Angels at the Gate

by T. K. Thorne

  Lila tries to help Flava serve, but I insist she join us. We sit on cushions around a large clay platter, using flatbread to scoop the pungent mixtures of meats, onions, and beans. Dates, goat cheese, and fresh milk follow the main servings, and then honey cakes almost as good as Hagar’s. I appreciate the extravagance of serving such food.

  I finally sit back with a rounded belly, leaving something of my portion to assure our hostess there has been plenty to eat. Now it is polite to speak, and I compliment her on the meal and ask questions about its preparation. We meander into conversation about current events. “This new king does not understand his people,” Jemia complains. “They never do. I have seen three of them, you understand.”

  “Grandmother, do not get yourself in a tangle,” Danel says.

  “I am not tangled. My old eyes see better than yours. This city is fearful and isolated; we are overripe and rotten.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  She slaps her palm against her thigh. “There is closing the gates, and there is closing the gates.”

  I shift on my pillow, trying to ease the burning ache in my hip and leg. “I do not go out much, and hear very little other than what Lila tells me,” I say as apology for knowing little of what goes on in the city.

  “What do you make of the explosion, Grandmother?” Danel intercedes, in an obvious attempt to change the subject from politics.

  She lifts her shoulders in a shrug.

  “Have you ever heard such before?” he insists.

  She squints, as if trying to see into a distant memory. “When I was a young girl, there was a noise like the one today. It was down where the pitch pits lie.” She spreads her hands wide, her voice dramatic. “The ground cracked open—shooting a tower of flame into the sky!”

  “A tower of flame?” It is the first time Lila has spoken.

  “Believe me or not,” Jemia says crossly.

  “I believe,” Lila says, her gaze solemn. “The gods are angry with this city.”

  Jemia appears lost in her memory. “When it finally burned out, foolish children that we were, we went to look down into the crack, pushing and jostling each other, fearful Mot would reach up and grab us.”

  I remember poking sticks into holes with Ishmael to see if we could wake a demon. “What did you see?” I ask.

  She shudders, though it is overly warm from the day’s heat. “Mot’s kingdom.” She pauses, well aware of the drama of her telling. “We saw the layers of the earth, down, down, so deep, there was nothing but blackness.”

  “Mot’s Tongue,” Danel says. “I have seen that place. The older children take the younger there to frighten them. I went, before Father took me with him on the caravan. It is just as you describe, but I never heard of a fountain of fire erupting from it. That must be why they call it a ‘tongue.’ I always wondered.”

  I feel my eyes widen, and a sense of doom grips me. Beneath us, in the depths, fire rages, waiting for the earth to shift to release it. Mot’s Tongue could erupt anywhere.

  “It happened long before you were born,” Jemia says. Then, as if it is part of the same subject, she points a bony finger at me. The skin of her hand is creviced like a piece of parched earth. “There are other things that happened before you were born that do concern you.” The finger stays extended, but sweeps to include Danel, “And you.”

  Danel looks perplexed.

  Knowing she has our attention, she retracts the finger, folding it with the others in her lap. “I must tell you a story.”

  “Your father, Chiram,” Jemia begins, “was a good boy.”

  The sense of danger lingers, but I am hungry to learn more about Chiram and lean in for her story.

  “Perhaps not as quick as others, but steady and dependable,” she continues. “You are much like him in that, Danel. When he was a young man, he traveled to Mari to visit his uncle, and he met a beautiful woman. He was warned she had spells of darkness, but he was so taken by her, he brought her home as his wife. They were happy and, in due time, she had a child.”

  “Which was me,” Danel says.

  “Yes, it was you. But it was a difficult, painful birth, and something broke in her mind afterward. She seemed to forget who she was and did not acknowledge either her husband or her child. She would wander out into the streets, and Chiram had to find her and bring her home to suckle you.”

  Danel’s hands clench into fists. “I know this, and I know the rest. She disappeared, and Father brought me to you to raise.”

  “Only for a while.” Jemia stops a moment to get her breath. I can hear the faint wheeze, and am now glad I did not bring Nami and make it more difficult for her.

  “Danel’s father—my Chiram—was almost as lost as his bride,” she continues. “He was a shaper of knives, but returning to his profession only made him think of his lost wife, so he tried his hand at various things. He had it in his mind that a traveling caravan had snatched his wife, so he attached himself to various ones, finding a place by hunting and cooking for them. When Danel was old enough, Chiram came for him.”

  Jemia’s watery eyes travel from Danel to me. “Hear now the part you do not know, and I, too, did not know until Chiram came to Sodom after Zakiti died and you, Adira, disappeared into the desert.”

  Everyone’s attention intensifies. Jemia sways a bit, as if the weight of what she knows rocks her off-center. “When Danel was four summers old, Chiram found his missing wife.” She looks directly at Danel. “Your mother.”

  Danel jumps to his feet. “What? Where is she? How?”

  “Be calm, grandson.”

  But Danel will not be. “Why are you telling me this now, in front of guests? I do not understand.”

  It is Lila’s cool, small hand on Danel’s calf that settles him. He looks down at her, his mouth tight. She says nothing, yet much passes between them. He sits. “My apologies, Grandmother.”

  She goes on as if never interrupted. “Many seasons had passed when he found her, and she was the wife of another man, the owner of the caravan.”

  I draw a shaky breath, putting this together. “My mother? Your son’s wife was Talliya?”

  Jemia nods and gives us a moment to absorb what she has told us.

  Finally, I ask, “Did my mother remember Chiram as her husband when she saw him?”

  “No, she did not. And Chiram, though he longed for her, did not claim her. She was married to a man Chiram respected, and she seemed happy.”

  I feel blood drain from my face, and I stare down at my hands. “When we were captives in a cave in Babylonia, Chiram told me— ” I must take a slow breath to relieve the tightness in my chest. “Chiram told me that when he and my father left to fight against Chedorlaomer, my mother was pregnant.” I look up. “With me.” My mouth is dry. I had not told Danel these details. “Chiram said my mother went throughout the camp, telling everyone her son would soon be born, and that would set things right.”

  Tears glimmer in Jemia’s eyes. “Deep inside, a part of her knew she had lost her son.”

  “She told everyone I was a boy.” My own voice breaks over a closing in my throat.

  Jemia reaches out and takes my hand.

  “And so I was raised,” I say, “even after she died.”

  “And so,” Jemia echoes, “Chiram stayed near her. And her son, Danel, was companion and friend to her daughter, though neither knew the other to be family.”

  Danel takes a deep breath and looks at me, his brows lifting with a sudden understanding. “We, then, are sister and brother.”

  CHAPTER

  47

  I looked into the water. My destiny was drifting past.

  —Sumerian proverb

  IT IS STILL DIFFICULT TO sleep. In my nightmares, a fiery tongue straight from Mot’s kingdom burns, coming closer and closer. I wake in a cold sweat, alone. Have my nightmares again driven Lot from my bed?

  He has not touched me once, not even a casual brush. I laugh to myself. I will never learn if there w
as any truth to the talk of large thumbs and the size of a manhood! Affection grows with a marriage, or so I have been told, yet it is impossible to plant that seed in frozen ground. My womb is barren, unless El grants me the miracle he gave to Sarai. But even El needs a man’s cooperation. Not that I have tried to interest Lot, even for the sake of hoping the healer wrong. I have not learned affection for Lot. I abhor him. How stupid of me to think I could ever be content here. Daily, he grows more fanatical and puts all our lives at risk.

  I worry about Ishmael and hope Sarai gives birth to a girl, though she prays to the goddess for a boy heir, not trusting El in such a matter. What will happen to Ishmael and Hagar if Sarai has a boy? Will he have a chance to live his dreams? Sarai has never forgiven Hagar her thoughtless bragging over Ishmael. Sarai will want her own son to be Abram’s heir.

  It is a difficult matter, since Ishmael is Abram’s first son, but Sarai is his first wife and sister. If I could wager, I would place it on Sarai. She is not a woman who easily concedes defeat. And El has said she will bear an heir.

  Pushing aside the bed coverings, I rise and, as always, Nami is instantly awake and accompanies me. I wonder if she knows the moment my eyes open.

  I stop in the courtyard to scratch Philot’s neck and give him a fig, which he scoops into his mouth with his soft lips. A glance at Lila’s sleeping form assures me she has enough coverings now to stay warm—warmer, she claims, than I, because she has the fire.

  “It is not fair to keep you here,” I whisper to Philot. “I will send you to the fields tomorrow.”

  Philot nods his head as he eats the fig, as if he says, You say that to me every day. I know he would be happier in the fields, and it would remove a burden from Lila, who must bring hay every day, hay that is getting scarcer to find. We could also stable him with the other animals at the far end of the city, but I am stubborn. I want him with me.

  On the day after my arrival, Pheiné confronted me about it. “Surely, you do not plan to keep this smelly donkey in the courtyard, as if we were nomads!” Her emphasis on the word “nomads” left no doubt as to her distain. I could have told her the desert people felt the same way about city dwellers.

  Instead, I said, “He smells like a donkey. What is wrong with that? The city smells far worse.”

  She ignored this, pointing to Nami. “And the refuse-eater. Can you not put him outside?”

  “Her,” I corrected, “and she stays with me.”

  Pheiné tossed her head. “I have lived in this house all my life. You are little more than a child.”

  “I may be, but I am also the woman of the household. The donkey and dog stay.” After a moment, I added, “But you may leave, if you wish.”

  Perhaps it was not the best way to begin our relationship, and it has not improved since then. Thamma follows her sister in everything, and so, no hope of better there. But what more can be expected from me, a woman so repulsive her husband seeks solitude in his daughters’ room? My hope for sisters was crushed the moment I stepped into the little gate. Pheiné and Thamma hate me for reasons I cannot understand. My heart was open to them, but now it is closed. If they do marry and bear children, they will turn them against me.

  I move to the window, pulling back the latticework and holding the night coverings aside. The moon has risen, casting a silver shadow on the dark sea. After a while, I sense a presence and turn to find Lila at my side, a woolen blanket wrapped around her shoulders.

  “Hurriya had Lot build this opening in the wall,” she says. “She wanted to see the sea.”

  This makes me wonder more about Hurriya. Perhaps we shared a kinship in needing this opening to the world.

  “I know you are not happy,” Lila says quietly, “but I am glad you are here. ”

  “You are my only friend in this house … in this city, I believe.”

  “What about Danel?” she asks.

  “Yes, there is Danel too. My brother.” My heart lifts at those words. I have a brother and a grandmother.

  Now she gives a quiet laugh. “I wonder if he will visit again.”

  A tone in her voice only confirms what my eyes have already seen. “He is not a wealthy man,” I say.

  She sees that I have discerned her interest. “That is no matter to me.”

  “But he is a good one,” I add.

  The palms of Lila’s small brown hands press together at her chest. “That, my mother always said, is enough.”

  I smile. “My father always said it was as easy to marry a wealthy man as a poor one.”

  “And by that logic,” she counters, a gleam in her dark eyes, “just as easy to marry a poor one as a rich one.”

  “I believe perhaps Danel will visit often.”

  We watch the moon together. Nami gives a sigh and settles at my feet.

  “Lila,” I say at length, “do you know how Hurriya died?”

  She gives me a sharp look and hesitates. “They say she fell from the cliff.”

  “Where?”

  She points out the window toward the cliff face where I climb almost nightly, the place where Mika held the blue fire in his hand. It seems at once so long ago and only days past.

  “But that is not the truth,” Lila says, with a glance over her shoulder.

  “How then?” I press.

  Lila turns back to the sea, glimmering in the moonlight, her voice hushed. “One morning, she just walked into the water.”

  I take a breath. “She drowned?”

  “Yes.”

  I remember my experience as a young girl when I tasted the bitter water despite my father’s warning. “How?” Only the heaviest objects can sink in the Dead Sea.

  “She just walked in, spread her arms wide and lay face down. A boatman saw her, but could not reach her in time.” Lila’s voice catches. By this, I know Hurriya had been a good woman, kind to Lila. What had she seen that made her embrace the sea and its bitterness? Though I have no answer to the question, some deep part inside me understands.

  All the tears she wept are naught but a pillar of salt.

  CHAPTER

  48

  Is there so much anger in the minds of the gods?

  —Vergil

  I have no rest; only trouble comes.

  —Job 3:26

  THE FOLLOWING DAY, LILA AND I sit in the dappled light of the courtyard, teasing lentils from their pods, she on the reed floor, and I on a small stool like the one I sat on in Sarai’s tent. We keep the rugs rolled up until it is time for a meal, to keep chicken droppings off them.

  It is a pleasant morning to shell peas. Two from each pod. Her nine fingers work twice as fast as mine. She has bought a great reed basket of them. I still carry the thrust of our talk, but every day she is becoming more comfortable in the role of friendship I offer her. “This basket nearly broke my back,” she says, a complaint she would never utter in front of Lot’s daughters.

  “Why did you choose such a large one?”

  She sighs. “It was a better bargain than the smaller.”

  “Then you should have hired a boy to carry it.”

  Her dark eyes flash, indignant. “I would have wasted the savings!”

  I laugh. It speaks of her character that she is concerned about the household affairs, though she has no portion in them.

  “Well,” I say. “We shall have lentil soup and lentil stew and then—”

  “Lentil soup,” Lila says, catching the path of my humor, “and then lentil stew.”

  I remember the camaraderie in the desert women’s tent in Yassib’s camp. Into this opening, I ask, “Lila, how did you lose your finger?”

  She hesitates, glancing at my face. “Forgive the query,” I say quickly.

  “No, it happened a long time ago. I was only a child.” She takes a breath. “I do not remember much, just sitting in the dust outside our hut and reaching for what I thought was a stick.” She looks up. “The stick came alive in my hand—a newborn viper.”

  I draw a breath. Even a just-hatc
hed viper is dangerous, sometimes more full of poison than an adult.

  “My mother came running at my screams. Before I could realize what she was doing, she pulled out the knife she had in her sash for cooking and killed the snake, then cut off my finger so the poison would not spread. I have done without it most of my life and do not miss it.”

  I nod. Our deformities, though quite different, link us together in a way a whole person cannot understand.

  Nami whines, nosing the basket. I call her to my side before she can knock it over, having no wish to pick lentil pods from the reed-strewn floor.

  At a knock on the door, Lila rises with far greater grace than I can manage and goes to open it, giving me time to struggle to my feet. My limitations are not that noticeable now, once I am up and moving, but getting up and down is a challenge.

  It is Danel. He has become a frequent visitor. I greet him while Lila goes back to shelling peas. Danel follows her with his gaze, and I smile. He is so obviously smitten.

  At the sudden squawking of the chickens and a gasp from Lila, I turn in alarm. She is kneeling on the floor, her back to us. Beyond her, I see that Nami has forgotten my command to leave the basket alone, and spilled the contents. Relieved at the mundane upset, I sigh in annoyance and sympathy. Each day we are confined to this house, Nami finds obedience increasingly difficult.

  Lila’s hands are full of pods. I take a step toward them to help her collect the spilled beans, but Danel’s sudden grip on my arm halts me.

  I have missed what he has not. Philot is pulling against his tether, his head up and his tail clamped in fear; the chickens have retreated into the far corners; and Nami’s posture is aggressive—her head low, the tufts of short hair spiked between her shoulders. Her legs splay, and tension holds them stiff, ready to leap in an instant.

  Only when the floor moves, do my eyes resolve what she and Lila and Danel have already seen. It is not the floor that moves, but a snake, a ribbon of black sliding through the brown reeds scattered on the floor. The soft rustle of scales accompanies the snake’s advance toward Lila. She is rigid, but a pod falls from her trembling hand. At the movement, the serpent lifts its narrow head, and I recognize it—a desert cobra.