Wings of the Wind Read online

  She’d snatched up the bait without hesitation. I swallowed a smile. “True.” Yet somehow the manna cakes formed by your palms taste sweeter. “My mother and hers were good friends and always desired the match.”

  Her eyes narrowed as she contemplated my explanation. My mother had indeed desired that I marry Keziah. But watching Alanah now, this strong, brave woman, squirming with frustration and feathers ruffled as she weighed whether I would choose another woman over her, I decided that there was no one else for me. I had never gone against my parents, in life or in death. But in this one thing, I would defy their wishes, with pleasure.

  My mouth twitched as I realized just how to make Alanah take that one last step into the snare of her own making. “She is also skilled at weaving. In fact she made this tunic.” I smoothed the brown fabric against my chest.

  Her eyes flared as they tracked the path of my palm. She was jealous. My blood surged at the possibility. Alanah was more than softening to me. She was quite possibly as attracted to me as I was to her.

  But as swift as the drop of a veil, she drew herself to her full height and spun to continue collecting manna. The move was too fast, however, and she teetered, off-balance for a moment. I grabbed her elbow to steady her. She jerked away as if stung by a scorpion.

  “Why won’t you let me help you?” I said, frustration leaking into my tone.

  She turned on me, one fist on her hip. “I don’t need you to help me, or protect me.”

  “I vowed that I would.”

  “I don’t hold you to any vow.”

  “It matters not, I am bound to my word. I am your husband.”

  “You are not my master.”

  “Have I ever treated you as such?”

  “You will. I am acquainted enough with marriage to know what happens after a man has his way. My father’s women were no more than property. When he died they were given to my worthless cousin like a set of oxen.”

  “That is not marriage. That is slavery.”

  She scoffed “What is the difference?”

  “The difference is that, here, Torah is obeyed. A wife is afforded many protections. Yahweh bids us to love our wives. Treat them with care. Consider them part of our own flesh.”

  She watched me speak, confusion in her eyes.

  “I have no desire to imprison you. I have told you before and will say it again: I will not hold you here against your will. My only thought has been your protection.”

  “Well, there are only ten more days. Then you will be free of me.” Something like pain flickered across her face as she glanced away.

  I stepped close, unconcerned that many others were now in the field, foraging their own daily rations. Her eyes went wide, the blue-green reflecting the sunrise, yet she did not retreat. A handspan apart, we breathed in tandem, gazes locked.

  Her lips parted for a moment, as if to say something, but they quivered and she pressed them together. The movement caused my belly to warm with anticipation.

  I could not help myself. Keeping my movements slow, as if she were a frightened doe, I lifted a finger and traced the curve of her ear. Her breathing hitched and she closed her eyes. I slid my finger down the long, smooth line of her neck.

  “Yes, Alanah,” I whispered. “Only ten more days. Eternal days—but not for the reason you think. I will wait for you. Hoping you will choose me of your own accord.” Leaning forward, my lips nearly grazed the top of her cheekbone. “But do not think for one moment that the wait will be easy.”

  17

  Alanah

  You will always be my only wife . . . Eternal days . . . the wait will not be easy . . . Tobiah’s words wandered around in my head, traveled with growing intensity through my extremities, and wormed their way into my heart. My chest ached. Had he truly meant what he’d said? I searched beyond the sheer ceiling above me, peering at the silent stars that denied me answers.

  I shivered, remembering the scorching trail Tobiah’s finger had left on my skin. He had touched me with a feather-light tenderness that I could not reconcile with the bloody-faced warrior who had loomed over me on the battlefield.

  I’d always kept my distance from men back in the village. Their leering had been more than enough to remind me of who my mother was and what they expected of me. The knife I’d always carried at my belt had not been for decoration, it had become necessary after run-ins with men who’d not heard of my brothers’ fierce reputations or my weaponry skills.

  But Tobiah did not look at me the way they had. The way he’d touched me did not make me wish I were invisible, or cause me to curl up inside, wishing for death. Instead, I’d had to close my eyes to restrain the swell of hope that surged upward and clench my fists against the force of desire to make the too-small gap between us vanish.

  How had my enemy captured me so completely?

  Yet even as I considered my bondage, I remembered that he had vowed to not hold me here against my will. Tobiah had never threatened me. He’d never forced me to do anything, never manipulated me. He had only protected me, as he had promised. He’d appointed his cousins to ensure my safety and watched over me by lying across the opening of the tent every night.

  Truth flooded through me. I was not a captive. I never had been.

  I knew for certain that if I stood up right now, grabbed my bow, and left the tent, Tobiah would stand by his word. He would let me go. The thought filled me with crushing anguish.

  “Tobiah was only four when it happened.” Nita’s low voice reached through the dark, startling me with its haunting tone in the stillness. Usually by this time of night, Nita was already in the depths of sleep.

  Was she talking to me? Or voicing some memory aloud for her own benefit? As I waited for her to continue, the sheer canopy above us undulated from a cool breeze tinged with the slightest scent of the nearby sea. I shivered, and Bodo stretched in his sleep, then curled in closer to my chest.

  “I wonder . . .” She whispered, for Tobiah was nearby, stretched across the tent entrance on his mat. “I wonder if he even remembers anything.”

  “What would he remember?” I whispered back. A brief image of a Liyam-sized Tobiah slipped into my imagination, a small boy who would someday be the warrior who snatched my life back from the precipice of death.

  “The night his brothers died. My three nephews, along with their entire families, were killed. Their young wives. Their children.” Her voice went flat.

  My mouth gaped, although the older woman could not see it in the dark. “How?” The hesitant question somehow pressed through the pinch of my throat.

  “My brother married Rivka back in Avaris. They had three sons.” A sigh broke from her lips, its tail end curved into an audible smile. “Oh, they were beautiful boys, Alanah. Tzipi’s boys resemble them in so many ways. As if Yahweh kept pieces of my nephews and scattered them in Liyam, Mahan, and Yonel as a consolation.”

  The three boys had kept their distance from me after Tzipi’s edict, especially Liyam. But there were times when I caught Liyam’s eyes on my bow, one tiny hand tugging at the other as if it were a bowstring. More than once I restrained myself from dropping a wink his way, a rebellious nudge of encouragement for the obvious fascination with archery, and with me.

  “Tobiah and Tzipi came late for Uri and Rivka. Rivka was past her thirty-seventh year. It was such a surprise! And twins! What a blessing. Especially after all we had endured under Pharaoh and during our flight into the wilderness.”

  She turned onto her side, her form silhouetted against the glow of the moon on the tent wall. “We had been in this detestable wilderness for so long, Alanah. And the longer we tarried, the shorter our memories became. One of the Levites, a man named Korah who was a cousin to Mosheh and Aharon, began to sow seeds of discord among some of his tribe. It started quietly, some murmuring, some questioning of whether Mosheh really knew what he was doing. Whether he had become senile in his old age.”

  “Was there an uprising?”

  “There wa
s. And my nephews were involved.”

  “Did they raise arms against Mosheh?”

  “They never had a chance.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Mosheh ordered the unrepentant rebels to be separated out, along with their families. And then, within the hour . . . the earth began to tremble.” She paused as if caught up in the latent sensations of such a terrible thing. “The ground split open. Oh—” She sighed. “Alanah, I will never forget the sight of that enormous gaping mouth slicing through camp, racing toward them. And every single person in Korah’s camp—man, woman, child, beast—all of them disappeared into that pit.”

  Cold shock paralyzed me. My tongue went dry in my mouth. “But—” I swallowed, trying to coax my voice out. “But why?”

  “Yahweh himself appointed Mosheh over us. And declared Aharon our high priest. Korah did not just question Mosheh. He raised himself up against El Shaddai, the Mighty God. If he allowed rebellion to slither its way through our camps, we would be removed from his divine protection. We would be exposed to the fury of the Egyptians. Exposed to the vengeance of the Amalekites. We would be slaughtered. It is to protect life that Yahweh has allowed life to be taken.”

  I thought of the fiery cloud that hovered nearby and the feeling it gave me whenever I looked its way, as if it was a mighty warrior, like Tobiah, standing guard over his people.

  “And now it is happening all over again.” She made a guttural noise of frustration. “These young ones. They do not understand. There are so few of us left who remember how destructive rebellion is. The slaughter after the Golden Calf was worshipped. The thousands who died. The firestorm that burned the outer rim of camp when the foreigners among us incited a riot.”

  She kept talking, as if to herself. “They take for granted the miraculous water that feeds this multitude. They have eaten the manna every day of their lives and do not see the utter strangeness of it. They have not felt the desperation of thirst or the hopelessness of hunger. All they do is complain.”

  “Why would they complain?”

  “You must understand, Alanah. My generation is almost completely gone. Nearly forty years ago, Mosheh sent twelve spies into Canaan. Ten of them came back with tales of the people . . . your people and their ferocity. The giants in the land. How the enormous walled cities were too mighty for us to conquer.”

  “As they are.” I did not even attempt to smother my smug response.

  She cleared her throat. “No, my dear. I know you do not understand, but there is no army, no fortress, no giant that can stand against our God. No one. I have seen his might with my own eyes.” Her voice grew stronger with each word. “I have walked through the bottom of the sea. On dry ground. I have watched as he humiliated Egypt and brought the mighty Pharaoh low.”

  I blinked into the darkness. The conviction in her voice was difficult to argue with. And truthfully, I had seen the way Yahweh fed them every day. Was this God truly as powerful as the Hebrews insisted?

  I’d had little to do with the gods since I was a child. No use for deities who stole everything, ignored pleas and offerings—no matter how bloody—and capriciously withheld rain and devastated crops at their whims. No use for deities that would steal a mother from her child.

  Although my father’s wives groveled at the feet of their household gods, I ignored the lumps of clay and stone carvings that represented the gods in the heavens and instead spent my time outside, stalking deer, working in the orchards, and honing my shooting skills. The gods took. They took everything.

  “Even my own sons are complaining,” Nita said. “They cannot understand why we don’t just push forward into the land, as we should have forty years ago. They are prepared, body and soul, to fight this fight. And truthfully, we all are tired of the desert. I must admit, even I have been dreaming about lush grass and fields of wheat and barley, lakes and rivers and flowers and fruit . . .” Her voice trailed off. “Even if I will never see it, it’s good to know that my children and theirs will enjoy it.”

  “Why wouldn’t you? Since you obviously believe my people will be overthrown?”

  She paused so long I wondered if she had gone to sleep.

  “I won’t live to see it, Alanah. When the spies returned with their report from Canaan, we all were terrified. Myself included, I must admit. And instead of trusting Yahweh, we wondered if perhaps it would have been better had we not left Egypt in the first place. My Zakariyah, too, was among the men who took up the cause with Mosheh, saying that perhaps we should consider returning to the mountain where we had lived after our flight from Egypt.”

  As they should have. My family would still be alive.

  “Because of our faithlessness . . . because of our rebellion . . . Yahweh pronounced judgment upon us. None of us who were over twenty years old will set foot in the Promised Land. I will die. Soon.”

  18

  8 IYAR

  1407 BC

  I’m so glad both of you came.” Shira embraced me, careful of the shoulder she’d just this morning finally given me permission to move freely. Although the ache remained where the arrow had pierced me, I was surprised at the range of motion I had somehow retained, in spite of the depth of the wound.

  Shira patted Tobiah’s arm. “The wedding feast has already begun, but you are both welcome to join us. Come, I will introduce you to our family.”

  I’d been hesitant to accept Shira’s invitation to the wedding feast of Kiya’s grandson, but she’d insisted it was my payment for her healing services. This directive was, of course, delivered with a smile and I was glad for the diversion from the unsettling things Nita had told me and the ominous declaration that her life was very near the end.

  A blur of faces and names hurtled at me from every side as Shira guided us through the large gathering, gesturing to various guests. “My son Avi and his wife, Liora. My son Dov and his wife, Rachel. Kiya’s daughter Nailah, whose own son has just been married.”

  Nailah was a replica of her mother, tall, slim, and exotically beautiful, the two of them so similar they could have been sisters, except for Nailah’s grayish-green eyes that I recognized as inherited from Shira’s family.

  A swarm of tiny children surged toward Shira, tugging at her skirt, begging for attention with little hands and the name of their grandmother on their lips. She knelt down, speaking with each one in turn, her eyes trained on theirs as she listened to each regale her with stories of some uncle named Jumo who had let them take turns on his drums.

  My chest constricted so painfully that I had to press my lips together to restrain a gasp. A memory washed over me with such vivid, bright detail that I was suddenly back in my home in the valley, sitting on a bed, tucked into someone’s arms, telling her about something one of my older brothers had done, some minor offense that felt enormous in my small mind.

  My mother. It had to be. I could feel the warmth of her body. Smell the flowery sweetness of her bright red hair. Hear the lilt of her voice as she comforted me.

  “Alanah? Are you well?” Tobiah’s arm had somehow slipped around my waist, holding me up against the heaviness that threatened to press me into its shadows.

  I should pull away. Put distance between us. But somehow the fit of my body against his expansive chest felt like the most natural thing in the world. As if the space had been carved out for me alone.

  Heat flooded up my neck. “N-no . . .” I stammered. “I can stand . . . I am well.” I seized on the only excuse my mind could conjure. “My shoulder hurt for a moment. But I am fine.”

  His eyes narrowed as if he knew I was lying, but he released me.

  Shira gestured for us to sit near her but immediately was caught up in conversation with a few nearby women. They chattered like a flock of waterbirds, trading stories, laughing, waving their hands in rhythm with jubilant, overlapping words.

  Someone handed Tobiah a large bowl of stew and a basket full of manna bread. He placed the meal on the ground in front of us, broke a piece of bre
ad in half and handed it to me. We ate in silence, dipping bread into the bowl of stew time and again. Somehow, even in the midst of a loud celebration, with over sixty people gathered into this large campsite, I felt the most relaxed I’d been in as long as I could remember. Tobiah’s quiet presence next to me had a soothing effect—as did the wine that someone had thrust into my hand. Someone else had refilled the wine, twice.

  “I’ve never been to a wedding feast.” The words bubbled from my lips like a freshwater spring.

  “No?” He twisted his mouth to the side, his expression dubious.

  “My father simply brought his wives to our home one day, without ceremony.”

  “You had no other family? Or friends who married?”

  “Most of my father’s family lived in the territory of Edom.” Except for his older brother, whose son, Dagan, had stolen everything from me after my father’s death.

  “And my mother . . . I’m not sure where she came from . . . from the far north . . . Sidon, I think? Or perhaps even farther away. I have a vague recollection of a story about her family fleeing on a ship and making their way to Canaan. But I do not know who told me such a thing.” I shrugged, surprised that I’d allowed the memory to surface. “My father does not—my father did not speak of her.” Where had this sudden compulsion to tell Tobiah of my family come from? I dropped my head and therefore, hopefully, the subject.

  My hopes were denied.

  “Tell me more.” Tobiah’s voice was closer than I expected. When I turned my head to look at him, he had moved directly next to me, our arms nearly touching. The look of expectancy on his face was shocking. Was he so interested in my family?

  I drew my brows together. “What do you want to know?”

  “Tell me about your home.”

  I paused, feeling as if my toes were dangling over the edge of a steep precipice. If I took a step forward, there was no returning. Everything in me was urging me onward, daring me to take the chance, to open the door to this man who had somehow, against my every instinct, knocked down my defenses.