Between the Wild Branches Read online

  From the top of our sycamore, Lukio had taught me the names his people gave many of those stars, along with all the things he’d remembered about Ashdod. I’d been so fascinated, so curious about the city by the sea that he’d described. But when I’d been brought here, I realized that his memories had been painted with a softer brush, a product of both a child’s understanding of the world and a misplaced loyalty to the people he’d sprung from. Fine garments, intricately crafted jewelry, soaring temples, and skillfully painted murals that decorated extravagant homes were no replacement for the goodness of living among a people whose way of life was based on the laws of Yahweh—even if many had forgotten how precious those laws truly were. As a captive here, I had witnessed the distinction all too clearly. The people of Philistia may see themselves as far above the culture of the “uncouth shepherds” who inhabited the shephelah, but they also too closely resembled the brutal, debauched, and capricious gods they worshiped.

  A hand wrapped around my elbow, and I swung around, slamming my heel against the stone with a gasp of pain and surprise. The dark shadow that loomed over me slapped a palm over my mouth to cut off the scream that started to let loose.

  With my heart doing its best to claw its way out of my chest, I tried to suck in a breath, but his tight grip spanned most of my face. I struggled against the arm he slipped around my waist, desperate to be free and fighting both his hold on me and the memories that swam before my eyes, threatening to drown me. All I could see was the dirt and blood-smeared face of a soldier, his feathered headdress askew and horrific intent in his eyes. I clawed at him, my small hands doing little to fight him off, but my ragged nails digging into his stony forearms, nonetheless.

  “Shoshana. Hush,” a voice rasped as his grip tightened. But I was so frantic that it wasn’t until he spoke again that I realized whose arm I was scratching at like a wildcat.

  “Tesi. You are safe,” Lukio said, his mouth close enough to my ear that I felt his warm breath against my skin. “Be calm. No one will hurt you.” I went stiff in his hold, humiliated for my reaction, but my galloping pulse still urged me to run. To hide. To save myself.

  “You are safe,” he repeated. “I won’t hurt you.”

  The statement should have reassured me, but all it seemed to do was dredge up the sight of his fist slamming into the face of that Phoenician so hard that blood spattered over a few of the nearby spectators and remind me that I was risking far too much by meeting with him now.

  Lukio might not mean to harm me in this moment, but he was anything but safe.

  Nine

  Lukio

  Shoshana was shaking like a leaf in a windstorm, her eyes so large I could see the whites of them all around the hazel. I’d expected her to startle at my touch, but she’d been so frantic that I feared she might attempt to crawl over the parapet to free herself from my hold.

  I would tear apart whoever had made her this way. Whoever had left her as this cowering, trembling creature before me.

  My mind traveled to very dark places that filled my gut with bile and made my veins blaze with fury. But I could not let any of the violence thundering through my body show on my face or she might very well run and there was no guarantee I’d be able to speak with her again any time soon.

  “If I let go of you, will you stay quiet?” I said haltingly, in the language I’d not spoken aloud for many years.

  She nodded, her breath coming in short bursts against my palm. She was not as diminutive as she’d been at twelve, having grown at least three or four fingers more, and there were curves in places that had been girlish before, but she felt familiar in my arms. Perfect and familiar in a way that revived so many memories that my breath hitched in my chest. However, this was not the time to let my mind wander down those pathways. Not only was she still trembling in fear, but I was also betrothed to someone else.

  Although I loosened my grip, I hated to let her go fully. It felt good to be so close to her again. Even after a decade’s worth of bitterness toward her and brokenness without her, her presence soothed me like it had always done, since the first day she’d appeared before me at our sycamore tree. The little girl with uneven braids, a dimpled smile, and so many freckles they reminded me of the night sky had refused to let me wallow in embarrassment and anger after my first scuffle with Medad.

  Carefully I peeled my hand off her mouth and took a step backward but stayed close enough that I could still catch her if she bolted. She and I were talking tonight, whether she wanted to or not.

  “Why did you sneak up on me?” she snapped.

  Startled by the venomous tone, I took another step back.

  “I was making certain you were alone,” I said. “I waited around the corner in case you were followed up from the hall.”

  She folded her arms over her chest, chin jutting upward. “I’m fully capable of finding my way through this palace undetected.”

  Her voice was a shade lower than it had been ten years ago, yet it retained the raspy quality from her girlhood that I remembered so well. However, the sharp edges on her words shocked me. These years between us had done more than change her into a woman. They’d stripped something precious from her and left behind someone with strong fences.

  I had so many questions—a decade’s worth. But I began with the easiest.

  “How long have you been in Ashdod?”

  Her eyes tracked away from mine for a moment. “A little over a year and a half.”

  Her answer stunned me. Granted, I spent most of my time on the fighting grounds or at my home, but the thought that she’d been here all this time, practically under my nose, made my stomach wrench. I restrained the instinct to rail at her for not seeking me out and instead kept my voice dispassionate as I continued. “You were taken captive during a raid?”

  Her lips pressed together as she swallowed hard. “Yes, they attacked Beth Shemesh, and I was one of the survivors. Or at least one of the few worth dragging back here to be sold.”

  “Beth Shemesh? Why weren’t you at Kiryat-Yearim?”

  Again, she looked away. As if it were a difficult question to answer. “Medad moved us there a couple of years after we married. He became a tanner.”

  “He couldn’t take up the occupation on the mountain?”

  She shook her head. “He’d made friends with a tanner in the valley who gave him grand ideas about selling leather to the many travelers on the trade road. He thought living in Beth Shemesh would make him rich.” She huffed a softly rueful laugh. “It did nothing of the sort.”

  I paused, not wanting to exacerbate her wounds but desperate for the truth of everything she’d endured. “Did he survive?”

  “No. Somehow he scraped together enough courage to go out and fight when the Philistines were first spotted scouting in the valley. All the men who did so were killed.”

  Even though I felt no pity for Medad, who’d not only tormented me for years but stole Shoshana from me, the flat tone with which she described the death of her husband was so jarring that I was stunned speechless. She had been the most tenderhearted girl in Kiryat-Yearim—even more gentle than my sister, with whom no one on the mountain could ever find fault. And yet Shoshana spoke of the slaughter of the man she’d married without a shred of emotion.

  There was much more to be said about what had happened at Beth Shemesh, I was certain of it. But from the stiff set of her small shoulders and the hollow-eyed way she looked up at me, it was clear she was not ready yet. I would give her a reprieve, but not for long.

  So instead, I dug into my own wounds. “And what of Risi?”

  Her head snapped back, and she glared up at me. “Why do you care? You left.”

  I may have grappled with some of the most brutal fighters in this area of the world, but Shoshana had learned how to throw a stinging punch with only a few words.

  “I did. But that does not mean that I forgot her.” Or you.

  “You left Eliora brokenhearted, Lukio. If Ronen would have allowe
d it, she would have searched for you herself. As it was, he and your brothers looked for you for weeks. Elazar even sent some of his men to do so as well and used every connection he had with other tribes to look for you.”

  My insides twisted painfully. They’d searched for me?

  She lifted a brow. “You didn’t think they cared when you left without a word of good-bye? Without any reason for abandoning the people who loved you?”

  “I had plenty of reasons,” I shot back. “You among them.”

  She flinched. “Whatever happened between us had no bearing on the fact that you walked away from Eliora. Someone who had you firmly at the center of her world from the day you were born. If it hadn’t been for Ronen . . .” She shook her head. “Her husband was the only thing holding her together for a very long time. That, and her continual insistence that Yahweh was watching over you.”

  The idea that the Hebrews’ God cared anything for me was beyond laughable. I was their enemy and had tossed aside their covenant like refuse. But thinking of my sister broken in her mourning for me pained me deeply. I fidgeted with the ivory plug in my earlobe.

  “So, she and Ronen did marry.” He initially may have been in Kiryat-Yearim for nefarious purposes, but from the conversation I’d overheard between them the day I ran away, he’d professed to care deeply for her. At least that proved not to be another lie among the rest.

  She nodded. “Before we left Kiryat-Yearim, Yoela told me that they’d already had one child and another on the way. I would guess their family is much larger now.”

  The mention of Yoela caused a pang of melancholy in my chest. It was not only memories of Risi that had been relentlessly nagging at me lately but also the woman whose maternal affections I’d brushed off for so many years. I pushed aside the unexpected remorse to focus on the news of my sister.

  “But I thought my sister moved to Ramah with that prophet Samuel?”

  Surprise flashed across her features. “How would you know that? You left before anything was decided.”

  “I’d come to retrieve charcoal from the mound. . . .” I tripped over the words, certain she remembered what happened between the two of us in the very same clearing. “And I overheard them discussing their plans to leave Kiryat-Yearim.”

  I left out the shock of hearing the two of them so easily talking over their future—a future that I was not considered worthy to be a part of. I stared toward the beach in the distance, where I’d once laughed and played with the sister I adored, never knowing that one day she would choose to leave me behind with the same callousness as our father had.

  Shoshana remained silent until I finally met her eyes again. “You always seemed like such an intelligent boy to me. As if you knew everything in the world. I never realized you were actually a fool.”

  Stunned by the jab, I folded my arms over my chest to guard against another attack from one of the gentlest creatures I’d ever known. “What do you mean?”

  “They weren’t going to leave you, Lukio. They’d gone to tell you of their betrothal and ask you to come with them once they were married. Instead, they found poor Yonah weeping in your cave, devastated and insisting that it was his fault you’d disappeared.”

  My gut clenched tight as I thought of the seven-year-old boy who’d followed me nearly everywhere—at least the places that his twisted foot allowed him to go—and considered me an older brother. True, I’d snarled at Yonah as I was packing and told him to go back home when he attempted to follow me down the mountain. But I’d been so focused on leaving, on putting distance between myself and Risi’s abandonment, that I’d not stopped to consider whether he might blame himself for my disappearance. Regret bloomed in places I’d thought fallow for many years.

  “Eliora never had any intention of leaving you behind,” Shoshana continued, crushing nearly every excuse I’d given myself for leaving in the first place. “She’d hoped that during the years when Ronen was living in Ramah and learning from Samuel, you would be with them. But instead, you turned your back on her. On all of us.”

  My heart thudded out of rhythm. “You had already turned your back on me.”

  I remembered the last time I’d seen her with perfect clarity. I’d been so anxious to speak with her, having missed my chance a few days before when I snuck out during an eclipse of the moon and found our meeting place deserted. But when she unexpectedly appeared at the smoking charcoal mound that I’d built from the remains of an enormous burned-out cedar tree, instead of running to me with a smile on her face and a sweet embrace like she always did, her eyes had shimmered with tears as she approached with a tentative gait. Immediately I’d gone to her, worried that her father had gotten drunk and slapped her again.

  But she’d put out her palms, refusing to let me draw her close, and after three deep, shuddering breaths, told me that her father had betrothed her to Medad and that she had no choice but to marry the person I hated most. I’d not been shy about my response, cursing both Medad and her father and insisting that she come with me. That I would use the woodcutting skills I’d learned to take care of her. That regardless how young we were, we would build a home and a family together.

  But with tears streaming down her face, she’d said it was impossible. That her father would never approve of a marriage between the two of us. Then, on a sob, she’d turned and run from me, leaving me the most alone I’d been since the day she’d first encountered me at the sycamore tree. So I had taken my ax and destroyed the charcoal mound I’d worked on for days just as thoroughly as she’d destroyed me.

  “You know I had no choice,” she said, pulling me back to the present.

  “Of course you did. I asked you to go with me. I could have—” I halted, letting out a breath. “You know I would have taken care of you.”

  “That was never in doubt, Lukio. But my father told me that if I didn’t marry Medad, I would never see my brothers again. I tried. I did. I begged him to let me marry you instead, to go speak to Elazar. But after your father cut him from the guard around the Ark, he said he would have nothing to do with your family. Besides, he owed Medad’s father a great deal of money for a gambling debt.”

  “And you were the satisfaction of that debt,” I stated, the words choking me.

  Her father had deserved to be cut from that guard. He’d fallen asleep during his watch and subsequently had made it possible for two men to assault my sister in their failed attempt at finding the Ark. But it also seemed to have made him desperate enough to sell his daughter and keep her compliant by threatening to cut her off from her siblings, whom she’d raised just as surely as Risi had raised me.

  I let my eyes drop closed as the weight of these revelations settled onto my shoulders. “Why didn’t you tell me all this?”

  “Because you refused to let me, Lukio. The moment I told you my father had made a betrothal contract with Medad’s father, you lost control. You . . .” she dropped her voice. “You frightened me. And then you left Kiryat-Yearim before I could talk to you again and explain everything.”

  An ocean of guilt washed over me. I’d spent years blaming her for walking away without remorse, thinking that she’d not put up any fight for us. And she was right that I’d lost control of my mouth, said things I never should have, especially to an innocent girl who’d borne the brunt of her father’s anger too many times.

  Shame flooded my bones. “I would never hurt you, Tesi.”

  “Don’t call me that,” she said, acid in her tone.

  I blinked at her in confusion.

  “You were wrong to leave your sister. Wrong to walk away from Elazar’s family, who loved you so much, even though you fought against their affection. And no matter what my father forced me into, I could have used my—” she paused to swallow—“my friend.” The sudden hurt on her face was at the same moment a kick in my gut and a window into the heart of the sweet girl I’d known so well. But then just as swiftly, that vulnerability was replaced by a renewed hardening of her jaw and stiffeni
ng of her shoulders.

  “But nothing can change any of that,” she said. “Nothing can replace all the years the locusts have consumed between then and now. And nothing can change the fact that I am a slave to your soon-to-be wife. So do not call me Tesi. Do not act as though you know me. Because you don’t anymore.”

  She pressed past me, and I grabbed her hand, desperate to halt her steps. “Please don’t go. I have more questions, and I . . . I want to help. Get you back home to your family.”

  She paused, her small shoulders tense as everything went quiet except the shushing of the waves in the distance. I could feel her indecision but still she refused to look back at me. “You can help by doing as I said. We are nothing but strangers now. And that is all we can ever be.”

  I’d never before heard such bleak defeat spill from her lips, even during our heart-wrenching last conversation in Kiryat-Yearim. She shook off my hold and, just like she had done that day at the charcoal mound, walked away without a second glance, leaving me even more tangled in confusion and helplessness than before.

  Ten

  Shoshana

  I held my breath as I looked back over my shoulder for the hundredth time on my barefoot trek through the palace in the depths of the night. As I’d told Lukio two weeks ago, I was more than adept at stealing about this place like a silent wraith, but I could not grow complacent. I breathed easier at the sight of the empty corridor behind me and then peered around the corner.

  As usual, there was only one guard near the stairs that led down to the wine cellar, but he had his back toward me, so I padded forward with quick steps. He’d never turned around before, always remaining in place ten paces away as he watched the opposite direction, appearing diligent in his duties, even though he knew full well that my friends and I had snuck into the room he was charged with guarding.