by Misty Moncur
When the rains had come and gone, we sat in the small yard with Mui, my old milk goat, and her daughter, Abigail, bleating softly to each other.
I broke a long silence when I said, “Mother, did you know Kalem was married?”
She glanced at me but returned her eyes to her work. “Yes, I’ve always known.”
“I always wondered why he didn’t marry you,” I said.
Her cheeks turned rosy. “Me?”
“You cannot tell me you never considered the idea.”
She didn’t respond, but her rosy cheeks continued to speak for her.
I smiled to myself. “Then you know of his daughter?”
“Yes, Kanina. So sad for them.”
I tried to ignore the pang when she called me by that name.
“I’ve been trying to convince Kalem that he should seek her out. Right the wrong he did when he left her.”
“I believe his wife forced him to leave,” Mother replied calmly. “Got her father involved.”
“But his daughter didn’t,” I insisted.
“I don’t know what would be best. I know it saddens him. It was a blessing when you began to accept him.”
I looked up at her, but my eyes slipped past her to a man who was entering the village on the path that led from Melek. He wore a red tunic and a brown leather kilt. He came from the trees into the clearing and looked around curiously.
He looked familiar, but it couldn’t be him.
I watched as he questioned Chemosh, a man who lived at the far end of the clearing and carried a large, limp pheasant slung over his shoulder toward his home. Chemosh pointed down the main road toward my end of the clearing. It reminded me of the time Onah had come looking for my mother.
But I had a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach that this man was not looking for the midwife.
Mother noticed the direction of my gaze and turned too.
“What is it?” she asked quietly with worry in her voice.
“Nothing’s wrong,” I quickly assured her, though I wasn’t quite sure yet. “It’s just, that man. I know him.”
She studied the man as he approached us. “Oh?” She brightened. “Is he one of the striplings?”
“No.”
The man neared us. Our eyes met. He smiled and kept a steady stride toward me, even quickened his pace as he became sure of his destination.
“He’s very handsome,” Mother observed, and I felt her study my profile.
“He is,” I agreed.
He stood at our gate, bronzed skin and sparkling eyes, sheepish smile. Hunting weapons. Travel pack. Two unbroken, whole arms. Someone else might not have noticed the scar at first glance, but I was looking for it.
I got to my feet, unable to break eye contact with him. I felt Mother at my elbow.
“Shalal,” he said, nodding to us both.
I cleared my throat. “Mother,” I said. “Meet Muloki.”
“Shalal, Muloki,” my mother said graciously.
I had mentioned his name to her in Judea over a year ago but there was no real reason for her to remember it. And even if she did remember it, she could not know that Muloki was the enemy warrior who had struck Zeke the blow that had nearly killed him, because I had not told her. I had not told anyone.
“Muloki, this is my mother, Leah.”
He gave me an odd look and said something I didn’t understand.
I looked to my mother for translation.
She looked delighted to meet someone with whom she could speak her native language. But she was confused when she turned to me and said, “He wishes to know why you don’t speak to him in his language.”
“I don’t know it,” I told her, and she related my comment to him.
He spoke again, but before she could relate it back to me, I quickly explained to her where I had met Muloki and how I had miraculously understood him there at the gate of Antiparah.
Mother nodded and explained it to him, or tried to. He still looked puzzled, but willingly followed Mother’s invitation to take off his travel pack and sit down to rest. He declined food but did take the cup of nectar I brought out from inside the hut for him. And the whole time he and Mother talked to each other so quickly I couldn’t make out any of the foreign words I knew, which were admittedly very few.
“Does he speak the language of Middoni?” I asked Mother when there was a lull in their conversation.
“Enough that we understand each other sufficiently,” she said.
“Did you ask him what he’s doing here?” I asked her.
“Yes, Kanina. He came to look for you.”
“Me? But why?” I asked, though I could think of several pretty good reasons. I remembered how he had talked to me at the gate of Antiparah, interest in his eyes and a smile on his lips. I remembered locking eyes with him at Cumeni, lowering our weapons. I remembered the last look he had given me after Zeke had nearly sliced through his arm with one blow to protect me.
Mother’s voice was almost scolding when she said, “Oh, Kanina. How can you live in a camp of men for four years and be still so naïve?”
“I wasn’t being naïve,” I protested. “I was being modest.”
Mother burst out laughing, and at Muloki’s question, explained my comments to him. He smiled too.
I went back to my loom, distractedly weaving the intricate patterns, making mistake after mistake while Mother and Muloki talked. Sometimes Mother would tell me what he said—information about the Land of Nephi or his home or his family—but mostly I just listened to the rise and fall of their voices in the foreign tongue and wondered why he would come all this way to find me.
I found myself glancing often at the scar on Muloki’s forearm. It was straight but rough. The muscles under the skin had healed with a bulge and a narrowing, the effect of which was actually quite attractive. I was astonished that he had been able to keep the arm. I had seen the unnatural angle of it after Zeke had broken the bone completely and severed the flesh. Zeke had been bleeding his life out onto the ground. And they both had taken a stance to continue fighting.
“Kanina, why don’t you walk with Muloki to ask Kalem to dinner? I will get it prepared.”
I knew she had already proposed the idea to Muloki because he was getting to his feet.
“But we can’t talk to each other,” I said.
“Go,” she persisted gently.
Muloki approached and held out a hand to help me to my feet. I took it and thanked him.
I was not unhappy to see him. I was intrigued and flattered that he had traveled such a great distance to find me. I wanted to ask him so many questions. He hadn’t expected that we would be unable to converse. Still despite the questions and unexpected obstacle in communication, the reason he had come was clear.
I went ahead of him and led the way until the path widened as it neared Melek. After that we walked side by side. I stole secret glances at him, but he looked down at me openly, intending to catch my eye. I smiled but looked away each time. There was no reason for him not to be bold. Since he had already traveled many days from the Land of Nephi in search of me, boldly meeting my gaze was an understatement of his intentions.
A man with intentions. That was the last thing I needed.
When we arrived at Kalem’s, he was standing in his little courtyard, hands on hips, staring down at his fire.
“Hi, Kalem,” I called over the fence.
He turned as I came through the gate, already smiling.
I gestured Muloki through the gate. “Meet Muloki,” I said to Kalem. Then I turned to Muloki and gestured toward Kalem. “Kalem,” I informed him.
While they clasped arms, I said, “Muloki is a Lamanite soldier. I met him while we were stationed at Judea.”
Kalem gave a nod but thankfully did not ask me any questions. He had spent his time in the army. He knew that when a soldier did not offer more information, it was not kind to ask. Likely, it would not be something you wanted to hear.
Kale
m questioned Muloki in the language I did not understand and after both their glances landed on me and then returned to each other, I stepped over to Kalem’s fire and examined the pot with nothing but tepid water in it. How had this man survived without me coming by to clean, grind maize, wash his clothes, and prepare his meals?
He had come to our home at Mother’s invitation whenever possible, enduring my disdain for the taste of a good meal and a few welcoming smiles.
Sometimes I was so ashamed of myself.
I turned to look at Kalem and Muloki, and the sound of their conversation made me think of Gideon, the only person I had ever known who had the gift of tongues, with a pang of sudden and intense longing—and it was not for his interpreting abilities.
I broke rudely into their conversation. “We’ve come to invite you to dinner.”
They both turned to stare at me.
“Mother’s waiting,” I said and moved toward the gate after pouring Kalem’s pitiful attempt at dinner on his fire.
Kalem, startled for a moment, chuckled, gestured to Muloki, and they both followed me back into the forest.
We traveled without talking. I hummed the rabbit princess lullaby to myself to keep my mind off of things I shouldn’t think about—the quiet guard tower on a gray day with a drizzle of rain in the corner, a copse of trees filled with moonflower blooms, a muddy training ground, the sound of one step before whirling to block the arc or a sword, a hand tilting my bow to adjust my aim, kneeling in the shade among shards of black obsidian, forest-filtered light on my hands.
I hummed louder.
Mother had dinner prepared, and despite not understanding anything that was said, I felt the Spirit in our home and my mood lifted. After eating, Kalem read to us from the words of Isaiah during which Muloki spotted my scabbard under my hammock in the corner and brushed my arm to get my attention, silently asking permission to retrieve it. I nodded and when he brought it to the table, Kalem said something, and Muloki unwrapped it from its leather sheathing.
“Kalem made it,” I said. Mother translated and Muloki’s transfixed gaze flicked to Kalem.
Modestly, Kalem began pointing out how he had weighted it and fit the grip to my hand. Muloki stepped back and cut it through the air and seemed so interested that I retrieved the rest of my weapons. Mother and Kalem kept their distance from them, but Muloki, much to my pleasure, devoured them with his eyes as he inspected them with his hands.
I watched him for a time, watched as his hands ran over the weapons, his fingers over the blades. Before I realized what I was doing, I inspected the rough scar on his arm with my hands, running my fingers over it, thinking that Mother and I could have done a much better job with healing this wound.
The silence in the room changed somehow, and I realized everyone was staring at me.
I knew Muloki remembered that moment on the battlefield, saw Zeke in his mind as I did, the fierce enemy warrior ready to fight him to the death to keep him from me.
We locked gazes.
And Mother suggested Muloki stay at Kalem’s.
Chapter 15
Muloki stayed at Kalem’s for a long time. Kalem said Muloki had no plans to go back to his homeland because he resented being made to fight for causes in which he did not believe. I didn’t blame him. It was hard enough to fight for causes in which you did believe.
To earn his way, Muloki helped Kalem with his business, often accompanying him in his travel and trade. He seemed to enjoy the trade, but what he loved more was apprenticing as a weapon maker. Kalem truly was an artisan, and Muloki eagerly learned at his elbow, taking to it very quickly. Despite their difference in age, Kalem and Muloki became great friends, and it eased my mind that Kalem had company and was not so much alone.
When Muloki was not working for Kalem, he worked with Hemni in my family’s fields. Once, he had tried to help at the tannery, but Isabel had resented the intrusion too much and run him away.
“What did you do to her?” I teased him.
“I took her father’s attention to myself,” he said haltingly, still unsure of his words.
He was very astute, and he was right. Isabel worked hard and thrived on her father’s approval of her skills. And Hemni’s approval was well-deserved. Isabel made a fine, soft buck-skin that was in high demand throughout Melek.
Muloki and I were working side by side digging furrows that the heavy rains had washed out. I had always disliked working the fields, but after the things I had experienced in the army, I found digging furrows preferable to digging trenches or graves.
“Yes, she does seem to crave her father’s attention,” I said.
“She is like you.”
I straightened up to stretch my back, rested my shovel against my side, and ran the back of my arm across my forehead to wipe away the sweat. “What do you mean?”
Muloki didn’t always have the words for what he meant, and over the months, I had become accustomed to asking him for more explanation.
He straightened too. “She is like you.” He pointed upward. “She seeks much her father’s attention.”
“Oh.” I smiled. “You mean prayer.”
“Yes, prayer. To your father?”
“To my Heavenly Father.”
“This is God.”
“Yes. But Isabel seeks her earth father’s attention.”
Muloki smiled at me and reached out to brush at my cheek as if he were brushing away dirt. “But this is not so very different.”
I thought for a moment and then shook my head. No, it wasn’t so very different.
I looked down the long row. The air was warm, and it was humid there by the plants. I checked the position of the sun. It had scarcely moved since the last time I had checked it.
“I can finish,” Muloki said, reading my expression. “You go home. Rest.”
“No.” I grasped my shovel, and I began again to clean out the furrow.
It was so much smaller than the trench at Judea. I thought of that first week in the trenches and of spilling dirt on Joshua’s head again and again. How he must have hated me! But he had barely said one word, just brushed the dirt out of his hair and carried on with the taxing work.
Later I had apologized, but he had just shrugged it off.
“It’s not as if the dirt could do anything to conceal your good looks,” I had said, thinking a compliment might smooth things over between us.
His eyes narrowed and he gave me a hard look. “Don’t say things like that.”
“Like what?”
“You must know what it’s like when people only like you for your looks.”
“I didn’t mean—”
He cut me off. “Nobody ever means it.”
I had pondered much on his words, and I had never commented on his looks again.
“You tire to dig the furrow,” Muloki said, breaking into my thoughts.
“Oh,” I said, embarrassed as I realized I had stopped working entirely. “No, I was thinking of someone. Something that happened a long time ago.”
“Thinking of a man.” He nodded. “This man,” he said and traced the scar on his arm with a dusty finger.
“Zeke? Oh, no.” My embarrassment deepened. I took a step back and tucked an errant lock of hair behind my ear.
“Zeke,” he repeated, trying out the new word. It sounded harsh from his mouth.
“His name is Ezekiel. Zeke. He is Hemni’s oldest son.”
His eyes widened slightly. “Zeke is this man?” He indicated the scar again.
“Yes,” I said quietly. I swallowed hard, and I couldn’t take my eyes from the scar.
“Zeke is your man.”
I nodded. Then I took a breath and looked up to meet his eye. He only looked curious. “Yes,” I said, afraid of hurting him, but wanting him to know my heart was given elsewhere.
He searched my eyes as he stepped closer to me. “Zeke is not here.”
I shook my head, all too aware that Zeke had not returned to the village and had ye
t made no plans to return. Dinah said his work was not done, but there were questions in her eyes I could not answer.
“I only am here.” Muloki stepped even closer to me.
I laughed nervously, but I was not afraid of Muloki. I was afraid of myself. I was lonely and vulnerable, and I knew it.
“No.” I took a step back, then another. “You are there.” I pointed deliberately. “I only am here.”
He laughed too, throwing me the same irresistible smile he had shown me outside the gate of Antiparah when his friends had teased him for detaining me so long with his flirting. He closed the distance between us before I could protest any more.
“We two are here,” he said. His eyes widened innocently as if he were simply clarifying the definitions of here and there.
“Yes.”
He cupped the side of my neck with his hand, and threw a nod back over his shoulder. “Zeke is there.”
My eyes widened too, not in mock innocence but in confirmation of what I had long suspected. He had come to Melek in search of me, I had known that, but months had passed since his arrival, and he had not tried to be more than my friend. He had not put his fingers into my hair and looked at me the way he was looking at me then.
Could I drop my shovel and run? Could I hit him with it? A very disloyal part of me wanted to let it slip from my fingers and accept the invitation Muloki conveyed with so few words.
I considered the invitation for too long, I knew. Muloki patiently let me.
I handed him my shovel. “I think I will go rest,” I said, and I turned to leave.
“Keturah, I am here,” he said to my back, his voice gentle and quiet and promising.
I paused, nodded, and then continued out of the field. I didn’t go home to rest. I went to the falls to think. But when I got there, I pulled out my slingshot. I had told myself I carried it only for hunting, but I picked a tree in the distance and slung rock after rock at it until the bark chipped away and I was gasping for breath.
