “Yes.”

  “Soft and cute on the outside, but resilient and valiant on the inside.”

  “That’s right. You should have seen him handle his bow and arrows: Hit! Hit! Hit!” Realizing that she’d let her excitement burst into the open, Deborah stopped talking. Her face flushed. “Looks like I’ve become enchanted with a boy instead of with my duty.”

  “It’s natural.” The eagle winked. “And he seemed enchanted with you, too, until he changed his mind and ran away.”

  “It wasn’t his fault. I had hair growing on my face.”

  “That would do it.”

  “I think of Zariz often, but I don’t expect to see him again. It makes me very sad.” Deborah’s voice trembled, and she inhaled deeply to calm down. “Right from the beginning, I liked Zariz. He wasn’t afraid of Seesya and the soldiers, just like my friend Barac. I’ll never see him again, either.”

  “Why not?”

  “Seesya killed him.”

  “Really?” The eagle cocked her head. “That’s news to me.”

  Deborah reached across and picked up the clay bottle. “I should just drink it. There’s no choice. I must become a man.”

  “That’s hardly an expression of enchantment.”

  “I might not be enchanted with the immediate result of becoming a man, but my heart is truly committed to the ultimate result—winning back Palm Homestead and becoming Yahweh’s prophet.” Deborah pulled out the cork plug. “That’s my True Calling.”

  Putting the open bottle to her lips, she started to tilt it.

  “Wait!”

  She paused.

  The eagle shifted, her bobbing up and down. “I have one more question.”

  “Yes?”

  “Did you ever ask your father how you—a girl—could become a prophet?”

  The odor from the bottle stung Deborah’s nose and she held it away.

  The yellow eyes blinked. “Well?”

  “I did, and he answered.” Closing her eyes, she recalled that sweet day, sitting with her father, the world safe and happy, neither of them having any inkling of the approaching calamity. “Yahweh created the whole world. Don’t you think He can create a prophet out of a girl?”

  The eagle nodded. “Wise man, your father.”

  “He was,” Deborah said, “but I still thought the idea was outlandish.”

  “It’s natural for fathers to have aspirations for their children, to imagine them doing great things.”

  “Which are completely unrealistic.”

  “Not always,” the eagle said.

  “I told my father that, even if I received a prophecy, no one would listen to a girl.”

  “What was his answer?”

  “To a special girl, they’ll listen. You’re a true Hebrew, the seed of glorious ancestors. One day, Yahweh will speak to you, and you will sit under your palm tree and deliver His message to the people—to us, the ancient Hebrews. I believe it with all my heart. I pray that I’m still alive to witness it.” Deborah took a deep breath and exhaled. “That’s what he said, and a short time later, Seesya murdered him.”

  “Yet his words continue to live in you.” The eagle stepped backward, her folded wings scraping against the tunnel walls. “Come, climb on my back. I want to show you something.”

  Deborah gestured at the heavy door. “There’s no way out.”

  “Indulge me.” The eagle lowered her shoulder. “Hop on!”

  She plugged the bottle and put it on the floor by the wall. “Is this really happening, or am I dreaming?”

  “Why don’t you bang your head hard against the wall and see if it really hurts?”

  Deborah laughed and climbed onto the eagle’s back, bending forward to avoid the ceiling.

  “Hold tight. It’ll be a rough ride.”

  Deborah put her arms around the thick neck. “I’m ready.”

  The eagle lunged forward and rammed the wooden door. There was a loud cracking sound, but the door remained in place. Deborah expected the eagle to collapse, but instead, she took a few steps back and rushed at the door again. This time, a long, vertical crack appeared in the door.

  “It’s locked with a crossbar outside,” Deborah said.

  The eagle reversed all the way to the back wall, took a deep breath, and raced forward along the narrow tunnel, striking the door and shattering it to pieces.

  Deborah pressed her cheek to the feathers as the huge bird squeezed through the doorway and stepped to the center of the floor at the bottom of the shaft. The waterfall roared, engulfing them in a cold mist. The eagle tilted her head upward, spread her wings, and took off.

  They ascended through the shaft, slowly at first, then faster. Higher up, the darkness softened, and Deborah could see the serpentine chain of stone-carved stairs circling them swiftly. They rose through the whole height of the shaft in a fraction of the time it would have taken her to climb all thirteen hundred and thirteen stairs.

  The entrance had been left open. It was narrow, but the eagle forced her way out through the wooden doorjambs into daylight and stepped to the middle of the dry basin. Deborah glanced back and saw large, four-pronged footprints in the copper-tinged sand.

  After the damp and cold mine, the heat outside was pleasant. The small fire that the boy-servants had started in the morning was reduced to smoky ashes. Deborah wondered where the men and horses had gone, but before she managed to say anything, the eagle took off again.

  They flew low above the ground, the wings spanning the width of the canyon, and then soared into a vast blue sky. A turquoise spot appeared in the distance, growing into the kidney-shaped Sea of Salt. The light-brown peaks of the Judean Mountains appeared on the left, and the dark Moab Mountains on the right. She saw Ein Gedi by the salt-crusted shore below, and Jericho, surrounded by countless palm trees. The eagle followed the Jordan River north for a while before breaking west, over the ridges of the Samariah Hills.

  Deborah noticed a dramatic change in the land below. The hills, which she remembered as barren and barely inhabited, now supported many towns, villages, and homesteads. The slopes were terraced and cultivated, the valleys cleared of stones and divided into fields. When they flew over a village, she looked carefully at the livestock in the corrals. There were horses and donkeys, oxen and cows, sheep and goats, but no pigs. She was filled with joy and wonder. Overnight, her people had populated and filled the land, which was blessed with the abundance Yahweh had promised!

  The eagle veered northwest. The familiar hilltop structure of the Holy Tabernacle appeared, surrounded by pilgrims carrying offerings, priests in white robes, and columns of smoke from the altars. Shiloh had grown to three times its former size, and the fairgrounds outside the city gates had expanded into the valley, busy with vendors and caravans.

  Turning westward, she saw hundreds of maidens in white dresses, dancing in the vineyards while young men packed the hillside. Deborah realized it was the fifteenth of the month of Av again, but how? She had been to Shiloh only recently. Could a whole year have passed without her noticing? Was she still fourteen, or was this her fifteenth birthday? It made no sense, especially because the changes she was seeing had taken more than a single year to materialize—a decade or two, more likely.

  Further west, the road was busy with pilgrims in both directions. When the eagle turned south again, the road below became even more crowded, but most of the travelers were headin
g in the direction of Emanuel. Deborah wondered where they were going.

  The answer came a few minutes later, when she saw Emanuel in the distance and the eagle turned east, leaving the road before it reached the town, following the column of travelers, which soon arrived at Palm Homestead.

  The slopes surrounding the verdant valley of her childhood were filled with Hebrew men and women, too many to count. Palm Homestead was thriving, its fields thick with wheat, its orchards heavy with fruit, and its pastures dotted with cattle. There was no trace of the canal Judge Zifron had used to steal the water of the cistern. A two-story house with a sizable courtyard and spacious livestock corrals had taken the place of the small house she remembered. In one of the corrals, a man walked a pony with a young boy in the saddle. The man wore a wide-brimmed hat on his head, hiding his face from above. As the eagle circled the house, Deborah tried to see the man’s features, but couldn’t.

  The eagle hovered above the great palm tree near the house, the one her father had named Deborah’s Palm. Under the tree, a woman sat, her back against the trunk, her bearing proud and imposing. She was dressed in leather armor and held a long sword with a silver hilt, red rubies decorating the crossguard, a black gem on top of the pommel. The woman didn’t cover her head, as Hebrew wives usually did, and her orange hair was long, wavy, and magnificent. She raised the sword, and the thousands of Hebrews quieted down.

  “Hear, O Israel!” Her voice was clear, sonorous, and very familiar. “Yahweh is our God! Yahweh is one!”

  “Yahweh is our God!” The countless voices joined together, reverberating like thunder. “Yahweh is one!”

  “The King of the world has spoken,” she continued. “If you follow my laws and keep my commands, this land shall give you its full harvest, and every field shall be heavy with bounty. But if you break my—”

  The flapping wings drowned the woman’s voice as the eagle ascended, heading south. Deborah looked over her shoulder, catching a last glimpse of Palm Homestead and the multitudes of Hebrews. She finally understood what the eagle had wanted to show her, and she was filled with awe and anticipation for the future.

  The sun went down, and they flew in silence between the dark earth below and the starry sky above. Deborah leaned forward against the thick feathers, her arms around the eagle’s neck. She closed her eyes and rested.

  A sudden drop in altitude made her sit up.

  The eagle descended into the canyon and flew between the dark walls until the final curve came, and they faced the dead end. Folding her wings tightly, the eagle squeezed through the entry, dropped down the shaft, and landed at the bottom beside the waterfall.

  Deborah dismounted and stepped over the broken door into the tunnel, where the small lamp still burned. She heard a commotion behind and turned to see the eagle standing outside the tunnel and repairing the door, which came together and stood solidly as if it had never been broken. A loud bang told Deborah that the crossbar had settled into its slots, locking the door.

  She pressed her face to the porthole. “What I saw in Palm Homestead, was it the future?”

  “The future isn’t certain until it becomes the present.” The eagle’s voice easily overcame the roar of the waterfall. “What you saw is possible—if you make wise choices along the way.”

  “Nothing is possible while I’m locked down here. I’d like to get out.”

  “That’s a wise choice.”

  “But you barred the door.”

  “You noticed?” Chuckling, the eagle knocked on the door with her beak. “As good as new.”

  “Won’t you let me out?”

  “Freedom must be earned, not collected as a gift.”

  Deborah patted the door with an open hand. “How? It’s impossible to open this door from inside.”

  “Defeatism is self-fulfilling, but so is the determination to win.”

  She understood. It was up to her to find a way out.

  The eagle’s yellow eyes glowed warmly. “I hope our aerial expedition illuminated your path and granted you peace.”

  Her last words echoing over the noise of the waterfall, the eagle spread her great wings and flapped them powerfully. Deborah caught a glimpse of the pronged talons as the eagle disappeared upward in the dark shaft of the mine, sending gusts of air that puffed on Deborah’s face through the porthole, carrying the sweet scent of Palm Homestead.

  Chapter 36

  Deborah added the last of the oil to the clay lamp. How long before the lamp would die? Not long, she thought, and the ensuing darkness would be bleak and final, like death. She shuddered and sat down, her back against the wall. The eagle had said she must earn her freedom, but the heavy door was barred from the outside, and she had no tools with which to tackle it. Sallan had spent three years locked up in this tunnel, and if the Elixirist himself couldn’t find a way out, what hope did she have?

  Closing her eyes, Deborah realized how tired she was. A quick nap wouldn’t make a difference. Would Hashkem return to choke her again? Killing him had been no sin, and she would tell him he had no right to torment her anymore.

  When Deborah woke up after what felt like a short time, she checked the oil in the lamp and discovered that only a thin layer remained at the bottom. Most of the oil had been consumed, which must have taken a few hours. Now the prospect of darkness was close and real, and Deborah’s dread was mixed with anger at herself for wasting time on sleep. She had to find a way out!

  Pacing back and forth between the door and the far end of the tunnel, she poked the walls in search of hidden cracks, stared at the rough-hewn ceiling for signs of weakness, and racked her mind for insight on how to earn her freedom. She could see only a single way out—the door—but it was almost as solid as the surrounding rock.

  From memory, she visualized the door on the outside. The crossbar was a thick plank of solid wood, a bit longer than the width of the door. It was secured in two slots, one on each side of the door, about a third of the way up each doorjamb. Could she reach out, hook her fingers under the crossbar, and pull it out of the slots? She suspected that her arm wasn’t long enough, but it was worth a try.

  Deborah pulled the chair over, placed it next to the door, and mounted it. The wooden legs creaked and trembled but held her weight. She put her arm all the way out through the porthole, her shoulder pressed against the edges, and reached down, searching for the crossbar with her fingers. As she suspected, whoever built the door had considered this possibility and placed the crossbar low enough that even a man with long arms couldn’t reach it. She needed a tool that was long enough to reach down and hook on the crossbar, but there was nothing even remotely useful in the tunnel.

  With a sinking heart, Deborah realized there was no solution. She had plenty of drinking water in the bucket by the back wall, and the dates Kassite had left would last her a few days if she nibbled sparingly, but the prospect of spending even one more day in this soon-to-be-dark tunnel was intolerable. Pacing back and forth, she stared into every corner, searching for something useful. Anything!

  Eventually, she gave up, collapsed to the floor, and buried her face in her hands. “Freedom must be earned, not collected as a gift.” The words rang with wisdom, but in reality, she was stuck here until the two Edomite men came back and gave her the gift of freedom. Otherwise, she would die here, never to be free again. Which brought to mind the other lofty proverb the eagle had shared after barring the door: “Defeatism is self-fulfilling, but so is the determination to win.” Was it defeatism to accept defeat at the hands of reality—a solid door, a well-designed crossbar, and a total absence of tools? How was she supposed to muster determination to win empty-handed against this unyielding and impassable barrier?

  The flickering light gave her an idea. She carried the lamp carefully and placed it beside the bottom of the door, tilting it until the burning wick touched the wood. If the door caught fire, she might be able to break it. On the other hand, the smoke might kill her before the door budged, but right now
, she was willing to risk death rather than give up.

  What she got, however, was neither freedom through a burning door, nor death by smoke inhalation. Instead, the mist coming in through the crack under the door extinguished the small flame.

  Deborah froze. She stared in every direction, seeing nothing. She held her hand in front of her face, and her white skin didn’t show at all in the black void. This wasn’t the normal darkness she was used to at night, when the light of the moon, the flickering of the stars, and the glow of a nearby fire gave shape to her surroundings. The darkness in the tunnel was complete and absolute.

  Slowly, Deborah got down on all fours and proceeded until her head banged on the wall. Her breathing quickened as she sat with her back to the wall and began to tremble. The scabs on her back began to itch, and she leaned forward away from the wall, staring into the darkness. She thought she saw shadows and shapes. Was there a large figure standing before her? The eagle?

  “Are you here?” Her tremulous voice sounded like a stranger’s. “I need you to come back!”

  There was no response.

  “Please! Help me!”

  The constant noise of the waterfall outside sounded louder now. Was someone coming through the door?

  “Who’s there?” She waved her arms in front of her to ward off whoever, or whatever, was about to attack her. “Go away!”

  Panting hard, her body shaking, Deborah felt her chest tighten, and a lump formed in her throat. It was a terrifying yet familiar feeling—her own fear tightening its clutches.

  She recalled Sallan’s words: “Banish your fear and embrace your strength.”