To Dwell among Cedars

by Connilyn Cossette

  “We know you are content,” she said. “You are the least greedy woman I’ve ever known, and even from the first day you came to us you were thankful for everything that was offered to you. You are eminently humble, and your dedication to serving both our family and the men who guard the Ark is unparalleled. But that doesn’t mean you should push aside the desire to marry, Eliora.”

  Her words were kind and meant to be encouraging. But I could not help but wonder why they all continued to push so hard for me to marry. Would they be relieved when I no longer lived under Elazar and Yoela’s roof? Were they disappointed that it had taken so long for me to leave?

  I inhaled a sharp breath, disturbed that I was even entertaining such thoughts. But this conversation had dredged up fears I’d long thought buried.

  “And you will be a wonderful mother,” added Safira, oblivious to my silent distress. “You took care of Natan when he was small, protecting and guiding him after you lost your mother, and you will raise your own children with the same strength and dignity. It would be a tragedy if you did not have the chance to do so.”

  And yet Natan has become little more than a snarling, wounded animal, I thought. No matter how hard I tried, I was a poor stand-in for our mother.

  Surrounded as I was by the three of them, I did not anticipate Miri snatching my loosening headscarf. My hair tumbled down, its length unwinding in a golden-brown spiral over my shoulder, the tail end of it dangling near my waist.

  “If you would stop hiding all of this,” she said, grinning, “Abba would not be able to decide between all the potential bridegrooms.”

  Face hot, I grabbed for the brown cloth, but Miri giggled and spun away, taunting me with the fluttering fabric. “If Ronen saw what was beneath these hideous headscarves you insist on wearing, he’d not be able to peel his eyes away.”

  Her laughter jangled my nerves, and a rush of aggravation barreled through me. Before I could think to stop myself, I used my long legs to dash over to her and snatched back the length of cloth.

  “That is the last thing I want,” I said, my words razor sharp and so loud that they echoed off the surrounding trees. “Why don’t you all just leave me alone?”

  Miri’s jaw gaped at my cutting words and the force of my anger.

  Hands shaking, I turned my back to her and rewrapped my hair in the cloth. I looped the fabric over the thick waves in the same fashion I had since I was younger than Miri, having found the attention unbearable whenever I left my head uncovered. As I did so, I worked to calm my breathing and willed my thundering pulse to slow.

  My sisters said nothing, likely too shocked by my fit of temper to speak. Once my hair was wrangled into place, along with my unruly tongue, I entwined my still-trembling fingers at my waist and turned back to face the three of them. I’d never, in all the years I’d lived here, even raised my voice. They must be horrified by such awful behavior. I would not even blame them if they turned their backs and left me alone by the stream to drown in regret.

  “I am so sorry, Miri,” I said, shame flowing all the way down to my toes. “I should not have snapped at you. Please . . . please forgive me.”

  Rina and Safira stared at me with matching looks of confusion, but Miri rushed to me, throwing her arms around my waist, tears in her dark eyes. “Oh, Eliora, I am the one who should apologize. I did not mean to embarrass you.”

  “No. . . . It is I who am in the wrong,” I stuttered as I returned the embrace. “I cannot believe that I yelled at you.”

  “I deserved it,” she mumbled against my chest. “I pushed too hard. I am awful.”

  My own eyes blurred as I squeezed her tightly. “You are nothing of the sort.”

  Suddenly Rina and Safira were wrapped around Miri and me, the four of us locked in a joint embrace as they murmured assurances that my fit of temper was justified and that they would not shove me toward marriage again. My heart pulsed with love for my sisters, the ache of gratitude overcoming the embarrassment of my offense. How could I have believed for even a moment that they meant to push me into marriage to be rid of me? They’d never done or said anything that warranted such uncharitable notions.

  And no matter that their harmless teasing had prodded the tender place inside me that wished Ronen would see me as someone other than the Philistine girl he found behind a rock wall, he was here only temporarily.

  Once the festivals were complete, he would return to Beit El, and I would remain where I belonged. I had no interest in leaving the only place in the world I felt safe for even a day—let alone the rest of my life. I would control both my tongue and the foolish flutterings that winged around inside my chest whenever Ronen smiled at me, because I refused to live on the outside of Elazar’s household ever again.

  Twenty-One

  The rains had come early, nearly undoing our plans for a large Shabbat gathering. But years ago, my father had commissioned an enormous tent for this very reason, since many were the days on this lush mountainside when the common courtyard became a muddy mess during the wet months. So, while my sisters and I had been hauling water from the stream, the men had raised the rainproof shelter fashioned from treated animal hides, stringing it between pillars and propping up the center with sturdy poles long before the first fat drops fell from the sky. With tightly woven goat-hair walls on each side and a thick hide roof, we would enjoy a warm and protected evening with our loved ones and guests.

  I did my best to forget that Ronen would soon arrive, and the confusing emotions that thought inspired, as Miri and I gathered all the rugs from inside our home, and those of our neighbors, to spread upon the cold ground. In the very center of the tent, we prepared a fire, one that would lend light and heat, but whose smoke would drift upward through the hole in the roof created for that purpose.

  When that task was finished and Miri had slipped out to help Rina with the food, I collected a few clay lamps and filled them with fresh oil from a stoppered jug. I’d only just laid one fresh wick of twisted linen in the first lamp when a sharp series of barks rang out in the courtyard. Then, to my shock, two furry blurs burst into the tent, one small one with a long bristling tail and the larger one with floppy ears, hackles raised, and teeth bared.

  I cried out, dropping the clean wicks onto the packed dirt as I attempted to get out of the haphazard path of the dog and his prey, a gray squirrel that tried to take refuge behind one of the braziers I’d placed in the corner of the tent. The dog barked as he darted back and forth, trying to corner his quarry. Even though I knew this to be a pet of one of the Levite guards, the sound made the hair on my neck and arms rise, ushering me back to Ashdod in an instant, to my ninth year and the last time I’d been so close to a canine.

  A little dog had followed me to Jacame’s home after I’d delivered a message to her daughter-in-law across town. With her ribs showing beneath her mottled black-and-brown coat and her belly distended, it was plain that she was not only pregnant but starving. Wild dogs were common outside the city, scavenging among the refuse piles, some roaming in vicious packs to protect themselves from the humans that hunted them for meat, but I’d rarely seen one within the city walls, especially one that seemed in no way aggressive. Instead, she’d looked up at me with an almost audible plea for help that no nine-year-old girl could resist.

  The moment I’d arrived back at the villa, I’d pilfered some pork trimmings from the kitchen refuse pot, wondering if the dog had waited near the back door. To my surprise not only was she there when I returned with the scraps, but once she devoured them, she rubbed her head against me and licked my hand before running off.

  For the next two weeks, she appeared at the back door nearly every morning, lying low in a shady corner behind the house until I appeared with whatever remnant I could tuck away during meals. I was careful that no one might see me sneaking food to her. Jacame especially had a fear of dogs after some childhood incident, and I did not want one of her maidservants running off my little friend.

  But all of
my clandestine efforts were for naught because suddenly the dog stopped coming. And no matter that I wandered up and down the street for days, hoping she would appear, she seemed to be gone.

  A week later, Harrom called the household to gather before the rubble of the small home next door, which he’d purchased from an indebted neighbor. He’d razed the home in order to expand his own villa, planning to construct an impressive vestibule that would display his wealth to visitors in grand fashion. With solemn ceremony befitting his priestly status, Harrom declared the expansion a gift from Dagon, and after pouring wine libations in a hole where the new entrance would be, called one of his servants to bring forward the threshold offering.

  I heard none of what was said after that, too busy trying not to retch on the ground or sob, because I knew for certain that the tiny brindled pups squirming inside the clay pot the servant delivered to my uncle were those of the little dog I’d fed at the back door.

  Although I kept my eyes pressed tightly closed, somehow I managed to remain standing through the grisly ceremony and the burial of the vessel beneath the new threshold, but the moment it was finished I dashed off without apology to hide beneath my bedcovers until Azuvah appeared to wipe my tears and whisper reassurances in her language until I finally fell asleep.

  No matter how hungry I’d been after that, even when the city was overcome by plague and food was scarce, I’d never again eaten the flesh of a canine. In fact, when I’d come to Kiryat-Yearim and discovered that, unlike my people, the Hebrews found dog and pig meat to be abhorrent, I’d been beyond relieved.

  I swallowed down the nausea such memories invoked and fled, leaving the dog to continue her fruitless search for the squirrel, who’d most likely slithered beneath the tent wall and escaped.

  The rain had slowed for now, leaving the air replete with mist and the trees all around our home dripping. Glad for the cool air, I inhaled deeply, once again giving thanks that there were no terrible threshold offerings with the community of Israel, that human infants were not buried in pots beneath their floors, and that fertility and divination rituals were seen as the height of repugnance. Worship of Yahweh was a stark contrast to that of my people, and I would ever be grateful that I’d been invited into Avraham’s covenant.

  Pushing the macabre images from my mind, I focused instead on all that remained to be done and headed out of the courtyard toward the side of the house. We would need at least a few more logs to keep the fire going, since our Shabbat gatherings usually lasted long into the night, especially when my father got lost in telling stories of the ancients, as he frequently did.

  To my surprise, Natan was at the wood shelter, unloading logs from large leather packs strapped to one of our sturdy donkeys, whom Miri had named Kalanit for the reddish hue of its coat. The sodden and bedraggled animal looked nothing like the graceful poppy flower she was named for as she patiently awaited her unburdening, shifting foot to foot while her long ears twitched and her white-rimmed eyes blinked away the rain droplets.

  My brother had returned from his sulk in his cave last night, bruised and battered but much calmer than when we’d parted ways in the clearing. It seemed Ronen’s suggestion to allow him room to settle had been a wise one. To my great surprise, he’d not balked when our father asked to speak with him alone upon his return and had followed him to the roof to accept his chastisement with silent resignation. In fact, when I’d been asked to join them there, in order to answer my father’s questions about what I’d witnessed, Natan had already informed Elazar of Ronen’s intervention. And by the contrite set of his swollen and split lips, something Ronen had said after the altercation must have gotten through to him.

  “How much more of that tree is left out there?” I asked, choosing to ignore the enormous purple-and-green bruise that encompassed his eye, cheek, and a large portion of his forehead.

  “I’ve managed to cut up most of the branches, but the trunk will take me quite a few more days. Of course, it’s soaked now and won’t be useable until it dries out for a few weeks.”

  “Haven’t your friends been helping?” I asked. “I would guess it would be a three- or four-person job.”

  “I don’t need them,” he said, a sharp edge to his tone. “I can handle it on my own.” He stared off into the distance, silent yet full of thoughts that I desperately wished he would share. But Ronen had taught me that it was better not to push. Natan would speak when he was ready to, and not before.

  So, I waited, my gaze on the misty woods before us but watching from the corner of my eye as my brother scratched at his stubbled jaw. He looked more like our father every day, but there were also hints of our mother in his features, something I’d neglected to tell him and wondered if I’d been wrong to do so.

  “I am sorry you saw me like that,” he said, scrubbing Kalanit between the eyes. “I didn’t mean for it to go as far as it did.”

  I repressed a smile of triumph that my patience had been rewarded so soon. “Did you not?”

  “I only meant to stop him from slandering you,” he said, glancing up and then away again. “Not . . . well, I didn’t like that you saw the two of us.”

  “Nor did I. It . . . it frightened me, Natan. Ronen is right that if you’d kept going, I would have had to watch you be sentenced as a murderer. And I could not bear—” My words were choked off by a glut of emotion in my throat. “I can’t lose you.”

  His chin jerked up, his brown and green irises finally meeting mine, something he’d not allowed for weeks, if not months. “I know, Risi. I’m sorry.”

  Losing all restraint at the sincerity in his tone, I threw my arms around his waist and planted my forehead against his shoulder, vaguely noting that he’d grown since the last time he’d allowed me to embrace him.

  “Please,” I said. “Please. Walk away next time. I can bear to be called names. But if something happened to you . . .”

  He patted my shoulder, clearing his throat. “Risi. That Levite is back.”

  Dropping my arms from around his waist, I whirled about to find Ronen coming up the trail, followed by another man who looked very similar to him. Their mantles were soaked and their hair was dripping, but Ronen’s eyes were on the two of us as they came closer, a faint curve of amusement on his lips.

  I glanced up at Natan, realizing I’d not told him that Ronen and the others would be joining us for the meal and fearing that leftover emotions from yesterday would erupt again. But although Natan’s posture was rigid, he simply watched in silence as the men came nearer.

  “Natan!” exclaimed Ronen, as if he’d not just yesterday nearly come to blows with him. “I’ve told my cousin here”—he gestured toward the other man—“of the game you taught me when you were small. Perhaps you’ll give him a demonstration?”

  Natan sniffed, taciturn as he met Ronen’s eye. A few long moments ambled by as they held each other’s gaze, some sort of silent exchange passing between them that I did not grasp.

  “I lost those dice long ago,” said my brother, shocking me with the admission. But now that I considered it, he had stopped wearing the little leather pouch around his neck in the early months after we’d arrived in Kiryat-Yearim.

  “Ah. Just as well. You’d likely trounce me as you did when you were a boy.” Ronen laughed, the rich sound doing something strange to my insides. “Although, since it took three of us to wrench you off that young man yesterday, I’d guess you would trounce me in most things.”

  My heart stuttered, and I restrained a gasp of shock that he would bring up the fight before he’d even set foot inside our home. Natan was as stiff as a stone column beside me while I blinked at Ronen, horrified by his audacity. What had I been thinking of inviting him here so soon after such a heated confrontation?

  “I’m certain we can find something you might have a better chance at besting me in,” replied my brother evenly, and I braced myself against whatever sharp-tongued insult he might lash at Ronen. “Those soft hands must be useful for something. Mi
lking goats, perhaps?”

  Ronen paused only two breaths before he burst into laughter, tilting his head back as the sound of his amusement echoed off the surrounding trees. “That they might,” he said, stretching his long fingers in the air. “Although I can’t say that I’m adept at milking either. Somehow I always seem to get kicked.”

  Utterly bewildered by this exchange, I divided glances between Natan, who now seemed to be fighting his own smile, and Ronen, whose dark eyes glittered with mirth. Less than one day ago, I thought the two of them might tear each other apart, and now they seemed to be sharing some sort of joke that I did not understand.

  “That you do,” interjected Ronen’s cousin, with a laugh that was a poor imitation of Ronen’s rich and deep one. “His mother gave up asking him to help with the livestock when we were boys because he always managed to end up pinned in a corner, bleating for help.”

  “Not true. It was only that one evil ram who had an unnatural hatred of me.” Ronen elbowed him with a mocking scowl, then turned to address me. “This is my cousin, Machlon. Osher and Shelah had other duties to attend to this evening, so I invited him to come with me. I hope that is not too presumptuous.”

  “Of course not,” I replied, smiling at Machlon. “We are delighted to have you join us for Shabbat. With all the produce your cousin and his friends helped harvest yesterday, there is more than enough.”

  He bowed his head in response, a palm to his heart. “It is my honor,” he said, then lifted his brows as his dark eyes swept over me, head to toe. “I’ve been eager to put a face to everything Ronen has told me about you.”

  My cheeks went hot, and without forethought, I reached up to ensure my head covering was secure. What had Ronen told his cousin that would cause him to scrutinize me so openly? Although a smile remained on Machlon’s lips, something in his perusal unsettled me, reminding me of the way the people of Kiryat-Yearim watched me when I first arrived. The two men might be cousins and similar in appearance, but I had the sense that they were very different in ways that mattered much more than looks.