“And no matter how inconsequential the task,” Kiya said. “There is not one man who is regarded as less important. My husband tells me that it is a beautiful thing to experience.”
“Your husband is a Levite?” I looked up at her, trying to keep my jaw from gaping.
“He is. And a leader of the musicians who lift worship to Yahweh with their instruments.” Pride radiated from her smile. She was truly one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen. How had a woman with such regal bearing come to be married to a Hebrew slave? “Were you married in Egypt?”
“No, we came to love each other along the journey.” Kiya’s golden eyes fluttered skyward. “The more Yahweh drew me in, the more our differences became buried in love for each other.”
Tobiah flashed through my mind. I do not love him. He is my enemy. But I had to admit that he was kind. Kinder than my brothers had ever been to me, with their rough goading and crass jesting. They had treated me like a younger brother in many ways, and tormented me as such. It wasn’t until they came to appreciate my hunting skills that they began to treat me with any sort of respect. But even if they valued my bow, the older I got, the more they heckled me, until I gave up following them on hunts and slipped out to stalk game on my own.
Although Tobiah was silent most of the time, he was quick to offer help, spoke in low, patient tones, and never treated me as a captive. Holding on to my obligatory anger at him was becoming more difficult each day. Especially after the excursion that yielded an ibex and two tiny sand cats who were now mewling loudly from their basket inside the tent.
“What is that noise?” Shira looked around.
Hesitant to reveal my spontaneous decision to rescue the sand cats to these women, I said nothing.
“It sounds like some sort of animal,” said Kiya, cupping her long fingers to her ear.
“My cats,” I said in a low tone.
Shira bent forward to hear me. “Cats? Did you say cats?”
I rolled my eyes. “Yes. Cats. I rescued two of them the other day. They were nearly devoured by a snake.”
“Oh!” Shira clapped her hands. “Can we see?”
I was struck dumb for a moment by her enthusiasm, but I shrugged and retrieved my squirming, complaining charges from the tent.
After our foray to the hidden pool yesterday, Tobiah had said little but had brought me a large basket in which to corral them, apparently resigned to my insistence that I would keep them alive.
“How sweet!” Shira reached out eagerly.
“Not when they are sinking their teeth into you.” I placed one in her hands and then offered the other to Kiya.
The Egyptian woman raised her hands in refusal. “No, thank you.”
“You still hate cats, Kiya?” Shira winked at her. “It’s been a long time.”
“I cannot believe you don’t.” She folded her arms and rocked back on her heels.
“It was not the fault of the cats,” said Shira.
“They hated me too,” said Kiya. “Swiping at my ankles every time I walked by. Snarling and hissing.” She wrinkled her nose. “Especially that fat orange one with the missing eye.”
“Pharaoh!” Shira flapped a hand in the air and giggled like a little girl.
Kiya laughed, a smooth, pleasant sound. Even her laugh was beautiful.
“What are you two talking about?” I snapped, feeling oddly annoyed by their shared memories. With instant regret for my rudeness, I clamped my mouth shut but kept my face blank.
Shira smiled. “We are speaking of our time back in Egypt. Kiya and I were both slaves in the same household. And our mistress was a devotee of Bastet, the cat goddess. Therefore, cats ruled the house.”
“Especially the one Shira named Pharaoh.” Kiya smirked.
“Why do you think I named him that?” Shira lifted the sand cat and nuzzled his spotted fur with her nose. “And what is this one’s name?”
I pressed my lips together. Was this woman determined to break down every defense I had? There was something about Shira that conveyed such calm acceptance that I always found myself revealing too much in her presence.
Resigned, I sighed. “That one is Bodo. And this”—I pointed to the one now suckling and kneading his claws on my forearm—“is Capo. And obviously they are very hungry.”
“Do you have milk for them?”
“Tobiah brought me a jug of goat’s milk.”
“Good. When you need more, let me know. My sons tend the Levite flocks.” She stroked Bodo. “He is a good man, is he not?”
I wrinkled my brow in confusion.
“Tobiah. He seems to be treating you well?” Her thin brows arched high, making plain what she was truly asking.
“He has not touched me.” I scratched Capo behind his too-large ears.
She smiled. “I thought so. I could tell he was a young man who values the Torah. It’s not much longer though, is it?”
My lashes fluttered. “Twelve days.”
“And have you made a decision? Will you stay?”
“Where would I go?” A variety of half-laid plans unrolled in my mind: swiping Nita’s knife while she slept . . . taking refuge among my father’s Edomite kin . . . settling in some deserted village, alone.
“Indeed. Where?” She pinned me with a glare, as if privy to the machinations in my head. “Tobiah will protect you here, Alanah.” She jerked her chin at the northern ridge. “Out there you would be completely vulnerable.”
A hundred sharp-tongued defenses sprang up. None of them very kind. I swallowed them all, with huge effort. Perhaps she had little faith in my survival skills, but Shira had been good to me. “As you say.” I stretched a tight smile across my lips.
“You are wearing my belt!” Kiya exclaimed.
Startled by her interruption, I put a hand to the intricately woven belt wrapped around my waist. “You made this?”
Pride washed over her lovely face. “It suits you well!”
I looked between the two women whose puzzling connection was finally becoming clear. “You are married to Shira’s brother?”
A warm smile played across her full lips. “I am.”
“Did he take you captive as well?” I had heard the stories of how the Hebrews plundered Egypt as they fled. Perhaps they had taken Egyptian prisoners too.
“No, Eben didn’t put me into bondage. He helped release me from it.” She studied me for a moment, as if understanding my true motive for asking. “It is true. We were once enemies. My people enslaved his. And slaughtered them relentlessly for hundreds of years. Yet even in spite of his own prejudices, and my foolish choices, Eben loved me and saved me from an evil man, twice. My husband protected me, time and time again, even when I refused to follow Yahweh.”
Instantly grasping the hidden meaning of her explanation, I looked down and stroked Capo. He purred and pressed against me, eyes closing. “I can protect myself quite well.”
“Of that I have little doubt . . . But, Alanah, look at me,” Kiya commanded with a tone borrowed from some queenly ancestor.
Reluctantly, I obeyed, anticipating a reprimand from this older woman whose elegant presence made me acutely aware of the dirt beneath my fingernails and the loss of my hair. But the warmth of her honey-gold eyes surprised me as she reached out and gripped my shoulder lightly. “Eben protects me because he loves me, not because he sees me as weak.”
She paused, as if allowing the implication to settle in my mind.
Perhaps it had. “What changed?” I whispered.
“Yahweh.” Her voice trembled with passion. “Yahweh called to me. Brought me out from Egypt so I could be united with the Hebrews, and Eben, in sacred covenant. Though I am a child of Egypt, I am now part of Israel.”
She smiled, her eyes traveling upward for a brief moment, as if she was remembering something from long ago. “Someone once told me that Yahweh would make himself known to me, if I searched. And he did. Perhaps he will make himself known to you.”
What a stran
ge notion, that a god would call to someone. As if a deity would somehow speak to a lowly mortal. To a woman. To me.
16
Tobiah
5 IYAR
1407 BC
Alanah gasped. Wide-mouthed. Eyes open. She was sitting up on her pallet, arms stretched out, flailing, grasping at empty air as I swept into the tent.
I scrambled to her side and put a hand on her shoulder. Sleeping just outside every night, I’d heard her whimper in her sleep before. She tossed and turned on a regular basis, but the fear in her strangled cry this morning had jarred me. I found myself leaping up before I’d even made the decision to interfere.
She turned, vacant-eyed but with horror splashed across her face. Could she even see me? She seemed to look right through me to the other side of the tent.
She swiped at her face as if brushing away flies. “Close their eyes! Close their eyes!” she moaned.
“Shh.” I took a chance and stroked her cheek. “Ishti, it is a dream. You are here. With me. Tobiah.” The endearment ishti—my wife—had slipped from my lips all too easily. I darted a look to Nita on her bed, but her back was toward us; she must be deep in sleep to not hear Alanah’s distress.
Alanah blinked and shook her head, clearing away the confusion of pre-dawn and throwing off the grip of her nightmare. When her eyes cleared and she realized how close I was, she shrank back, wariness in the drop of her brow.
I lifted my hands in the air, surrendering before she struck at me as she seemed tempted to do. “You were dreaming. I only sought to wake you.”
I inched back, sensing she needed more space. She glared a moment more and then relaxed, softening the tilt of her shoulders and uncurling her back. She, too, glanced at Nita’s side of the tent, but my aunt still did not stir. I sat back on my haunches, arms folded, studying her face. “Are you on the battlefield?”
Her brows lifted in question.
“The dreams.” I tugged at my beard. “Do you see yourself there again?”
She looked down at her hands. “All I see is blood, and so many empty eyes, staring.”
What could I say? I visited the same horror whenever my own eyes closed. In fact, she had not woken me at all; sleep visited me only for a few restless hours every night. This morning had been spent as many others, restless on my pallet, swatting away images of Shimon, glassy-eyed and rigid in the blazing sand.
Although I had trained to serve in the army, endured years of pushing my body to its limits during exercises, the battles against Arad’s forces had been my first. My nightmares were haunted by broken Canaanite bodies, many by my own hand, screaming or cursing Yahweh with their last breaths.
Divided between the surprising desire to pull her into my foolish arms and the drive to distract us both with some other activity, I chose the latter. “Would you . . . would you like to take a walk?”
Only ten more days stood between our covenant and its consummation, and each day seemed to drag its feet slower than the last. Would she leave after the thirty days were complete? Or stay and continue as my wife?
The agony of the question kept me awake almost as much as my turbulent dreams. How could something that seemed so abhorrent a few weeks ago—marrying a Canaanite—now be such an intriguing possibility?
Every day since our first hunting excursion, I’d invited her to come with me whenever I trekked into the hills. Although our conversation was limited to local game or brief explanations about the ways and laws of my people that baffled her, it was the comfortable silences between us that made me thirst for more knowledge of her past.
“Manna will already be on the ground. We can get an early start.” I offered her what I hoped was a reassuring smile, instead of an infatuated grin.
She untangled her legs from the bedclothes and smoothed her twisted dress as she stood. In an unconscious move, she lifted a hand to straighten her hair. Her gaze cut to mine when she realized her turban had fallen off during the night. Swiftly, she bent and retrieved it before wrapping it around her head to hide the brilliant red.
I winced, experiencing all over again the pain of watching Shira cut that first strand—the only cut I’d watched her make. Like a coward I’d fled the tent that day to keep from snatching up the shears from Shira’s kind hands and throwing them into the dirt.
As we left the tent, after Alanah had ensured her sand cats were still sleeping in their basket, Nita looked over her shoulder, a satisfied smirk on her face. She’d been listening the whole time. A matchmaker from the beginning, my doda.
We walked together, silent in the chill of the desert morning. Alanah wrapped her arms around herself, perhaps wishing she had brought a shawl. I restrained myself from offering my own arm and instead focused on the white field in front of me. Morning already claimed the top of the cliff, and the manna sparkled there like new snow.
A flock of blackbirds burst from an acacia tree, cackling their displeasure. Even this early, many creatures were ahead of us, feasting on the miracle grains before the rest of the multitude awoke to rescue their daily bread.
I followed behind Alanah as she shuffled through the thick of it, scooping handfuls into her basket and sneaking bites when she thought my attention was elsewhere. How could it be anywhere but on her?
The strength that radiated from her drew me like wildfire to desert brush. Everything, from the way she carried her slim body to the way she navigated the rocky path with sure-footed grace, called to me—she was like no other woman I had ever known. I wanted to know her more. I wanted to know everything about her.
As she reached a sunlit spot on the trail, she lifted her chin, eyes closed and hands loose at her sides, enjoying the warmth of the sun on her face. I was held captive by the sight.
And when she opened her eyes—eyes the same bluish-green as the malachite stone I’d snatched from the ground during our first hunting trip—I remembered the first time I saw them, when they made me forget my friend, my brother, on the battlefield in the urgency to save her life.
We smashed through every defense the Canaanites had set in place. Their lines confused, their charioteers decimated by our archers, Shimon and I pushed ahead. I heard his fierce battle yell as he was pulled by the tide of battle deeper into the melee. I was pushed back and lost sight of him as enemy after enemy clashed their angry swords against mine.
We pushed through the lines of Canaanite infantry, swords high and the mighty bray of the shofarim vibrating through our blood. There was no sense of time or direction amid the crush of death and men around me. After the first few men I sent reeling into the afterlife, faces were only a blur.
But Shimon. How long did he take to die? How long after we’d been separated had his life been stolen? Had he been gasping for breath, calling out for help as I carried Alanah away? Why had I lived? Why had I not saved him?
A touch on my shoulder jolted me off the battlefield, and Alanah’s face appeared in front of me. “Tobiah?”
The sound of my name on her tongue completed my journey back to the moment. It was the first time she had spoken my name with anything resembling tenderness. She knew where I had been in my mind; she understood.
Was she softening to me? The look on her face told me she was, for it betrayed a level of concern I had not anticipated. It would be so simple to close the gap between us, to wrap my arms around her. I saw the idea play itself out in my mind, but before I could summon the courage to do so, she stepped away. Had she seen the temptation written on my face?
I drew a deep breath, thinking to distract myself by asking about her family, or her ridiculous cats, but suddenly Alanah had questions of her own.
“Who is Keziah?”
I nearly choked. What had Tzipi told her? I’d hoped that the brief mention of Keziah had gone unnoticed. I should have known better. Alanah missed nothing.
“My mother wanted me to marry her,” I said. “When I returned from the battle at Arad, we were to begin a yearlong betrothal period.”
“So s
he is not your first wife?”
Ah. Alanah thought she was to be a second wife, or perhaps a concubine. “No. You are my only wife. You will always be my only wife.”
She looked away, her gaze drawn to the stand of acacias nearby where a large monitor lizard perched on one of the branches, perhaps disappointed that we had startled the blackbirds away. “But our marriage has kept you from your betrothed.”
“We were not yet betrothed. I was not . . .” I cleared my throat. “I was not ready to be married.”
“And yet, when you saw me lying out in the sand, you decided it was time?” Alanah gripped the elbow of her wounded arm, drawing it across her body.
“No . . . Yes . . . I don’t . . .” I stumbled through my tangled thoughts. “No, I was not ready to be married, but when Shira told me I must marry you, I knew it was the right thing to do.”
“The right thing?”
“It is my duty to obey the Torah.”
“So you married me out of duty?” She pursed her mouth as if tasting a bitter root.
“And to protect you.”
“And if I leave?”
“I told you before, I will let you go.”
Her brows arched high. “You truly would not stop me?”
“If you were determined to leave, I would release you from our agreement.”
“And you would then marry Keziah?” she asked.
I drew in a quick breath through my nose. “I suppose I should, to not bring further dishonor to her family.”
“And is she beautiful?”
The abrupt question startled me. Was that a note of jealousy in her voice? I pushed out my bottom lip and folded my arms. “Yes. I would say she is beautiful.” But her eyes don’t call my name like yours do.
She brushed away some manna that clung to her skirt, emitting a low noise from the back of her throat. Interesting. I settled back on my heels. Silent. Face carefully blank as I waited. I was a hunter. If anything, I knew how to wait.
“And no doubt a wonderful cook,” she said, lifting the basket of manna with a smirk.
Wings of the Wind Page 10
