In All Places (Stripling Warrior)

by Misty Moncur

  Mother and I cleaned our home and made it habitable again. Zeke helped me clear the kitchen garden and prepare it for planting the winter vegetables. Micah helped us too, but he spent a lot of time helping Cana with her chores and making her giggle. He was gaining the affection of the younger girls even faster than Zeke was. Seeing them together that way eased my mind about the arrangement.

  On the third afternoon, I carefully wrapped my weapons in cloth, determined to put them away because the time of war was past, and I was placing them beneath my hammock when Mother came into the hut and said, “Keturah, there is someone here to see you.”

  Zeke was standing in the yard when I slipped through the mat at the door. I recognized what I had not on those evening walks here in the village so long ago, that since he had sought first permission from my mother, this visit was part of a formal courtship.

  “Walk with me,” he invited.

  I smiled at him and walked out through the gate. “Would you like to go to the waterfall?” I glanced at the sky. We had plenty of time to get there and back.

  “If you don’t mind, I’d rather not,” he said.

  I understood why immediately and was sorry for even thinking of it. The waterfall had once been our childhood place of play, but now it was a place I shared many memories with Gideon.

  “Why don’t we go see the old training ground?” he suggested instead.

  “I would like that.” It was a better idea.

  We walked through the field, careful not to trample any of the plants growing there. They were large and lush, and it was nearly time to harvest them. I led him to a small rise at the edge of the field and we climbed to the top of it.

  “I used to hide here to watch the striplings,” I confessed.

  The sun was hours from setting, but it had crossed the midpoint and was falling in the sky.

  “Kenai told me.” I could tell that wasn’t what he wanted to speak of, so I just waited silently for him to pull his thoughts together.

  He clasped his hands behind his back and squinted into the horizon. “I spoke to Gid,” he said. “Before he left.”

  I folded my arms over my chest.

  “He loves you.”

  I shut my eyes, but I didn’t say anything, and for a long time neither did he.

  Finally he cleared the emotion from his throat. “I’ve been thinking of that morning in Cumeni.”

  I knew the one he meant.

  “When Gid took command of the prisoners to Zarahemla. You were mad at him.”

  “I was.”

  “He gave you a flower.”

  “He did.”

  He cleared his throat again, but unsuccessfully. “Your eyes were closed—like they are now.”

  I remembered the moment vividly.

  “But I saw his face when he offered you the flower.” He put his arm around my waist and pulled me to his side, and I allowed it. “You really get to him.”

  “Please stop,” I said.

  He was trying to say I had made a mistake and done it willfully. He was trying to say I was a distraction and a nuisance to the men and they were worse for knowing me.

  “Keturah, you are what every man wants to fight for.”

  I turned by degrees to look at him.

  His deep brown eyes were gentle and full of compassion. “It is okay to mourn him,” he said.

  I slid into his waiting embrace. His arms were protective and comforting and hard as stone. I finally understood what he wanted to be for me, and feeling miserable, I finally admitted I needed it. He stood there and stroked my hair, and this time when I mourned for the loss of Gideon, he did not storm away in bitter jealousy.

  Slowly, in His time, God was teaching us both what it meant to love another person.

  “Do you remember,” Zeke murmured into my hair, “that time we came across the wounded buck in the forest?”

  “Of course I do,” I mumbled into his shoulder. It had been mangled, broken, left for dead.

  “I told you to turn away from its suffering.”

  “You didn’t want me to see it.”

  “But you pushed past me and knelt by it. You stroked its ears, talked to it, and then mercifully slit its throat.”

  I watched it in my mind as Zeke spoke.

  “That’s when I fell in love with you.”

  He couldn’t have been more than fourteen when that happened. Had I ever known? Had I seen it in his eyes?

  As we started back toward the village, I thought of the wounded buck, of Gideon, and of marching out of the training field, this field, with Helaman’s army.

  Later that evening, my unit returned to the village. They carried bundles and gifts and provisions to be taken back to the militia. I knew they would leave at dawn the next morning, so I worked quickly to help the women of the village prepare a large meal and pack food for their journey.

  It was the last time I would cook for them, and my heart felt heavy even as we talked and laughed in the yard of our little hut. Gideon stayed on the far side of the fire, and I might have thought he was still upset, but he couldn’t keep his eyes from tracking to mine.

  Don’t say it. You’ll wish you had never said it to me.

  But oh, how I wanted to hear the words from his lips just once, the ones he was so clearly saying with his eyes.

  You can’t take the words back.

  He wanted the army. Not me. I looked at the stars, into the fire, into the dark woods, but he was in every place my eyes went to. Finally, I just closed them and rested my head on my knees. I wouldn’t make it harder for him. I would make it quick and brutal. That was who I was.

  When the men finally unrolled their bedrolls and let the fire die down, I got up and went to the hut.

  “Keturah.”

  My name was soft in the night, but I turned to see its owner in the shadows at the corner of the hut.

  “Are you just going to leave it like that?”

  “Zach, I have to.”

  He moved suddenly toward me, took me by the arm, and pulled me to the far side of the hut where no firelight glowed and no one could see us.

  “You’re killing him.”

  I shook my head. This was the better way. We couldn’t have a long and forbidden farewell in the woods. That would kill us both.

  “He wants the army, and the armies need him.”

  Zach scoffed. “He wants you. If you don’t know it by now, you’re blind.”

  “It doesn’t matter what either one of us wants.”

  He drew in a breath and looked at me in the darkness. I thought I had made it clear.

  “You are a fine warrior, Keturah,” he said slowly, deliberately. “But you are not the woman I thought you were.”

  Did he intend for that to sting? Did he think it was a surprise to me? I had always been a better warrior than a woman.

  “That’s why I joined myself with the army,” I said as I turned and walked to the door of the hut.

  I had pulled back the mat when he called quietly, “Do you love him?”

  I pretended I didn’t hear and ducked through the mat. It was easy not to tell him. He wasn’t the one who needed to know it.

  The morning broke calm and clear. It would be a perfect day for travel, and I tried not to wish I was leaving with my unit. I kept busy as the men prepared to leave, and when they were ready and lined up on the road to say goodbye, I approached them with a smile I had to muster from deep within my saddened heart. When would I see them again? How had I come to love them all so much?

  I reached back ten times and gave them each an arrow from my quiver with tremulous fingers, which they all returned with gifts of their own.

  I accepted three bracelets made of pure white sea-shells from the fishermen, Corban, Cyrus, and Mathoni. Cyrus and Mathoni each handed me one and then Corban stepped forward and handed me his. “Stay faithful,” he said.

  Josh produced a necklace of red gemstones from his satchel. “Don’t waste time on people who don’t like you for
who you are.”

  Reb tied a belt he had woven from yellow fibers around my waist. I expected him to say something funny, to make me laugh one last time, but he didn’t say anything—just sniffed and stepped back, red rimming his eyes.

  I ran my hands over the belt. It was unique and beautiful. “Thanks, Reb,” I said, pretending not to notice he was fighting tears as I fought back my own.

  Zach stepped forward and handed over a piece of jewelry made from green jade and fashioned into the shape of a leaf. I thought of the knowledge we shared of plants and their various uses and all the power that gave to us. He didn’t say anything, which was not unusual for him, and it was as though the previous night had not happened.

  Noah gave me a soft purple feather that I thought I might add to my dancing dress.

  Ethanim placed several sets of orange beads into my hand and closed my fingers around them with his. “To adorn your axe,” he said.

  And Lib, with the sunshine hair and vigilant, watchful guard. He pulled an exquisitely soft blanket from his bedroll and passed it to me with a glance back over his shoulder at the other men. Red tinged his neck and was making its way up into his cheeks.

  “Think of me sometimes,” he said in a low voice. “When you pull it around you.”

  They each hugged me at the gate of our courtyard, and most of them pinched me in the side, pulled my hair, or slugged me in the arm.

  “I’ve been dying to get my arms around you,” Joshua joked as he squeezed me too tight.

  I laughed as I pushed him away and looked at the last man in line.

  Gideon.

  He smiled at me. His smiles had always been rare, and I knew that I would treasure this one.

  I tried not to think of all the people who watched us—all the boys, Mother, Zeke, Zeke’s parents, Micah, half the village.

  Gideon’s embrace was too brief.

  “There is so much I want to say,” I told him quickly.

  He shook his head. “You always did let your actions speak for you.” He allowed himself a moment to look into my eyes. “Here,” he said and pressed something into my hand.

  I looked down at a ball, the kind we used when we all played together in the camps between work assignments. It was newly made of golden brown buckskin, but not a pretty adornment like the others had given me. Puzzled, I looked back up at him.

  “You’ll figure it out, Kanina,” he said. His words were mild, but they were accompanied by a fire burning in his eyes that dared me to discern his meaning. Then, with boldness beyond comprehension, he kissed me—and not politely. He was insulting nearly every person there. He knew it, and still he kissed me. One of his hands slipped around my waist, his thumb brushing the ribs over my heart. His other hand slipped into my hair.

  It was completely silent in the clearing. No one gasped or clucked her disapproval. No one cleared his throat when the kiss went on. No one scuffed a sandal in the dirt as he tried not to stare. No one laughed or coughed or even breathed.

  Gideon.

  He rested his forehead on mine for just a moment, not long enough, and then he let me go. I doubted he even saw the other men when he shouldered past them and left the village.

  With wide, shocked eyes, the other men smothered grins and followed after him.

  I gave Lib a last wave, and he gave me a look that I could not interpret. He motioned to something behind me, and when I looked, I noticed Zeke standing there staring after Gideon.

  I touched his arm, and he looked down at me.

  “I will see you in a few months,” he said, completely avoiding mention, discussion, or even acknowledgment of what had just happened.

  Because there was just nothing to say.

  Chapter 14

  I was glad when Micah walked out of the village without a word, because I knew he was angry.

  I stood alone on the village street, feeling the soft ball in my hand, feeling Zeke’s arms around me, feeling the weight of Micah’s glare, feeling Gideon’s lips on mine. I stood there feeling guilt and shame, love, hope, and confusion.

  Then I felt the weight of so many eyes on me and Mother’s hand sweeping my hair to the side and smoothing it down.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “I’m going to the falls,” I said, and I stayed there all day, returning only because I knew Mother would start to worry. But when I got back and saw her face as she sat at the fire with Dinah, I knew she had worried anyway.

  It wasn’t difficult to keep our little home in the village, so I started helping at Kalem’s in the city. He needed me, and I felt like I owed him.

  One day while I was hanging his laundered tunics behind his home to dry, I asked him, “Why have you never remarried?”

  He sat nearby cleaning a rabbit for the evening meal. “I don’t remember telling you I was married.”

  “You once said you had a daughter my age. Did you have a wife?”

  He was silent for long moments. I knew I was being intrusive, but it wasn’t like he hadn’t been intrusive in my life.

  “I still have a wife.”

  I straightened up and looked at him. “Oh.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say to that.

  After a few more moments, the rabbit was done and he stood to take it to the pot of stew I had boiling over his fire. He slipped the pieces in and returned to his seat to clean up.

  “You know of the battle in which I slew your father,” he said at last, his voice flat.

  “Yes.” It was our oldest family story, and I had finally begun to believe it was true.

  “When I saw that the people offered no resistance, I was overcome with shock and then horror at what I had done. It may be the practice of some to attack and kill unarmed men, but it was not my practice.” As he spoke, a shadow came over his face, a darkness in his eyes that I had not seen since before we had left for Judea. “Over the days that followed, I was filled with deep regret. I despaired. But finally I began to feel hope, what I now know was the Holy Ghost.”

  “And you went to the king and sought his forgiveness,” I said, reciting what I had always been told of Kalem’s conversion.

  “Oh no. I had killed—” He cut himself off and cleared his throat. “The king was dead,” he continued instead. “I went to his brother, Lamoni.”

  The old king, Anti-Nephi Lehi, had given his kingdom to one of his sons, purportedly my father, though Mother had never so much as mentioned this. Lamoni was his brother. Lamoni had never ascended to the high throne of the Lamanites, but had been a king over his own people for a time. After moving to Jershon, he had yielded the title completely, and we were ruled by judges just as the people of Nephi were.

  Having been in the army for years and knowing something of the way battles ran, I knew that Kalem himself must have been of the noble class to have had the honor of slaying the enemy’s king. I always thought of this without much emotion. Since I had never known my father, these events were just a story to me, one that affected my entire life certainly, but not one I had even believed until a few years ago.

  “Well,” he went on. “When I went back home and told my wife what I had done, joined the Church of God, she was furious about it. Her family was quite prominent and it was a great embarrassment to her.”

  I could guess what happened and wasn’t surprised when he told me how she had demanded he leave and never return.

  “So I did. I did what she asked. I honored her wishes, and it has been one of my biggest regrets.”

  “Why don’t you go back? Find your daughter. She is a woman grown now. She probably has a home of her own.”

  He snorted. “Do you think she would allow me into it? After I left her abandoned all these years?”

  I grimaced. “No, I don’t suppose she would. But you are always too hard on yourself. You never know what life has been for her. She may welcome you.”

  “And she may disdain and shun me.”

  “But of course you wouldn’t let the fear of that happen
ing stop you,” I teased.

  The wash was done, so I told him goodbye and went to the falls to look out over the valley and think.

  Many days passed like that, turning into a month, then two. The boredom of my days wasn’t much different from the boredom of my work with the army. It was the work itself that was different. I asked myself a thousand times why I hadn’t just stayed with my unit, within the circle of their friendship and protection. But each time I began to doubt myself and my decision to come home, I was revisited by the Spirit that had planted the idea in my mind in the wild garden of Manti.

  So I stayed in Melek, and I began acquiring and making items I would take with me when I married, just as if I had been betrothed, though I was not. I had scarcely been alone in four years. Now I was alone nearly all the time, and I had too much time to think.

  I often thought of that day with Lib and Zeke by the stream while Dinah fed the striplings who had escorted me home. Lib had suggested that I didn’t know my own heart, that I had made the wrong decision. Zeke had both agreed and understood, and he had left me the time and the freedom to be sure.

  Sometimes I wondered about Zeke and how he really felt about me. He had to feel the pressure of expectations as much as I did. I was so much less than he deserved. I was a warrior whose idea of mercy was a quick death, not a woman who would bring him honor.

  I thought of Zeke lying unconscious on the battlefield, of how hard I had fought to keep him alive and whole.

  And always, my mind went back to Gideon, to his kiss in the village and his determination to spare me from having to choose between them.

  I let myself think about these things, mulling them over slowly as the days went on, but it never helped. Sometimes I took out the leather ball or the beaded hair tie, but they offered no clarity, and I knew the best thing was to lose myself in work, service, and preparation.

  Mother began to encourage me to practice her intricate patterns of weaving cloth, and as we both had spare time, we spent it developing this skill together. She taught me more of medicines and of cooking with the herbs of the forest. She told me of my grandfather, the healer, and of her sister, Hannah, and we had many good days together.