by Stant Litore
“My skin is already unclean from its touch.” Devora stooped over the body. “I will carry him to the camp. The men can make a cairn for us.” She kept her hands from shaking as she slid her arms beneath the reeking, broken thing that had been a boy; she lifted it. The corpse was very light—lighter than the basket of clothes she’d carried. Its intestines trailed to the ground beside her as she held it. Devora averted her eyes. “Gather up the clothes, Mikal,” she murmured, and then took an uneasy step forward, then another. She tried not to think of what she was carrying; when it shifted slightly against her, she bit back a scream, swayed for a moment, eyes closed.
“Let me help.” Hannah’s voice was hoarse with crying.
“Touching it means being put from the camp.” Devora’s own voice was harsh. “That should only happen to one of us.”
Hannah stifled a sob. Devora ignored the sound, kept walking. The mud by the river sucked at her feet. The wind, which made waves of purple blossoms in the heather and made the reeds hiss like serpents, kept tugging her hair across her face. She gritted her teeth, pressed on. There had been no opportunity for Hannah to say goodbye to the child. Devora understood her pain, but she had no time for it and could not permit herself to think about it, or she would begin crying as well.
“Maybe we should leave the body,” Mikal whispered, her eyes wide.
“We do not leave one of our dead unburied.” Devora’s voice was cold.
Hannah cast her a grateful, tearful look.
“Run ahead to the camp, Mikal,” Devora said. “Tell them.”
Mikal bit her lip, then nodded and sprinted through the reeds. In a few moments she was far ahead, running fleet as a gazelle.
Devora gazed ahead, fixedly ahead. The camp seemed an eternity away, as though it were in far Kemet and she had a wilderness to walk across before she could get there. Her arms ached beneath the small weight of the boy. Yet she did not let herself stumble or stop.
By the time Devora and Hannah stumbled out of the heather and reached the first of the tents, Devora’s rough washing dress was pasted to her back with cold sweat, and despite the wind her hair clung to her cheeks and neck. She feared falling ill, but the grim resolution within her was stronger. She still carried the dead child.
The kohannim and some of the other levites had gathered at the edge of the camp, and Mikal was there speaking urgently, tearfully, with them. The high priest stood with them, his sleeves bloodstained from a recent sacrifice, an olah in the Tent of Meeting. He’d been listening to Mikal with a grim look. But then one of them saw Devora and Hannah and cried out, pointing. They all fell silent.
The levites parted, making a path for the two girls. Eleazar’s eyes were wide with shock, his gaze fixed on the burden Devora carried. She saw Zefanyah, and the look he gave her lent her strength, strength she badly needed. Devora held her head high and carried the boy’s corpse into the midst of the camp.
As she reached the navi’s tent, two nazarites ran up with a woolen cloth and laid it a few feet before the door of the tent, so that Devora could set the body down without defiling the earth within the camp. Then the cloth could be lifted to carry the corpse to the slope where cairns were raised, and the body could be wrapped in the cloth, lowered into the earth, and covered with heavy stone.
But Devora did not lay down her burden. She stopped with her toes nearly touching the edge of the cloth and waited, holding that small, dry weight in her arms, her eyes on the woman who stood in the door of the tent.
Naomi wore the white dress of the levites, and though she had never been tall, in the moonlight at the door of her tent she looked as regal as a queen of Kemet. Her gaze took in Hannah’s tears, the corpse Devora carried, the brown stains and gore on Devora’s sleeves.
Her eyes grew cold.
“Were any of you bitten?”
“No, navi.” Devora held her head high, though she wanted to slip away and hide; the hardness of Naomi’s face shook her. Devora stood very still. “I was the only one it touched.”
She heard a half sob behind her. Hannah.
Naomi searched Devora’s eyes for truth. Her face remained hard, her emotions masked. This was not the Naomi who had smiled wryly at God’s secrets or Devora’s “pluck.” This was Naomi the Old, judge of Israel, who had been alive when the People had taken possession of the land. Naomi, who had learned from the first navi and whose responsibility was keeping the land clean from the dead.
“I believe you, girl.” For a brief moment, Naomi’s eyes showed her pain. Devora took in a quick breath, but did not otherwise react. She had to be strong if she was to face the consequences of her choice without tears and without terror.
“Set down the body; a cairn will be built for it.”
Devora obeyed, though she felt that any movement might make her collapse in fatigue. She yearned for Naomi to say anything to her, anything personal. Bending at the knees, she laid the corpse gently on the cloth before her feet. Straightening, she looked at it. Lifeless and still, it seemed more pitiful than perilous; a wisp of torn flesh and sinew, a torn-up face without any breath in it. Sunken and small. A thing once made in the image of God and then withered and savaged until nothing left of God could be seen in it.
Devora stood and lifted her eyes. “You wanted to know what I saw,” she said softly. “When I fainted.”
“Yes.” Naomi’s eyes were keen.
“I saw you.” Devora met her gaze without flinching. “Standing in front of a burning tent. There were corpses in the tent. Then you fell, all at once to one side without bending your legs, and when you hit the ground you were gone. And I saw myself standing near. I saw myself grieving but I had no tears.”
Silence.
The men were gazing on with horror. It was the first time anyone but Naomi had heard Devora speak of having a vision. Even Hannah’s sobs fell silent, and the girl looked at Devora with wide eyes.
“Were you older when you saw yourself stand there?” Naomi asked.
Devora shook her head, something inside her beginning to quail. “No, I don’t think so.”
Naomi gave a small, slight nod. Her face giving nothing away, her voice clipped and sharp. “Did you see anything else?”
Devora shook her head.
Naomi made a quiet, dismissive noise in her throat, as though setting what she’d heard aside until its importance was clearer. She looked out over the gathered men of the camp. “This girl is a navi. She brings us the niv sefatayim, the fruit of God’s wisdom. God who sees what has been and what may be. You had best listen to her.” She turned her gaze back to Devora, and her voice grew colder. “But she is also unclean. For seven days she is unclean.”
Devora lowered her head, blinking moisture out of her eyes.
“Devora of Israel,” the navi intoned solemnly, “I put you from the camp. You will take neither food nor water nor clothes. You will touch no item in this camp. You will touch no crop nor any well filled with water. You will keep yourself separate from the People, sharing neither nearness nor speech. For seven days.”
Devora swallowed. “Navi—”
Anger flickered in the old woman’s eyes. “Go.”
The word was as sharp as a slap.
Devora’s face burned. She had tried to plead, to ask for one kind word—whether from the navi or the levites or from Hannah or from anyone, she didn’t know. She’d been rebuked. She’d deserved to be. For a moment she searched Naomi’s face for some compassion or love, but found only that mask, as though her weathered face had been chiseled from stone, immutable law written into it in crevasses and hard lines, even as the Law had been written into stone tablets long ago on Har Sinai. There was in that face no pity or reprieve or farewell, only the cold justice that Shiloh hoped would keep a People from perishing from this earth.
Devora glanced behind her, saw Hannah watching her with reddened eyes and tear streaks on her face. Mikal white as though she were ill. The levites had their eyes on the corpse, and they too looked pa
le.
Suddenly she needed to be out of this camp, away from Naomi’s hard eyes. Devora turned and ran. The levites stepped back out of her way, careful not to touch her with so much as a fold of their garments. That brought a fresh sting to Devora’s eyes, and her feet pounded the soil as she sprinted, her hair flying behind her.
But as she reached the last of the tents, she heard a man’s voice call out her name, not loudly. She stumbled, then straightened and turned. Through her tears she saw Zefanyah approaching at a jog, a waterskin slung over his shoulder. Her face burned with shame and she looked away, furious with herself that the nazarite should see her like this, not only unclean but her eyes tear-swollen and surely hideous.
“Devora, take this with you,” he called. She glanced up, and he tossed her his waterskin. Without thinking, she caught it out of the air with both hands. She could feel the weight of it; it was full. Enough water for a few days. He was giving the waterskin to her, a true gift, for she could not bring it back with her, neither to him nor to the camp. She would have to bury it out in the wilderness; her touch had defiled it the moment she had caught it out of the air.
She hugged the waterskin to her breast and looked at him through the strands of hair that her run had left disheveled across her face.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
He smiled, and there was such warmth in his eyes that she couldn’t bear it. She turned from him and ran again, ran harder, not looking back to see if he was watching her. The city of tents fell behind her, the low voices of the camp fading to a hum like that of bees.
Once she was halfway up the slope, Devora slowed, then bent over, gasping for air, the waterskin still clutched to her breast. The day was getting dim; with the hills looming so high around Shiloh, especially to the east, dusk came early and dawn came late. The cold reality of what had happened fell on her, as sharply as though she’d ducked under a fall of ice water. She sank and sat in the heather, the lovely blossoms swaying about her in the breeze that had replaced the earlier wind. She was cold, and her body itched with dried sweat. She lifted her hands and she could feel the cold of the dead boy’s flesh. She was defiled. Unclean. She had touched the dead.
Devora clutched at the stems of the heather and tore at them. She let out a long, raw scream, tossing her head back and screaming until she had to gasp for breath again. Yet still her breast ached as though there was a great bruise across her body.
She sat for a while in the weeds, just catching her breath. Then she chafed her arms against the cold, trying to think as the night gathered about her. She heard the cries of jackals, but they were far from here. Later, even as the first stars appeared, she heard the low moan of one of the lurching dead. Even though it was far away, she shivered at the sound of it. She had no weapon in her hands, neither knife nor washing board. She had only the waterskin Zefanyah—bless him—had tossed her. And even had she had something lethal in her hands with which to defend herself, she had no desire to see another of the loathsome dead.
Yet.
She had carried that child. She had done what she must, what she feared to do.
The thought gave her strength. She bent and searched among the stems of heather. It took her some time to find what she needed, but at last she pulled a jagged rock free of the dirt, and she held it up before her eyes, looking at it in the starlight. It was longer than her hand, and thinner. And this stone knife had not been handled by any of the People, had been touched by no one but God who had shaped it and placed it here in the earth for Devora to find. And at the end of her seven days, Devora could simply toss it aside.
She forced herself to her feet, her eyes wide in the dark. She had heard the moan; she knew there were other dead in the hills. But she refused to lie crying in fear.
As she moved across the slope to find shelter, the wind picked up again, as if to hurry her. It rushed through the heather, even as it had when she was carrying the body toward the camp; the heather flattened before it as before the rush of God toward his Tent. It was very beautiful—the blossoms moving like a single living creature beneath the stars—but it was ominous too. As though something powerful and unexpected was coming to the valley.
KINDLED LIKE STRAW
FOR THE week of her uncleanness, Devora lived by filling her waterskin from small creeks in the hills about Shiloh and by foraging for berries and roots, which were plentiful this close to the harvest. She kept her waterskin and her stone knife with her at all times, even once when climbing a tall tree to take eggs from a bulbul’s nest. Yet she was nearly always hungry. She washed her dress and bathed sometimes in the mornings in streams she found, but by nightfall she felt sweat and dirt caked on her skin, which was a misery to her, and her dress became ragged and stiff, as though it were a part of her uncleanness.
Dutifully she avoided the herds of cattle that ranged farther up the valley, and once when she saw the smoke of campfires on a ridge and caught the scent of roasting meat, she turned and ran through the heather, putting distance between herself and those tents, until her mouth stopped watering.
Several times she heard a corpse moaning, and once she heard two dead moaning, as if to each other, from opposite slopes across the valley. She found it difficult to sleep, and when she did, her dreams were violent and evil. Sometimes she sat in the weeds fingering the edges of her stone knife and looked at the sky or gazed down at Shiloh’s tents, and thought of Zefanyah or of the cattle herder who she’d seen fighting the dead years ago. That was far more pleasant than thinking of the dead. She imagined her return to the camp, her reintegration into the People. She imagined the nazarite sweeping her up in his arms and kissing her, having missed her and yearned for her for seven days.
She tried his name on her lips.
Zefanyah.
She decided it was a beautiful name, a mysterious name. Even an erotic one. Zefanyah: “God has hidden him.” The word meant hidden like a secret or like a treasure, something you store up to give to someone at the proper time. Devora began to pray softly and silently in the dark. New hopes, strange hopes, were blossoming inside her, and she dared to wonder if perhaps God did not hate her, if perhaps God had forgiven her for her helplessness the morning of her mother’s death. Forgiven her enough to have stored up this treasure, this secret for her.
On the final night of her exile from the camp, Devora sat near the summit of the hill of cairns where Shiloh buried its dead, with her back to a great olive tree. She had spent the past two nights in this same place; the olive was a comfort to her, something warm and alive and straight at her back, something that reached toward God’s stars. Though she was still unclean and outside the Law, she at least felt as though the Law was there, a great tent over the valley sheltering the People, and one of its poles firm against her back. It gave her comfort. She gazed up at the stars and thought of the invisible roof of that tent. She thought of telling Zefanyah about it.
Even as she thought of him, the moon lifted above the opposite ridge.
Looking up at it, she stopped breathing.
Most nights, the moon glided gracefully into the sky over Shiloh valley like a great white crane. But tonight the moon shone dark red, a great sore in the sky. Devora shrank against the olive tree; she suddenly felt terribly exposed on this hillside; her instincts screamed at her to hide, even if it meant digging at the earth with her fingers to make a burrow, like some beast of the hills. All thoughts of Zefanyah had fled.
The moon crept higher.
One by one, the little fires of the camp far below went out.
She breathed shallowly; she kept watching that moon. It was unnatural, that color, and the size of it—as though the moon had swallowed up much of the sky around it. She waited for some vision that would warn her or help her interpret what she saw in the sky, but no vision came, no touch of dizziness. The air was cool and clear.
She couldn’t sleep; she just watched the moon creep, bloodied, across the sky, until it set.
Then for a long tim
e the night was dark again, and chill. Sometimes the jackals cried in the hills, and Devora shivered, both relieved and frightened that the moon had gone, leaving no hint as to what it portended.
A shriek shattered the night like glass. Devora froze. The cry was distant—it came from the direction of the camp. The cry went on and on.
Then there were other screams, thin and distant. Her eyes grew round in the moonlight.
A deep, deep call—a single rolling note—filled the air, and the hills deepened the sound and rolled it on and gave it back to the air amplified. Devora felt it in her feet and legs, in the slamming of her heartbeat. Someone had blown the shofar, the ram’s horn, down in the camp. One long note, now fading to silence except for echoes from the more distant ridges—the t’qiah, the note that means God is mighty, beware, this land is his!
As if in answer, another sound erupted, quiet at this distance but distinct enough to make Devora shudder in the night.
The moaning of the dead.
The wailing of many, many throats.
She got to her feet, gazing down at the tents, her heart in her throat. There were sharp, terrified screams on the air and, under it all, that moaning. The ram’s horn did not call again.
“El adonai,” she whispered, “adonai, help them.”
A flame went up in the night, a tower of fire rising over one of the tents, as though some power had spewed fire toward the sky. She watched with wide eyes. She felt a rush of heat across her face, crackling along the skin of her arms. It was the same as the feeling that came when she had a vision of things to come, the rush of the shekinah through her mind and body—yet this heat was immeasurably stronger, as though someone down in the camp had opened the door to a furnace the size of a mountain. The heat rushed into her and through her, and she cried out, every part of her burning; in a moment it might wither her like a dry leaf tossed into a fire pit.