Angels at the Gate

by T. K. Thorne

  But they are gone.

  “Where?” Scar shouts.

  I try to look at him to plead with him by meeting his gaze, to tell him I am trying to remember what he wants. He lifts his arm, his face purple with rage or drink, and then it drains to white. He stands in the brilliant light for a long moment before I see the arrow’s tip protruding through his chest. As Scar falls forward between Chiram and me, Puzir turns, drawing his sword.

  His blade is not clear of the scabbard when another slices obliquely across his neck and wrist, leaving a wet, red line. He staggers, met by a short thrust up through his sternum. The straight blade of a long knife yanks free as he falls, sprawling, over the back of Scar’s legs.

  I cannot comprehend what has happened. Only that two of my tormentors now lie beside me, and I can see a portion of a leg of the silently downed third just outside the cave entrance.

  A figure squats at my side; a hand touches my cheek. I can barely feel it. That is good. I do not want to feel … ever again.

  “Adira?” He speaks my name gently, but I am unable to speak his, though I know it. Raph.

  “I am so sorry, Adira. So very sorry.”

  He gathers me into his arms, and an avalanche of pain crushes me into darkness.

  FROM TIME TO time, I rise from black oblivion to see the sky above me, mostly the stars or the branches of a tree where Raph has us rest in the day’s heat. I remain in the cart, trying to swallow the water or broth that Raph holds to my lips, his hand supporting my head. Even when I slip back into the darkness, I am aware of a pressure against my side, an anxious low whine-song. I cannot reach for Nami, but I know she is there. Sometimes I feel her tongue on my wounds, though I cannot bear the pressure on my face, and I pass out from it.

  THIS TIME I wake to the sight of smooth, plastered walls. I turn my head slightly to see Raph, his beautiful face clean of travel dust, but drawn and lined with concern. He speaks in a low voice to another man, who carries a leather hide bag similar to the one Mika carries.

  “Will she live?” Raph asks.

  The man shrugs. “If she has the will, she might.” He pauses. “But she might not wish to.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The bones of one side of her face are crushed. I can do little, but help her pain. And I believe she has internal wounds. I greatly doubt she will ever bear children. What man will want her?”

  I hear the words, and they are like a fist in my belly. No children? My world has always been filled with travel and trading. I delighted in new cities, learning new languages and customs. Settling with a man and having a family were something for the distant future, but now I understand I will never have such a future. I feel its loss as a deep, keen ache.

  Raph looks over at me and sees my eyes are open. He strides to my bed and kneels beside me. I lie in a real bed, I notice, like the one Mika and I lay in atop the goddess’s temple. “Where?” I mumble. My mouth seems not to cooperate with my mind’s direction, but Raph understands.

  “At the palace in Mari. The king has received you in the name of Samsu-iluna.”

  It is as though I have been traveling far from the world. Every concept is strange.

  “Nami?”

  Hearing her name, she rises from her place beside the bed, slipping her head beneath my hand.

  Raph strokes her shoulder. “She would not leave your side. Those Babylonians kept her tied, but they knew her worth and gave her food and water.”

  I nod only slightly. My head feels very large, as if it belongs to someone else, and I cannot breathe well from one side of my nose. I am afraid to touch my face, though the pain feels distant. That is a great relief.

  “I found your knife,” Raph says. “It is with your things.”

  Trust Raph to think of that. I find comfort knowing that small piece of my father is still mine.

  “And Chiram?” My mouth is thick, swollen, and the words are distorted.

  Raph looks down and then back at me. “He was dead when I arrived.”

  I close my eyes. Chiram followed me into the desert, slew my father’s slayer, never pushed me to tell where I hid the silver. What kind of man was this man I despised my entire life? I swallow. “Did you bury him?”

  “I did not have time, Adira. I did not know if you would survive.”

  “Go back and bury him.”

  “If you wish, but not until you are well enough to travel, and I see you to the tents of Abram.”

  Chiram would be only bones by then, but I can see Raph will not budge on this. The tents of Abram. Yes, that is where I must go to honor my oath. Mika has made his choice, and I must make mine. I signal Raph to lean close. “When you go, find the protruding stone that hangs over the river just behind our encampment. Beneath it, tied to a submerged rock, are my bracelets of silver.” I pause to be certain he is listening carefully and, I admit, to rest. Even the act of speaking is an effort.

  He waits.

  “Those rings did not save Chiram, but they kept me alive. Perhaps they have more to do.” I realize I am talking a little wildly, but Raph only nods. “I promise,” he says. “Now rest.”

  “Wait.” Uttering so many words has exhausted me, but I take his hand, noticing two of my fingers are heavily bandaged. “Why did you return, Raph?”

  “I did not want to leave you, but I had to protect my people’s legacy.” He answers in a low voice. “I hid it, as you did your silver. I will return to it when you are safe and take it home.”

  The world begins to fuzz at the edges. “That is good,” I say. “I want to go home too.” But home has always been wherever my father and the caravan were, and that place has dissolved like a dune of sand in the wind.

  PART

  III

  CANAAN, 1747 BCE

  CHAPTER

  39

  There is no permanence. Do we build a house to stand forever; do we seal a contract to hold for all time? Do brothers divide an inheritance to keep forever; do we the flood-time of rivers endure? It is only the nymph of the dragon-fly who sheds her larva and sees the sun in his glory.

  —Anonymous, Ur

  WHAT WOULD MY FATHER THINK to see his “daughter of the wind”? That is the first thought that arises as we come into sight of the spreading oak trees of Mamre in Canaan. I am glad he cannot see me. Only the wind can look upon me now without flinching. Raph does well at it, but he is used to me. He was true to his word and stayed with me two moons until I healed. I was still weak, but he was eager to get me here, so he could go back and find his dreaming stone.

  I am not eager to face Abram or Sarai or Ishmael. What will my childhood friend think to discover I am a woman, and one with the face of a demon spirit? We often played at discovering one, poking a stick in its hiding place and then running away, screaming in terrified delight at the idea of being chased by it.

  Enough, I tell myself. It is not as if I have lost a great beauty. My right cheek is sunken. Two of my fingers have healed in an awkward manner and do not bend correctly. My right eye sees only a blur and my hip and leg ache, causing me to limp, but everything else has healed to the outside perspective.

  Inside is another matter.

  Philot stops to bray at the scent of other donkeys and sheep ahead. The vibration shakes his whole body and me along with it. I smile.

  “It is good to see you smile,” Raph says, looking over at me. He walks beside us, his golden hair gleaming in the sun.

  I know my mouth is slightly crooked from the pull of skin on the sunken cheek, but what is that? A smile is a smile, an acknowledgment of the peculiarities life brings to startle us out of our desperation. Here I was, but a moment before, sunk in a morass of pity for myself, fear of the future, fear of the past—and my little donkey shakes it away with one bray. If only he could shake away my fears for Mika. They have occupied every step of this journey. What will happen if Mika was wrong about which enemy attacks Babylonia?

  What if he was right?

  SARAI CONSIDERS ME.
We have done with the greetings, the customary food and drink and cursory explanations. Raph has gone. Abram and Ishmael are out checking on the herds. The slaves who were about the duties of the household have been dismissed.

  Sarai sits on a stool. Where I would normally be at her feet in deference, I also have a stool because of my injuries. An early lamb that has been hand-nursed lies at her feet. The lamb remains, half asleep, as Nami strides over to inspect her from nose to tail. Nami is not a herd dog, but she understands sheep and goats and calves are not prey, especially when they are in a human’s tent. She investigates the rest of the area, the beautiful woven rugs, bronze and copper urns, and the slender, hipless statuette of Asherah, consort of El or of Baal, if one is a city dweller. Nami finishes her inspection and returns to lie at my side with her forepaws crossed.

  A slave enters with a strong tea, which she pours into cups. Her eyes carefully do not find my face. I imagine word has spread like the flooding Nile across the encampment.

  Sarai has been working on a mending project, but she puts it down in her lap when the slave leaves us, and looks at me. Even now, with silver threading her hair, she is a beautiful woman. Her gray eyes are still luminous and her cheekbones strong, though her lips have a stern line to them and her hands are mottled with brown spots.

  I know what she sees, looking at me. I am thankful I do not have to look at myself.

  “Here we are,” she says, a beginning to a difficult conversation that has creased tiny lines at the corner of her mouth and a furrow of brows above her expressive eyes. I can see how she captivated the Egyptian king. It is telling of her character that she does not begin by offering sorrow at my father’s death or my own trials. Sarai is a woman who suffers no wallowing, and this is fine with me. I do not want her pity. I blink, realizing I have been lost in my own thoughts. I must appear stupid as well as disfigured.

  “You are still of an age to be a girl, Adira, but I believe I speak to a woman. You have seen much.”

  She cannot know how much I have seen, and I have no urge to tell her.

  “I am grateful for the refuge of your tents,” I say. My words come out with some distortion, though I speak slowly and try to overcome the difficulty.

  She sits straighter. “We are your family. We owe you more than simply refuge.”

  “I have been told I cannot bear children.” I wish us clear on that. A woman who cannot bear children has little worth in this world. I never cared about such before. My thoughts centered on all that the world offered to see and explore. But now that my step has slowed, I can imagine myself old and alone with no daughter to comfort me, no son to protect me.

  Sarai’s chortle seems to draw from a deep well of sorrow and irony. It is a contradiction that gives me pause. So long have I been wrapped in my own grief, I have forgotten it was Sarai’s barrenness that caused her to give Hagar to Abram as a second wife.

  Sarai presses a long finger to her mouth, as if signaling me to secrecy. “We are both barren then, for different reasons, yet I have been told I will bear a son to carry on the covenant that El has made with Abram.”

  This is the first I have heard thus. “Is Ishmael not Abram’s son?”

  Sarai’s face tightens. “He is, of course.” Her hand momentarily clenches the pile of wool in her lap. “I think it is all nonsense. I am too old to bear children.”

  I am bold when I should be discreet. “Who has said you will bear a son?” This seems very unlikely, given her age.

  “According to my husband, El has said it.”

  I am curious. “You think the word of El is nonsense?”

  Sarai meets my gaze without the slightest discomfort. “All the gods are fickle.”

  I have heard this said in the lands of Babylonia where the rivers ebb and wane and flood with capriciousness. In Egypt, where the Nile’s flood can be marked to the precise day and hour, the gods are viewed as steadfast. This, I see for the first time, is reflected in the characters of Sarai and Hagar. Hagar is always hopeful and sees tomorrow as a better day. Sarai is practical and plans for the disaster sure to come.

  Sarai strokes the fine wool cloth in her lap. “But I have a little more faith in the potions El’s messenger left me.”

  Would Mika be that messenger? If so, she must mean he gave her herbs the last time my father and I had been here. Or perhaps the third wise man had been the one to give them to her. “Is there any sign?” I ask.

  A quiet and beautiful smile melts the sternness from her face. “I will swear you to secrecy with my handmaids.”

  I nod.

  “My moon blood has returned.”

  This is not exactly a pregnancy, but it is a miracle no less, though I have heard women sometimes stop their moon blood and then start it again. My own has ceased, not from age, of course, but from the blows my belly received. Quickly, I focus my attention back to Sarai, unwilling to return, even in my mind, to that dark cave.

  “That is a hopeful sign,” I say.

  With a trace of smugness, she picks up her mending. “We will see. If I give birth, I will have to suckle the child before all the women to prove it is my own.”

  This I do not doubt.

  “Meanwhile, there is much to do, including finding you a suitable husband.”

  I want to laugh … and cry. “That may be a challenge greater than having a child.”

  She looks at me critically, seeing all the damage of my flesh and perhaps some that is deeper. “We will see.”

  CHAPTER

  40

  For in his days the angels of the Lord descended upon earth—those who are named the Watchers—that they should instruct the children of men that they should do judgment and uprightness upon earth.

  —Book of Jubilees

  I AM RESTLESS IN THE TENTS with the women, awkward at the tasks assigned to me with my stiff fingers and uncomfortable under the quickly averted gazes. No one speaks of what has happened to me, as if my past is a large hole in the earth everyone avoids.

  It is a black fissure for me as well, but when I encounter it, I stop and stare down into its abyss. My father is down there. And Chiram. I never understood how important Chiram was to me. I am still not sure how this is so.

  Raph is gone and Mika—I cannot begin to accept that he is no longer part of my life, though it is truth. I see now that what I loved in Raph was what I imagined. But Mika—my love for Mika formed bit by bit, growing from tiny seeds planted in the desert, its roots spreading so unobtrusively that its bloom, at last, was a surprise. Mere distance or time cannot unwind them. His love has changed me as surely as what happened in the cave.

  Nami stays by my side, knowing, as she somehow always does, that I need her.

  I SEEK THE refuge and comfort of the herds, sitting alone until Ishmael finds me. It is the first time we have been alone together since my return.

  “What happened to your face?” he asks, staring at my cheek.

  Startled that this question comes first, I look at him. “A man kicked me and shattered the bones.”

  Ishmael’s mouth tightens. “I will kill him.”

  “He is already dead.”

  “Then I will pray to El that his children and his children’s children are tormented by demons.”

  Ishmael’s frankness and loyalty melt some of the pain in my chest I thought permanently lodged there. “Thank you, Ishmael.”

  Taking a seat on the rock beside me, he pulls out a fine bronze knife and reaches down for a stick to sharpen. “Why did you not tell me you were a girl?” he demands, now that we have dispensed with priorities.

  “Because it was my father’s wish that it be a secret.”

  He mulls over this. “If you had told me, I would have kept it secret.”

  I smile. Ishmael and I are like siblings, though we did not see one another for long periods. I was older and showed him how to read the silent language of the donkeys, goats, and sheep, and how to train a dog to herd them.

  He applies the blade to th
e stick and begins to strip off the bark. “Now what are you going to do?”

  “It is up to Sarai. If she finds a miracle man who will agree to wed a monstrosity who cannot bear him children, then I will be a wife. Otherwise, I do not know.”

  When have I decided this? When did marriage become a haven, the place of refuge and safety my father always considered it? A new thought arises, born of this moment. What would stop me from changing back into a man’s dress and starting a business somewhere as a merchant or buying a caravan, as Chiram had envisioned? My heart begins to beat, as if it had been a dead thing startled into life, but with it stirs a demon of fear born in a cave across the desert. My childhood efforts with Ishmael to tweak a demon from its hiding place may have resulted only in squeals of imagined terror, but now one rises before me, clawed paws spread wide, mouth agape.

  “I will marry you,” Ishmael announces.

  Again, his loyalty is a healing balm. “I am honored, Ishmael, but you are your father’s only heir, and El has promised to make of him a nation of people. You must bear him sons.”

  Ishmael’s blade takes a savage bite from the wood. “Then I will take another wife for that.”

  I start to protest and then close my mouth. What can I say? His own mother is second wife to Abram and has borne him a child when Sarai could not. It is not an uncommon practice here and in Babylonia.

  Then a lance of cold spears my spine, despite the sun’s warmth. What would happen to Ishmael should Sarai conceive and give Abram an heir? I know the tale of Sarai’s wrath when Hagar boasted she was with child and publicly bragged she was now the favored wife. Hagar may have been a slave, but she had been a king’s slave and always carried herself with the pride or implied superiority of the Egyptians.

  But Hagar had underestimated Sarai’s power. Blood bound Abram and Sarai, as well as vows. Sarai was, after all, not only Abram’s wife, but also his half-sister. She had been with him all his life, traveled with him from Ur and then to Egypt, where she lied to the king for his life. He owed her much.