Strangers in the Land (The Zombie Bible)

by Stant Litore

  Riding with Hurriya before her in the saddle and her arm about the girl’s waist was a strange experience. With the exception of Lappidoth, Devora had never spent so many hours so near another person. This Canaanite girl in her arms neither spoke nor cried as Shomar carried them through the wheat; she simply rested limp against Devora’s shoulder, taking shallow breaths. Sometimes she slept. Devora began to feel a strange protectiveness, riding with her like this. She could feel the warmth of Hurriya’s body through her salmah.

  They passed Cleft Hill on their left in the early afternoon and saw the tiny wooden houses of Rise Early clustered beneath the slope, with olive presses just outside the town and barley fields behind it. That had once been a walled town, one of the strongest of the Canaanite towns, but it had never really been rebuilt after the Hebrews had taken violent possession of it. Devora spared the cookfires one uneasy glance as they passed. Strangers in their land, so many in their land.

  An hour or two later, Devora lifted her hand for a halt and brought Shomar to a stop by a wide pond north of Rise Early and let him drink. Zadok lifted the Canaanite from Shomar’s back and laid her gently by the edge of the water beneath one of the leafy terebinth trees growing there. In their branches cicadas sang loud as thunder, recalling moments from Devora’s girlhood in Shiloh, where a hundred such insects had roared in a line of terebinths outside the girls’ tent.

  Zadok walked a little way from where Hurriya rested. Then stopped and gazed, brooding, at the pool. Devora tended to her horse, patting down his flanks with her own shawl. Then she stroked Shomar’s neck for a few moments and whispered soft words.

  Devora glanced at Hurriya, who had her eyes closed. The navi smiled slightly, still warm from holding her. She supposed the girl was asleep. After a moment, Devora joined Zadok at the water’s edge, and they walked along the bank for a while in silence. A kingfisher darted in and out of the water. She glanced to the north. From here the land rose steadily, climbing toward the Galilee and toward the snow-capped mountains of White Cedars in the north beyond. In the near distance, Devora could see the Hills of Teaching and of Cleansing towering over the land. There was smoke rising from the slope of Cleansing, but not enough for it to be a camp of armed men. Probably herdsmen. If they were nearer, they’d probably hear the bleating of goats.

  The earth at the bank was soft here, nearly mud. “But no hoofprints,” the navi murmured. “Nor feet. Barak and his men didn’t stop here.”

  “I will finish looking,” Zadok said quietly. “Go back and rest, navi.”

  She glanced at him—his face was tight with grief.

  “You fought well,” Devora said softly. “It is not your fault the high priest is dead.”

  Pain flashed across his eyes.

  “My father died that night,” he said.

  Devora had no need to ask what that night meant. For her too it would always be that night.

  “He died defending the Ark, and the levites, and the navi. I was seven. He threw me within his tent, commanded my mother to hold me there. I have never forgotten his face. I will not give to the fulfilling of my covenant less than my father gave to it.”

  Another silence. She did not break it; she knew the importance of silence when the heart is sore.

  “I fought well,” he said at last. “But the high priest is still dead.”

  He just looked out over the water. Devora felt stiff, as though she’d slept badly. She could not yet cry for Eleazar or the other dead in Shiloh.

  She thought of pressing him, but it would do little good until he was ready to speak. After a moment she left him standing there in the reeds.

  Returning to where the Canaanite lay in the damp grass beside the water, Devora saw with a sinking of her heart that Hurriya was weeping. The young woman was gazing up at the branches above her, her tears leaving pale streaks through the dirt and sweat on her face. Devora approached and knelt by her, very near but not touching, folding her hands in her lap. The girl looked only half-alive, lying there pale in her anguish amid the lush vegetation.

  “Do you have any kin in the Galilee?” the navi asked softly.

  “Leave me alone,” Hurriya whispered. She was looking at the pond. “I want to die here. Here, where it is so beautiful. Where there’s water. Please just leave me here.”

  The vulnerability in her voice tugged at Devora, and angered her. “I lost all my kin, girl,” she said sharply. “Everyone I knew of as my tribe. All of them. Mother, father, the elders, the other children I’d known. In a single night, they were gone. You can’t let yourself speak of dying. There are always other people who need you. Right now I do; you’re my guide. There must be others in the north, kin who need you. Someone we can take you to.”

  Hurriya shook her head. Then whispered something Devora couldn’t hear. The navi leaned closer, and Hurriya repeated: “Sister.”

  “A sister, yes. At Judges’ Well?” Devora asked.

  Hurriya was silent for a few heartbeats. “There was this olive tree,” she said, her voice hoarse. She sounded not as though she were speaking to Devora but as though she were speaking to herself, aloud, because she needed to. “The tallest one. Anath would climb to the very top. I’d call up to her. Could never get her to come down. She said up there she could see the whole sky and the goddess’s face.” Hurriya stared at the water. “I want to tell her—I saw the whole sky too, and the goddess’s face. In my little—” Her voice broke. “For only a few days. A few days.” She sobbed.

  Devora felt a flicker of unease at the mention of a deity not her own, a deity she couldn’t trust, but the girl’s sobs quashed her unease and took her whole attention, for though nearly silent, Hurriya’s sobs seemed to shake her whole body and risk breaking her. It was clear the girl would never make it into the north like this, and Devora did have an obligation to her. The girl had come to her, and she was suffering.

  With a sigh Devora took the Canaanite into her arms, wrapping the salmah tighter about her and then holding her. Hurriya was shaking; Devora held her pressed close with one arm, and with her other she tore off a bit of her dress and dipped the linen in the water beside them. The water was very cool.

  Gently, and taking care not to brush Hurriya’s face with her fingertips, Devora washed her face with the cloth, clearing away the grime of travel and grief. “There,” she said softly when the left side of Hurriya’s face was clean, “a woman can at least mourn in dignity.”

  Hurriya made no answer, and Devora finished, then rolled up the cloth and laid it gently in Hurriya’s palm, in case she wanted it.

  “Are you bleeding?” she asked, keeping her voice low so that the nazarite wouldn’t hear. She could see Zadok out of the corner of her eye; he’d finished his circuit of the pool and was tending the horses.

  “What do you care, Hebrew?”

  “By the Covenant, girl, be civil. I am trying to help you.”

  “I don’t want your help.”

  “Another ride and you may.” Devora tried to dampen her frustration. “Let me tend you.” There was no other woman here to do so, Hebrew or Canaanite, so Devora would have to care for the girl herself. Stranger or no.

  Hurriya made no sign of assent or denial. Devora cast a quick glance about her, then called out, “Zadok, look away and do not approach, please.”

  The nazarite didn’t turn toward them. “Your will, navi,” he said. His voice cold with his own grief.

  With great care, Devora unwrapped Hurriya’s salmah. Keeping the cloth over her arms, Devora gripped her above the elbows and lowered her gently onto her salmah like a blanket. Seeing her body unclothed, Devora gasped. Her breasts were still swollen in a way that must have been torture. Dried blood on the girl’s left thigh and leg, though not enough to endanger her. Gently Devora took the scrap of linen from the girl’s hand where she’d clutched it loosely, wet it again in the pool, and slowly washed her thighs and her womanhood. Then she rose and walked grimly to Shomar, to her saddlebag, retrieving the spare waterskin.<
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  Zadok was currying his own horse. “Is she well?”

  “No woman’s well who’s just had a child,” Devora said curtly, and walked back.

  She knelt again beside the young woman, who was no longer crying but only gazing up at the branches. Devora recalled what she’d said about the olive tree and her sister. The protectiveness she’d felt for the girl earlier was fiercer now, and she wondered at it but had no time to think too much about it, for the girl’s need was so great. She had forgotten for the moment that she was Hebrew and Hurriya was heathen. Or rather, it wasn’t that she’d forgotten it—it was that the fact that Hurriya was a young woman grieving and in pain seemed so visible and immediate that the other fact paled before it like a torch in bright sunlight. Devora submersed the waterskin in the pool until it was full. Lifted the skin to the girl’s lips. “Drink,” she said. “Small swallows.”

  She watched as Hurriya drank slowly, and tilted the waterskin up for her until the young woman lifted her hands and grasped it. Devora let her have it.

  “I forgot how far you’d walked,” she murmured. “My mind was on—other things. I’m sorry.”

  Hurriya took a few last swallows, then lowered the skin to her side. Her eyes were a little more alert. “Why are you doing this? When you despise me.”

  A twinge of guilt. “I don’t despise you, girl.”

  “You despise my people.”

  Devora paused. “You came before my olive tree. You are my responsibility, my care.” Her tone was fierce and it surprised her.

  Hurriya lay back. “I’m grateful for the water.”

  Devora nodded.

  “My people—there are only remnants of us in the land.” Hurriya closed her eyes. “And most Hebrews see us as labor, either in the fields or in their beds. You’re different. You see us as a threat.”

  Devora hesitated a moment, a turmoil within her. She was trying to sort through her feelings for this strange girl.

  “You Canaanites invite the rising of the dead,” she said at last. “When the People came to the land and there were raids between our tribes and yours, you tossed your own dead into the water and left ours unburied.” Her voice went low and intense. “The unburied dead cry out to God. They moan. Ceaselessly. They even rise from the earth and walk, seeking burial, feeding to sustain their walking until that burial is given to them.”

  “I have seen that,” Hurriya whispered.

  When they left the pond, the slow pace of their riding made Devora hiss in exasperation, but her own body was grateful for it. Already her thighs burned from chafing against the saddle, and the rolling gait of her husband’s gelding promised her livid bruises later. The girl actually moaned for the first few minutes of their ride, then mercifully fell asleep, though the look of misery did not leave her face even in slumber. Devora yearned to pronounce some curse against Barak as dire as the one she’d given Nimri. She should not have had to chase after his army on horseback. She should not have had to take this girl with her as a guide—she could have left the girl dying at the edge of Shiloh camp and been done with her. Yet she knew she could never have done that.

  As they rode, Devora began watching the rising hillsides, alert for moving figures. Already, she feared to catch some glimpse of an unsteady, lurching corpse. But there were none. Which only made her more anxious. They’d left the barley fields of Manasseh tribe behind and were climbing toward the high lakes of the north.

  Hurriya snored softly as she slept against Devora’s shoulder. She was still so pale, and her body so thin within her salmah, as though God had formed her not out of a man’s rib but out of leaves and dry twigs.

  She was so small, so vulnerable. At one point, the navi’s hand twitched with a powerful urge to stroke Hurriya’s hair in comfort, and Devora reminded herself angrily that the girl was unclean.

  Devora had never caressed another woman’s hair, and it was some time before the memory came to her of her own mother caressing hers, and singing softly to her, when she was eleven. Before she’d bled and before the walking corpses had come to her mother’s camp. Though it surprised her to realize it, this memory of her mother brought Devora no pain or fear, only warmth and well-being. It felt good, riding in the late summer heat with Hurriya in her arms and with the warm strength of Shomar beneath them, bearing them both. It felt good. Though her thighs and rear were sore, Devora found herself nearly dozing, lulled by the warmth of the girl she held and the smooth, rolling rhythm of the horse, and would startle awake after a few minutes of drowsy stupor. For a time, she forgot what they were riding to and what they were riding from.

  Until she glanced back at Zadok and felt the darkness touch her heart again. The nazarite hadn’t forgotten. His face was grim as a man’s who’d just stood by while his brother died.

  After a while, Hurriya woke. She seemed more alert. With each mile she looked about her more, her face drawn with pain but the worst of her anguish fading from her eyes as though each step Shomar took was erasing an earlier step. Erasing the long nightmare of her walk to the navi’s seat. As though her child and her pain had never been. As though all of that had happened in the dark dream country, not in her waking life. Yet she remained terribly pale. Devora made her drink often.

  They came to the high country, and Zadok emerged from his brooding and began watching the tall grasses and the scree on the slopes. There were a few hours of light yet, as the days this time of year were long. Devora began asking Hurriya softly for advice on the way they should take, and to her pleased surprise the weary girl offered an occasional gesture or word of direction. They picked their way among well-traveled paths into the broken hills that hid from their eyes the Kinnor, the Harp-Shaped Sea. They passed the two peaks of the Hittim, skirting them on the east. Devora considered Hurriya’s wan face and then glanced at the smoke that hung over the tiny settlement on one of the hills. They could stop, perhaps, and ask for herbs for the girl. Yet she was in haste, and there would be women with herbs following Barak’s camp, she was certain. Uneasy, Devora pressed on.

  Hurriya cast a glance at the settlement too, but without any expression of longing. Perhaps she simply didn’t care.

  The Kinnor Sea called to Devora’s heart as they moved carefully along the cliffs that confined it on the west. Near the shore, the water was that shade of blue that water only gets when it is viciously cold, for the shadow of the hills lay over it. Innumerable white birds dipped and glided over the water, far below the women and the nazarite. Their voices came up to them in faint, shrill cries, like the voices of God’s own host diving out of the sky to give battle. Even from this height, Devora could make out little houses clustered near the water and small boats on the surface.

  “Kinnor, the harp,” Devora whispered. “I have never seen this sea. It is beautiful.”

  “Kenar,” Hurriya said.

  Devora glanced at her. “What?”

  “Kenar. The sea is Kenar. Not Kinnor.”

  She frowned. “Is that a Canaanite word?”

  “It’s Canaanite. Look.” She gestured at the water. “My mother told me there are more fish in that water than there are men and women on the earth, and a god sleeps at the bottom of the sea, and his name is Kenar. The fish swim out of his dreams into the water, and because his dreams are deep and don’t end, the fish will go on swimming up to the nets for all time, as long as the god stays asleep. The men who go out in the boats are careful to speak very quietly when they’re on the water. They don’t want to wake the god.”

  “A heathen story,” Devora murmured. “There is no god actually under that water.”

  “Do you know that? Have you swum down there to look?” Hurriya’s voice turned bitter. “You asked me to guide you. Yet you believe this is your water and your land, and me a stranger in it. And you don’t believe what I tell you about it. How should I guide you, navi? You should have left me to die near my son.”

  Devora fell silent. Hurriya’s words depressed her. They reminded her of how dependen
t she was on the Canaanite here, and how dependent the Canaanite was on her. She did not know this part of the land. Yet she needed to find in it five hundred living men and a great many dead ones. She looked down at the sea—Kinnor—and for a while she watched the water and the great white cranes swooping over it. Whatever the sea was called, it was breathtaking when seen from here, so near the sky. As pure and beautiful indeed as a harp’s music.

  When she did turn her head at last, she found Zadok riding beside her, and gave a start. The man’s face was stricken with awe, his eyes moist though he shed no tears; he was staring at the sea. Devora looked away; it seemed indecent to witness such naked emotion on Zadok’s face. She hadn’t known the nazarite was capable of being moved at such beauty.

  They climbed farther into the hills and left the cliffs of the sea behind. Following not the Tumbling Water in its deep ravine but a caravan road that wound up toward the heights. They found dusk falling over a land of dark and wooded ridges, cut sharp and beautiful against the sky. After pointing out the wagon track she thought would lead them toward Walls, Hurriya fell into a sleep that was deep and desperate, her head cradled against Devora’s shoulder, her mouth open. As the last light faded, Devora tensed and became more alert, listening now for sounds she feared to hear—for they had reached the high Galilee.

  They stopped to refill a few of their flasks with water at a small well where a few boys were tending sheep, Zadok asking questions of them. Hurriya opened her eyes long enough to take a look at the boys, then fell back into her sleep. Devora sat her horse near enough to the boys to see the terror etched into their faces, carved there like letters in stone. Their eyes wide. They had seen things, in these hills, recently. They shook their heads when Zadok asked about the dead, as though too afraid to remember. But they did let the nazarite know that many armed Hebrews had passed the well earlier that day.

  Devora motioned Zadok to her side and whispered so as not to wake the girl. “We must try to ride at a trot.”