Sarah: Women of Genesis: 1 (Women of Genesis (Forge))

by Orson Scott Card

  A terrible roar sounded in her ears, and a hot wind blasted through the streets. The earth seemed to heave underneath her, and she fell sprawling in the hard-packed street. What was it? What had happened?

  People were emerging from their houses, looking frightened. Someone climbed onto a roof and shouted down what he had seen. “Gomorrah is on fire!” he cried. “It’s all smoke, and half the city is gone!”

  Suddenly terror struck in Qira’s heart. Half the city gone! And the earth shaking like that—the visitors had said nothing about earthquakes. This was worse than she had ever imagined. Why didn’t they tell her it would be so bad that half of Gomorrah could be wiped out in an instant? Why didn’t Lot stop her from going? She realized now—he wanted her to go. He dragged her and ordered her about just because he knew it would make her angry enough to make her run back to the city. This was what he planned from the start. He was trying to get her killed!

  She started to run back the way she had come. Lot might want her dead, but her girls still needed her. And now that they knew it was real, her sons-in-law would surely not forbid her to bring her older daughters with her. The house of the eldest was just over this way—she could run past there and get her daughter and bring her out of the city and . . .

  And a stone about two cubits across tore through the sky and exploded in the air just above the city of Sodom. The shock wave flattened every building. The fireball instantly burned everything within a half mile. The sound of it could be heard as far away as Hebron. Qira’s sister Sarah heard it, and felt the trembling of the earth.

  Later, there would be stories about how one of those pillars of salt near the dead sea was Qira, turned to salt by the power of God because she turned back to watch the destruction of Sodom. But the truth was what Sarah knew in her heart when she heard the sound of the explosion, and felt the shaking of the earth, and then saw the brightness in the sky that lasted all through the following night. Five great stones hit the earth or exploded above it, one for each of the cities of Siddim. No one was left alive except for the few slaves who had made their escape during the night. And Lot and two of his daughters.

  Sarah grieved for her sister. For many days she grieved. Not because Qira had died—Qira was not young, and death was not the worst thing in the world. No, Sarah grieved because she knew how wasted her sister’s life had been, and how pointless her death, and how empty the soul that she would have to show before the judgment bar of God.

  O God, was there something I could have done to save her? Sarah prayed.

  The answer came from her own heart, for she knew that there was never a time in Qira’s life when anything Sarah might have said or done could have reached past her pride and touched her heart. Qira controlled her own life, and so she had nothing at the end of it. While Sarah had given her life to others, and never controlled it at all—and so her heart was full of treasures, and if she died, she would die with little fear of seeing the face of God.

  She had something else, too. For several months later, it was very plain that Sarah, old as she was, had a child in her. Conceived on the night before Sodom was destroyed. God had performed many wonders that day. Lives were taken. A life was given. In Sarah’s womb, a great nation had been given its first moments of life. His name would be Isaac. Sarah’s grief for her sister was lost in her joy at the stirring, finally, of life in her belly.

  Part VIII

  Isaac

  Chapter 22

  For all these years that she had been with Abraham, Sarah had cared for the smooth running of the camp. Abraham could leave when he needed to and stay away for weeks at a time, knowing that all would be in good order when he returned, for Sarah would deal with any problems that came up.

  So it galled her that her pregnancy might cause the good order of the camp to be disrupted. Her plan was to live as she had always lived—to spend her days in the door of the tent until the morning of the day her son was born, and then, by evening of that day, to again be in the door of the tent, keeping her ear to the heartbeat of Abraham’s household.

  After all, Qira had not been ill with her pregnancies, not the way Hagar had been. Why shouldn’t Sarah expect to be more like her sister than like her handmaid? And, in fact, despite some nausea, Sarah never did get particularly sick. But that didn’t mean her life could go on as it normally did.

  Because she was not young. As her belly grew, the joints of her hips began to feel loose and painful, as if they might dislocate at any time. Her back ached so that she could hardly rise in the morning or lie down at night. And one thing that was utterly out of the question was for her to sit, hour after hour, distaff in hand, at the door of the tent.

  So because her body did not have the resiliency of youth, she ended up lying down in her tent. For three days she lay there, sending servants away because she wanted them to be about their regular duty, then having to call out for them because she needed help to do things that it shamed her not to be able to handle for herself.

  Through it all, Abraham stayed close to the camp, even though Sarah urged him to go about his business. “You are my business,” said Abraham, “and so staying by you is going about my business.”

  “I don’t want anything to change because I’m having a baby,” said Sarah.

  “Everything has changed already,” said Abraham. “You’re the only one who refuses to see that.”

  Sarah understood exactly what he meant, but it didn’t matter. She couldn’t abide staying cooped up in her tent while the life of the camp went on around her. She told Abraham, “I don’t want Eliezer to know that he doesn’t need me.”

  “He knows he doesn’t need me,” said Abraham. “What makes you think he doesn’t know the same about you?”

  “He does need you,” said Sarah. “You’re the authority in whose name he makes all his decisions. The only thing that brings him to me is . . .”

  And then she realized how foolish she had been. Eliezer did not come to her anymore because he did not know what to do without her wisdom. He came to her because of loyalty. Because she needed to be a part of everything.

  She could stay in her tent and be pampered and it would make no difference.

  But if that’s true, I could die in my tent and it would also make no difference. And when you come down to it, everyone eventually dies, and life goes on, so no one is needed for anything if that’s the test. When I’m out there by the tent door, I do relieve Eliezer of much of his burden. He doesn’t need me to tell him what to do—he needs me to settle petty problems so he can deal with more important ones. I serve him and I serve Abraham by easing their burden. I don’t do these things because they can’t do them, I do them so that they don’t have to. And even though they’re happy to take up the slack during my pregnancy, I will be far happier if they don’t have any slack to take up.

  So she ordered a litter to be made, and every morning had two maidservants lay her upon the litter and arrange her clothing around her. Then two men came in and carried her out into the shade at the door of her tent. Lying there, she could not use the distaff, but she could embroider so her fingers would be busy while she listened and talked to those who came to her. Several times during the day they would move her litter so it would stay in the shade, And by lying down so much, she conserved enough strength and flexibility that she was able sit up to deal with personal needs, shielded from view by the maids.

  That was the compromise that allowed her to get through the months while the baby grew within her. It helped keep her mind off her fears for the baby. What if the child was deformed or feeble-minded? She had heard so many stories of what could go wrong. Of course she knew that it was a miracle for her to have the baby growing inside her at all, and that God, having done that much, would have no difficulty in protecting her child and making sure he was born hearty and strong. But she could not help but fret, all the same, and it was good to stay busy.

  The one thing she never feared was to die in childbirth. As long as the child su
rvived, she would have accomplished her purpose. Oh, if she were twenty or thirty years old, she would long for the years she might spend with her child and fear death greatly. But at her age she knew that the chance of her living long enough to see Isaac reach manhood was slim indeed. The rearing of this child would almost certainly be in other hands someday. He would most likely learn of his mother through the stories he was told. Let him be told that his mother worked to help his father until the day she died. And if that turned out to have been the day he was born, it made for all the better a tale around the fire.

  Only one of her fears was real, and therefore that was the one she could not face. Hagar.

  Ishmael was born to be the heir, but only because Sarah could not have a child of her own. Now that Sarah was pregnant, the child within her was the only one who could inherit when Abraham died, for only he was a child of Abraham’s wife. Hagar was not even a concubine.

  Abraham loved Ishmael. Everyone knew that, and knew as well that Abraham was a fair and generous man. Ishmael would be well taken care of. And Hagar, too.

  Yet Sarah knew how this would look to Hagar. Though there had been peace between them for fourteen years, it was a peace based on balance. Sarah was the wife, with great authority and respect from all. But Hagar was the mother of the heir, and that also gave her an unassailable position.

  Now that position was gone. Sarah was wife and mother, and Hagar was nothing except insofar as Abraham, out of charity, doled out favors to her in memory of her useful service some fourteen years ago. Or so it would seem to Hagar. The old hungers and fears were bound to return.

  And yet if Sarah so much as mentioned any of this to Hagar, even if she was trying to reassure her, it would only make things worse, for Hagar would take it as confirmation that Sarah was plotting against her. How else could it look to someone who had already lost everything once before in her life? Oh, Sarah understood well. Her heart ached in sympathy for this young woman who, despite all the pain between them, had once been Sarah’s closest woman-friend. Hagar was the one who had been Sarah’s companion and comfort and, yes, guide in the Pharaoh’s house. Hagar had given the use of her body in Sarah’s service. The debt was great, and the love, however strained, was still strong for her in Sarah’s heart. But she could not speak of this to Hagar. She could only watch, and dread.

  For one thing was certain. No matter how the rest of the camp might long for the baby Isaac to be born, and dote on him after he appeared, there would be one woman who hated him because he had taken the place of her son.

  What made this secret harder to bear was the fact that she was the only one who knew it. For only Sarah had grown up in a king’s house, knowing all the family lore of dynastic struggles, assassinations, poisonings, maneuverings behind the curtains and under the sheets, all to secure a throne for this child instead of that one. The bitterest stories she learned from her father were the tales of fratricide and parricide. The sons who could not wait to inherit, and so rebelled against their fathers. The wives who feared their husbands would choose the wrong child, and so poisoned the rivals. The young men who, upon acceding to the throne, had their brothers murdered. The royal uncle who somehow forgot to feed his “sickly” nephews, the little princes, so that they passed away and the regent inherited the throne after all.

  She tried to tell herself that only royal houses had such problems. Shepherd families did not kill each other to get control of some wells, some sheep, some tents.

  But Abraham’s house was a royal family. Kings were priests first, soldiers second, rulers third. Abraham was all three. And he had the promise of God that his descendants would rule the land of Canaan. Hagar would have to be a fool not to know what her son was going to be deprived of because of Isaac’s birth.

  She would not be in a hurry, though. She was still young. Abraham and Sarah both were old. How long could they live, after Isaac’s birth? What if Sarah lived till Isaac was three? What if Abraham lived five years after that? Isaac would be eight years old, and Ishmael would be a man of twenty-two. By then he would have had time to make friends and gather followers. He wouldn’t even have to lift a finger himself. One of the men would do it for him. Or perhaps Hagar would. Whoever it was, Ishmael could be outraged, could deny that he ever wanted such a thing. He could have the killer strangled over Isaac’s grave. Whatever show he wanted to put on. All that mattered was that Isaac would not outlive Abraham by a week.

  That was the fear that lived in the back of Sarah’s mind. That was what she tried so desperately not to think of while she lay on the litter, her belly growing above her brittle bones. That was the one thing she never mentioned to Abraham during all those months until at last the child was born.

  It was a terrible birth. The midwives commiserated with her and tried to comfort her, but she could see how frightened and frustrated they were. Her body was too old. She hadn’t the strength in the muscles of her back and belly to push the child out. Nor could she give birth squatting: Her bones were too brittle, her joints too frail to sustain her in that position. For hours she lay in the pangs of birth, as the child waited in vain, unable even to show the crown of its head.

  Of course Sarah prayed. For her baby, for herself. After all the years that she had been barren, her womb unused, the passages of her body closed, it was no surprise that the baby should have trouble being born. But if the Lord had done the miracle of letting these two old people conceive a baby, shouldn’t he go ahead and finish the job? She prayed and complained and pleaded and, yes, demanded, for in the throes of pain she did not care about the protocols of addressing God, and instead spoke to him as one would speak to a friend whose help was needed and who, for reasons known only to him, was standing uselessly by.

  Then there came the moment when, once again, she remembered that the goddess of childbirth was Asherah, the one that Sarah had repudiated by marrying Abraham. Was there some divine struggle going on over the baby in her womb, the God of her husband battling with the stubborn, angry, vengeful goddess of her childhood?

  O God of Abraham, help me drive such thoughts from my mind! I know that Asherah is nothing, a misunderstanding, a memory of Mother Eve and not a god of any kind. I know that I sinned against no one when I broke the vow that gave me to her. And yet the fear and pain drive the thought of her through my body like a tent spike and I cannot pry her out. O God, deliver me of this baby, pull him out of my body and let me die, if that be thy will, only let me die forgiven for having thought of Asherah again.

  The baby suddenly slid down, and a midwife said, “Ah, there’s the little one.” Another pain. Another sensation of release, of sliding, of her body being pried open like a butchered sheep and all of her insides slopping out and she tried to scream at the pain and terror but all that came from her throat was a gurgling sound and she thought, This is death.

  “A little man,” said the midwife.

  A baby cried.

  “God is merciful to his daughter!” cried Sarah.

  “She’s whispering something,” said someone.

  “God watch over my son!” she shouted.

  “Hush, sleep.” A hand stroked her forehead. And as if the words had some power in them, she could not stay awake another moment, but slipped into the darkness of sleep, not knowing if it was the sleep from which the dreamer never wakens, and at that moment not caring either. The child was born. Her boy was alive.

  She woke again and again, each time surprised to be alive at all, and then surprised by the pain that still gnawed at her. Hadn’t the child come out after all? Was this going to go on forever? And then back down into the darkness of sleep.

  Finally she awoke and did not feel so much pain. Nor did she collapse again. She saw only darkness around her. Then she realized that her eyes were not open. She parted her eyelids and saw that there was faint light coming from somewhere. She was thirsty. Her mouth was so dry that she could feel her lips split open like sun-dried mud.

  “Water,” she whispered.

>   Someone stirred beside her. Her handmaid, of course. She closed her eyes and waited. Soon water splashed over her lips. She licked with her tongue, drew water inside her mouth. More trickled in. She managed to swallow some through a throat that seemed to have been mortared shut. That was enough. Sleep reached for her again. “Thank you, Hagar,” Sarah murmured.

  At last, hours later, she woke to daylight. Her mouth was dry again, but this time she could see who lay beside her. Abraham. What was he thinking, to lie by a woman who was not yet purified? But then, why not? If she died, what would it matter then?

  “Abraham,” she whispered.

  He woke, and almost at once reached for a flagon of water and offered it to her, just as Hagar had offered it last night, a splash over the lips, a trickle into the open mouth. “More?” he asked.