In All Places (Stripling Warrior)

by Misty Moncur

  I was so much better at being a warrior than a woman.

  That evening Mother and I went to Hemni and Dinah’s for the evening meal. Muloki sat in the yard playing a kind of game with Sarai and Chloe. Or rather, they were playing a game with him. I watched as they showed him different objects and asked him for the words. They clapped when he got it right and giggled when he got it wrong. There was so much giggling that I began to pay closer attention and realized he was getting the words wrong on purpose. After a while, Muloki held up the objects and asked the girls for the word in his language. There was much less giggling, and he had the girls enthralled with his strange language.

  After dinner, Cana invited Muloki to join us on a walk through the woods. We showed him where the striplings had camped and trained before they got their orders. The field was planted now with squash and beans. It looked like nothing more than a farmer’s field, and I felt silly taking him there to show off a place that was so plain.

  Muloki surveyed it with his hands on his hips.

  “It is very humble,” he said.

  “Well of course we didn’t have a large training ground in Melek,” I said defensively. More than one person had explained to him that the people of Ammon did not fight, did not kill others, and depended on the Nephites for defense. There had been no need to train an army, and hence no need for a training ground.

  Cana shot me a look and said more kindly, “What do you mean, Muloki?”

  He thought for a moment, walked out in front of us quietly, careful not to trample the plants. “It is…the Spirit is here. Your Holy Ghost.” He turned back to us and placed his hand over his heart. “Humble, yes?”

  “Yes,” Cana confirmed.

  Feeling stupid, I stepped toward him and said, “When Helaman arrived on the field for the first time, every knee bowed with respect for him. The Spirit compelled us to do so. It has always been here, from the first moment.”

  “I didn’t know you were here for that,” said Cana. “Jarom and Zeke described it to us so vividly.”

  I shrugged sheepishly. “Sometimes when I stepped from the woods onto the field it appeared as though legions of angels trained here. And when I looked again, I saw only stripling youths.”

  “Zeke trained with these angels?” asked Muloki.

  I glanced at Cana. I could feel my cheeks burning when I said, “Yes. All the boys trained here.”

  “And Keturah, too. She had to fight her way in. She had to prove her abilities in front of everyone,” added Cana.

  Muloki’s eyebrows rose. “I have much wondered how a rabbit got into your army of boys.”

  “A girl,” Cana corrected. “A girl got into the army.”

  I smiled. “He’s teasing me,” I told her. “Because my mother calls me rabbit.”

  She giggled, understanding. “Yes, well, rabbits are very quick,” she said.

  Muloki caught my eye. “They can steal past many guards.”

  Cana looked to me for an explanation.

  “That’s how we met.” I licked my lips. “I was completing a spy mission for Kenai. Muloki stood guard at the gate.”

  Cana lost a little of her color. “Kenai,” she said. “Have you heard from him?”

  “We’ve had a letter or two,” I admitted.

  “Oh,” she said, her cheeks filling with color again. “Of course you have. And he is well?”

  “He is fine,” I said. “He is a great captain. He leads many men and many successful and essential missions. His work is important.”

  “Did he…did he ask about me?”

  “No.” I wished Muloki wasn’t standing there with us, though he did not appear to be listening—he had turned to wander out through the field a little. He didn’t know the language well, but he was bright and quick and had obviously caught the turn in our conversation. “He said he was fine with the arrangements. I asked.”

  “Fine?” she asked weakly.

  I leaned toward her and lowered my voice. “Believe me, Cana. You don’t want them fighting over you. Not brothers. And I thought…” I lowered my voice even more. “I thought you liked Kenai.”

  “I do,” she whispered back. “I did. I liked them both.”

  I looked deeply into her eyes. She was telling me the truth. And why wouldn’t she have liked Micah all this time? He was tall and handsome, smart, polite, and kind to her. She had grown up as close to him as she had to Kenai.

  “You’ll be happy with Micah,” I said firmly, assuring us both. “It will all be well.”

  We left the training field and Cana led us toward the falls, but she had become melancholy and her heart was no longer in it.

  “Would you mind very much if I went home?” she asked us.

  “We’ll come with you,” I said. I hadn’t been allowed to walk alone in the woods for four years. It felt wrong to let her go alone.

  “No,” she said quickly. She was already starting across the meadow. “I mean…” she hedged as she glanced between Muloki and me. “I’d like to be alone for a little while. I won’t have a chance when I get home.”

  It was true. There were too many people at her home. I spent so much time alone, it was hard to imagine Cana not having any time to herself. Though I was starting to hate my time alone, I realized that sometimes a person needed to be alone with their own thoughts, to feel of the Spirit and to pray.

  “Okay,” I called. “Be safe.”

  She nodded and disappeared through the trees.

  Muloki and I looked at each other.

  He knew Cana and Micah were betrothed, and I tried to explain that it was Kenai who had loved her and Micah had never shown any interest in her.

  “Do you have brothers?” I asked him as I led him to the log above the main waterfall.

  “Dead,” he said.

  “In the war?”

  “Yes. Soldiers all.”

  “How many?”

  “Five.”

  “Oh, Muloki! I’m so sorry. All five were killed?”

  “Yes. In the north. I went south with my friend by command.”

  “So you weren’t there.”

  “No.”

  “But are you sure then? Perhaps the report was wrong.”

  He shook his head and reached under the neck of his tunic. He pulled out a large, animal tooth threaded onto a thin leather cord. It was intricately painted.

  “This tooth mine. Five teeth, same, come to my hands.”

  I looked at the tooth for a long time turning it over in my fingers examining the painting. I thought it was a jaguar tooth or maybe a bear.

  “I have luck,” he continued. “Not all Lamanitish dead are accounted for.”

  “What about your parents?” I said after a while.

  He shrugged. I didn’t pry farther.

  “Why did you come here? To Melek?” I asked him.

  We sat together on the log, the water rushing swiftly under our bridge. It was cool where we sat, a nice respite from the warm day and the hard labor. The sun was beginning to set. It would be time to go before long. Mother would be worried. She would be alone.

  Muloki looked at me, but then let his eyes fall away, following the path of the river to the distant sea as he spoke. “When I first saw you at the gate of Antiparah, it was as if you shone like the moon. A light so pretty and your moonbeam shone to me.”

  I rested my chin on my raised knees and listened closely.

  “Even in the battle at Cumeni your light shone, and I could not swing my sword to you.”

  I remembered when he had begun to lower his sword. I gave a soft hum of acknowledgement and turned my head to look back at him, resting my cheek on my knees.

  “And I healed here.” He raised his arm. “But there was no life left in my home and no one to shine like the moon, so I came to feel the light, to heal more.” He laid a hand over his heart as he had done earlier to indicate he felt the presence of the Holy Ghost. “Here.”

  “The Spirit,” I said quietly.

  “
Yes. I know this now.”

  “I’m glad you’re here,” I said. “I’m glad you came.”

  “You are much alone.”

  “Yes,” I said. I took off my sandals and tossed them over to the grass. Then I dropped my feet into the water.

  “And you are not alone with me.”

  I laughed a little. “No,” I agreed and added, “You are persistent.”

  “Persistent?”

  I thought for a moment. “You keep trying. You won’t stop.”

  He shook his head as if he didn’t understand. I closed my eyes and tried to think of a different way to explain the word.

  Suddenly a slap of cold water landed in my face. I gasped, lost my balance, and fell into the water beneath the log. The water wasn’t so very deep, but it was swift, so I braced myself against the log and wiped the wet hair from my face.

  Muloki stood near me up to his knees in the water, a huge grin on his face, and he splashed me again.

  “Hey!” I protested.

  I had no sooner wiped the water from my eyes than he splashed me again. And again.

  “Muloki!”

  “I am persistent, yes?”

  “Yes,” I laughed.

  “Relentless?” His eyes were twinkling with amusement.

  “Yes!”

  “Giving no quarter?”

  I shook my head against another splash, and then I bent and sent large handfuls of cold water toward him. He began to walk toward me, and I barely got the water as high as his chest.

  “And you take no retreat.”

  “Never,” I said and kept splashing until he was too close and it did no good. He grabbed my hands, and I slipped, taking him down with me. We came up laughing, and I braced my hands on his shoulders to push him down again.

  We knelt in the water above the falls braced against the log, but strong as the current was, we did not go over the edge.

  I heard a giggle from the bank. I froze. Then I looked back over my wet shoulder and saw Cana standing there with Micah in the green grasses on the solid ground.

  “Micah!” I exclaimed. “You’re back!”

  “We just got in,” he said with a long, obvious glower at Muloki.

  I waded toward them. I could hear Muloki wading behind me. “All of you?” I asked hopefully.

  “Only Darius and me. Jarom and Kenai have gone to join Moroni in the east.”

  Moroni?

  “And Zeke?”

  “He’s still in Manti,” Cana said, and threw a look toward Micah. “Right?”

  “He has work to finish there,” said Micah. It sounded like the same half-truth Dinah kept telling me.

  “Captain Moroni?” Muloki asked as he came to my side near the bank and held out his hand to assist me up. He went to one knee in the water to form a step for me.

  Micah took my other hand and hauled me onto the bank. Then he extended his hand to Muloki.

  “Yes, the great Captain Moroni,” Micah affirmed. “He is gathering an army to force your people from our lands for good. He raises the Standard of Liberty in all the cities he passes through, and the people flock to him. They tire of those who would usurp our freedoms.”

  I wrapped my arms around myself, shivering. “Muloki is not our enemy, Micah,” I said softly.

  He looked down at me, taking in my soaked and clinging clothing, my wet and stringy hair, the chills on my arms. “I can see you don’t think so.”

  Surprising everyone, Cana hit Micah lightly on his chest and scolded him. “Micah, do not be rude to our guest. Or your sister.”

  I tried to hide my smile as he reluctantly apologized to Muloki, introduced himself, and clasped arms with him.

  “We should start for home. It will be dark soon,” Micah said and turned to go, gathering us all with a look. But Cana touched his arm and caught his eye.

  “And I am sorry to you, Keturah,” he sighed. “It has been a long day.”

  “It has been a long four years,” I said, recognizing the same weariness in his voice that I had felt when I had returned home.

  He nodded and led us home.

  Chapter 16

  Darius was still eating when we arrived home. He was talking to Mother as fast as he ate. When we stepped into the courtyard he was telling her about the messengers that had come to recruit volunteers for Moroni’s army.

  “A reinforcement of six thousand fresh troops just arrived in the south,” Darius said through a mouthful of Mother’s corn cakes. “So Helaman was finally able to give leave to the striplings, and the messengers recruited a number of them to move to the campaign in the east instead of going home.”

  “And Kenai thought this would be acceptable to me?”

  Darius swallowed and gave a laugh. “Kenai has kept himself alive for four years in a wilderness roamed freely by enemy warriors. Fighting with Moroni, in a band of thousands upon thousands, hardly seems dangerous. And besides, Kenai is twenty-one now, grown, and hardly needs your permission.”

  Mother didn’t say anything to that, just pursed her lips, and I could see she was not pleased with the news.

  “Darius!” I called out to break the tension between them.

  He turned, gave me his familiar grin, and jumped to his feet.

  “What happened?” he asked when he saw that I was soaked through.

  “I got wet,” I said.

  Cana went inside for cloths to dry with and blankets.

  “Are you all right?” Mother asked, giving me a stern look that she hid from Muloki and the others.

  I held my chin high. “Muloki had a question about the meaning of a word,” I said.

  “Oh?” Teaching Muloki new words was an endeavor of which she approved and worked studiously at herself. “What word?”

  “I am persistent,” Muloki said, placing emphasis on the word. “I…”

  “Splashed,” I filled in for him.

  He nodded. “I splashed Keturah.” He made a motion with his hands. “Persistent.”

  I glanced at his wet tunic and kilt, remembered him kneeling in the water so I could step up onto the bank. I made my tone smug when I said, “I am persistent, too.”

  Cana came out with blankets then and handed one to Muloki. She wrapped the other tightly around my shoulders, pulled my wet hair from under it, and rubbed my arms up and down.

  “I’ll walk you home,” Micah told her.

  “It’s only twenty paces,” Darius teased Micah. Then he turned to us. “You should have seen how anxious he was to get home. We could have camped one more night at the south end of the Land of Melek, but Micah said we’d make it before dark if we kept moving.”

  “We did, didn’t we?” Micah sounded casual, but I could see he was embarrassed as he hurried Cana out through the gate and into the gathering darkness beyond the fence. And I wondered that anything in this world could embarrass my older brother.

  Muloki stayed for a while to dry a little near the fire, but when the sun began to dip below the horizon, he said he wanted to get back to Kalem’s.

  Darius waited until after he had gone and Micah had returned before he asked, “Who is Muloki?”

  Mother and I exchanged a look. She knew about Antiparah. But nobody knew about Cumeni.

  “Apparently, Kenai took your sister on one of his spy missions with the intent to send her into Antiparah.”

  Darius and Micah turned their attention to me.

  “I was a sixteen year old girl and the only Nephite soldier who could get into the city in broad daylight. Kenai spent three days showing me how futile it was to watch from a distance. Then he presented his idea, what I learned had been his intent all along.”

  They both seemed to be without words. Micah was the first to speak. “Kenai let you walk into Antiparah when the Lamanites held it?”

  “He ordered me to.”

  “I don’t believe that,” Micah said, shaking his head.

  I shrugged. I didn’t really matter what he believed. It had been three years ago and it was long
over. Kenai and I understood one another and had made peace with the decision.

  “Muloki was the guard at the gate that day. He let me pass. He felt the Spirit of God when he talked with me, and as soon as he could, he came to find me so he could find out what it was.”

  “How did you speak to one another?”

  “If he didn’t know what the Spirit was, why did he think you could tell him what he felt?”

  They had many questions and I answered them the best I could. Mother helped me with all she knew of him.

  “So he saw you, and he thought he was in love at first sight?” Micah asked, a dark, frustrated look stealing over his features.

  “Yes. Is that so hard to believe?”

  “No, but I—”

  “Sorry if that makes your obligation to me more difficult. I can see that you have your mind on your own happiness.”

  “Keturah!” Mother said in surprise.

  “Well, frolicking in the river with Muloki didn’t make it any easier,” he shot back.

  Micah had always put the rest of us first, before his own comfort, before his own happiness. What I had said was unfair, and I knew it.

  But he was scowling at me, so I scowled right back.

  “Just look at yourself,” he went on. “Your sarong was sticking to you like skin. You’re not a little…you’re not a little girl anymore!”

  “So stop treating me like I am!”

  “Stop acting like it!”

  “Micah! Keturah!” Mother exclaimed.

  Darius looked between us with wide eyes.

  We did not often disagree or fight in our family. But we had all been through so much, learned to take care of ourselves or lean on men who were not members of our family. None of us were used to explaining our actions. It wasn’t like when we were young and we asked Mother’s permission for everything. Perhaps this was the way it would be from now on.

  And it was how it should be. We would just have to learn to allow each other our independence and agency. We all had to make our own mistakes and learn our own lessons.

  I turned away, ready to let it go, but Micah persisted. His tone was lower, but just as angry. “I told Zeke you loved him, because you swore to me that you did.”