Between the Wild Branches Read online

  I tugged at whatever was holding my arms and legs together, making an attempt to escape whatever was to come, and found only frustration. I could not move at all. I could not fight an enemy I could not see or hear or touch.

  “Fear only the fetters you place on yourself.”

  I don’t want to be enslaved, I thought, even in my dreams feeling the track of hot tears down the sides of my face. Please, Yahweh. I want to go home. My true home.

  Again, gentle hands moved over me, touching the bindings at my wrists and then my feet. The weight of them released, offering me the sweetest of relief before I fell into sleep once again.

  Feet pounding on the deck above dragged me from the first peaceful dreams I’d had in hours, perhaps days. Blue skies. Green trees. My family. I cursed the interruption of such bliss and tried to reclaim it by squeezing my eyes tighter.

  A confusing flurry of activity began inside the hold—harsh whispers and then hiss of cargo being shoved and dragged across the floor.

  “He must be here,” said someone. “Keep looking.”

  “Natan?” said another low voice that sounded vaguely familiar. “Lukio?”

  Thinking I was perhaps still dreaming of home, since the voices spoke in Hebrew, I said nothing in response, only waited for whatever spirits had come for me to do what they must.

  More voices overlapped, and the boards upon which I lay vibrated from the pounding of feet. A small torch hovered over me, blinding me after so long in the darkness.

  “He’s here!”

  Once I could finally peel my one functioning eye open, I found three Philistine soldiers standing over me, none of whose dark bearded features I could distinguish clearly in the deep shadows cast by the torch.

  Were they here to beat me more? Why would they not just leave me to die?

  One of them knelt beside me, placing a hand on my forehead. “Fever. We’ll need to find help for him soon.”

  “How did he escape his shackles?” said another, wonder in his voice. “He’s too weak to break them like this himself.”

  “Can you stand?” one of them asked me. “We need to get you up the ladder.”

  I moaned at the thought of moving and then must have fallen into another stupor because I awoke to the sounds of axes chopping down trees. Or perhaps the ship was breaking apart and going down to the same depths that likely swallowed my father.

  Before I could make sense of the distinctive sound of wood splintering, I was being dragged by two of the Philistines. I considered fighting them, but what did I care what they did with my body anyhow? So, I did not struggle, even when they, and their companions, pulled me through a hole in the side of the boat, and I braced myself to be tossed into the black sea. But instead, I landed atop a tangle of fishing nets, in the bottom of yet another small vessel.

  “Throw it right in there,” said another soldier, as the smell of bitumen and smoke took over my senses. “The ship is full of oil and wine. It won’t take long to go up.”

  I turned my throbbing head just in time to see a torch arc across my sight, and in the flash of light I saw the young man beside me in the bottom of the boat. He looked familiar, with the same black hair as the other soldiers, but he was much younger, his beard not as full.

  My attention strayed to the sky above me. So many stars. As many as Tesi’s freckles but not nearly as beautiful.

  I must have spoken aloud, because the young soldier at my side replied, “You’ll see her soon enough, brother.”

  At his amused response to my ramblings, the haze that had swaddled me in confusion since I’d been thrown into the ship’s hold began to clear. I stared up at the young man, my addled mind trying to ascribe Yonah’s name to his face. But that couldn’t be. Yonah was just a boy and I’d callously left him behind to hate me forever. And yet, when my wavering vision moved to the faces of the other men closest to me in the boat, I found Gershom, Iyov, and even Ronen looking back at me with matching expressions of horrified concern.

  I blinked slowly, expecting the dream-fueled images to fade into the night sky, but the faces of my brothers remained on the bodies of the men dressed in Philistine garb, the ones who’d just pulled me from the depths of a ship’s hold and were now rowing with all their might. With my heart taking up a painfully lopsided gallop, I flicked my one eye back to the youngest of them.

  “Yonah?”

  Although his gaze was tinged with worry, he gave me a wide smile, which was illuminated by the flames that were already consuming the ship that had nearly been my tomb.

  “I know you always hated it when I followed after you, brother. But this time you had no choice.”

  Thirty-Five

  My brothers and the other Hebrews rowed through the night, battling the black sea and the insistent waves in order to reach the port of Yaffa before dawn. For men who’d never stepped foot on a boat before or navigated by the stars, their success in keeping the coast in sight throughout the night and reaching Danite territory unscathed was a miracle.

  While I lay on my sickbed in the house of a skilled healer in Yaffa for the next few days, struggling with bouts of fever and infection in my leg, Yonah told me the story of how they’d hurried to Ashdod after Shoshana told them of my fate, dressed in the same Philistine garb the Hebrew men had worn during their escape, and arrived just in time to watch the horrifying sight of me being vanquished on the fighting grounds. They’d watched from afar as I was hauled back, unconscious, to the watchtower, and then later that evening trailed after the soldiers as they took me in shackles up to the port.

  Hanan, the man who credited me with saving his daughters, had taken the risk of approaching Jaru after I’d been rowed out to the ship, which was anchored a short way off the coast, and once again Azuvah’s son had found a way to help.

  He’d had a large delivery of strong drink sent out to the Egyptian sailors, a “gift of gratitude” for keeping my presence on their vessel a secret. All the time I’d been languishing down in the hold, the sailors had been enjoying their bribe, making it almost laughably easy for the men of my family to overtake them in the small fishing vessel they’d stolen under cover of darkness.

  Yonah took great pleasure in describing how he’d picked three of them off with his bow before the Egyptians even realized they were under attack from their starboard side. By the time the other two men, who’d been left aboard to guard the vessel from just such an incident, shook themselves out of their drunken stupor, Ronen, Hanan, and my brothers had already climbed aboard and engaged them. Those men soon joined their compatriots in the depths before I was dragged aboard the fishing boat, half-mad with pain and fever.

  If they had not found a woman who knew how to treat battle wounds so well, all of their efforts might well have been in vain. Once my fever had broken, she’d stated that I would have in no way survived the sea voyage to Egypt. While she assured me the knife injuries that I’d sustained at my cousin’s hands would heal, she cautioned that I might always sustain a limp, a fact Yonah found quite amusing and jested that he’d not wait around for me while I trailed along after him in the woods.

  During my convalescence, Gershom and Iyov found a spice trader willing to allow us to travel with him on his way to Damascus, so I found myself flat on my back in a wagon, among baskets of herbs and pots of spices, enduring hour after painful hour of jostling as we made our way eastward. But I refused to complain, since I could have been at the bottom of the sea instead of on my way to Kiryat-Yearim.

  When night fell, camp was made on the side of the road within a small clearing of trees, and I was ushered between Ronen and Yonah to a pallet beside the fire. Over a meal of fish Iyov purchased at the port and fresh bread supplied by the kind healer before we’d taken leave of her home that morning, I pushed past the damage in my throat to tell my own story.

  Determined to splay it all before them, and undeterred by the presence of Hanan and the others, I told them every ugly detail of my time in Ashdod. After leaving their families and
risking everything to come for me, and after all my disrespectful and ungrateful behavior toward them, they deserved to know, and I deserved to endure the shame of the telling. I’d passed the time on my sickbed practicing just what I needed to say to these men I’d once refused to call brothers.

  “I do not expect forgiveness for the way I shunned your kindnesses toward me.” I cleared my throat and allowed my gaze to slowly move from Gershom, to Iyov, to Ronen, and to Yonah, so they could see the true depths of my contrition. “But I vow to spend the rest of my life atoning for being so hateful. I am determined to pay you all back for rescuing such an undeserving fool.”

  After a few long and painful beats of silence, Gershom leaned forward, elbows on his knees, to stare into my eyes. “We were more than ready to forgive you ten years ago when we set out to find you the day you left.”

  Guilt coated my tongue with bile as I prepared myself for his chastisement.

  “But that has not changed, brother, no matter how long you’ve been gone. Yes, you were a fool to run off like that, but you were a boy. And we should have done better by you. All of us. We failed you in many ways. We should have done better at trying to understand why you were angry, instead of simply reacting to your hostility.”

  I shook my head. “You were more than patient with me. I was determined to have my own way, and I was so full of bitterness that I doubt I would have ever listened.” Perhaps I had to endure all that I’d been through in order to see with clear eyes and understand that my sister had been right about Elazar and his family, after all.

  “Regardless of your choices in the past,” Iyov said, “we are proud of you.”

  I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

  “You saved lives, brother. And kept the Ark out of Ashdod’s hands. And from what Shoshana says, you did not hesitate to risk your own life to do so.”

  Teitu’s face hovered in my mind. “I could have done more—much more—had I not been so selfish and blind all these years.”

  “And Mosheh could have gotten us out of Egypt forty years earlier,” said Gershom with a shrug, “had he not been the same.”

  In the years since I’d left the mountain, it was apparent that Gershom had stepped into his role as Elazar’s successor well. He’d always been levelheaded and slow to speak, but now he was a man of deep wisdom. Or perhaps he’d always been so wise, and I’d just been too immature to recognize it. Either way, it was plain to see that he would continue the legacy Abinidab, Elazar’s father and the original keeper of the Ark, had left behind. And from what I could tell, Iyov’s role as an instructor to the young Levites in Kiryat-Yearim fit him well.

  “Well, I am certainly no Mosheh,” I said. “It was not a burning bush that opened my eyes to all I’d been willfully ignoring, but Shoshana.”

  “She was quite devastated to have to leave you behind,” said Ronen. “She’ll be relieved to see you.” Then he leaned closer, a glint of mischief in his eyes. “And to think, after all these years you can finally have the girl you always wanted.”

  “You knew about this thing between them?” asked Gershom, incredulous, as he batted a trail of smoke that curled into his eyes.

  “You never told them?” I asked Ronen.

  “Of course not,” he said with a furrow in his brow. “I may have hidden my intentions to steal the Ark from you and tried to manipulate you for information, but I promised I would not break your confidence about the girl.”

  Talk turned from my failings to the journey ahead, and I was grateful for it. The way they’d offered me such unmitigated forgiveness overwhelmed me, along with the fact that none of them seemed to even hold a grudge for all the grief I’d caused. I went to sleep that night with the stars overhead, my brothers beside me, and the deep sense that more than just my body was healing during this trek back to Kiryat-Yearim.

  In the morning, just after they’d loaded me into the wagon again like a half-gutted buck, I called Yonah over to me, needing to offer him a separate apology. I asked him to forgive me for shunning him so much of the time, especially for that last day when I’d left him thinking it was his fault I’d run off.

  “I won’t lie to you. It took me a long while to understand,” he replied, “but a few weeks later, Abba told me something that finally got through to me.”

  “And what was that?”

  “That when you came from Ashdod you’d not truly let go of Philistia. That it had a firm grip on your heart, one that was so strong only Adonai could break it. But he also reminded me that if Yahweh could part the sea, topple Jericho, and make the sun stand still for an entire day, then he could certainly break whatever chains bound you to Philistia and bring you home.”

  The echo of Samuel’s words in Elazar’s explanation made it all the more apparent that I’d not been alone in Ashdod. Somehow, the God I’d been so dismissive of for most of my life had answered my sister’s prayers on my behalf. Never was any man less deserving of such mercy.

  “There was no question that we would come for you, brother,” Yonah said, “only whether you would be glad to see us.”

  I reached up to put my hand on his shoulder, still reeling from the idea that this young man was the same little boy who used to trail after me in the woods, chattering loudly enough to scare all the birds away, and seemingly oblivious to the limp that hindered him. “Well, once I realized that you all were not evil spirits dragging me to the underworld, I was very glad indeed.”

  He grinned at me, mischief glimmering in his bright brown eyes. “Well, from what I hear from Shoshana, you had all the women in Ashdod falling at your feet. Now that we’ve kept you from rotting at the bottom of the sea, perhaps you can teach me a thing or two.”

  I stifled a groan as I stepped over a fallen tree branch, pain shooting into my hip and down past my knee. The winding path from Kiryat-Yearim up the top of the mountain somehow seemed to have grown to twice its length in my absence. But returning to Elazar’s home a broken and contrite man was bad enough; I had no intention of being carried there atop a litter on my brother’s shoulders. I would finish this final leg of our journey on my own two feet.

  Gershom and Iyov, along with Hanan and the other men I’d rescued in Ashdod, had gone up ahead to herald our arrival. By now, everyone would know I’d returned. And not only would I see my sister for the first time in ten years, but I would hold my Tesi in my arms again, where I was determined she would remain for the rest of my life.

  Waving away Ronen’s offer to stop for a while so I could rest my leg, I leaned heavily on the staff Iyov had found somewhere on the journey and pressed forward, the anticipation in my belly far more urgent than the ache in my limbs.

  An enormous beast burst from the bushes up ahead on the trail, causing both Ronen and Yonah to whip knives from their belts, their eyes wide as Igo charged for me with a yelp of joy. His entire body quivered with excitement as he pressed his big head into my uninjured hip, nearly knocking me down. I scratched behind his silky ears, nearly as glad to see him as he was me.

  Zevi followed soon after, his smile as wide as the sea.

  “Lukio!” he shouted as he barreled down the trail and then shocked me by throwing his arms around my waist. “You’re safe!”

  It did no good to swallow down the emotion that surged into my throat. My vision blurred as he pushed his face into my torso. I slid my hand into his dark curls and pressed him closer, telling him without words just what he meant to me.

  Three other boys had appeared on the trail, all a bit younger than Zevi, their eyes were wide as they took in the sight of us.

  The tallest of them jogged to Ronen’s side. “Abba! Did you defeat the Philistines?” The boy had very clearly inherited his mother’s large forest-colored eyes.

  “Of course, Avidan. What did you expect?” said Ronen with a proud grin. “And look, I’ve brought your uncle with me.”

  If possible, those eyes grew even larger and his jaw went slack. “He’s my uncle?” he half-whispered. “No wonder
he has such a big dog.”

  Chuckling, Ronen gestured to the other two boys. “This is Gavriel, Miri’s eldest, and Shalem, Iyov’s youngest.”

  So much life had passed while I’d been in Ashdod. I did not even know who all among Elazar and Yoela’s brood were married now or how many children and grandchildren had been born on this mountain during my time away. Shai and Amina, the twins, had been only around five when I left, and little Dafna, barely three. I’d missed so much because of my selfishness.

  As these nephews I’d just met looked up at me with unconcealed awe, I vowed to do all I could to make up for lost time. I may have been a terrible brother to Yonah and the others, but I would pay restitution by being the most devoted uncle any of these children had ever known. And as for Zevi, who’d still not released his hold on me, Shoshana and I would need to have a discussion about his future, just as soon as our own was decided.

  “Come now,” said Ronen, scrubbing his son’s hair with his knuckles. “Let’s continue on. I’m certain your ima is beyond anxious to see her brother.”

  Avidan nodded his small chin. “She said if he doesn’t hurry, she’s going to come down this path and find him herself.”

  I barked a laugh. “Well, we’d best move along. Unless she’s changed, your ima doesn’t show her anger often, but when she does, it’s terrifying.”

  “Especially if you wake the babies,” my nephew replied, sounding as if he’d learned that lesson the hard way.

  “Then you better lead the way,” I said, biting back a grin, “or who knows what she’ll do to me!”

  Without hesitation, the three younger boys trotted off, but Zevi and Igo remained at my side as we continued on.

  “Seems as though you’ve made some friends here,” I said.

  Zevi shrugged his small shoulders. “They asked me to explore the woods with them today.”

  “That’s the best part of Kiryat-Yearim,” I said. “When I was a boy here, there was nothing better. You should go.”

  His eyes darted up the path to where Avidan, Gavriel, and Shalem had disappeared, the yearning on his face more than plain. But he shook his head. “Maybe later. You just returned.”