In the heat of the day everyone rested. Hoglah and Milcah erected a lean-to for their mother and Tirzah, who whined for soup. Ada had brought her youngest back from the brink of starvation with broth made from dried meat of the ibex Hur had given them.
Hoglah grabbed a waterskin and trotted toward the nearest well to draw water for soup. Even with a headcloth shading her face, Hoglah had to squint deeply to make out which way to go in the blinding midday sun.
No hills or mountains edged the horizon. No tumbled boulders gave form to the land. God had tilled the desert flat, breaking large rocks into small until the arid earth was shapelessly even, from horizon to horizon. Only a few sparse lines of low gray shrubs hinted at dents along the desert floor where winter water collected.
Shielding her eyes, Hoglah looked for the tall tamarisk that marked the well. Once she located it, she marched straight ahead, looking neither right nor left. At this sun-scorched hour, nothing moved and the vast formless plain scared her.
At the feet of the tamarisk, flat rocks framed the well. A thinner rock lay atop the mouth of the well to keep animals from falling in and polluting the water. Hoglah set down her waterskinand, grunting with effort, shoved aside the well cover. On one of the rocks edging the well, a great camel-hide bucket lay under a frayed palm mat. The bucket was threaded on either side by thick rope, which wound around the base of the tamarisk.
Before lowering the stiff, leather bucket, Hoglah peered into the hole. The rocky sides of the well were illuminated for a foot or two by the noonday sun. Below, all was black. Hoglah dropped the bucket onto the rock and stepped back, with a shiver, feeling unseen eyes. She shook herself to cast off the feeling and looked around. All was still. She was alone. She picked up a small pebble and dropped it into the well to hear how far down the water lay. The bell-like echo told her the water lay far below.
Kneeling, she lowered the bucket into the hole, the fibrous rope rasping her hands as she untangled it. Finally, she heard the bucket hit water and lowered it farther, to fill it. Then she stood, to gain purchase as she lifted. Hand over hand, she pulled the heavy bucket steadily upward, her feet braced, her upper arms straining. About halfway up, she stopped to gather her strength again, letting her arms slacken slightly. Again, she looked around, sure someone was watching.
When she resumed, she had lost momentum. She grunted as she pulled, sliding her left foot forward to gain more purchase. Just as she did, she caught sight of a man emerging from behind the tamarisk.
“Here . . .” he said.
But it was too late. Startled, Hoglah felt her left foot slide out from under her. She lost her balance and her feet flew forward as the bucket’s heavy weight dragged her toward the hole. Sharp pebbles scraped the backs of her legs. Her headcloth flew off. It happened so fast she did not think to let go of the rope as she sped toward the mouth of the well. Hoglah gasped as she plummeted downward, the air in the well rushing up her robe. She screamed as the rope played out faster and faster, plunging her into the dark. Water bit her feet, then rose up her legs, slowing her descent and tangling her robe around her body in a wet, heavy mass as swirling water reached her waist.
The rope jerked, stopping so violently Hoglah almost lost her grip.
“Hold on,” a voice above echoed. “Don’t let go. I’ve got you.”
“Please,” she begged, “don’t let me die.”
Clutching the rope, Hoglah was suddenly aware of how badly her hands burned where the rope had torn into them.
“I can’t hold.”
“You must,” he shouted as he pulled the rope. Slowly, she felt herself rising, the water now at her thighs, then her calves.
“See if you can touch . . . each side of the well . . . with your feet.” He expelled the words heavily between labored breaths, as he pulled hand over hand. “Brace your feet.” He breathed and pulled. “Let your feet . . . help you walk . . . up the wall.”
“Please . . .”
“Listen to my voice.”
He pulled.
Her feet were now clear of the water, but she felt her arms were being ripped from their sockets. She had a vision of falling, armless, into the black water that lay waiting to swallow her. Her moan filled the well.
“Listen to me . . . I’ve got you.”
He pulled.
“Press your feet . . . against the sides . . . of the well.”
She forced panic from her chest and took a deep breath. Then tentatively spread her legs until her feet touched the sides of the well. She pushed the balls of her feet against the sides, the sandal bottoms slipping slightly. The strain on her arms slackened, and the man above felt it.
“Good. Now walk your feet up as I pull. Press your feet when I stop for breath. Then I’ll pull again.”
He pulled, then held.
“Feet.” He pulled, then held. “Feet.”
Her face clenched with effort, Hoglah so focused on pressing her feet between pulls that she forgot her fear. Soon black faded to gray and the sunny circle at the top of the hole became larger and brighter. As the end of her effort came into view, Hoglah loosened her grip and slipped downward, gasping in horror that she might fall back into the dark maw.
“Hold on,” he called. “Almost there.”
Sunlight crowned the top of her head and crept down her face. Her arms bent with the rope as she was pulled across the lip of the well onto the flat rocks that framed it. The man rushed toward her, wrapped his hands around her wrists, and dragged her away from the well. Then he sat, his knees bent and his head cradled on his arms, panting.
Hoglah, cold, wet, and exhausted, lay on the pebbled ground, absorbing its warmth. She began to cry, low whimpers growing to full-throated sobbing. She did not know if this man pulled her out to save her or to sell her into slavery. She did not care. She just cried.
They remained that way for some time, Hoglah sobbing until her cries subsided into jerky coughs. The man sat a few feet away. Each sapped of strength.
When the man raised his head, he saw a wet mass. Water had twisted Hoglah’s robe into dark, sodden lumps that covered all but her lower legs.
He sighed, stood, and raised her up. Fearful, she faced him. She was as tall as he, perhaps a touch taller. Then she noticed his copper-colored hair and the mosaic of freckles across his face. Her eyes widened and, immediately, she slumped, lowering herself, and he understood that she recognized him as the sheep shearer.
“You could have drowned,” he began.
“You made me . . .” she began, then corrected herself. “You saved me.” It was what he wanted to hear and what she wanted to say.
She looked down at her soaked robe, clinging to her, revealing her shape. She lifted her left shoulder to align her breasts. He noticed. Suddenly she realized that she stood, alone, with a man who was looking directly at her upper body.
“I must leave.”
She lifted the hem of her robe just enough to allow her to run, then darted off, as he called after her, “Your waterskin . . .” He raised it above his head.
She turned, ran back, snatched the skin from him and exhaled, “Thank you.” Then she lifted her skirts with one hand and the waterskin with the other, and ran like a gazelle with a wolf at its heels.
“Your servant, Asaf,” he called after her, congratulating himself on saving the young woman he had in his sights, and the good fortune he might make of it.
When Hoglah returned to the lean-to, her mother, Tirzah, and Milcah forgot their torpor when they saw her damp robe and wild expression.
Tirzah sat bolt upright. “What happened to you?” she asked, delighted by the diversion.
Hoglah shuddered and wondered how she would explain. “He startled . . .” She realized she would have to explain who he was. She began again. “Yes, it was the Shadow People mother talks of. They threw me in the well, then drew me out.”
“Shadow People? Really?” Tirzah looked ready for an absorbing story.
By that time, Hoglah had calme
d down enough to re-explain. “No, really, it was just me. I filled the skin, then slipped, and spilled it all over myself.”
“That sounds like you,” Tirzah said. “But how did it soak your whole robe?”
“Did you mention a ‘he,’ or did I misunderstand?” asked Milcah.
“No matter,” said their mother, “here you are, safe.”
CHAPTER 15
A PACT IN THE GREAT CRATER
RUMORS PASSED THROUGH the tribes as quickly as head lice, people scratching and picking, wondering why the journey was taking so long, wondering if Moses had led them astray. They heard rumors about a great god’s footprint in the desert. Some called the vast, elliptical crater “the Footprint of Ba’al.” Others said it was “the Footprint of Moloch.” When she heard the name, Milcah shuddered, remembering what Tirzah told of Moloch, the brazen god who ate living children to appease the fire in his belly.
“I hear it is colored like a rainbow,” Hur said as he sat with his father near the edge of camp, looking up at a thousand small fires flickering in the night sky. He picked out familiar patterns: the goddess, the lion, the boatman. He had become comfortable with the desert night, less so with the slow pace of their journey.
“Why not go directly to our ancestors’ lands? We hear they are not far and they are rich with grasses and water. Our flocks would recover.”
“Suppose others now live on the land? You do not think such lands lie empty.”
“We will take them.” Hur slapped his thigh, his robe flapping in the wake of his hand.
“You yearn for battle,” Gaddi said, remembering his own youth, when his blood boiled to take down a taskmaster. And he remembered the futility of those feelings.
“There are many ways of winning,” Gaddi continued. “As great as a strong arm is a wise heart. We honor our elders for their years of wisdom.”
“Just because they have lived long does not mean they are wise,” Hur argued. “Their years might be only luck.”
“It is God’s will, not luck, that gives us life.”
“Why would God choose that miserable Bar-On over Noa’s father?”
They sat, silent, then Hur parted from his father and folded himself down next to Noa, whose face seemed serene in sleep. Cautiously, so as not to wake her, he slipped his hand beneath the sheepskin and slid it across her belly, swollen with life that he had made in her. At his touch, Noa stiffened slightly. Then Hur turned toward the embers that marked the dark edge of nowhere.
THE NEXT DAY, as they trod around rocky plateaus and through shallow wadis, Haddad appeared, alone. He shot Hur a conspiratorial smile.
“Want to see the Footprint of Ba’al?” Haddad asked, as they walked side by side.
“The great crater?”
“The very one.”
“When?
“Now.”
“Let’s go.”
“Take water and bread. The rest Ba’al will provide.”
Hur found Noa among the women and told her he would be gone only a day and a night.
“Again?” she said. Startled by jealousy, she wondered, “Why this Midianite over me?”
As recompense, she insisted on spending the night with her mother and sisters. Hur said he would secure her request.
Haddad stood at a respectable distance and tried not to stare at the foreign women. He noticed a slight bulge in Noa’s robe, then glanced at her face. He turned his back on the slowly moving troop and smiled into the blank desert. Even from a distance, he saw that she had eyes like a doe and Hur’s baby in her belly.
Hur ran back to whisper Noa’s request in his mother’s ear. Then, he grabbed a waterskin and some round loaves and told his father of their plans. Haddad followed and assured Gaddi they would return the next day, easily catching up with the slow-moving multitude.
“I will guard the safety of my friend, as I guard myself.” Haddad pulled the ring from his forefinger and handed it to Gaddi. “Here, my pledge.”
Hur gave his father no chance to disagree. He waved farewell and strode off, Haddad hurrying to keep up.
Gaddi feared that Haddad had secreted others, who lay in wait for his son. He respected Hur’s courage, but feared his son’s impetuousness. He considered going after him, but did not want to stain Hur’s honor.
AS THEY TROTTED eastward, the Israelites and their flocks became ever smaller.
Hur asked, “Just the two of us?”
“Why not?”
Hur nodded, masking his unease. He felt the weight of his knife at his waist under his robe and kept checking the margins of his view for Haddad’s scar-faced cousin and others who might be lying in wait.
“Your people will stop at the wells just north of the crater. The wells are known to all. So are the springs where we will stop, deep in the center of the crater. But perhaps luck will be with us and no caravan will spoil our trip.”
“You guaranteed my safety . . .” Hur broke in.
“ . . . as much as I can my own.” Haddad laughed.
Walking quickly, they reached the western edge of the crater before the sun had reached its zenith.
“Not here, farther on,” Haddad coaxed, as the trail paralleled the long northern edge of the ovoid crater. It was past noon when they stopped. Haddad led Hur to the edge and heard him draw in his breath. Haddad was pleased to give his friend this gift.
On the horizon, across a great gulf, Hur saw a ledge matching the one on which they stood. Far below the rim lay another world: black basalt cones rose in scattered groups from the crater floor and the thin line of a riverbed twisted among them.
“To the east, the crater opens to the Valley of the Willows, where the Kenites live,” Haddad explained. “When a flood rushes through, the waters are fierce. They carry away all on their way to ‘the gate’ of the crater.”
Haddad fell silent, allowing Hur to see.
Color striped the sides of the crater: a band of cream-colored rock atop a band of rose, a band of white glinting with crystals, a layer of sea green. Here and there spikes of red rock pierced the layers, pushed upward from the core of the Earth. A griffon vulture glided past, the tips of its wings bent upward, like the fingers of a dancer. It turned its head to examine them with a predatory eye. Its gaze held them for a moment.
“Come,” said Haddad, breaking the moment, as the bird drifted toward its nest on a ledge below.
They picked their way down a rocky path, reaching the wadi bed in late afternoon. They followed it eastward until Hur spotted feather-topped reeds like the ones that had framed the desert pool where he had taken his first ibex. His mind locked on the Scarface, and he looked around with a hard eye.
Noticing his look, Haddad agreed, “Let us approach cautiously, in case we are not alone.”
They sidled up to the screen of reeds, the trickling water of a small spring wetting their feet.
“No one,” Haddad whispered.
Water bubbled up in a sandy basin, bathing the feet of the reeds and the feet of the men before disappearing into the sand at the mouth of a smooth-walled canyon. Hur bent to drink, gulping the sweet spring water like a camel while reminding himself to draw water for Noa before they left.
Near the pool lay signs that marked the place as a stopover: fire-blackened rocks and the beginnings of a mudbrick caravansary. They gathered tinder in the waning day, then flinted a fire. Sitting cross-legged, they watched the setting sun tint the canyon walls shades of red and gold. Stars revealed themselves, Haddad peeled bits of wood from a dry stick and pitched them into the fire, and Hur allowed himself to relax.
They talked about their families. Haddad told Hur that he was being groomed as tribal leader and admitted that a part of him did not want the burden of leadership. He wanted simply to hunt and sit with companions on nights like this.
“But why reveal this to me? Is it not a sign of weakness?” asked Hur.
“Who else could I tell? My cousin, who would gladly snatch my place and give me a scar to match his? I can s
ee you are like me. And weak? Do you think me weak?”
Haddad stood, walked to the low, mudbrick wall, and returned with a clay vessel and two small cups.
“Those who stop here know where to find these,” Haddad answered, filling the vessel with water and settling it among rocks at the edge of the fire. When it was hot, he stirred in a pinch of ground berries from the bag at his waist, then poured two cups.
“Mmmm,” Hur murmured, the bitter-lemon taste of sumac tea warming his throat.
He pulled out one of the round loaves he had brought, tore it, and offered half to Haddad, along with strips of dried quail meat. Haddad shaved salty cheese from a small, dry block and handed some to Hur.
“A rough meal,” Haddad offered.
“But shared.”
Hur noticed that Haddad’s hawk-like face and wiry body looked even leaner in the fire’s sculpting light.
Feeling strong within and without, Hur stood and walked in starlight to the mouth of the narrow canyon. He bent to pick up a rock gleaming like marble.
“Don’t touch!”
Hur jumped back, and Haddad rushed to his side.
“Oh, prince of the desert, you still have much to learn. If you pick up rocks, you may meet the Deathstinger.”
“Deathstinger?”
“The yellow scorpion. Watch,” Haddad advised, as he walked into the canyon, expertly flipping a rock with his toes. The white walls of the canyon undulated like the sea as Haddad went deeper within, flipping rocks.
“Ah, a Deathstinger,” he called, just as a large, silent blur leaped down from a ledge, knocking Haddad onto the ground. Hur thought Scarface, but saw a whirlof yellow-and-black rosettes. A leopard.
Hur drew his knife and charged. Fearing he would cut Haddad, he pulled at the big cat’s head, slicing an ear. The leopard turned toward him. Fired by the leopard’s glowing golden eyes, Hur plunged his knife, piercing until the knife wedged into an eye socket.
The leopard screamed and sprang away. Hur’s knife rocking in its eye, it bolted down the canyon so fast that, in moments, it was the size of a glancing pebble, and then no more. Weeks later, a small caravan of traders found the blood-caked knife on the wadi floor and looked around nervously before scavenging it.
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