Wings of the Wind Page 5

  I’d been back in the valley, with shifting sand beneath my sandals and the screech of rams’ horns causing the hair on the back of my neck to stand on end. The dream could not have been more real.

  My whole body was rigid. My pulse raced, nausea threatened, and my lungs would not expand. Little sips of air were not enough. As I struggled to draw more breath, flashes of light clouded my sight.

  No. I would not faint. I refused to be pulled back into the chasm between dreams and wakefulness where the frightening images plagued me most. I forced a deep breath, looking around quickly when a moan escaped my mouth. Thank the gods that Tobiah was missing from his post outside the door and hadn’t heard the evidence of my weakness.

  I rolled onto my good arm and pushed myself up with my elbow until I was able to sit straight. My shoulder protested less today than yesterday. But still, I must not damage it further and hinder my escape.

  How long would it be before I could use my bow again? I reached past my feet to where it lay next to my quiver. I caressed the wood, smoothed by my father’s expert, callused hand and patterned after the one made for the goddess Anat by Kothar, the master craftsman to the gods. Why had Tobiah allowed me to keep it? No other weapons remained in the tent. Regardless, without arrows it was worthless.

  A flash of red drew my gaze, a dark circle of crimson splotched across my palm. Dried blood.

  Tobiah’s blood.

  Battle memories flooded in again, conjured by the little smear.

  Although the long-beards had been adamant that thirty days pass before the final act of marriage was carried out, I had fully expected to find the Hebrew in my bed as soon as Shira took her leave. Every nerve in my body vibrated when he entered the tent. I had been prepared to fight until he silenced my screams with his dagger across my throat.

  When he cut his hand instead and vowed to keep his word, I was almost disappointed that I would not be given a reason to provoke him to kill me.

  Almost.

  I curled and uncurled my hand, fascinated by the red stain blooming like a kalanit flower across my skin. A covenant. An unbreakable pledge forged by the Hebrew’s own blood. Why would he do such a thing?

  He must see the determination in my eyes, the plan to kill him and escape; a soldier would not miss such a thing. Yet he’d slept right outside the entrance, snoring like a bear. Either he had full confidence in his ability to fight me off or, like a fool, he trusted his enemy.

  My pulse pounded, causing the wound in my shoulder to ache again. Here was my chance. Although my arm may not be ready, my legs were able. Hunting with my brothers, climbing rocks in the wadis around my home looking for game, tending to the crops, and hauling jugs of water back from the village cistern kept them strong and sinewy.

  I slung my quiver over my good shoulder, gripped my bow, and peeked through the tent flap, braced for a painful run.

  My breath released in a huff. There would be no escape this morning. Tobiah crouched by the fire nearby, forming round circles of dough between his palms. His damp wavy hair hung unbound around his face. He must have awoken early to bathe. Frowning in concentration, he pressed the curtain of brown-gold away with the back of his hand, streaking flour across his forehead.

  The hint of a laugh tickled the back of my throat. To cover it, I offered a reproach. “You are burning it.”

  He slanted an annoyed look at me but grabbed a stick to flip the singed flatbread.

  “Shall I finish?” I said.

  His eyes met mine and held for a brief moment before traveling to the turban wrapped around my naked head. My face flamed and my fist clenched my skirt. It took all my will not to cover my head with my hand and run from his gaze.

  Mercifully, he dropped his attention to his task. “No. I made it—for you.” His low voice caressed the last two words.

  He made this food for me? He had every right to awaken me at dawn and demand his meal. Yet here he was, huddled on the ground like a kitchen slave, baking bread for me. Manna bread. The spiced-honey smell beckoned me from across the fire. My mouth watered and suddenly I could taste it again. Even such a little bit as I’d sampled yesterday spiked a desire for more. My anxious tongue tingled as Tobiah finished patting the circles onto the fire-heated rock, waited, and then flipped them.

  Restraining the urge to reach across the fire and grab the delicacy from his hands, I sat cross-legged nearby and placed my quiver and bow next to me.

  Tobiah’s lifted brow questioned their presence. I sifted a few explanations through my mind before coming up with one that might deflect his suspicion. “My father made them for me. I feel more . . . comfortable when they are close by.”

  His mouth pinched as he stood to bring me a piece of bread. He squatted next to me, a trickle of water from his still-wet hair trailing down his cheek. For half a breath I almost reached up to brush it away.

  “I promised to protect you,” he said with the unmistakable glint of warning in his eyes.

  My defenses shot up. “I don’t want your protection.”

  He gathered his brows. “What do you want?”

  “Nothing you can give me.” Gazing at the distant hills to the north, I imagined the roll of the highlands. White, black, and brown clumps of sheep and goats wandering free across grazing lands defiantly green in the face of sparse rain.

  My father’s farm, nestled against the foothills, waited there to be harvested by someone else’s hand. My father, brothers, and I had plowed and planted, tended the wheat and orchards—yet others would enjoy the fruit of our labor. The farm I cherished, the terraced hills I loved, now belonged to a cousin who hated me and had snatched the last crumbs of my life.

  I blinked the smoke of the cookfire from my eyes but inhaled the scent, both acrid and comforting. “There is nothing left.”

  Tobiah leaned closer. His eyes, now level with mine, searched with an intensity that stole my breath. “Then stop trying to run.”

  Why did it seem like he was looking at my very core, raw and exposed? I broke the connection with the guise of eating the flatbread he had prepared. Once again the taste, like no other, hit my tongue and blocked out any other sensation. A little moan of pleasure slipped out.

  Tobiah’s cheek quirked. “Good?”

  Hoping he would attribute my flushed face to the campfire, I shrugged. Like nothing I have ever tasted.

  “I gathered two omers of manna today. Can you finish here?” He gestured to the cooking rock, tucked against the fire, where he had prepared the bread.

  I sighed. Yes, I was a wife now. “Shira tells me this falls from the sky?”

  “Every morning.”

  “Even in this camp, away from the rest of your people?”

  He dipped his chin in affirmation.

  “And you do not know what it is or where it comes from?”

  After a quick shake of his head, he turned to enter the tent, leaving me to my task of grinding the tiny white pearls, as small as coriander seeds, into flour with the stone mortar and pestle he’d left by the fire.

  I could not reconcile the fierce soldier persona from the battlefield with his quiet, reserved demeanor. As of yet, I had not seen him even converse with anyone other than Shira, apart from the one-word answers he gave the long-beards during our pretense of a wedding.

  He did not seem to have friends among the other soldiers. And yet, there had been another pallet in the tent and a few scattered belongings that made me think another solider had occupied it before me. Who was it? And where was he now? Everything about Tobiah was a mystery. Who exactly was I yoked to? And how long would I have to endure it?

  The more I considered the sharp ridges pressed against the northern horizon, the less confidence I had that I could return to my village on my own. The only way I had reached the battle-camp in the first place was sheer desire to avenge my family. And truly, there was nothing left for me at home.

  My father’s farm was gone, his two wives inherited by my cousin, Dagan. And due to my mother’s
choice to abandon me to return to the temple, I was an outcast among the villagers—greeted at the cistern by only whispers behind hands and haughty looks.

  Dagan had refused to offer any sort of dowry, making it clear I was welcome in his house only as a slave—retribution for the bloodied nose I had given him as a child. He and some other boys had followed me home from the village with lewd suggestions on their lips toward the cast-off daughter of a zonah. I silenced them with one well-placed punch.

  I nibbled on another piece of manna to take my mind off my cousin’s treachery. The sweet bread calmed the roiling in my gut like a balm. It needed no butter, no spices, no date honey to enhance its flavor. And to think, the Hebrews ate this every day!

  All of them looked healthy and strong. Even Shira, elderly and small, sparkled with life and energy, not normal for a woman her age—or someone who had endured the harsh desert heat and sun for forty years. Her skin, although faintly wrinkled, glowed as though lit from behind. Her countenance was almost that of a young girl, full of laughter and vitality.

  I mixed the white powder with a bit of water from a nearby pitcher and kneaded it into dough. It was soft and fluffy like I imagined a cloud would feel if I could reach the sky. I pressed it between my palms and enjoyed the lavish feel of the cool concoction spread between my fingers, like a curious child squishing mud at the edge of a stream.

  Smothering amusement at my own foolishness, I formed a circle with my thumbs and then patted it, back and forth, stretching it as I did, until a smooth, white disk lay across my hand. I brushed ash off the flat hearthstone close to the fire and flipped the bread onto its surface. A familiar action made unfamiliar by my surroundings and the ingredients.

  After a tall stack of flatbread lay cooling on a cloth by my feet, a commotion behind me startled a look over my shoulder. Tobiah had packed all his belongings into two baskets and was now dismantling the tent.

  The Hebrews were breaking this war camp, preparing to join the rest of their group in the south. I had little choice but to go with them.

  8

  Sturdy poles toppled as stakes were pulled from the ground. The tents around us folded in on themselves like weary dancers, skirts billowing as they fell. Soldiers milled around our campsite, shouting orders, packing belongings onto wagons, watering their animals. As the camp flattened, the landscape became clearer.

  When I had slipped through the wadi into this valley, the sun had already begun laying herself down at my back, and in the haze of dusk I could not see the expanse of the land where we camped. Nor did I have the presence of mind during the rush of war to distinguish my surroundings.

  Now I could see that all around us were high ridges, sharp against the blue sky. The red sand beneath my feet contrasted the brown hills that encircled us to the north.

  Shira appeared with a large bundle—too large for her tiny frame—on top of her head. As usual, the radiance of her smile brightened an already lapis-blue day.

  “How is our wounded soldier?” She gave a playful nudge of her elbow to my good arm.

  “Better.” Although my arm did not throb as much, my heart seemed to have taken up the cause as I thought about leaving this valley and moving farther away from my home.

  Tobiah offered to take Shira’s bundle and load it on a wagon nearby. She pushed his hand away. “You leave me be, young man. We only have a few miles to travel. In Egypt I balanced huge jugs of water on my head while carrying a basket under each arm.” She winked. “I’ll be just fine. I am stronger now than I was then.”

  I did not doubt it. She exuded strength—in more ways than one.

  “I’ve come to travel with you. I don’t want to lose track of my charge in the chaos of returning to camp.” She adjusted the bundle on her head.

  “Are you not traveling with others?” I had seen her only near Tobiah’s tent, I did not know where she went when she left.

  “I came with a group of older midwives to help the wounded. None of the young mothers I have been tending are close to their times, so I decided to lend a hand where needed.” She pursed her lips into a wry smile. “And my hands certainly were needed.”

  “If only they were used to heal me and not to shear me like a ewe.” I rubbed the back of my naked neck, already prickling with day-old growth. When Shira did a job, she did it thoroughly. I surely looked like old Jobab, the beggar who hunched near the village cistern without a wisp of hair on his ancient spotted head.

  Shira’s melodic laugh and distracting chatter soothed the ache that swelled in me as the company began to move. We were marching south, away from the farm where my every good memory dwelt among the olive groves, the date-palm orchards, and the vineyards terraced on the sides of those rocky hills. To my surprise, Tobiah walked on the other side of Shira, his long stride shortened to match the little midwife’s.

  I leaned forward to toss a question at him. “Why don’t you march with the other men?”

  He faltered for a step but recovered. “There is no need.”

  “I’m not going to run,” I said, as much for myself as for him. Home pulled at me, but walking alone in the desert, with no food or water, I would not last three days.

  “That is not the reason.” He raised a shoulder, dropped it, and then glared at the ground. I looked to Shira for an answer.

  “Tobiah has been released from army service for a year.” Her eyes, with a wisp of humor, flicked to him. “In order to bring happiness to the woman he has married.”

  Tobiah suddenly seemed to be more interested in the hills to the east than our conversation.

  “He cannot fight?”

  “Unless we are attacked in camp, then of course he is free to defend us, but no, he cannot go to war.” She squinted with obvious compassion for a solider who could no longer do as he was trained.

  I should not pity him—it was one less man to fight my people—but for some reason, guilt slipped between my ribs. Only a year. Then his life will return to normal. Even if mine never will.

  Another woman called to Shira, and with another wink and a promise to return soon, Shira left Tobiah and me to walk alone. The absence of her chatter amplified the silence as it stretched between us—deep silence that hummed with unanswered questions.

  “How long is this canyon?” I said, if only to slice through the pulsating emptiness.

  His voice rasped from disuse. “We have a few miles left to cover. But we should arrive before sundown.”

  “How did you do it?” I asked.

  He furrowed his brow in question.

  “Defeat the army that had only a few weeks ago crushed you, taken so many captive, and then sent you off like a pack of frightened jackrabbits?”

  He gazed over the heads of his fellow soldiers toward the southern route we traveled. “Yahweh.”

  “Your god?”

  He nodded.

  I snorted. “Your god didn’t fight for you, it was your army that defeated us.”

  He swung his head to spear me with an intense gaze, too intense for a dispassionate soldier with no thought but to destroy his enemies. “It was our hands, but Yahweh fought for us.”

  My father had named me for Anat and raised me to be in her likeness, the fierce warrior goddess with a bow. The empty quiver on my shoulder was a reminder of the legacy he expected me to fulfill. Yet even though I’d grown up hearing the tales of the gods—their constant struggle for supremacy, their never-ending lust for blood and power—the tales were mist and legend. The way Tobiah, and Shira, spoke of Yahweh—it was almost as though their god were as real as flesh and bone, as if they could sit down and drink a cup of wine with such a deity.

  “How could a god fight for you?” The image of a heavenly body, made from the light of stars and swiping at mortals with a ghostly sword, floated into my imagination, and I scoffed under my breath. What a foolish thought.

  “You have much to learn of the Creator and his ways.”

  Something raw—an edge I’d never examined before—began to
throb. The dull ache in my chest dredged up whispers of questions I had never thought to ask, questions born from the sweet breath of mornings as I’d hiked through the fertile valley I loved, from the intricate structure of a purple-fringed passion flower, and from the vibrancy of a varicolored sunrise over the eastern horizon.

  A break in our conversation highlighted the crunch of gravel beneath our feet. Changed from sand, the trail had begun ascending out of the canyon toward a low range of hills.

  “Your army did crush us,” said Tobiah, breaking the silence. “Because we were caught off guard. Our fathers wandered in this desert.” He gestured to the east and south. “For almost forty years.”

  I had heard the stories but did not believe them. A multitude, wandering like nomads in the wilderness for a generation? Without a destination in sight? How could they survive? No water, no food?

  “When at last we again neared the borders of the land Yahweh had promised thirty-nine years ago, we were unprepared for the attack by your king. It is surprising that more of us did not die.” A muscle at the top of his cheek twitched at the memory.

  I was entranced by the telling of his story and the perspective of one who lived on the receiving end of my father and brothers’ last battle. A cold shiver meandered up my back. Had Tobiah crossed swords with one of them?

  “When we knew we had lost, and that so many were taken, the shofar announced retreat. And we did, ashamed and defeated.” All of Tobiah’s words strung together over the last few days could not have matched this speech. I pressed my lips together, determined not to interrupt him.

  “Armed with the blessing of Yahweh and his promise of victory, we snuck down through the wadis in the night, surrounded your army, and—”

  “Decimated us.”

  A reminder. This man was my enemy. No matter that he had spared me, he was party to the destruction of my family. Tobiah continued in silence until we came up over another ridge. The Hebrew camp spread out before us, in baffling width and depth.