Between the Wild Branches Read online

  I was sorry that he died at the hands of the Philistines, but I did not mourn him—only that his children would barely remember the man they once called Abba, even if he’d had little interest in them, or me, when he was alive. The only reason Medad had wanted me in the first place was to punish Lukio for the last time they’d fought, when Lukio had beaten him senseless for publicly slandering Eliora. Medad had even admitted as much to me once, crowing over the fact that it had been all too easy for him to suggest that my father satisfy the gambling debts he owed with his own young and innocent daughter.

  To push away the bitter memories, I indulged myself in a few moments of hope while I waited for Lukio. I imagined Aaliyah and Asher with Elazar’s family, exploring the woods with the other children who lived on the mountain. I thought of them climbing into Yoela’s lap to hear stories, knowing that Eliora and Lukio’s adoptive mother would treat them as her own grandchildren. And even though it hurt, I imagined their sweet voices exclaiming over all the new things they would experience on the mountain where I was born.

  A tear slipped from my eye as I recalled the sound of their laughter, their voices calling me Ima, the feel of their arms around my neck, and their precious bodies pressed to mine while I rocked them to sleep at night. I forced myself to smile as I imagined them happy. Safe. Loved.

  And it had to be enough. For now.

  “It is good to see you smile,” said Lukio, making the cherished images disappear behind my eyelids.

  Startled, I surged to my feet, hoping in the dim starlight he hadn’t noticed the tears I’d shed while dreaming of my children.

  “This has to end, Lukio.” I tossed the shell at his feet, where it cracked in half. “It’s fortunate that Mariada hasn’t seen any of these on her sill. I would be hard-pressed to explain. How did you get them in without anyone seeing, anyhow?”

  He grinned, the unguarded and dazzling curve of his lips threatening to steal my breath. “I bribed one of the kitchen maids to sneak into the room, in the guise of collecting used dishes.”

  A streak of fear shot through me. “What if she reveals that to someone?”

  He shrugged one large-muscled shoulder. “She thinks they are gifts for your mistress. She finds the gesture delightful.”

  I frowned at the flippant way he spoke of charming Mariada, even if it was not my place to be unsettled by such things. “Regardless. You cannot summon me again. It is only complicating matters.”

  His mismatched eyes studied me. “How is it a complication? From what I’ve heard, Mariada goes to bed early and sleeps like the dead. I need to speak with you, so I coincided my messages with nights that I’ve been meeting with Nicaro to discuss plans for the solstice festival. If someone questions my presence in the palace—which they won’t—I can make it seem as though I am visiting my betrothed. None of these people would blink an eye at such an explanation. Only a Hebrew would find that sort of behavior suspicious or immoral.”

  My face flushed. Not only from the swipe at my heritage and my convictions but at talk of intimacies between himself and Mariada.

  Ignoring whatever emotion he saw in my expression, he clucked his tongue and bent to pick up the two halves of the shell I’d destroyed, examining them and then lining up the fracture until the seam disappeared. “I liked that one. It changes colors in the sunlight.” His voice dropped to a murmur. “It reminded me of your eyes.”

  Heat flowed into every one of my limbs in a rush, and something like panic mixed with pleasure stirred in my blood. The feeling was dangerous. Reckless.

  “Lukio,” I whispered with urgency, “what is it you need to say? We cannot meet again.”

  Curiosity moved across his furrowed brow, but then he sighed and leaned back against the wall. “I’m determined to find a way to get you home—”

  “I am not going anywhere,” I said, cutting off whatever plans he thought to lay out.

  His eyes went wide at my adamant statement. “I’ll make certain you are safe.”

  I shook my head, lips pressed tightly.

  “I would never put you in danger, Shoshana,” he said in a gentle tone, dropping all pretense of the haughty Philistine champion. Instead, he was my Lukio. The sweet boy with the tender heart who’d promised to keep me safe from every harm. Who’d chased off jackals, coyotes, snakes, and even a wildcat once during our nighttime explorations in the woods. Who’d dried my tears and caressed my hair while holding me tight under our sycamore.

  The affection in the words, along with the way his deep voice caressed my name, made me want to tell him everything. To throw myself into his arms and plead with him to make it all go away. But that would do nothing more than make a precarious situation even more difficult. I had to make him understand but without revealing too much.

  “I am fine where I am,” I said. “Mariada is a good mistress. I have no fear for my safety. Leave me be, Lukio.”

  “I will not,” he said, his jaw setting in that familiar way he had whenever I’d disagreed with him about which path to take in the woods. “You are vulnerable here. These people—” He paused, taking a swift breath through his nose. “These people see you as less than human, Shoshana. They would have no issues with using you. Mariada may be kind to you because she is by nature a tenderhearted girl, but you do not understand what could happen if—” He stopped to swallow hard against whatever he’d meant to say. “If you’d seen some of the things I have, the way female slaves are abused . . .” He shook his head, his expression thunderous. “I won’t allow it. No. You have to go.”

  The proprietary way he spoke suddenly made my blood boil. He may have known me as a child, and yes, I’d made promises to him back then, but those meant nothing anymore. I’d been married and widowed and enslaved since he’d left. He’d gone back to his Philistine kinsmen and then betrothed himself to one of their women. There was nothing between us now but regret and bittersweet memories.

  I gritted my teeth against the rising frustration, but the words exploded from my mouth anyhow. “You are about a year and a half too late for all that.”

  “What do you mean?” His words were measured and low, his eyes going narrow with menace. I’d spoken too much, but there was no retreating now.

  “Do you think that your soldiers merely came to Beth Shemesh, killed my husband, and then sweetly escorted me to this place?” My chest heaved as unwelcome images of that day reared up. “No. They slaughtered most everyone. They burned the town. They slit the throat of the old woman I tried to save as if she were nothing more than a sow to be butchered. If I hadn’t sent my two children off with someone before the attack, their little bodies would have been among the dead. Or worse, they would have been captured. Because your people have no mercy, Lukio. They aren’t bound to Torah laws that protect prisoners of war—especially women and children—from the aftermath of battle.”

  My entire body was shaking. Memories of what I’d endured came at me so powerfully that I could smell the stink of my attacker’s breath. Feel the pain in my scalp as he gripped my hair in his fist. Hear the sound of his mocking words while he stripped every shred of my dignity away. I held my breath, counting my heartbeats until I was able to speak again.

  I let my gaze meet Lukio’s. From the way his hands were balled into white-knuckled fists and the storm of rage on his face, he clearly understood what I’d been through.

  “So yes, Lukio, I know the risks of remaining in this city. But I won’t leave. I can’t.”

  His response came out like the slow grind of a knife against stone. “What possible reason could you have for staying here after what happened to you? And why, when I am offering you the means, wouldn’t you go back to your children?”

  The truth scalded its way up my throat as it burst free. “I won’t leave my daughter!”

  His head snapped back. “What?”

  I closed my eyes for just a moment, collecting myself. There was no use in holding any of it back now. I released a slow, shuddering breath before I spo
ke again.

  “Nine months after Beth Shemesh, I gave birth to a baby girl.”

  His mouth opened, but no words came out.

  “And even though Mariada is kind and was much more lenient than most mistresses would be, I was not allowed to keep my child, of course. I only held her for a few hours.”

  I could still feel the ghostly weight of that precious bundle. When they came to take her away, I could do nothing. Say nothing. She was in my arms and then she was just gone.

  “But you said you won’t leave her . . .” he began, and I could practically see his mind working through everything I’d revealed as he swiped one of his large hands down his face and over his stubbled chin. “If they took her away, then why insist on staying here?”

  I dropped my chin, choking back a sob. “Tela lost a baby a couple of months before, when she was weeks from giving birth. She replaced her dead child with mine.”

  He let out a muted curse. “No wonder she was so hostile on the beach when Mariada suggested you hold her.”

  “I suspect Virka doesn’t even know the difference. He was gone during that time. He missed the death of his own child and the switch Tela made for another. Only her maid, her mother, and her sisters knew about the miscarriage anyhow. If her husband is suspicious, he’s given no indication that I’ve seen.”

  Lukio said nothing, only ran his hand through his long hair, which had somehow come undone from the knot at the back of his head.

  “My other children, Aaliyah and Asher, are safe. I sent them to live with Elazar and Yoela.” His eyes went wide at mention of his family in Kiryat-Yearim, but I pressed on, needing him to understand my reasoning. “But my baby is trapped here in this abhorrent city, and I will not walk away from her.”

  “So, you will endure slavery for the rest of your life, simply for a few glimpses of your daughter in the arms of a woman who treats you like an animal?”

  “Trust me, I have no intention of either one of us staying any longer than we have to.”

  His brow furrowed. “But how—”

  I put up a hand. “That is of no concern to you. I have a plan, and any further communication between us will only interfere. So, stop this, Lukio.” I gestured to the broken shell in his hand. “I appreciate that you want to help for the sake of the friendship we once shared, but I need you to let it go. Let me go.”

  He met my gaze, and I allowed my own to tangle with his. An ocean of grief and regret and broken promises swirled in the chasm between us.

  “I need to get back,” I said as I turned my back on him and the yearnings his presence dragged to the surface. “I’ve spent far too long up here.”

  But before I took three steps, his hand wrapped around my wrist. He pulled me to a stop and then came so near I could feel the heat of him against my shoulder. My heartbeat crashed against my ribs as memories broke through the wall I’d so carefully built around the past.

  Although we’d been children when our friendship began, the last year of our time together had been different. Still innocent, of course. But there had been lingering embraces, whispered words of affection, promises made, and one sweet but bone-melting kiss mere days before my father sold my future to Medad instead of the boy who held my heart in his young but ax-roughened hands.

  “I should not have left,” he said, his voice gruff in my ear. “I should have stayed and fought for you. I should have told Elazar about our understanding. If I had, perhaps—”

  I shook my head. “My father was serious about not allowing me to see Levi and Yadon again. And as much as I cared for you, I couldn’t lose them. I could not have made any other choice.” Grief compounded on grief, as I mourned again that it was all for nothing, since after Medad moved us to Beth Shemesh they were lost to me after all. I’d not seen their precious faces since the day I’d left the mountain.

  “I understand,” he said. “I would have done the same for Risi.”

  “For as worthless a husband as Medad was, Aaliyah and Asher were worth all of it. And regardless of how my baby’s life began, she is worth the sacrifice.” I looked back up at him and pressed my free hand to my chest in a futile attempt to stop the violent twisting of my heart. “I won’t abandon her, Lukio.”

  “You wouldn’t be the girl I knew if you did,” he said, his beautiful mismatched eyes glittering in the starlight.

  For as much as both of us had changed between that awful moment we’d parted and now, I could see now that he was still the boy who’d been my closest friend and confidant. The one whose embrace had made me feel like nothing could ever harm me. So, I allowed myself the indulgence of leaning into his warmth one last time, laying my cheek against his broad chest, and breathing deeply of the scent of him, at once familiar and strange.

  “You will come to me if you need anything,” he said, the sound of his low voice reaching into the marrow of my bones while his large palm stroked down the length of my hair just one time.

  I nodded and pulled out of his hold, instantly feeling chilled at the loss of his nearness and my throat aching from the urge to weep. But I forced myself to walk away, leaving him alone on the terrace with a broken shell and all my futile longings for what might have been.

  Thirteen

  Lukio

  I’d been staring into the same half-empty horn of beer for most of the morning, seated on an intricately carved cedar chair—not unlike the one Nicaro had occupied during the boat races—in the hearth room I’d had designed to mimic the grand one in the palace.

  Alone beneath the vibrant blue ceiling my craftsmen had painted to blend seamlessly with the sky, which could be seen through the large opening in the roof above the circular stone hearth, I’d not moved from this place for hours, my eyes latched to the colorful mural on the far wall. Teitu had come in a number of times in the guise of asking whether I needed more food or drink, but judging from the furrow between his black brows, he was worried about more than my stomach. However, he said nothing, wise enough to know I was in no mood to talk.

  It had been three days since Shoshana had revealed what happened at Beth Shemesh, and I’d not slept more than a few hours since that conversation. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw my Tesi fighting off a monster, crying out for help—crying out for me. And almost equal to my regret for leaving her behind to endure such horrors alone was the memory of her cheek pressed to my chest and the soul-deep satisfaction of having her so close to me after all these years.

  I looked around this beautiful villa I’d built—the rich furnishings, the intricate murals, the finely woven fabrics that covered the cushions on long stone couches along the walls, the fluttering white curtains over the windows that stretched from ceiling to floor—and wondered how it was that Medad, my greatest enemy, had had a richer life and hadn’t even known it.

  He’d had what I’d dreamed of for years. A life with Shoshana. Children with her.

  I’d once imagined using my woodcutting skills to provide a home for my own family. The satisfaction of using my ax to create piles of wood to keep that family warm. Building a house with my own two hands to keep them safe and dry. I’d envisioned coming home to my Tesi and her dimpled smile and carrying my adoring children about on my shoulders like I’d seen Elazar do with his younger sons and daughters.

  Medad had taken it all from me, and from what Shoshana had said, he hadn’t appreciated any of it. If the man was not dead already, I would gladly find him and repay him for the way he’d treated the family that should have been mine.

  He’d once been my friend, and his friendship made me feel like finally I was part of the community of Kiryat-Yearim. He’d invited me into the games he and his younger brothers played, without a question for what sort of blood flowed within my body. But when the boys’ father discovered his sons with me during a raucous game of war among the trees, he dragged Medad off by the hair, leaving my ears blistered by his vicious opinion of my contemptible heritage and the strangeness of my mismatched eyes, which he deemed an indication of
my inherent evil and baseborn nature.

  From that day forward, Mehad had made it his mission to prove his father’s words true to everyone in Kiryat-Yearim, as if by doing so he could erase the fact that he’d once been kind to a Philistine.

  He took every opportunity to mock and humiliate me, naming me Demon Eyes, which made the dual-colored eyes that Risi had told me were a special and unique gift from our parents—since our mother’s eyes were brown and our father’s green—into something I began to resent.

  When the attacks on my appearance no longer seemed to rile me, Medad aimed for my heritage, scorning the Philistines for their habit of eating abominable things like swine, dogs, and rats before moving on to swipe at my connection to Elazar’s family, saying they took Risi and me in only out of pity, and that Gershom and Iyov were not my true brothers and never would be; that I would never be anything more than a Philistine dog to them.

  Medad played on every fear and insecurity I had until he made me doubt everything and everyone, including myself. After a few months, I was convinced that Risi and Shoshana were the only people in the world who cared for me at all.

  And yet, if what Shoshana had said was true, Elazar’s family had all searched for me—even the men I’d rejected as brothers. Not just for a few hours, but for weeks, all the while I was running off to chase after achievements that I was coming to see meant absolutely nothing.

  I pushed to my feet and threw the ceramic horn at the hearth, feeling a hit of satisfaction at the sound of pottery shattering across the shells and river stones that swirled in the beautiful circular patterns I’d commissioned a master tile-layer to create. Every guest I’d had for the past few years had been awed by the design, and I’d been thrilled by the pleasure such admiration for my home gave me. Now I wished I could rip up the entire useless thing with my own hands and crumble each piece to dust. I wished I could lean my body against the blue and scarlet columns that held up the roof on this gaudy villa and pull it down around my ears like Samson did that temple in Gaza.