Strangers in the Land

by Stant Litore

  The day she first saw Lappidoth was the second day of her flight.

  She heard the moaning first, faint but unmistakable over the music of nearby water, and for a long time she stood still, terribly still, in grass higher than her chin. When she moved a little, as silently as she could, she came to a stream and saw the dead—and him—on the other bank. He was defending his herd from them. One of the cows had been torn apart; the others huddled in the middle of the stream. There were four corpses attacking. One was naked with a great gash in its side, its ribs white in the sun. Another of the dead had only one arm, yet it clawed at the air with the other as it came at the herdsman.

  The young man had cast aside his cloak so that they could not grasp at it to pull him toward their biting teeth; he wore only his loincloth and a cattleherder’s gloves, his body covered in a sheen of sweat. He held a flint hatchet, and he ducked and darted among the dead like a desert fox among serpents. Devora watched, breathless. The herdsman was so careful not to touch them with his hands, not to defile himself. He brought his hatchet down at one of the corpses’ heads, shearing away the ear, then neatly flipped the hatchet about in his hand and swung his right arm back, driving the flint blade into the corpse’s head. Then he leapt back out of the others’ reach; they staggered after him. Devora held her breath, her heart in her throat. The dead hissed, and she could hear again her mother’s shrieks and the shambling feet of the dead in her camp. Devora shrank back, though it meant the tall grass obscured her sight a little.

  Even as she watched, eyes wide, one of the dead closed with the herder while his hatchet clove another’s head; leaving the hatchet stuck in the first corpse’s skull, the man ducked beneath the second’s grasp and got his gloved hands on its hips. In a moment he lifted the rotting corpse high above his head and hurled it bodily into the stream.

  The corpse in the stream splashed on its back like a turtle trying to right itself in the water. There was no time for the herder to try retrieving his hatchet; the corpse that was still on its feet was reaching for him. He leapt to the side, grasped a fistful of its hair in his gloved hand, and tried to pull it from its feet, but the corpse’s scalp peeled free with the hair and the thing was still grasping for him, moaning, a bared patch of its skull shining in the sun. Devora bit her hand to smother a scream. She wanted to flee, to get far, far away from the dead, but something in her held her there, hiding in the tall grass, watching. Her own camp had been helpless against the dead, but this man wasn’t. Her eyes shone with admiration.

  The man stumbled; he fell to the dirt and then rolled fast to his left as the corpse turned and staggered after him. He got up into a crouch and then sprinted across the sand, putting distance between himself and the corpse. The other unclean corpse had risen from the water and was coming at him too. The man ran to the water’s edge and bent and took up two large stones in his hands, one a blunt river stone the size of a clay bowl, the other a jagged rock that had been broken in two sometime before and would serve for a hatchet. With his eyes hard, one rock in either hand, he turned to face the oncoming dead.

  In the end, they lay at his feet, unmoving. The herdsman stood panting, the rocks still clutched in his hands, dripping brown, viscous fluid, his head lowered. He might have been praying, or mourning, or simply spending all his energy just breathing, just staying on his feet.

  She had watched him for so long. A warmth lit in her heart.

  But he was a man, a strange man, and she was still a girl. She slipped away through the grass; glancing once over her shoulder, she saw through the tall blades his face lifted, peering after her. He must have heard her rustling retreat. He must have looked up. Her heart pounded, and she fled. She didn’t stop running until her sides burned and her legs gave out under her.

  The man gave her something to think about on the long walk to Shiloh. Something other than her mother’s face. By day as she walked—drinking from small streams and chewing on grass to dull the bite of hunger, her ears attentive for any sound of the dead—she thought about the man and the way he had stood between the moaning dead and the riverbank. The way the sun had blazed on his bare shoulders and arms. She had not known what a man was, not really. There had been men in the encampment where she and her mother lived, and there had been her father, though they were gone now. They had been merely adults, taller and mysterious beings. Now she had seen a man. It seemed to her she had never truly seen one before. Her heart thrilled at it. The memory and wonder of it gave her the strength to keep placing one foot before the other.

  But at night there was no escape from her terrors.

  At night she lay awake, shivering, as the breeze tossed the blades of grass overhead. She could only lie still, listening, imagining terrible noises in the dark. Remembering how she’d wakened to see her mother’s torso disappearing through the flap of the tent; something had her feet, was dragging her out. Her mother clutching frantically at the rug. The whites of her eyes.

  Then she was gone; the rug slid out behind her. Devora had trembled, staring at the tent flap as her mother’s screams broke the night, terrible screams. The sound of teeth tearing flesh. Screams that went on and on. Devora had covered her ears and just rocked back and forth, too scared even to cry.

  Sometime in the hours that followed, Devora had taken up a clay pestle her mother had used to grind meal, the pestle cool in her hand, and had waited, shaking. At sunrise, a gray hand with strips of its flesh hanging loose had peeled aside the door of the tent, and her mother’s face had peered in. What was left of her mother’s face. Much of the flesh about her jaw had been chewed away, the bone showing under one gashed cheek. The corpse’s dull eyes had looked directly at Devora, its mouth opening in a hiss.

  Afterward, she had fled her mother’s tent and the remains within it. The encampment had been full of the dead, shuffling back and forth. One of them was her father—who had been eaten as he slept in another tent. He had been weak. He had not saved her mother, or her—had done nothing to help them. Seeing her come out of the tent, he moaned, and then they were all moaning at her, all of her dead kin, and she ran. Ran fast and far across the low slopes, until she couldn’t hear them anymore.

  When the world was dark, there was no escape from the memories of her mother’s camp. But by day, as Devora stumbled and half ran at times through the long grass, uphill and down, she forced the night shivers from her mind and dreamed instead of the man she’d seen fighting for his cattle, the man who, unlike her father, slew the dead and defended his own. His strong hands and the way the sunlight glistened on his back. She thought of him holding her, taking her in his arms, pressing his mouth to her throat as she had sometimes seen her father do with her mother. The warmth of that dream sustained her on the long walk. Whispering to God as she moved through the weeds, she vowed that she would find that man again one day.

  Yet it was four and a half years before she saw the herdsman again, and in that time the entire shape of her life had changed. She had become the navi, had faced the dead again, had seen the fire in the tents. She’d even been kissed, but the man who’d kissed her was now beneath a cairn.

  The year she turned sixteen, there was a rich harvest in the land, and more people than usual came to the Feast of Tents, that gathering where the men and women of the land leave their permanent camps or their towns and come to pitch tents in the fields near Shiloh for seven nights, in memory of their time of wandering in the desert. Many of the young women danced hill dances they’d learned from the Canaanites or the wilder desert dances of their own People. For the first time, Devora danced too—for she found her herdsman by accident as she spoke with a few chieftains among the tents pitched by Ephraim tribe. Their eyes met, and she excused herself from that moment of council, because some things are more important than talk or planning or Shiloh itself.

  She danced that night for Lappidoth, whose eyes shone as he watched her. She knew he did not remember her; probably he had not seen her face that other time. Probably he had seen
only a movement of the tall grass as she ran. But now he gazed upon her, and she burned as he looked at her, burned as though he’d touched her. How she danced! She let her hips sing of her desire as she moved in the moonlight; she had thought of him so many times as she lay waiting for sleep.

  After the fires at the Feast of Tents were coals and the people had gone to sleep, she rose from her place and sought out his tent. There was no woman there; he was alone. She slipped onto the wool carpet he lay on and woke him with a whisper in his ear, a whisper she herself could not hear, for her heart and the blood in her ears were louder. It was the boldest moment in her life. She had no family, no tent of her own, only the visions that came to her sometimes from the God of the Covenant and the memory of her first sight of this man, a memory she’d held close for years. Those two were the only things she had, the only things that meant anything to her then. She whispered to him about her longing, how strong and like a man he’d looked to her when she had first seen him. Then his hands grasped her arms and he pulled her beneath him; she gasped as she felt his weight on her. His face above hers was struck with wonder, like a man who has been told that though he had never known it, he is the son of a chieftain. Or like a desert man on a long journey who crests a hill to find an unexpected, clear lake at his feet. “Who are you, girl?” he asked hoarsely.

  “Devora,” she whispered. “Your wife.”

  Before the Feast of Tents was finished, Devora and Lappidoth stood beneath a canopy together, and it seemed to the young navi that all Israel celebrated with them. They had reason to. The nazarites, though now few in number, had fulfilled their vows well, cleansing the low valleys of the restless dead. It was becoming rare to hear of a corpse walking. And though the Feast of Tents was a reminder of deprivation and hunger in the desert, it was also a reminder that beneath the sheltering roof of the Law, the People had survived the desert.

  When Devora and Eleazar and the kohannim met and talked in the afternoons, they spoke of the need to push all the tribes to make sure that none of the Canaanites sent their dead to the water or left bodies unburied. And that none of their own people did either.

  During the short, warm summer nights, Devora’s mind was on other matters.

  For thirty years, Devora had hidden away the memory of her mother’s camp, and Lappidoth had found less reason to fear for his herd. Now the dead were back.

  As the reverent hush of Sabbath fell over Shiloh camp, Devora drew aside the heavy canvas door of her husband’s tent and found Lappidoth already within, seated cross-legged on his red cushions, and she found with warmth in her heart that he was the same man she had seen fighting for his cattle, the same man she’d danced for. He was still strong, and sturdy as an oak. Life in this lush land had been good to him. The fine threads and fringes on the rugs and cushions within the tent he shared with her were a sign of his wealth. He had many cattle in the fields and ten hired herdsmen and was an astute trader. In his lap he held a great clay bowl of grains, and before him was a round wafer of unleavened bread, about the size of his two hands.

  “You’re not eating the Sabbath meal with Hannah and the priests’ wives?” His voice was a low rumble in the dimness.

  Her throat felt tight. “I’d rather eat here with you, my husband.”

  He nodded and held out his hand to the cushions at his side. She went to him and knelt gracefully there by him. He pressed a clay bowl into her hands; it was filled with water. Devora set it before her and washed her hands and arms up to the elbows as the mitzvot required, then her face. The water felt cool against her skin, and she sighed softly as some of the sweat and dirt of the day flowed away into the bowl. Lappidoth took up a piece of the unleavened bread, breaking it in two.

  After a moment Devora set the bowl behind her and leaned against his side, her head on his shoulder, as she had often done long ago, as a young woman. She pressed her face to his garment, which smelled of cattle, and cried without tears, her body shaking as though coming apart. Lappidoth’s calloused hands were warm and comforting on her back.

  She just let him hold her. He waited, neither eating the bread nor pressing her to eat, and not asking her any question. He just held her.

  After a while she whispered, “There is a windstorm in my heart.”

  Lappidoth put his arm about her, held her tightly to him. With his other hand, he took a small stone and set it beside the bread. “This is my wife’s heart,” he rumbled. Then covered the stone with his cupped hand. “This is my love for my wife, covering her heart. That the winds may pass over without tearing through her.”

  She smiled despite the tightness in her breast. “I love you,” she whispered.

  Yet as she gazed at his hand cupped protectively about that small stone, she shivered. His words reminded her of what she’d seen at the olive tree, and her worry howled louder inside her. What if God had removed his hand?

  SCREAMS IN THE NIGHT

  THE NAVI bolted awake with a cry, clutching at her breast. She sat up, heaving for air. The pain and terror of her dream so violent, she felt she’d black out. A roaring in her ears.

  Then her husband’s strong arms were about her, his voice low in her ear, murmuring to her, calming her. He caressed her hair as he spoke, almost as he might caress the neck of one of his horses, calming it after a rearing and a cry of panic. Horses, nightmares, the ravaging dead—nothing ever really fazed Lappidoth. Devora clutched him, her heart pounding, grateful that in the spinning dark there was one thing to cling to.

  She gulped in great breaths of cold night air, her wool covers tangled about her legs, her body nude but for a sheen of sweat. She hated this. Hated waking like this. It was always a few moments before she even really knew who she was.

  She reached for the wool, drew it up about her. Lappidoth laid her gently back and helped her cover herself; his body was pressed to hers, warm and firm. He kissed her cheek and neck. “Shhh,” he murmured. “Shhh, Devora.”

  Devora realized he was kissing away tears. Her face was moist. “Don’t let me go back to sleep,” she whispered.

  Lappidoth’s arm squeezed her, a promise. He shifted so that his hip rested on hers, so that his body partly covered her beneath the wool. It comforted her. He was large and warm, and his weight held her to the present, to this specific moment in his tent, in his bedding.

  After a moment she put her arms around him, though her hands still trembled behind his back. He didn’t try to make love to her, just held her, occasionally kissing her face, the line of her jaw, her lips. Devora listened to her husband’s breathing, like that of some huge animal in the dark. She could feel his heart beating where his chest pressed to her. She began to breathe more slowly. Full, deep breaths, filling her body with air and life. Her heart stopped racing.

  She pressed her face into the soft place between her husband’s neck and his shoulder and breathed in his scent. He had always been a distraction to her, a distraction from everything.

  She felt something stir against her hip, and her senses came alert. She moved her fingers slowly over his back, thinking. She held her breath a moment, then decided that if he wanted her again, she would voice no protest, though she also wouldn’t invite it—she wanted only to be held. But lovemaking too would distract her from the past and the future. And she knew with an ache between her ribs that each time he touched her might be the last.

  His large, thick hands began to caress her arms slowly, though he made no other movement. His breathing was a little faster. After a moment he murmured her name in that soft growl of his, and she caught her breath, remembering the night he first said her name that way—repeating it a moment after she made a gift of it.

  Some time later, she found herself warmed and content and safe as she lay under him and felt his strong body on her and inside her. She loved the way his breathing felt after he finished. She drank in the smell of him.

  “I’ll ride with you,” he murmured.

  She gasped, her content fading. “No, you won’t,�
� she whispered, worry sharp within her.

  He lifted himself up on his elbows, and she looked into his eyes in the dark. “I’d be ashamed to stay,” he said. He had faced the dead before.

  She lifted her hand to cup his face, felt the roughness of his beard against her palm. He covered her hand with his own. A large hand, a herdsman’s hand. Once strong, so strong. Now so wrinkled, the veins thick like cords, but—so beautiful. Her husband was a man who sat with others in the evening and discussed the Law. He was a quiet man, though furious when roused. For an instant, heat rushed into her, scorching her, not a passion-heat but a God-heat, and she saw her strong, gentle husband in the grip of the dead, many of them, so many, the unclean dead tearing him off his horse and bearing him to the ground, their nails and teeth digging into his flesh. She gasped, and the vision left her, leaving dizziness in its wake. The tent spun around her a moment, and to keep herself from spinning with it she clutched Lappidoth’s arms as tightly as she had during their love. She forced herself to breathe, and the world stilled.

  Kisses soft and moist on her brow, on her eyelids. His rumbling voice. “Are you all right?”

  She kept her eyes closed, fearing the tent would spin again. “Please, husband,” she whispered. “I beg you. Stay, defend your cattle. You have no herds in the north.” She felt the tension in him, but he didn’t speak. “I will be with armed men, I will be safe. I will serve our God better knowing you are here.” She opened her eyes at last, saw the pain in his. It made her ache. Making him promise to stay, when she left and put herself at risk, was cruel. But he was not a young man now. And what she had seen!