A Light on the Hill

by Connilyn Cossette

Pork. One of the items Yahweh had labeled abominable, incapable of ever being made clean. No wonder the flavor had been so strange to me; I’d never eaten the flesh of a pig. Darek, too, stiffened next to me. Both of us were now faced with the choice of eating a forbidden food or giving away our heritage and jeopardizing Yuval’s life.

  From the corner of my eye, I noticed Darek scratch his cheek, the covert move reminding me that he had shaved his face in violation of the commandment to keep a beard, and also had trimmed the tzitzit from his garment—to protect my life.

  Life is more important, his gesture said.

  I sighed. Do you know the intentions of my heart, Yahweh? No clear answer resounded in my head. But one of the commands Mosheh had given us sprang to mind. Love Yahweh, with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your strength . . .

  It had been a long while since I’d meditated on that command but now I felt it coursing through my body as if mixed into my blood. Yuval’s life was of upmost importance, and I would ask Yahweh for mercy in breaking this law, for Yuval’s sake.

  And yet even as I did so, each bite reminded me that the last stew my hands had made had ended the lives of two boys, and for that, I deserved no mercy whatsoever.

  CHAPTER

  Twenty

  Although the group had planned to wait until the evening to travel to Megiddo, Shuah insisted that for Yuval’s sake, they would go. For all I’d heard of the Midianites, he was surprisingly kind to three strangers. I wondered if he would regret the salt covenant if he knew who we really were.

  When the meal was finished, Zendaye insisted I sit in the shade to rest while the group packed their belongings.

  I was truly grateful for the suggestion. Waking well before dawn, standing against a lion, and then working to deceive a group of strangers into believing I was a Canaanite priestess had sapped what little strength I’d pretended to have.

  Keeping the silence he’d maintained throughout the morning, Darek followed me to an olive grove at the edge of camp. Was he as drained of energy as I was? Or was his well-honed body able to sustain through even such a day as this?

  Finding the largest tree to prop my back against, I slid down the trunk into the coolness of the dappled shade at its foot and leaned my head against the knotty bark. My eyes fluttered closed, and I breathed deeply, finally allowing myself to draw in the fresh air around me and savor the stillness.

  Although I could not see him, the feeling of Darek’s eyes on me intruded on my rest, and I frowned. “Please stop looking at me,” I said, “or I will ask Zendaye to loan me a veil.”

  He said nothing, but I sensed him moving closer until the shadow of his body completely blocked the light.

  “Why?” His sharp-edged question startled me.

  “Why what?”

  His shadow shifted, as if he’d adopted a different stance. “Why must I stop?”

  “Because it is the reason I began wearing the veil in the first place. The staring, the gawking, the endless questions, the whispers. You see now why Raviv was so repulsed by me.” I squeezed my eyes tighter and put my hands over my face. “So please, please . . . stop looking at me.”

  He moved, and sunlight warmed my skin again. I held still. Waiting. Waiting for his response, for his anger or annoyance or a snide remark about my deceit, my guilt, my carelessness. My eyes flickered open, expecting him to have walked away, but instead he was seated next to me on the ground, his own back against the wide olive tree. He sighed, no doubt enjoying the respite as much as I did. “I am looking at you, Moriyah. Not the scar.”

  I lifted my eyes, scanning the silvery leaves that canopied above us, flush with clusters of green olives begging to be harvested. “There is not a difference.”

  “Of course there is. Consider this tree here. It must be very old,” he said. “Perhaps hundreds of years.”

  Stunned by his casual tone and not a little confused by the trail of his thoughts, I made the mistake of looking at him. He had not respected my wishes, and his gaze was still on me. My stomach trembled and my fingers went numb. Only the space of two handspans separated our shoulders. My response came out choked as I lifted my eyes again to the leaves shuddering in the light-fingered breeze. “How do you know?”

  “The size of it.” The certainty in his voice reminded me that he would inherit olive groves from his father one day. “The older trees grow, the wider around their trunks become. If you and I wrapped our arms around this one, our hands would barely touch.”

  The thought of Darek’s hands touching mine unsettled me. I dropped my gaze to a clump of grass that pressed up between us. I stroked the green fringe with my fingers.

  “The bark, too, seems to grow thicker every year,” he said. “Perhaps to guard against the elements, or insects, or disease.”

  I hummed a nonresponse, mystified as to why he seemed so focused on the tree behind us, but at the same time hoping he would continue speaking, just so I could listen to the soothing thrum of his low voice.

  “I’ve seen one of these trees blown over by a storm, sheared off in such a way that it almost looked as though a man had chopped it down. You would be surprised at the vibrant color inside and the way the rings ebb and flow in circle after circle. The different shades and the variations of thickness and shape . . .” He tapped the bark of the tree, just above my bare shoulder. “So much is concealed behind this marred skin. Such life. Such beauty, hidden in plain sight.”

  I restrained a shiver. I had no response to whatever it was he was trying to say. A storm had knocked me down seven years ago, and there seemed to be little more inside me than hollow desperation and fear.

  “How do you do it?” he asked, his tone shifting from pensive to pointed so quickly I could only stare at him, perplexed and scrambling for understanding.

  “Do what?”

  He waved his hand toward the traders. “You transformed yourself into . . .” His glance flitted from my painted face down to my Canaanite dress. “Whatever this is.”

  Warmth swept up my neck. “I don’t know.”

  “Last night, even with that . . . that veil on your face, you were . . . I don’t know. You. But then as soon as it was gone, you became Moriel, or whatever you called yourself. Even though you told me your plan this morning, I nearly choked when you burst out with that flawless Canaanite accent. I knew you’d lived in Jericho, but it was as if you’d been born there.” His words seemed to tumble over themselves in a rush, as if he’d been holding them in all day. “And then when you ordered me about like you were my mistress—” His eyes went wide. “Moriyah, it was as if someone else had taken over your body.”

  Unsure whether he was horrified by my performance or impressed by it, I ran my fingers through my hair. The feel of the smooth strands, unfettered for the first time in many years, distracted me for a moment and reminded me of the terrible shearing Alanah had given me on the way to Jericho. “It was during that journey, after we escaped the men who kidnapped us, that I first did it—turned myself into someone else. Two girls running through Canaanite lands was far too suspicious, but Alanah had short hair and it was easy enough for me to match her, although it was so painful when she hacked mine off with a flint knife. And then she showed me how to walk as if I were a boy.”

  I smiled at the memory of Alanah swinging her arms and stretching her pace with a controlled movement of hips. “I kept the image of my brother Shimon in my head whenever I walked, and matched the memory of his stride to my own. And then later, when we were in peril, I had to mimic someone else, and I realized it was easy to imitate her accent, her expressions, the way she held her body.” Leaving out the fact that I’d been emulating Rahab, who’d been a prostitute at the time, I shrugged. “It’s not something I have to work too hard to accomplish; it comes naturally to me.”

  “And who have you been imitating behind that veil?” he asked, his gaze penetrating.

  “No one,” I said, flustered by the strange question. “I am myself, unless it is neces
sary to pretend something else. To protect someone I love. Like with Alanah and my friends in Jericho. And today for Yuval.”

  “Who, then, is the true Moriyah?” He paused, his eyes traveling over my face with unnerving boldness. “The one I walked with in the vineyard that night, who listened to my foolish ramblings with rapt attention? The one whose laughter drew me like a drunk to spiced wine, pining for another drop of it, again and again? The one who ignored Rimona’s prejudice and insults to tend her wound with astounding grace? The one whose eyes spoke more to me across a room than any woman’s mouth ever did?” He stopped, releasing a shuddering breath. “Or are you the Moriyah whom my brother insists slipped oleander into stew to kill him?”

  I sucked in a gasp of disbelief. “Kill him? He thought I meant to murder him?”

  He nodded slowly.

  “But why?”

  He lifted his brows. “Perhaps to avoid marrying? To stay with your father, where you were content?”

  “No—Darek, you must know by now that could not be true.”

  “Do I?” he asked, with a challenging tilt to his chin. “Do I know that you are not capable of such things? Do I know that you meant only to shock the boys into leaving Eitan alone and not to threaten their lives? Or do I think that you would do anything to not marry a stranger? Even go so far as murdering him, or his sons?”

  “But you cannot possibly . . .” I stuttered over my words. “You cannot believe me so malicious, so vile. That is not who I am. What happened that day was an accident. A horrific accident. My only thought was to protect Eitan from Zeev and Yared and then to simply get through the awkwardness of a meal sitting across from a man who wanted to marry me to get his hands on my father’s vineyard—regardless of the worthless bride he was forced to accept—along with the awkwardness of sitting across from you.”

  “Why?” he pressed, leaning toward me with the flash of intensity in his brown eyes that caused my throat to ache. “Why was it awkward sitting across from me? Tell me.”

  Shaken by the question, the truth spilled out of me along with a few rebellious tears. “Because when you looked at me that night in the vineyard, I desperately wished the veil was gone, that you could see me. Not the scar. Me. The Moriyah I am before I remember every morning that I must cover up to save my family from more shame. The Moriyah I was before that priest pressed a sizzling brand against my skin and labeled me a temple whore. The Moriyah I can never be.”

  Still and silent, he was close enough that I could see every nuance within his eyes, the way the brown swirled with green and gold and even the slight ring of blue that encircled all of it as he held me captive within his gaze.

  “Don’t you realize?” he said, his voice diving into a whisper so low that it caused me to watch his mouth as he formed the words. He leaned closer, so close I felt his warm breath against my lips, a phantom touch that caused my eyes to drop closed in anticipation. “I see that Moriyah,” he rasped. “It is you who refuses to look beyond the scar.”

  CHAPTER

  Twenty-One

  Without forethought I breathed in his nearness, letting his beautiful, baffling words and the fresh scent of his skin wash through me. I opened my eyes, my attention drawn briefly to his lips, foolishly wishing for the small distance between us to vanish.

  “Moriyah—” he began, my name a tortured whisper.

  Zendaye called to us, cutting off whatever he’d been trying to say and rescuing me from my own foolishness. I popped up, brushed the grass from my dress, and strode away, hands shaking as I swiped the tears from my cheeks. What had just happened?

  Darek’s words skimmed too close to the marrow. It was true that I’d wanted Darek to see behind the veil that night, but this—this was too much. Too deep. I missed the familiarity of the fabric across my skin and the way people’s eyes glanced away from my face. It was safer that way. Besides, if I hadn’t been myself behind the veil, who was I?

  Binaim, Shuah, and the other men had loaded Yuval onto a wagon, drawn by a set of mules and driven by one of the Egyptians. Now out of Lilit’s tent and in the light, Yuval’s pallor startled me. How much blood had he lost?

  “How long until we reach Megiddo?” I asked.

  “A few hours,” Shuah said with a tug to his short gray beard.

  Zendaye slipped a long arm around me. “Pray to your gods, Moriel. Pray that they will watch over us and bring us safely to the gates of the city. And that your servant will survive.”

  One God—only one God could do such a thing. But I nodded to keep up the pretense that, as a priestess of Ba’al and Ashtoreth, there would be nothing to deliver Yuval but lumps of clay and stone.

  At Zendaye’s insistence, Darek lifted me to sit alongside Yuval in the wagon bed, and I did my best to ignore the feel of his warrior-strong hands around my waist and the way the heat from his fingers sank through the linen to my skin. I avoided his gaze, turning instead to watch Yuval’s chest rise and fall.

  The train of wagons, camels, pack animals, and people jolted to a start, instigating an acute longing for my mother and the sound of her soothing voice filling the time with ancient stories as we’d trudged along through the wilderness following Mosheh.

  Every bump and shudder of the wooden wagon made me clench my teeth in sympathy for Yuval. I hoped Lilit had given him enough of that poppy tea to erase every memory of the pain. Trusting my friend to a medium had been frightening enough, but now I would have to find a surgeon in Megiddo and beg him to stitch Yuval back together—all while convincing the people of that city that I was a priestess with enough wealth and power to ensure that I, and my servants, were untouchable.

  As I considered the task before me, exhaustion washed through my bones and I lay down on my back next to Yuval. I turned to face him, my eyes sliding closed as I whispered, “I will fight for you, my friend, no matter the cost.”

  Someone shook me by the shoulder. Bleary-eyed, I looked up into Darek’s face. “We have nearly arrived,” he said, low enough that the young Egyptian driving the wagon would not be able to hear. The wagon jolted forward again, pitching me to the side as I attempted to sit up. Beside me, Yuval groaned. My heart thumped as I searched his face for signs of awakening, but other than the slight rise and fall of his chest, his body lay still. Too still.

  If only I hadn’t been so careless. If he died it would be yet another blood-debt on my head. Perhaps Yahweh himself would avenge Yuval, snatch my breath before Raviv had the chance. If justice were to be done for Zeev, for Yared, and for Yuval—all in one sweep—it would only be fitting.

  The enormous migdol gates of Megiddo rose up in front of us as the caravan climbed the hill. The towering city looked so much like Jericho before it crumbled that my stomach clenched and a thousand memories swirled in front of my vision. All my feigned bravery dissolved into nothing. The debauchery, the lawlessness, the smell of daily sacrifices to evil gods tinging the air with ash and gag-inducing incense—how could I return to such a place? If Yuval were not lying across the threshold of death, I would slip over the side of this wagon and run all the way back to my father’s arms.

  We passed through the outer gates into a wide courtyard area, a holding place for travelers to be questioned and searched before being allowed entrance through the city gates. One of the many soldiers standing guard stopped Shuah in the first wagon. Shuah waved his hand back toward his company of traders, his amiable expression and wide gestures indicating that our group was friendly and only brought necessary items to trade within the city walls. The guard then ambled alongside our caravan, inspecting each wagon’s contents and interrogating every driver.

  When he arrived at our wagon, he turned to Darek. “And what is this?” He pointed at Yuval’s prostrate body.

  “That is my slave,” I said, my confident and even tone a stark contrast to the rushing rivers pulsing through my body. “And you will address me, alone.”

  I swallowed against the constricting fear that threatened to affect my voice. “He
was attacked by a lioness up there, on that mountain.” I pointed back to the distant peak we’d been at the foot of just this morning. “We have need of a healer.”

  The guard scratched his chin, “A lion you say? I thought they’d all been taken down.”

  “There were more of them up there?” I imagined those gleaming teeth sinking into Yuval’s flesh and shuddered at the thought that there had been more of those terrifying beasts.

  He nodded, sucking on his teeth. “That there was. A whole pack of them. Killed quite a few travelers over a period of months. The king himself slaughtered two males a few weeks ago, and the rest of the females were taken out the next day. He even brought back a cub. Eats right from his table.” The man guffawed. “I’ll be glad not to be given throne-room duty. The bigger that thing gets, the more liable it is to take a chunk out of someone’s leg.”

  “Is there a healer here who can help us? I’ve been told there might be an Egyptian physician in Megiddo.”

  He wrinkled his forehead. “Seems a lot of trouble for a slave.” His eyes traveled over my remaining golden armlet and the carnelian necklace on my chest, lingering there. “A priestess like you should be able to purchase another man in the market quite easily.”

  I pulled a tight smile across my lips. “I paid well for this one. I’ll keep him. Now, where can I find this physician?”

  He pushed out his lower lip and then gestured through the gates toward the towering temple that perched in the background. “The Healing Chamber is on the eastern side. Word is the two physicians came straight from Pharaoh’s own palace.” He shrugged. “Doubt they’ll bother with a slave though.”

  With a dismissive air I waved him away, and after a suggestive smirk at me, he meandered off to check the last few trading wagons that followed us. Catching myself slumping from relief, I straightened my backbone and set my jaw.

  The sounds of the many people streaming in and out of the city, the odor of the stock being driven to market, and the swell of beggars’ voices clamoring for attention near the gates caused me to remember the last time I’d been brought into a city, bound by ropes.