To Dwell among Cedars Read online

  “Your Gibeonite friends seem quite knowledgeable about these woods,” I said, using my own smaller ax to chop the branches. “How did you meet them?”

  He went stiff for a moment, but I kept my expression bland and my ax at work so he would not ascribe nefarious motives to the question.

  Something must have assuaged his defensiveness, however, because he began to tell me about how one day he’d been exploring the southwestern slope and happened across the two Gibeonites.

  “They didn’t care where I was from,” he said with a shrug. “They simply invited me to help them cut up a tree they’d felled and taught me about all the different varieties and best uses for each type of wood.”

  “Valuable information,” I admitted.

  “It is. And I hope to join their endeavors soon. They’re getting rich off the Philistines.”

  “How so?”

  “Iron forges need wood,” he said, “and lots of it. It’s one of the reasons the serens of Philistia want this land so badly. The shephelah contains some of the thickest forests south of Tyre.”

  “And we control most of the shephelah.”

  “Yes. So, for now, the Gibeonites are profiting from the Hebrew domination of this area by logging and transporting the wood to the coast. Although if my ancestors get their wish, they’ll overrun these hills and do their own clear-cutting.”

  I paused at his blasé statement.

  “Doesn’t that upset you? That many of your heritage want to subjugate the people who’ve adopted you?”

  “I suppose so,” he said, and although conflict raged in his dual-colored eyes, his tone was dismissive. That he even tolerated the idea of the Philistines overtaking us deeply unsettled me, so I allowed silence to drape over us as we stripped the trunk of branches. But soon the quiet became burdensome, causing my bones to buzz and my skin to prickle with unease, so I made another attempt to draw him out.

  “I enjoyed the Shabbat gathering the other night,” I said. “Your family’s reputation for hospitality is well deserved.”

  He grunted a non-response. Then, coming at the log from two different directions, he created a notch in the wood before using his whole upper body to come down on the trunk. Sooner than I expected, he’d split the roots of the olive tree from the upper half.

  “Your brothers must be impressed with your ability,” I said.

  He huffed a mirthless laugh. “They are only glad they don’t have to waste their precious time cutting wood.”

  His tone was so derisive that I felt a sharp pang of defensiveness for Gershom and Iyov, whom I’d found to be nothing but welcoming. Although their presence at the meal had caused me a small amount of discomfort, since their tendency to poke at each other good-naturedly and their obvious affection for their siblings, including Eliora and Natan, reminded me so much of my older brothers that I’d avoided looking their way.

  “I am certain that is not the case,” I said. “Levitical training can be intensive. Learning the statutes of the Torah from the elders and painstakingly memorizing the words of Mosheh is no easy task. There is a reason it takes years to accomplish. Gershom and Iyov are doing what their heritage demands, but that does not change their regard for you.”

  “They are not even my real brothers,” he said, propping a foot on the trunk of the tree as his eyes rolled skyward.

  Somehow the snide gesture snapped something inside me, but I did my best to rein in the anger that lapped at my restraint. “I’d do anything to have my own brothers alive again, Natan. Do not belittle the worth of good men who’ve called you brother and treated you as equal to their blood kin since you came to this mountain.”

  His nostrils flared as he glared back at me. “I did not ask to come to this mountain.”

  His harsh words startled me. “Perhaps not. But you cannot argue the fact that Elazar’s family has been far better to you than any Philistine would a Hebrew. If it were the other way around, you would be a slave. Not a son. Or a brother.”

  His chin jerked as if he’d been slapped, brows coming together as he stared at me. Although a hundred other admonishments sprang to my lips, not the least being the way his wayward behavior wounded his sister, I held my tongue, allowing him time to consider the weight of my words. As I did so, I realized that Natan and I had much in common. Both of us had lost fathers. Both of us had been embraced by families not our own.

  Although Abiram was nothing like my father, who’d been far less openly opinionated than his older brother, and twice as compassionate, he still had taken me in when my mother had turned her back on me. And Machlon had filled a large part of the void my brothers had left behind. No matter that I was becoming increasingly unsettled by the idea of betraying Elazar and his family, I could not fail the men who’d given me so much and who were the only family I had left. Nor could I fail my people by letting my heart rule over my head.

  When the silence again filled with that same buzzing from before, I decided to shift away from such a fraught conversation, sensing that if I pushed him any further today, I would lose any chance that he might eventually confide in me.

  “I need an arm-length piece,” I said, gesturing to the trunk under his foot and forcibly clearing my expression of frustration. “And about as thick as a man’s wrist.” I wrapped my fingers around my own to demonstrate.

  Natan’s eyes narrowed slightly, perhaps suspicious of the change in subject. But then his features relaxed, and the corner of his mouth tipped up.

  “Your arm? Or mine?” he said, stretching his hands far to the side, his huge ax still clutched in his fist. The boy did have an impressive wingspan, and he knew it, if the edge of mockery in the question was any indication.

  I was glad for the slight dig, however. It gave me leave to nudge him in more profitable directions. “If we made the neck for the lute as long as your arm no one would be able to play it but you. And I don’t think we have time to teach you before Yom Teruah.”

  His brows rose, a hint of amusement pulling at his lips. Then he set about splitting the log lengthwise, as I considered how best to bring up the Ark and stealthily ask about his midnight activities.

  “I saw Eliora’s face this morning,” I said, deciding to aim two stones with one hand. “It’s fortunate she wasn’t hurt worse. I still don’t understand what she was doing out there in the first place, though.”

  Natan’s ax paused at the top of his swing as he darted a glance at me. “It’s just like my sister to chase after the moon without thinking.” He let the ax-head drop with a heavy crack.

  “What do your brothers have to say?” I cringed at being forced to use my own culpability, but I could think of no other way to steer the conversation. “Do they think whomever ran into her was after the Ark?”

  “I couldn’t say,” he replied, swinging the ax down again on the log. “They don’t tell me much.”

  “Have you seen it?” I asked, doing my best to sound disinterested. “Since we brought it up here?”

  “The Ark? Of course not. Have you forgotten I’m not one of you?”

  “Hebrew?”

  “No. Levite. I’m not to even approach the guards when they are on duty, in case I should accidentally step over some invisible line and burn to ash.” He scoffed.

  “So, you don’t believe the Ark is dangerous? Even after Beth Shemesh?”

  “I was seven.” He shrugged. “All I remember is a storm and lightning. Besides, Arisa covered my eyes after that and wouldn’t let me look over the wall, saying that it was too horrible to see. She may be blinded by devotion to your Yahweh, but I’m not convinced.”

  The scornful way he spoke of Eliora’s faith in the One True God gave me pause. I wondered what had convinced her so thoroughly that Yahweh was the God above all gods. Had it been the old Hebrew slave who taught her to speak our language? Or had it been whatever she imagined happened during that storm in the valley? I’d accidentally overheard her tearful pleas to Adonai in the garden and felt certain she believed that h
e heard every word, as if he were a friend meeting with her, like Adam in Gan Eden.

  “Were you serious before?” asked Natan, the expression on his face suddenly boyish. “About the lute?”

  I unrolled the words we’d spoken over this past hour and remembered that I’d teased him about learning to play. “Do you want to learn?”

  His man-size hands twisted back and forth on the handle of his ax, and a faint blush pinked his thinly bearded cheeks. “Shoshana enjoys music.”

  Understanding dawned almost immediately, but I refused to embarrass the young man. “Shoshana? The girl from the other day?”

  Natan cleared his throat and nodded. “She and I . . . are friends. We have an understanding of sorts.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Please—you can’t—don’t say anything to Elazar,” he said, his words tripping over themselves.

  “I would never betray a confidence,” I said, placing a hand on my heart to display my sincerity. “You have no cause to worry.”

  His shoulders relaxed, but he seemed to be having trouble looking me in the eye. How quickly he vacillated between boyhood and manhood. I wondered if my brothers had seen the same double-mindedness in me when I was fifteen.

  “But I will say this—” I waited until he finally lifted his curious gaze—“one day she will make a lovely bride.”

  He smiled the first true, genuine smile I’d ever seen on his lips. “She has always been kind to me,” he said quickly, as if he were desperate for my approval. “Even when many of the other Hebrew children were not.”

  The sorrow within that statement reminded me once again that inside Natan the near-man was Lukio, the orphan whose foreign looks and manner must have made him an outcast of sorts among the children of Kiryat-Yearim. I wondered how much of that painful history played into the fight I’d broken up between him and one of the locals near his age.

  “One day I will be ready to provide for her.” Natan held up the ax, his meaning clear. His drive to become a woodcutter like the Gibeonites had less to do with a desire for riches and more to do with the young woman he’d set his future hopes on. “And then I will ask Elazar to arrange a match.”

  I studied the piece of olive wood that he’d expertly cut to give myself time to arrange my thoughts. Although he’d given me very little indication that he knew the location of the Ark, I suspected he might know more than he let on. “Unfortunately, it will take a day or two to carve and sand down this piece of wood into a serviceable neck for the lute, and then the musicians will be using it for practice, so I won’t be able to teach you how to play.”

  His shoulders slumped, his countenance falling.

  “However . . .” I grinned, enjoying the way his face lit with anticipation as I teasingly drew out the word. “I brought another instrument with me from home, one that is easier to learn than the lute. Perhaps I can bring it up with me in the morning and I’ll teach you a song or two?”

  “Truly?” He sounded incredulous. “You’d do that for me?”

  “Of course! Besides, I still owe you a debt after you beat me so handily at dice all those years ago. I’ll teach you and we can call it even. Yes?”

  He laughed, shaking his head. But then his grin faltered. “Eliora made me promise to help with the apple harvest tomorrow. With all the fruit on those trees of hers, the work will probably take up the next couple of days.”

  Time was not my friend. Yom Teruah was only a couple of days away, and I was no closer to pinpointing the location of the Ark than I had been when I came. I had to figure out if Natan knew something, anything, that might point me in the right direction.

  “How about if I work extra hard repairing the lute this afternoon and then I come up and help with the apples tomorrow? That way the harvesting will go a little faster and you and I can work in some music lessons during breaks.”

  That honest smile appeared on his face again, and I wished Eliora were here now to see the miracle of it. “Shoshana will be pleased.”

  “Nothing better to win the heart of a beautiful woman than a song from your own heart.” My father had told me the same thing, speaking of the way he’d wooed my mother when he was only a little older than Natan. But as I spoke his words, it was not Natan’s Shoshana I was thinking of, but rather a green-eyed woman whose sweet voice was an intoxicating melody all on its own.

  It seemed the resolve to keep my distance was a weak one indeed.

  Twenty-Seven

  Eliora

  Reaching for the golden fruit at the very top of the tree, my fingertips barely brushed the sun-warmed skin of the apple as it slipped from my grasp yet again. Annoyed, I pushed upward on my toes, determined to conquer the very last holdout on the tree I’d been harvesting, but the ladder beneath me juddered and my footing slipped. I gasped loudly, desperately grabbing for a nearby limb, but in the same moment, Ronen appeared beneath the trembling ladder, his long fingers wrapping around the sides to steady its wooden frame.

  Natan had told me Ronen was coming to help today, but I’d been doing my best not to look over my shoulder every so often, anticipating his arrival. However, I’d been failing miserably, so his sudden appearance had come as a surprise.

  “I guessed that might happen,” he said, a mischievous glint in his dark eyes that made me think he must have been watching me for a while. “The ground is still soggy from last night’s rains. And I also knew you could not ignore that one at the top.”

  Frowning, I glared up at the offending apple, which mocked me from its unreachable perch among the dew-laden leaves. “I cannot just leave it,” I said, eyes narrowing, “or it will have won this battle.”

  He laughed, mouth wide and shoulders shaking. “Eliora, slayer of apples and all manner of wayward fruits. Perhaps you’ll let me be your champion?”

  I looked down at him, making a quick study of the shoulder-length hair swept into a dark knot at the back of his neck and the way the deep brown of his irises looked like well-polished mahogany in the sunlight, before glancing back up at the apple.

  “What is the use of being the tallest woman in Kiryat-Yearim if I cannot reach the top branches?” I grumbled, but descended the rungs of the ladder and traded places with him.

  Of course, he climbed the tree like a bushy-tailed squirrel and snagged the golden apple with ease, but instead of handing me the trophy, he put it to his mouth and took an enormous bite.

  “Ronen! What happened to acting as my champion?”

  He shrugged a shoulder, then descended with his ill-gotten gains. “It was worth the deception. This is the best apple I’ve ever tasted.”

  He took another bite, grinning at me as he chewed.

  I shook my head, feigning annoyance, but truly he seemed to be so lighthearted this morning, and my own spirits echoed the levity. Even the morning had been bright and the rains had ceased for a few hours, and I was grateful for the sun warming my back as I worked.

  “It should be the best apple you’ve had. It came all the way from Naftali territory.”

  “That far north?” he said incredulously.

  “Yes. One of the Levites who came to guard the mountain four years ago originated in Kedesh. He brought cuttings from some of the local trees with him, having heard that plants grew in this area with extraordinary abundance. He was curious to see if this variety might thrive here.”

  He tipped his head back to take in the height of the branches. “This tree grew so tall from a cutting in only four years?”

  “Oh no, it was joined with the root of another tree, one that was well-established but only produced bitter fruit.”

  “But how . . . ?” His forehead wrinkled. “I don’t understand.”

  “Come,” I said. “I’ll show you.”

  Ducking under the lowest branches, whose leafy fingertips nearly brushed the ground, I led him in a crouch through the dappled shade to the trunk.

  “This”—I pointed to the crotch between limbs—“is where the new portion was joined to th
e original tree. The Levite taught me how to cut the bark and attach the cutting with the trunk, then bind the wound with wax and cord until the two became one. We added seven branches to this tree, all of the Naftali variety he’d so carefully transported, wrapped in damp rags.” I pointed to the intersection of each one. “So now, instead of bitter fruit, this tree now bears apples that are sweeter than date honey.”

  “And this works with all trees?” His tone was incredulous.

  “Some better than others,” I replied with a shrug. “Many times well-cultivated olive branches are grafted onto wild trees, which produces an abundance of fruit in a shorter amount of time and higher quality oil. We aren’t certain why, but two of the branches we tried to affix to this tree did not actually take hold, although they were treated with the very same care. The Levite who brought these cuttings to Kiryat-Yearim insisted that the apples tasted even better than they had where he came from and wondered if something in the soil affected the flavor.”

  He reached a hand out to shake one of the branches, testing its integrity. “Foreign branches joined to an established tree,” he said, tilting his head back to gaze up through the leaves. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  A strange thought rooted itself in my head as he spoke. “Just like me.”

  “What’s that?” he asked, his attention back on me.

  “The branches were brought from far away and joined to this tree. Just like Natan and I came from Ashdod”—I touched two of the solid connections I’d wrapped with my own hands under the Levite’s guidance—“and became part of Elazar’s family.” I slid my hand down the trunk of the tree and then pointed at one of the curving roots that disappeared into the soil. “And now I am rooted on this mountain, as firmly as if I were born here.”

  How marvelous that two enemy children, wild branches by any measure, could—like my father had said—become one with the sons of Avraham. Just as if we were born of the same blood.

  The choice Elazar had given me eight years ago had been a gift of immeasurable mercy. He could have sent us back like Abinidab had offered to do. Or he could have simply left us there in the field to perish. But instead, he’d offered not just food and shelter, but a family whose love far outshined that of the one I’d been born into.