CHAPTER
TWENTY
When Eitan finally raised his head, we stared at each other, a clash of hazel and blue that caused the air between us to thicken. I’d been working so hard to keep my distance these past few months, pretending that each crossed glance, each brush of fingers at meals, each secret smile hadn’t been dragging me farther from shore, closer to this moment. But the pull was undeniable. Eitan was an undertow that I was no longer strong enough to resist. One I no longer wanted to resist.
“Do you want to leave?” he asked, his grip on my hand relaxing.
My eyelids fluttered in confusion. “Why for?”
“You aren’t afraid?” His expression was agony and his words a plea.
I breathed a sigh, trying to align my thoughts with Hebrew words. “When Darek bring us here, I thought you mean to kill us. And then I think that festival, Shavuot, maybe you want us for a sacrifice. . . .” I dropped my eyes. “Like on my island.”
He lifted my chin with a gentle finger, his eyes wide with horrified understanding. “Our God is not the same, Sofea.”
“I learned this, but I could not understand your words.”
“What changed your mind?”
“The crutch you make for Prezi.” I dipped my chin and placed a palm to my heart. “And I thank you.” Remembering what else had shifted my perceptions during that festival, I smothered a smile.
“What is it?”
“Also the—” I gestured with my fingers, struggling for the word. “In your hair?”
“Ah, the flower? You liked that, did you?”
I spoke through my fingers to stifle a giggle. “Oh yes. Very beautiful.”
He tilted his chin back and laughed, the rich sound echoing off the stone around us and traveling all the way through me. The place where we were seated was hidden from view and, even with the noise of the bustling market nearby, somehow felt very much like our own private world. Like one of the secret sea caves on my island.
“Will you tell me . . .” I bit my lip, hoping he would not be offended. “About your hair?” The locks in question were still damp, the dark waves cascading over his shoulder to tickle the skin on my arm.
“You want to know why my hair is so long?”
I nodded.
“I am a nazir,” he stated. I repeated the word, and after he’d patiently corrected my pronunciation, then praised my victory after a second attempt, he continued. “I took a vow when I was fifteen, consecrating myself to Yahweh. In doing so, I abstain from cutting my hair, from eating or drinking any fruit of the vine, and from touching any human corpse, even family members.”
“For the rest of your life?”
“Perhaps.” His face darkened a bit. “Or until I am able to make the proper sacrifices at the Mishkan to complete the vow.”
“For what purpose did you choose this?”
“It’s a long story and goes back to when I was nine, when we first moved to Kedesh.”
I settled back against the stone wall, indicating my wish for him to tell the tale.
He sighed, leaning his head back and looking up into the bright sky, as if he could see his past written on the clouds. “The only people here were a few Levite families and a regiment of soldiers. So my mother allowed me to wander freely, to explore as the men worked to rebuild the city. It was near paradise for a young boy, a mostly deserted city to ramble around in all day.”
“Why did they need to rebuild? Was Kedesh attacked?”
“I forget that you are still learning about our history,” he said. “This city was built by one of the Canaanite tribes and was taken by our armies shortly after a decisive battle at Hazor, just to the south of us. Thankfully, this city was left standing for the most part, but there was much work to be done to prepare it for . . . its purpose.”
I winced at the veiled reference. A refuge for killers.
“I’d made friends with Tal, the grandson of the priest who presided over Kedesh, and we spent many hours shooting rocks off the parapets, searching for trinkets in the empty houses and buildings, pretending that it was the two of us who had driven the enemy away.”
I could almost see the two in my mind, scrambling about barefoot, stick swords in hand, searching every dusty corner for treasure. It reminded me of the way I’d dragged Prezi along on my adventures: collecting pretty shells, catching minnows in the tide pools, poking around in every cave and cove I could find.
I tilted my head, confused by the direction of his story. “But what of your hair?”
He squeezed my hand playfully. “I’m getting to that.” The false exasperation in his voice and the teasing grin he sent me reminded me so much of his easy, lighthearted manner with his sisters, the very thing that had warmed me to him in the first place. Eitan was so very opposite of any man I’d ever known.
Suddenly, like a sun-warmed wave breaking against a beach, knowledge crashed over me—I wanted that heart-stopping smile directed my way every single day for the rest of my life. Feeling the shift in my core, I allowed the delicious sensation to wash over me, swallow me whole.
With a rush of audacity that I’d not felt since being torn from my island, I let my thumb brush slowly over his and lifted my brows in a taunting gesture. “Well . . . go on, then.” Then, just to make sure my message was clearly received, I reached over with my free hand and slipped one finger into a wavy strand of his hair, soft and cool from the washing.
Just as he had done, I twirled that piece around my finger once, not taking my eyes from his. Another loop. He leaned closer, submitting to the gentle tug.
“Finish the story,” I whispered. The next two loops brought us face-to-face.
“What story?” The breathy reply paired with the sweetness of honey across my lips and the smell of cedar and hyssop from his damp hair. His warm palm cupped my face, his thumb grazing my cheekbone as he waited, a question in the pause.
My answer was the last twist of my finger that drew his lips to mine. His kiss was gentle, the brush of a feather against my mouth that I felt all the way to the tips of my fingers—and nothing like the bumbling press of lips between two children on a beach long ago.
Eitan exhaled my name, and any restraint I’d had floated away with the sound. I slid my arms around his neck and pulled him to me, forgetting everything but his lips and his scent and the softness of his beard against my skin. I pressed closer, delighting in the feel of his arm snaking around my waist, capturing me against his body. Suddenly, he broke the kiss with a quick intake of breath, and I swayed forward, not ready to relinquish the moment.
“Sofea,” he said, gently using the palm on my cheek to put a bit more distance between his mouth and my greedy lips. His lashes fluttered closed, the sweep of them dark against his freckled cheeks, and he waited one breath. Two. Three. Then his eyes opened, the tangle of blue and brown and green brilliant with excitement and reflecting the wide smile curving across his face.
Feeling my cheeks blaze as I realized how I’d thrown myself at him, I inched away, settling back on the ground. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not,” he said with a slow shake of his head, his chest rising and falling in quick rhythm. “Not at all. I’ve waited for that for months. I am simply working very hard to draw on every drop of training Baz drilled into my head.”
“What does your training have to do with this?” I gestured between the two of us.
“Because you are all too tempting . . .” He leaned forward, slowly sliding his fingers down the side of my neck, causing me to shiver. “. . . And as Baz reminds me frequently, patience has never been my strength.” He came closer to brush a slow, warm kiss across my lips.
“Ah yes, I remember. Baz teach you to be still in the courtyard.”
“That he did.”
The laughter in his eyes caused an admission to spill out. “Prezi tease me that I stand on a stool, watching.”
His brow lifted, smugness in the upturn of his mouth. “Oh?”
Glaring, I
poked his chest. “I only watch your sisters play with your hair.”
He made an amused noise in his throat. “Jealous of them, were you?”
My face went hot. He’d hit all too close to the truth. Even now I’d do anything to push my hands back into his hair and let the long smooth waves slide through my fingers. To distract both of us, I huffed out, “What of the story?”
His grin was pure satisfaction. “Where was I?”
“Your friend.”
“Ah yes. Along with exploring every building in the city, Tal and I also shadowed the men as they worked. We helped with repairs to the walls and building, farming, shepherding, carpentry, whatever chore they would allow us to do.” He gestured toward the parapet opposite us. “Tal and I gathered many of those rocks you see embedded into that patch of the wall.”
The pride was evident in his voice. Even as a child he’d taken part in rebuilding this city; he was as much a part of it as those stones. Remembering what he’d told me about his lonely life in Shiloh, I said, “Tal is a good friend. Yes?”
“The best. No brother could be closer.” The words were undergirded with hints of a bond that I sensed was as strong as that between Prezi and I. “He lives in Shiloh for now. He was born of the priestly line of Aharon, the first High Priest of our nation, so he is in training until he comes of age at twenty-five, when he will serve at the Mishkan. When we came to Kedesh, his grandfather, Dov, was the priest in charge of this city, as Tal’s father, Amitai, is now. Directing rebuilding efforts, along with administrating a Levitical refuge city, as well as tending to the physical, judicial, and spiritual concerns of the people is no small task. But no matter how busy he was, Dov always took time to fill our eager ears with stories of our ancestors and the wisdom of his long years.”
He stopped to look into my eyes. “I would very much like to introduce you to Dov. He saved my mother’s life and also gave her this inn.”
Although his description of the man was laced with warmth, I had little interest in meeting any sort of priest. I had plenty of experience with a man who wielded such unfettered power.
“It was Dov who told me of the nazir vow. He explained that a man or woman could choose to bind themselves to Yahweh in this special way, even if that person was not of the priestly line. When I was fifteen, I decided that I would submit myself to that vow.” A shadow passed across his features, a hardening of the lines around his mouth. “And I will not end it until my mother goes free.”
Shifting so that I faced him, I lifted his hand from where it lay fisted on his thigh. At my touch, he relaxed, and I slid my fingers between his. This hand created deadly weapons from fire and wood and stone and yet had caressed my face earlier with the tenderness afforded a delicately formed piece of glass. Again I wished for a better command of Hebrew words, ones that might smooth the fractures inside him that I now understood ran just as deeply as my own. Instead, I lifted that strong, beautiful hand and pressed the back of it against my lips. Once for a lonely child with a malformed ear. Once for a boy who’d not understood the consequences of a few leaves in some stew. And once for the man who’d carried the weight of his mother’s imprisonment for too long.
The gesture seemed to lighten his mood. “Enough of such heavy talk,” he said, bending to brush another sweet kiss on my lips, mischief once again creeping into his expression as his eyes crinkled at the corners. “I have an idea.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
Eitan
Drawing on the pulse of exhilaration and relief coursing through my limbs, I bounded to my feet and stepped a few paces away. I’d expected Sofea to flee from this rooftop the moment I’d confessed my part in Zeev and Yared’s deaths, especially after I’d seen her reaction last night at the gates. Instead, she’d comforted me, soothed the furious grief that consumed me as I relived that horrific night in the shadows, and then, when I was still reeling from the release of baring my soul to her, she’d kissed me. If I lifted from this roof to take wing with the next flock of starlings that happened by, I would not be surprised in the least.
She’d kissed me! And now she was looking up at me expectantly, her blue eyes bright as she waited for me to explain my sudden burst of energy. After dumping all my ugly truths on her, I was desperate to steer us away from the dark reaches of my past and show her a glimpse of who we could be, together.
With a grin, I untucked my sling from my belt, its usual location since those days Tal and I had spent hours and hours hurling stones from this very roof. Holding the braided cords high, I unfurled the weapon. “Do you still want to see me shoot?”
She nodded her head, the amused purse of her lips highlighting a dimple in each of her cheeks that I very much wanted to press my mouth against—and planned to, soon. I could still taste her sweetness and needed a distraction from the memory of her fervent response.
I gestured for her to stand back farther and she complied, her eyes luminous with that avid curiosity I’d come to delight in. Since I always kept a stone loaded in the leather pouch, it took only a flick of my wrist to bring it into motion. Having spotted a cracked pot on the lip of the parapet earlier, one that held a handful of desiccated flowers that must have been gathered by my sisters weeks ago, I made it my target.
The sling whirred like a hummingbird in flight as I circled it through the air to my right and then to my left, propelling the leather and rope in a smooth, practiced track through the air. Loop. Loop. Release. Even though I put little strength into the throw, the stone slammed into the broken pot with such force that it flew off the low wall, spraying shards high into the air.
Her gasp of surprise had me spinning around to catch the expression of wonderment on her face, a look that gave me no little amount of satisfaction.
For all the weapons Baz had taught me to wield over the past few months, the one I’d latched onto as a boy was still the one I was most competent with. And Baz assured me that being left-handed gave me a distinct advantage. Shamelessly, I reveled in the opportunity to impress this woman whose every glance made my heart scamper around in my chest like an untethered pup.
“Would you like to learn?” I asked.
“Me?” She lifted a hand to block the glare of the sun.
Striding back to her, I grinned and dangled the leather pouch in front of her. Her blue eyes watched it swing back and forth for a moment before she reached out to yank it from my grasp.
With a laugh I headed toward a small pile of stones in the corner that my brothers had undoubtedly gathered to fling from the walls themselves. I selected a few small, smooth ones that would be suitable for practice, then walked back to where she stood with her back to me, elbows on the wall, gazing to the east.
“Nadir say there is a lake there.” She pointed over the now-harvested orchards and olive groves that painted the valley with vibrant shades of orange, red, green, and yellow, to a sliver of water glimmering beneath the sunlight.
“There is. In fact, the land Darek recently inherited from his father lies adjacent to the water. The valley is very fertile: olive groves, green pastureland, and cedar and oak blanket the hills. My mother said the soil there is rich, and the area is plentiful with streams.”
Sofea shifted to look at me, blinking in confusion. “You never go yourself?”
I shifted my gaze to the stones in my palm, rolled them back and forth. “Since moving to this city with Moriyah, I have not been past the boundary line.” That two-thousand-cubit radius, marked with large, light-colored rocks, had been my universe since I was nine.
Back when we’d arrived, the boundary hadn’t even been delineated. Moriyah had been forced to make it all the way to the gates in order to outrun Raviv, but the Levites were meticulous about maintaining it now, ensuring that the roads leading to this city of refuge were always clear and marked with signs engraved into boulders and trees to make a manslayer’s flight to Kedesh as quick and easy as possible. Now that all six cities of refuge were occupied with Levites, an accuse
d killer would have less than a day’s journey to safety anywhere within the territory of Israel. Nothing like the perilous flight my mother and Darek had undertaken over a week’s time, with Raviv in dogged pursuit.
Sofea seemed to be processing this new information, and I wondered if she’d press for more to satiate her fathomless curiosity, but instead she rotated and gestured toward the north and the three white peaks that lorded over the northern horizon. “What is this mountain called?”
“That is Har Hermon. The Canaanites who populated this area before we came believed that their gods lived up there.”
“Where does your God live?”
“Yahweh is the Most High God, Sofea, the Creator of every living thing and the earth upon which we stand. There is no mountain that can contain him. No nation that can stand against his power. No sea that does not obey his command.”
Eyes wide at my declaration, her mouth twitched, as if more questions had bubbled to her lips. My mother was right that she had much to learn of our God. But then with a teasing smile she spun the sling in a lopsided circle in the air between us. “I thought you teach me shooting.”
“That I will,” I said, offering her one of the stones I’d selected. After showing her how to place the stone within the cradle of leather, resting in the small hole at the center, I demonstrated the best way to loop the sling back and forth a few times without releasing the cord that would send the projectile toward its target.
With a small wrinkle between her brows, she attempted to swing the cords the way I’d done. The pouch lobbed through the air haphazardly, the stone dislodging and clattering to the ground. I reached out to take the sling back and show her again, but she shook her head and snatched up the stone. “I try again.”
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