Deborah Calling

by Avraham Azrieli

  “There’s no one here,” she said out loud. “No reason to be afraid.”

  Trying to conjure memories of situations when she had been able to overcome her fear and embrace her strength, Deborah thought of Ein Gedi, when Seesya came down from the cave and rushed toward her with his sword raised for a fatal blow. He would have killed her had she not overcome her fear, primed her sling with a fitting stone, aimed it carefully, and hit him.

  The memory made Deborah feel better. She touched her sling, tied snugly as a makeshift belt over her robe. Her skills with this simple weapon were her biggest strength, as long as she could overcome her fear.

  Deborah’s panting slowed down and her trembling subsided. She untied the sling and shook it loose in the darkness. Forming a fist with her left hand, she pressed it into the leather pouch and raised her arm so that the two cords, attached to the opposite ends of the pouch, dangled along her arm down to her shoulder. With her right hand, she straightened the cords. At the end of one cord she felt the loop, and at the end of the other, the leather tab. It was a modest weapon, yet ingenious and very effective in the right circumstances. It made her feel safe—not that she could use it in this underground tunnel. There wasn’t a single stone to shoot, the ceiling was too low for rotating the sling, and in any event, it was useless against a solid wooden door. To break through the door, she would need a giant sling that could shoot a cow-sized boulder. Deborah smiled at the idea of sling-shooting a cow and shattering the barred door to pieces, as the eagle had done. Not that she needed to break down the door to get out. If there was a way to reach the crossbar and lift it out of the slots—

  Reach the crossbar!

  The idea was so simple—why hadn’t she thought of it before? Now she understood the eagle words: “I hope our aerial expedition illuminated your path.” Illumination was what she needed most in this total darkness, but without a source of light, illumination would come from her memory, imagination, and sense of touch.

  Deborah grasped the sling in one hand and felt her way back to the door with the other. She got onto the chair and felt the cool spray from the waterfall through the porthole. Acting by feel and visualization, she threaded the thumb of her right hand into the loop, coiled the tab end around her pinky and ring finger, and clenched her fist to secure her grasp on both cords. Pushing the pouch first through the porthole, she put her right arm out and shook it to straighten the cords. She felt the cold mist from the waterfall on her arm and imagined the pouch suspended below, its cords separated by the width of her hand.

  Next, Deborah tilted her arm sideways to the left until she felt the doorjamb against her thumb. Visualizing the crossbar, she remembered that it was slightly longer than the width of the door, with the end of the crossbar sticking out beyond each slot about as much as the length of her forefinger. With her cheek pressed against the inside of the door, her right arm all the way out through the porthole, she slowly lowered her hand along the doorjamb. She could feel through the cords when the bottom of the pouch touched the top of the crossbar, and began to rock her hand slightly back and forth in order to cause the pouch to swing as a pendulum parallel to the doorjamb while she continued to lower it very slowly until its swinging was blocked by the outer end of the crossbeam. Slightly lower, while keeping one cord close to the doorjamb, she felt the pouch clear the bottom of the crossbar and get under it. She held her breath and tugged upward on the cords, hooking the pouch under the end of the crossbar.

  “Got you!” She laughed in the dark. “Got you!”

  Now came the next hurdle—lifting the crossbar with one hand. Deborah adjusted her position on the creaky chair, took a deep breath, and pulled hard.

  Nothing happened.

  She kept the tension on the cords of the sling to prevent the pouch from slipping off the end of the crossbar, rested for a moment, took another deep breath, and pulled again, even harder this time.

  It didn’t budge.

  Her arm hurting from the effort, Deborah struggled to keep disappointment from overwhelming her. She had to think calmly. Having helped Sallan lift it when they had first arrived, she remembered that the crossbar was hefty and the slots tight. Was the pouch somehow hooked on the slot instead of on the end of the crossbar? She couldn’t imagine how that could have happened. But what else could it be?

  Out of ideas, Deborah steeled herself and pulled up again as hard as she could, gritting her teeth and groaning, the muscles of her arm and shoulder tight to the limit.

  No movement, except for the chair, which creaked and rocked under her.

  She wanted to keep tension on the cords, but her arm hurt badly from the effort, and she inadvertently lowered it enough for the pouch to slip out from under the end of the crossbar. With her whole body shaking from the effort, Deborah gave up. She pulled her arm with the sling back through the porthole, got down from the chair, and lay on the floor, panting. She was nauseated, and the darkness around her lit up with sparkling multicolored stars that didn’t disappear when she shut her eyes. It was a beautiful sight while it lasted.

  As she recovered, the stars faded into complete darkness again. Her plan had failed, and she didn’t even know why. Perhaps the door itself pressed on the crossbar, which in turn pressed against the slots, making it hard to pull out the crossbar. But what could she do about it? Pull the door inward while trying to lift the crossbar? It seemed impossible, and she couldn’t find the will to get up and try. Kassite had said, “Women are passive, temperamental, small-minded, and anxious.” Was he right? Were women incapable of doing what men could do in the same situation? If a man was in her position now, would he climb back on the chair, or remain on the floor, defeated, hoping someone would come to rescue him?

  Another dreadful possibility came to her. What if Sallan and Kassite were captured or killed while riding back to Bozra? No one else knew where she was. The thought of dying in this cell, starved, blind, and alone, enraged her. She had to get out, or die trying. In fact, a quick death would be better than a slow and lonely one.

  Repeating the steps as before, she used her left arm this time, and managed to hook the pouch on the other end of the crossbar. However, when she pulled, the result was the same, except that now she was filled with rage. Rather than lose control, she harnessed all that rage and channeled it against the cursed door that was keeping her prisoner.

  Continuing to pull hard on the cords, Deborah turned her body sideways and used her hip to hit the door repeatedly, shaking it in hope of releasing the tight fit of the crossbar in the slots. It didn’t work, and her rage exploded into fury. Pounding the door harder with her hip, again and again, she pulled on the sling, her left arm and shoulder burning with muscle pain.

  “Damn you,” she shouted. “Come out already!”

  The chair broke under her.

  Deborah yelped as she dropped halfway down and hung by her left arm, which remained extended through the porthole, twisted painfully, before the sling tore out of her hand, and her arm threaded back in through the porthole, allowing her to fall the rest of the way to the floor.

  The fall knocked the air out of her, and she lay flat, panting. Her arm hurt from being twisted, and her hand burned from having both the loop and the tab torn out of her grip. But Deborah couldn’t stay down. She had to find out whether the sling had been torn apart, or had extracted the crossbar from the slots before she lost grip of the cords.

  Staying on all fours, she felt her way back to the door, brushing aside the pieces of the broken chair. With a deep breath, she put the palm of her right hand flat against the door and pushed.

  The door didn’t move.

  “No!” Her rage flaring again, she got up and threw herself blindly against the door.

  The door budged.

  Deborah paused. Was she imagining it, or had the door actually moved?

  She pushed with both hands, putting her weight into it. The door screeched and resisted, but edged a bit further. Another push, harder yet, didn’t help.
The door would move no more.

  The roar of the waterfall was much louder, and cool mist caressed her face. Feeling around with her hands, Deborah found that the door was cracked open with enough space to put her arm through. She reached out and felt about with her hand on the outside of the door. The crossbar was there, standing diagonally. It had come out of one slot, but was still set in the opposite slot—the side of the door where the hinges were. To loosen it, Deborah lay on the ground, reached out with her right hand, and nudged the crossbar with her fingers, shaking it while applying pressure on the door with her shoulder. Her efforts forced the door a little farther, and she managed to put her head through the narrow gap, followed by the rest of her body.

  In the darkness outside the tunnel, engulfed by the cold mist from the waterfall, Deborah burst out crying. She had made it! She was free!

  Still down on her knees, Deborah searched with her hands on the floor outside the door and found the sling. She ran her fingers on the cords, the loop, the tab, and the pouch. The sling was undamaged. She tied it around her waist. The complete darkness no longer bothered her. She knew where she was and where she was going.

  Deborah washed her face in the cold water of the pool at the bottom of the waterfall and drank some, too. Moving slowly along the circular wall at the bottom of the shaft, she found the base of the stairs. Her right foot on the first step, she glanced up, hoping to see the weak light at the top of the shaft—her beacon of freedom. Instead, she saw the glow of torches above.

  Chapter 37

  Deborah’s first instinct was to start climbing fast and confront Sallan and Kassite over their betrayal. On second thought, however, she realized that the torches above might be carried by persons other than the two Edomite men. Running into a bunch of strangers on the narrow, rough stairs high up in the shaft could be deadly. Besides, even Sallan and Kassite might be dangerous to her. Hadn’t they locked her down here in the first place, putting her life in danger?

  Feeling her way back around the wall back to the door, Deborah closed it, lifted the crossbar, and secured it in the slots. She proceeded to the pool and stepped into it. The cold water reached above her knees, and the splashes from the waterfall soaked her robe.

  The approaching torches began to soften the darkness. Deborah stepped sideways, her back to the wall, and entered the narrow space behind the waterfall. The noise was deafening, but she was safe, at least for now.

  She waited.

  Through the column of water, the glow slowly grew stronger. Meanwhile, the chill from the water and spray penetrated her body, making her tremble.

  Finally, she saw two points of light reach the bottom and go from the base of the stairs to the tunnel door.

  She peeked from behind the waterfall. There were two men, their backs to her. One was taller and thinner than the other and wore a white hat. The shorter man had Sallan’s bushy hair.

  Kassite looked in through the porthole and yelled something. Sallan banged on the door with an open hand. Kassite shook his head, and Sallan thumped the door again.

  Deborah retreated behind the roaring waterfall. It wasn’t hard to guess what was going on. They had expected her to be inside and to rush to the door anxiously upon hearing them, but despite yelling through the porthole and banging on the door, there was no response. The darkness inside, she knew, made it impossible for them to see that she was no longer in the barred tunnel.

  The torches shifted and shook. One of them disappeared, then the other.

  Deborah stepped out of the pool.

  The door was ajar, and the glow from the men’s torches spilled out on the floor. She went to the door. She could hear their voices inside.

  “Look in the back,” Kassite said. “By the wall.”

  “I’m looking,” Sallan said. “She’s not there.”

  “Impossible!”

  With both hands, Deborah edged the door in until it closed. She lifted the crossbar and slipped it into the slots. With the door barred, she stood on her toes and looked in through the porthole.

  The two men stood at the far end of the tunnel, facing the wall, the flames from their torches casting jittery shadows.

  “She got out.” Sallan touched the back wall as if expecting to find a secret passage in the solid rock. “I don’t know how, but she got out.”

  “Someone let her out.” Kassite said.

  “Who? Nobody knows about this place except my boy-servants, and they’ve been with us the whole time.”

  “Obviously, somebody helped her. There is no way she got out by herself.”

  “There is a way,” Deborah said.

  The men turned and tilted their torches in her direction.

  “Who is there?” Kassite asked.

  “It’s me,” she said.

  They approached the door.

  “It really is you.” Sallan held his torch forward. “Good morning.”

  “It’s a wonderful morning for me,” she said. “Not so much for you, I’m afraid.”

  Kassite pushed the door, testing it.

  “It’s very solid.” Deborah knuckled the crossbar. “How does it feel to be on the inside?”

  “Let us out,” Sallan said.

  “Why should I?”

  “Please, open the door.”

  “Did you open it when I asked you to?” Deborah stepped back and squeezed some of the water out of her robe. She was trembling from the cold.

  “It’s not funny.” Sallan pressed his face to the porthole. “Not for me, not with my memories of this lonely jail.”

  “You’re not alone this time. Isn’t that nice?”

  “My old friend,” Kassite said, “your Hebrew girl outsmarted you.”

  Sallan turned to him. “She outsmarted both of us!”

  “It was not my idea to bring her here and lock her up.”

  “It’s not about outsmarting you,” she said. “It’s about doing to you what you did to me. That’s all.”

  “I did it for your own good,” Sallan said. “Believe me, Deborah, it hurt me to leave you here alone, but I had to do it in order to help you clear your mind and discover what’s truly in your heart.”

  “I’m also doing it for your own good.” Deborah adjusted the sling around her waist. “I’ll leave you here to help you clear your conscience and discover what it feels like to be on the receiving end of trickery and manipulation by someone you trust.”

  “Please, don’t do this,” Sallan said. “It’s not in your making to be cruel and vengeful like this. We’re old men. We could die here.”

  “There’s plenty of water, and I haven’t touched the dates you so generously left for me.”

  “Look at this.” Kassite picked up the clay bottle and shook it. “Still full.”

  “Is it?” Sallan took the bottle. “Didn’t you find the final ingredient?”

  “I know what to look for now. True enchantment. As you predicted yesterday, I figured it out.”

  “Then take it.” He passed the bottle through the porthole. “I mixed this Male Elixir for you. No point in letting it go to waste.”

  Deborah took the bottle, her hand shaking. “I’m freezing, and the sun is waiting upstairs. Farewell.”

  “Open the door, Borah!” Kassite hit the door. “I command you!”

  “Master, I’m sorry,” she said. “Can’t do that.”

  “You swore to obey me!”

  “I swore to obey the Elixirist, but you extracted my oath with a lie, and then made me work as a slave. And even if my oath was valid, it has expired.” She held up the bottle. “With the delivery of the third dose of the Male Elixir, our deal is concluded.”

  “Don’t leave us here,” Sallan said. “I implore you.”

  “Do not beg her.” Kassite grasped the porthole and shook the door. “Borah! I command you—open up!”

  “We’re too old for this place,” Sallan said, his voice trembling.

  “Old and wise,” she said. “Surely the two of you together will be able
to figure out a way to free yourselves.”

  Pointing his torch, Sallan made a full circle, looking around at the walls. “How did you do it?”

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

  The two men looked at each other, their pale faces lit by the flickering torches.

  “I’ll come back in a day or two,” she said. “Unless something happens to me, in which case you’ll die here the same way I could have died.”

  Heading across the floor to the base of the stairs, she took the first two steps.

  “Borah!” Kassite’s voice rang out over the noise of the waterfall. “Do not kill!”

  She paused, and for an instant her throat constricted and she couldn’t breathe.

  “Please, Deborah,” Sallan cried, “have mercy on us.”

  “Have mercy on yourself,” Kassite yelled. “The Hebrew god will punish you.”

  She groaned, unable to keep climbing.

  “I’m sorry.” Sallan sounded on the verge of panic. “Forgive me.”

  Deborah walked back to the porthole. “Why should I forgive you—yet again?”

  “Because you’re kind. And decent.”

  “That’s why you keep tricking me?”

  Sallan covered his face, unable to speak.

  Kassite put his arms around Sallan and held him.

  Her anger faded. She remembered the eagle’s words: “When a person rises to kill you, rise first and kill him.” These two old men posed no danger to her—not anymore. If she left the door locked, would she have dreams about Sallan and Kassite dying of hunger and cold, clawing at the barred door until their fingernails broke? Would they come to her in her dreams and choke her?

  Deborah put the clay bottle on the floor, hoisted the crossbar out of the tight slots, and dropped it aside with a loud thud. She picked up the bottle and went back to the stairs.

  Behind her, Kassite called, “Thank you, the great Qoz!”

  “You’re welcome,” Deborah said as she took the first step.

  Climbing the stairs warmed her body, and the monotony of the steps allowed her mind to wander back to the eagle’s flight and all the details of the Hebrew prosperity she’d seen in Canaan, particularly at Palm Homestead. That glorious future was worthy of her heart’s true enchantment. The eagle had said, “The future isn’t certain until it becomes the present. What you saw is possible—if you make wise choices along the way.”