Shelter of the Most High

by Connilyn Cossette

  With halting words I explained, leaving out the worst details of my village’s bloody demise and filling in only small pieces of Seno’s connection to my home and his betrayal on the ship’s deck. By the time Kitane finished translating our fight against the sea, Eitan’s expression had devolved from intense curiosity into devastation, as if he had somehow watched the horror play out in front of his face.

  Moriyah, Nadir, and the other man who’d been at the foundry, the short one with different features, had gathered around Eitan as I spoke. Moriyah’s hand was on her son’s arm in a gesture of surprise. He placed his own over hers, and the sight of his obvious love for his mother revived that odd twist inside my stomach. I turned my attention back to Kitane, determined to ignore whatever draw this man, this long-haired stranger, had on me.

  Moriyah spoke, and Kitane relayed that she had invited the tradeswoman’s family to a meal that evening. “They seem most interested in making you feel welcome, Sofea,” said Kitane. “I am happy to come tonight, but the caravan that my husband and I are traveling with is leaving in a little over three weeks, directly after the festival.”

  “What sort of festival?”

  “These people are called Hebrews,” she said. “They will give thanks to their god, Yahweh, during a harvest festival they call Shavuot.”

  “Who is this Yahweh?”

  She shrugged, dismissive. “They insist he is an all-powerful deity without region or boundary, and that he caused many disasters to fall on their enemies, freeing them from slavery in Egypt nearly sixty years ago.”

  She patted her neckline. “I have my own goddess, but I keep her amulet well hidden here. They don’t tolerate other gods in this place.” Her brows lifted with subtle conspiracy. “Imagine, these people worship only one god. So very strange. And their laws are just as inexplicable. Overbearing and restrictive.”

  A shiver built at the base of my spine. “What sacrifices do they offer this god?” My mind conjured the screams of a young girl as her body was pushed over the tallest cliff to the sea below, a desperate offering by our village after a poor tuna yield and a period of severe drought three years ago.

  “I don’t know, I’ve never witnessed this festival. There was another celebration a few weeks ago where lambs were offered and then consumed, but they said uncircumcised foreigners are not allowed to take part.”

  When I asked what that meant, her explanation inspired equal parts horror and fascination. I screwed up my face in disbelief. “Why would they do such a thing?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. But my husband was not about to have such a thing performed on him!” She cackled. “You should have seen his face! Besides, we are only traveling through, not here to worship their ‘One God.’”

  Two women walked up to Kitane’s stall to peruse her large variety of dyes and perfumes, their appreciative murmurings indicating their interest in the goods. “I must tend my customers,” she said with a wide trader’s grin toward the new arrivals. “We will speak more this evening.”

  I nodded my head. “Thank you. I don’t know how you came to be here, or how it is that you speak my language when you do not even come from my island,” I said. “But I am grateful.”

  She smiled, showing a wide gap between her front teeth. “Perhaps my goddess brought us together.” She brushed her fingertips over the neckline of her tunic.

  “Perhaps,” I allowed, wondering which goddess she served. Was it Atemito, the goddess my mother venerated? The one worshipped on the sacred hill back on my island? I brushed away the unsettling thought to consider how I would talk Kitane into taking Prezi and me with her when she left. Although this land seemed plentiful and far from stricken by drought, I would not take the chance that they may have brought us here only to sacrifice us to their One God.

  The courtyard was full of people speaking a language I could not understand, but through Kitane, I was finally able to communicate. Moriyah sat near us, asking question after question about my homeland, my people, and pressing for more details about how Prezi and I had landed on that beach.

  In turn, Moriyah told me about how Darek and his men had been scouting in Tyre that day, how they’d happened to come across us as they were leaving, having been spying during the fire festival in the city. What would have happened to us if they had left the night before? Or taken another route? Perhaps Prezi and I would still be there, our desiccated corpses becoming one with the sand.

  My cousin had refused to come into the courtyard this evening, although Eitan had offered to carry her, and still moved from the bed only to relieve herself in a pot. Although she had submitted to my insistence that she wash her body, her lackluster responses and blank stares made my chest ache. It was as if her body was present but her mind far away. It seemed that besides Seno, Posedao had claimed another victim that day, but stolen only the best parts of her. Prezi’s laughter, her kind nature, and our sister-deep connection had been devoured by the sea.

  “Tell me of your mother and father,” Kitane translated as Moriyah looked on. A woman who seemed to be so interested in my homeland surely could have no intention of offering Prezi and me up as sacrifices for their festival. Perhaps my fears were unfounded. My muscles began to relax, and I took another sip of date wine and a few slow breaths before allowing myself to answer.

  “My mother was the most beautiful of my father’s wives—his favorite,” I said. “She was as serene as a placid tide pool most times. She doted on me and my little brothers and sisters. . . .” I cleared my burning throat, pressing hard against those blood-tinged images, pushing them down deep enough that they could not pick away at my determination to be strong for Prezi.

  “How many wives did your father have?”

  “Six. And four concubines. He was the chief of our village and the high priest of my people.”

  Moriyah’s eyes grew round. “Six?”

  “Does Darek have more than just the three of you?” I pointed across the courtyard to the two other women I’d seen working around the inn, one an older woman with black curls threaded with silver and the other a slight young woman with a sharply pointed chin and a perpetually cowed expression in her brown eyes.

  “Three of us?” Moriyah’s eyes followed my gesture and then she laughed. “Oh! No. Darek is the husband of only one wife, as Yahweh commands. Binah and Sarai are women who have taken refuge in this city, and I employ them to work in this inn.”

  My mouth gaped. “But this home . . .” My gaze circled the inn around us. “Darek is wealthy. Why would he have only one wife?”

  Moriyah laid a warm hand on mine. “You have much to learn of our ways, Sofea. But Darek and I are bound, body and soul, for the entirety of our lives. We are one.”

  What did that mean? Did Darek control her so fully that she had no will of her own?

  “Since your father had so many wives, you must have many siblings. Is Prezi one of your sisters?” she asked through Kitane.

  “No, she is my cousin. Our mothers were half sisters.”

  “What can we do to help her?”

  The unexpected response stunned me for a moment. My answer unfurled slowly. “I don’t know that anything can be done. She left her soul at the bottom of the sea. Posedao consumed her.”

  After squeezing my hand in a gesture of reassurance that I immediately slipped away from, Moriyah left to intervene in a squabble between Abra and Malakhi. It seemed as though Malakhi took great pleasure in tormenting his twin sister. Kitane turned away as well, delving into a conversation in Hebrew with an inn guest beside her that I was helpless to understand.

  I was grateful for the quiet to consider Moriyah’s revelation, and a few things I’d noticed since our arrival now made much more sense. I’d not seen the other two women even approach Darek; they deferred only to Moriyah, fulfilling their duties and keeping mostly to themselves. And this afternoon, after we’d returned from the marketplace, I’d caught a glimpse of Darek and Moriyah talking together on the roof, shoulders p
ressed together, fingers entwined.

  The man who’d saved us on that beach, by all appearances a hardened warrior, seemed utterly devoted to his wife, his eyes following her around the courtyard as she served her family and her guests. As I surreptitiously watched the two, I noticed the interchange of secret smiles—a private language that spoke of deep affection.

  Even though my mother was my father’s favorite and a priestess in her own right, on nights when my father called for her, many times she returned to our little hut with bruises. The man was brutal in every way, and the chief he’d promised me to in a neighboring village was rumored to be just as ruthless. A shiver formed between my shoulder blades as a traitorous thought began to form in my head. Seno and his men saved me from that marriage. And yet my mother, my sisters, my brothers . . . I refused to be grateful for the price that had been paid for such freedom.

  Feeling the effects of the two cups of date wine I’d consumed and Moriyah’s lovely meal sitting in my belly like a stone, I stood, desperate to move away from the questions and the happy chatter in words I did not understand.

  Although tempted to go inside and try once again to rouse Prezi from the sleep that she’d retreated into most of this day, I caught sight of the stone staircase that led up to the rooftop, and felt the compulsion to explore.

  The stairs led me to a wide, flat rooftop that overlooked the entire courtyard. I peered over the parapet wall to the gathering below. Animated voices carried upward on the breeze as the children played a game of chase. A few men stood off to the side, deep in conversation, Eitan among them.

  After our translated conversation this morning, I’d been even more conscious of his presence. I’d forced myself to refrain from watching him during the meal tonight, but my ears rebelled against the restraint, searching out his voice again and again as he spoke with his young brothers who sat on either side of him at the table, vying for his attention. Now from my perch on the roof, I allowed myself a few moments to appraise his tall form, the dark hair that trailed down the middle of his muscular back, and the easy laughter that flowed from his lips.

  As if he could feel the weight of my attention, he lifted his eyes, catching my inquisitive gaze, and the corners of his lips twitched upward. Flustered at being caught watching him, I turned and walked to the edge of the wall. Standing on the balls of my feet, I leaned against the rough stone, peering down to the ground below.

  Although I’d never feared diving from cliffs into the sea, something I’d been doing since I was a small girl, somehow the long drop to the rocky ground made my stomach uneasy and I backed away, choosing instead to watch the colors bleed from the sky. After brushing the chill from my bare arms, I wrapped them around myself, wishing it was my mother’s embrace curling around me instead.

  A male voice came from behind me. I spun, heart pounding, expecting Eitan—but it was his friend Nadir who’d appeared on the rooftop. I retreated a few paces, keeping the staircase in the corner of my vision. Maintaining his distance, the man didn’t seem to be aggressive, but neither had Seno. I would not chance being taken unaware again.

  In many ways, Nadir was the opposite of Eitan. He stood nearly a head shorter than his friend, and his curly brown hair was cropped short above a very thick beard. Like Eitan, he was handsome, but with a wider, more rugged cut to his face. His skin was a deep bronze and fine lines around his eyes attested to a life squinting against the sun. Something about him reminded me of the men of my village who spent their days battling the sea for a regular yield of fish.

  Nadir spoke a few words but then stopped abruptly, no doubt remembering I could not understand. With a pinch between his brows he looked around, as if searching for a way to help me understand. His gaze snagged on my shell necklace.

  He pointed at it and asked a question. Then, moving his hands in a motion that mimicked waves, he made a shushing sound. Was he asking about the ocean?

  I nodded my head and repeated his motion, to tell him that indeed I had lived near the ocean. I touched the necklace, brushed my fingers over the speckled shell at the center, and said the word for sea in my language. Then I repeated the motion for waves.

  He smiled and repeated the word, obviously pleased with our little interaction. Then he pointed off to the southeast, made the wave motion again, and pointed again off into the night.

  Standing on the balls of my feet, I lifted my body to see that he was gesturing toward a glint of moonlight reflecting on the horizon. It seemed to be a small lake, shining in the light of the nearly full moon. I made the wave motion again to tell him that I saw the lake. He gestured to himself and with one hand made the motion of a fish flitting through the water, and then with his other hand, he scooped up that “fish.”

  Understanding bloomed immediately. Nadir was indeed a fisherman, just as I’d somehow sensed before. I repeated his moves and gave him the words in my own language. I was strangely satisfied by the connection we’d made in our little game. I leaned back onto the stone ledge and turned my gaze back to the small lake that I could now more clearly see sparkling there like a blue-black jewel under the night. Would it reflect the eyes of uncountable stars like the sea did in the tide pools? How deep was such a body of water—enough to swim in? I longed for the cool slide of water on my skin, the tang of salt in my nostrils, the pull of the tide luring me out into the sea and calling me to explore its mysteries.

  Nadir began to speak quietly, his words foreign but the lull of his deep voice tugging at something inside me. If Nadir was a fisherman, why was he here in this city? Was that lake he’d pointed out the one he fished? He must, for what was a fisherman with no boat, no nets?

  Although Nadir had been helping in the foundry this morning when Moriyah dragged me along with her to the market, it was Eitan who seemed to be the metalsmith in this town. I’d caught a glimpse of the weapon he’d been working on and wondered how he’d learned such a skill. For the brief moments I’d watched him converse with his mother, I’d been frustrated by my lack of comprehension and suspicious that they’d been discussing me.

  But what did any of that matter? I did not welcome the attention of either of these men with their strange language and their strange customs. I could no more trust them than I should have trusted Seno. I needed to look after my cousin, survive these next three weeks until the Hebrews’ festival, and somehow convince Kitane to take Prezi and me with her.

  Ignoring whatever gibberish Nadir was speaking, I turned away, slipping down the staircase and into the house without once glancing Eitan’s way. These Hebrews had nothing to offer me but more grief.

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  Eitan

  2 Sivan

  Tipping my head back, I guzzled the cool water, letting it spill past the corners of my lips and down my bare chest, relishing every drop until the waterskin was dry.

  Baz slapped me on the back, leaving a sting where his enormous paw met skin. “Giving up, are you, boy?”

  “You wish, old man.” I dropped the deflated goatskin bag on the ground. “In fact, I’ll wager you that I can make one more loop around the city before the sun finishes cresting those hills.”

  “Oh?” With a roguish expression he glanced at Darek, who’d come this morning to observe my lessons. “And if you don’t?”

  “I’ll do another two loops with your favorite torture device.” I gestured to the rock they’d made me carry my last few times around.

  Baz shook his head slowly. “I’ve something much better in mind.”

  “Oh? And what would that be?”

  He clucked his tongue and pointed to the eastern ridge. “Getting lighter, my friend.”

  He was right, I had no time to argue. I ran.

  Following the trench that encircled the city, one of the defenses built into Kedesh by the Canaanites long before Israel had captured it, I pushed past the burn in my legs and lengthened my stride. These past three weeks I’d challenged my body in ways I’d never thought possible, but Darek a
nd Baz assured me this training was no different from how Yehoshua trained his own men. And I would not complain. In fact, I was determined to run faster and longer than any other soldier. I’d not shame myself in front of Darek. I’d prove that I could hold my own against Raviv and that I would be anything but a distraction among Darek’s men.

  Passing beneath my mother’s window, easy to spot due to the lamp she kept burning there day and night, I wondered whether Sofea had joined her yet to prepare the morning meal as she had since she’d arrived. For the thousandth time, I pondered what exactly had happened on the roof between her and Nadir that night. She’d come floating down the stairs with a blank look on her face and her blue eyes shuttered against whatever storm she was fending off. Nadir said he’d given her ample space and merely talked about nothing of consequence, knowing she couldn’t understand a word, and that suddenly she walked away as if he’d somehow offended her.

  Much to my chagrin, she hadn’t been any more receptive to my offer of friendship than Nadir’s. I’d learned a few words in her language from Kitane, but yesterday when I’d approached her with a greeting, instead of giving me the smile I’d been craving since that day in the foundry, she flinched and walked away without so much as a glance over her shoulder.

  She knew now that we were not her captors. I’d asked Kitane to make that very clear from the start, but she was still in a strange land with strange people—it may be that only time could assuage her fear of us. But in the meantime I would do what I could to chase the haunted look from those intriguing sapphire eyes.

  The air was sweet this morning, cool on my bare skin and full of birdsong as the sun slid higher into the sky, chasing shadows from behind trees and away from the city walls. A large herd of sheep, one of those cared for by the Levites who administrated the city of Kedesh, huddled near the city wall and blocked my path. Frustrated by the obstacles, I jogged through them with gritted teeth, trying not to startle the ewes as I picked my way past, and nodded a greeting to the four shepherds who were driving the herd around the city and toward the olive grove to the north.