by Sharon Shinn
But it was worse than all his speculations. At the door to Nathan and Maga’s suite, he was met by an apparition: Rachel, dressed in gold and looking magnificent. She had obviously stationed herself outside the main room in order to snag him before he went in to join the general party, and because she was Rachel, everyone had let her do exactly as she wished.
“So,” she said, kissing him on the cheek and then standing back to survey him. “Maga tells me you’ve fallen in love with a completely unsuitable woman. You have to tell me everything.”
Chapter Twenty-three
Rebekah could not even remember the first time she’d noticed the fugitive colors loitering in her Kiss. When she tried to cast her mind back, it seemed like they had always been there, traces of ice and opal hovering just below the edge of noticing, but she knew that wasn’t true. A week or so ago, as she was standing naked in the water room, yes, there had been a flicker of color in her Kiss then; and a week before that, as she turned over in the middle of the night, she had noticed a faint glow nestled in the crystal’s white heart. And each time she had thought, “Yes, there’s that color again,” so neither episode was the first time, but she couldn’t remember the first time.
It seemed important to remember. It seemed important to understand at least one of the strange things that was happening to her.
She had become moody and a little withdrawn in the past few weeks, missing Obadiah so much that it terrified her. Unless she was dealing with her mother, she had always been relatively even-tempered, willing to do her share of work or deal with the most unlikable members of the household. But these days she didn’t want to talk to anyone, not her mother, not Jordan, not Hepzibah, not Martha when she came to visit. She wanted to sit alone in her room, and think about Obadiah, and cry.
Since this was scarcely possible in a house that contained twelve other women, even a large house, she found herself crying mostly at night. Lying on her mat, curled up in a ball, sobbing. At times, her weeping would grow to such a frenzied pitch that it was almost hysteria; she could not think what to do to make herself stop. She would push herself to her feet and pace the floor, still torn by racking sobs, wringing her hands together or flattening them against her cheeks in stark despair. Some nights, this went on for hours. When she finally lay back on her bed, she would be too tense to fall asleep; she would stare up at the dark ceiling, unable to close her eyes. It would be well past midnight before she would sleep, and she often woke up every hour or two until dawn, after which she could not sleep again.
Needless to say, she looked wretched in the morning—pale, pinched, and exhausted—and this added to her desire not to leave her room. When she did emerge, someone would always ask her if she had fallen ill. “I was coughing all night” had become her standard response. When she’d been a child, she had suffered from lung troubles, and she knew a few other women who regularly had trouble breathing in the green spring months. Still, it did not seem like a very satisfactory answer, particularly in the heart of winter, but no one questioned her too closely. Not her mother, who was too focused on her youngest son, or Hepzibah, who did not want to know the answers.
She could not understand the crying any more than she could explain away the colors in her Kiss. Yes, she missed Obadiah; not a minute of her day went by when he did not perch like a persistent songbird at the edges of her conscious thought. But she had missed him before and not skipped to the brink of sanity this way. Had not felt so dreary, so hopeless, so utterly ruined. She wanted more than anything to see him again, but she could not imagine how even that would help, because he would just go away again, leaving her more starved and desperate than before. Better to plan to never see him again, to recover now, this one time, from her strange dependence on him, than to experience this misery over and over again every time he was gone from her.
But the thought of never seeing him again sent her into an even worse spiral of depression, so she could not entertain that thought for long.
The other thought—the whispering of some treacherous, sinful demon—was that she would leave with him the next time he returned. Leave behind Breven and her family and her life, and spend the rest of her days with the angel.
It was not an option she had seriously considered before, no matter how often Obadiah had suggested it. He had seemed to her, he still seemed to her, an aberration in the course of her existence, a chapter she would look back on in awe and wonder years after it had closed. Although she could not imagine the relationship ending, in her heart she could not imagine it continuing, months and months, years and years, for the whole span of her days. It was a special gift, a hallowed time, a precious, sun-warmed bracket of days, but this time with Obadiah could not go on forever.
Unless she left. Unless she ran away with him, allowed him to carry her on some moonless night over the folded golden miles of the desert. Unless she returned with him to Cedar Hills to be his bride or his friend or his forgotten lover, discarded once the thrill of secrecy was gone. She had never been able to see her way clear to it. She had never been willing to sacrifice everything she knew for a world of uncertain terrors and the love of a man with whom she had nothing in common. She did not know how she would exist in that world if he put her aside.
But she could scarcely exist in this world without him.
So she wept, and she worried, and she watched the rainbow in her Kiss, and she wondered.
“You look like dried cow dung too brittle to throw on the fire,” Martha greeted her. It was three weeks since Rebekah’s last assignation with Obadiah, and Jerusha had sent her to Uncle Ezra’s house because “I need a day when I don’t have to look at that pout on your face.” On the whole, Rebekah preferred Martha’s assessment to her mother’s. It had been a relief, actually, to throw a veil over her face and walk beside Jordan to her uncle’s house, knowing that for those two miles, no one was looking at her expression and finding it unacceptable.
“That’s about how I feel,” Rebekah agreed. “Dried, cracked, fragile, and useless.”
“So you haven’t heard from the angel.”
Rebekah shook her head.
“But you will. Everything you’ve told me about him—he’ll be back. He warned you that it would be a while before he could return.”
“I know. It’s just that—I feel so awful. I feel so awful that I’m not even sure that seeing him again would make me feel good.”
Martha smiled at that. “Oh, it would. It will. When he comes back, you’ll forget all this.”
“And when he leaves again?”
Martha shrugged. “You’ll grieve again. That’s the life of an illicit lover.”
“And when will you see Chesed again?” Rebekah asked.
Martha sighed. “Not for another week at least. Maybe two or three weeks. They’re back in Gaza, and then they head down the western coastline, trying to make new contacts.”
“I can’t think of any cities along the western coast. Certainly no place big enough to have a trading center.”
“I know! That’s what I told him! But he said there are mining communities west of the Corinnis that are beginning to accumulate some wealth and—and ‘social status,’ he said. The women are looking for luxuries. Anyway, his father wants to make the trek, and of course Chesed must go along. So it will be a few weeks.”
Rebekah flopped over on her mat. They were sitting alone up in Martha’s room because it was too cold to stay in the garden for long, and Martha’s unpleasant aunt was in the fabric room. “Remember when ‘a few weeks’ didn’t sound so long?” she asked. “You would be on the road to Velora for a few weeks. The trip to Windy Point would take a few weeks. It didn’t matter. There was nothing to make you hurry back to Breven, nothing except a harvest festival or a spring feast to particularly look forward to. Now, ‘a few weeks’ sounds like a lifetime sentence. It is too long to live out.”
“But I know something that might pass the time a little,” Martha said. “If you’ll come.”
“What is it?”
“My father is taking my mother and my aunts out to the southern edge. Where the reskel grows. Aunt Rhesa says this is the best time to harvest the roots, once the leaves have all shriveled up in the winter cold. We’ll only be gone a day or two, and it will be good to get away from—” Martha gestured at the walls. “This house and everybody in it.”
Rebekah sat up, alarm sparkling through her. “But what if he comes while I’m gone? What if he only comes for a day, and I’m out in the desert with you, and I don’t get to see him?”
Martha shrugged. “What if he comes tonight while you’re here?”
Now Rebekah stood and started pacing. “I know. I thought of that. I didn’t want to come for that very reason. But I thought—I thought I might throw myself from the roof if I sat in that house one more day. And I’ll be back tomorrow night. And when he comes to Breven, he’s usually here for a day or two. I will only miss him one night, I won’t miss him completely—”
“You’ll have to show him where my house is. Next time you see him,” Martha said. “So he can drop feathers in my garden as well as yours, in case you happen to be staying with me. I’d like a collection of angel feathers, I have to admit. I’ll sew them to the edge of my winter cape and look quite elegant.”
Rebekah smiled at the nonsense. “I did show him your house once, when we were flying over Breven. But I don’t know that he’d think to look for me here. So I don’t think I can go on this expedition of yours.”
“Oh, but you really should,” Martha wheedled. “Just for two days! I think you’ll be better if you get out of the house, into some fresh air and sunshine—”
“It’s cold outside! We just came in from the garden!”
“Yes, but we’ll have a fire at the campsite, and it’ll just be us, just family, so we can all sit around the fire at night. And you know how beautiful and pure the desert smells in winter—like every grain of sand has been washed by hand and the sky has been laundered by Jovah—”
Rebekah actually laughed at Martha’s poetry. “And I know what it’s like to wake up with frost on my cheeks and icicles in my eye-lashes.”
“But it’s not that cold. Not yet. And we’ll only be out for a night.”
“But what if Obadiah comes?”
“I’ll ask my father,” Martha said. “He’ll know if the angel is planning a visit to Uriah any time soon.”
“And won’t your father wonder what you know about angels?”
“I’ll say Eph told me all about his visit. He did, too. My father likes it when I ask him questions about politics and business. He thinks it means I’ll be a smart wife for some merchant.”
“But sometimes Obadiah comes to Breven without telling Uriah that he’s going to be here. Sometimes he comes just to see me.”
“Well, then, we’ll—I know! We’ll stop at your house on the way out of town. Say you have to have—something. A special shawl or a new pair of shoes. You run in, you check to see if Obadiah has left you any signals the night before. If he hasn’t, you’re free to come with us. We’ll only be gone one night. If he has, well, then you suddenly find yourself too sick to travel. Everyone will be irritated with you, but they’ll forget it as soon as we’ve been on the road for two hours.”
“I could do that,” Rebekah said, thinking it over. She still might forgo one precious night with Obadiah, but she would not miss him entirely. He would not send her messages and grow frantic when she did not reply. It would not be a catastrophe.
And it was true. She was desperate to get out of the house—this house, her own house, any collection of stone and spitefulness—wild to smell the fresh-scented desert air and run across the corrugated surface of the sand. She would feel better after a short trip, in Martha’s cheerful company, distracted from her constant, nagging worries.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll go. When do we leave?”
Martha squealed and gave her a quick hug. “Tomorrow morning. We’d better let your mother know you’re coming with us.”
Jerusha heartily approving of any plan that kept her daughter out of her sight for another day or two, Rebekah set out the next morning with Martha, Martha’s mother, two of her aunts, Ephram, and Uncle Ezra. After the quick detour at Hector’s house—where there were no angel mementos—they were on their way, outside of the city limits only an hour or two after dawn. There were enough of them that they had brought two wagons, the older women riding in one with Ezra, and Martha and Rebekah being driven by Ephram. Everyone in the younger trio was in high spirits, and Ephram kept them laughing by telling them about the antics of some of his friends. Then Martha and Ephram began to imitate the behavior of some of their more unlikable relatives on their mother’s side, and followed that up with hilarious stories from their childhood. Rebekah contributed a few tales of Jordan’s mishaps as a baby, and the time her mother had mistaken hellsbane for dera leaves, causing Jordan to produce vile green excrement for two days straight. It hadn’t been funny then; it was enormously entertaining now.
It was a little after noon when they arrived at their destination, a stretch of southern desert that existed in a long, shallow bowl. Something about its placement—low enough to be close to the underlying aquifer or to escape some of the harsher winds of summer—made it ideal terrain for the reskel bushes that were so scarce in the rest of the territory around Breven. Here, they could be found by the dozens, covered with smoky blue blossoms during the spring months and with waxy green leaves in the summer. Now they were just shriveled little collections of cold-looking branches, but they still ran their roots deep into the soil under the sand, and it was those roots that Rhesa and the other women were determined to dig up.
The men made camp while the women went straight for their treasure, fanning out around the perimeter of the campsite. It was chilly, but the sun was bright overhead; the day had a somewhat festive air. All the women had pulled off their veils as soon as they were outside of the city, and now they strolled through the winter sands with a heady sense of freedom, the sun on their faces, their hair loose in the wind.
“Oh, this is wonderful, this is heaven.” Martha declared as she and Rebekah knelt beside a reskel bush and began to dig. “I feel like I’m breathing for the first time in weeks.”
“Are you going to use that trowel? Hand it over.”
“Aren’t you glad you came?” Martha demanded, passing her the digging tool.
“Yes,” Rebekah said. “It could be ten degrees warmer and I’d be happier, but this feels—” She couldn’t find the word, so she just shrugged and kept on digging.
Martha sat back on her heels and seemed oblivious to the fact that they had come here to do work. “I wish we could just leave,” she said suddenly. “Take the wagon all the way to—Semorrah, maybe. Gaza, even!”
“Oh, I wonder why you thought of Gaza,” Rebekah said with affectionate scorn.
“He’s probably not even there anymore. Just to go. Just to see it. It’s been so long since I’ve been on the road. My father has taken Ephram with him everywhere since last fall, but I haven’t traveled at all.”
“I haven’t been out since—” Rebekah fell silent.
“Since the time you met Obadiah,” Martha supplied.
“Yes. Maybe that’s what’s been bothering me. I’ve been in the house too long.”
Martha dropped her body down onto the sand, propping herself up on one elbow. “If you ask him, will Hector take you on his next trip?”
“Not unless my mother goes, and maybe not even then. I think my mother would be just as happy to be gone on a long journey and leave me behind.”
“Well, I’ll ask my father,” Martha said. “Next time he travels. If he’ll take you and me with him.”
Rebekah continued to dig around the root base of the reskel. A few inches below the level of sand, the loose dirt became sticky and dense, hard to cleave apart with the little trowel. It was clear Martha wasn’t going to help at all. “Well, we’ll see
,” she said.
“Don’t you want to go?”
“Not if—” Rebekah shrugged. “Not if I’d miss Obadiah.”
Martha made a grunting sound. “Right. Well. Next time your angel is here, tell him you want to travel. Tell him when you might be gone. Let him know you’re not going to just sit around on rooftops waiting for him to reappear.”
Rebekah grinned briefly. “I suppose that’s how you phrase it to Chesed.”
“Oh, I speak my mind to him, never doubt it.”
Rebekah had dug deep enough now to free some of the roots, fat as her finger but long as a whiplash. “How much can I take from a plant without killing it?” she asked.
“Two pieces, I think,” Martha said. “Maybe three.”
“Let’s be safe. I’ll take two.”
As soon as she had harvested two of the long, stalklike roots, Rebekah patted all the soil back in place and then smoothed sand all around the base of the bush. “All right,” she said. “Next one.”
They worked at a leisurely pace for the next few hours, Martha only occasionally deigning to do any of the actual digging. Rebekah didn’t mind. She actually enjoyed the pull on her muscles, the cramp in her hand, the ache developing in her back from bending over too long. It was good to move and labor, to stretch and strive. She liked the sense of accomplishment she felt when she had completed her task at one station and came to her feet, reaching her arms high over her head and forcing each bone and muscle to realign. She liked the drag of the sand against her feet as she walked between shrubs, liked the insistent prying of the wind at her uncovered face. She liked feeling stresses on her body instead of her soul.
“I’m hungry,” Martha said as they finished up their task. Early dark had descended on the desert, hurrying as if afraid of arriving late. “Do you think anyone’s made dinner yet?”
“No,” said Rebekah. “I think the men are sleeping beside the wagons, and the women are still out gathering roots.”
