In All Places (Stripling Warrior)

by Misty Moncur

  I climbed the outcropping and sat beside him.

  I looked out over the land. Lush and green, it was covered with trees and beautiful plants of all kinds. Perhaps some would see only a beautiful landscape. Perhaps Micah saw food for his sheep. I always saw medicines, the potential to heal and ease pain.

  But that day I saw only a long ago battle. I saw Zeke standing firm between Muloki and me—his dark blood streaming onto the ground, in excruciating pain, perilously faint, ready to fight to the death for me, prepared to die before he let anything hurt me. I relived it over and over.

  I stared forward, seeing only that moment in my mind. “I don’t want to marry Zeke,” I said hoarsely without looking at my brother.

  He didn’t say anything, but I felt him watching me, watching the tears silently trail down my face. They flooded from my eyes. I didn’t blink them back. I didn’t wipe them away. I owed Zeke my tears at least.

  “But I will respect your wishes. I will marry him if you desire it, and I will be a happy bride and spend the rest of my life striving to be a good wife to him.”

  I got up to go, but I turned back after a few paces and looked Micah in the eye for the first time, though my chin trembled.

  “I never lied to you,” I said, and my voice broke. “I love him—” I choked on a breath but made myself say the whole truth. “So dearly.”

  I walked to the old training ground. The beans and squash were almost ready to harvest again. I walked through the field and noticed that the old farmer kept it up well. No weeds threatened to choke out the plants. No debris clogged the furrows, and water would move freely through the field.

  It was humble there.

  I took the nearly invisible path to the meadow, and when I got there I dropped my satchel and all my gear into the long grasses and waded into the pool at the base of the falls. I stepped under the cascade of water and let it drench me, let it wash away my tears.

  Later I sat on the bank, letting the rays of the sun keep my wet skin warm.

  Telling Zeke would be easy compared to telling Micah had been. If Zeke had been anyone else, I would have refused to marry him. I loved Gideon. But Zeke had meant too much to me, and I to him.

  I don’t want to marry Zeke.

  Had I actually said the words? They were bitter and hurtful and truer than any I had ever said.

  The only thing that stopped me from leaving immediately for Judea was Micah. I had told him I would marry Zeke if he asked it of me, and I had meant it. I would make good on my words. He was my elder brother, and I would yield to his wishes.

  When at last I returned to the village, damp and vulnerable, I saw Micah talking to Hemni. Making official arrangements or dissolving the expectation of them?

  He spoke to Mother and Kalem too. Because they were married, he could rightly allow Kalem to take responsibility for me and my well-being and my marriage, but I knew he wouldn’t. I could see he worried over my welfare a great deal, and I had been cruel and petty to accuse him of wishing his responsibilities away.

  The only person he didn’t talk to was me. In fact, I thought he was avoiding me. I didn’t see him for days afterward, and when I finally did see him, he didn’t mention Zeke or my marriage or my failings. Several weeks went by and no one mentioned Zeke.

  On a market day that dawned with clear skies, I went with Mother to the main square of Melek. I left Mother at Kalem’s tables and walked through the market with Melia.

  Shopping in the market with Melia was a different experience than shopping with Cana or even Mother. It bemused me to see her fawn over all the beautiful things. Melia had been born into the upper class and her mother and grandparents had spoiled her, always given her anything she wanted. Even now, though Kalem was not rich, he was not poor either, and he indulged many of her desires in the market.

  Muloki, too, enjoyed purchasing gifts, and Melia was the recipient of many of his whims.

  When we stopped at Pontus’s tables, he grinned broadly and directed Melia’s attention to his new stock of bracelets. He liked showing blades to me, but he loved selling jewelry to Melia. I had to smile. Neither one of them had any idea their tastes were extravagant.

  “Did you get any more of those arrowheads, the obsidian ones?” I asked him when Melia was busily admiring the jade and silver jewelry.

  Pontus shook his head. “But I do have some made from steel.”

  Steel arrowheads? “Let me see.”

  He directed me to the opposite end of the table, and stood with me for a moment until Melia called to him.

  I waved him away and picked up one of the arrowheads to examine it.

  It certainly was sharp. The straight edges angled toward a small point at the tip. I set it down and picked up another that had a serrated edge and then another that had a hooked barb on the side.

  I glanced up when Kenai appeared at my side.

  “That barb prevents the arrow from being easily pulled from its victim,” he said after he had inspected it in my hand for a few moments.

  I knew that.

  “Clever,” he went on. “But not very original. That’s the very essence of war. You can’t get it out of you, and if you do, it leaves you damaged.”

  “I know,” I said. “I miss it, even though it was so terrible.”

  “I don’t miss it,” he said. “But I’ll never forget it.”

  “I won’t either.” Although, for me, unlike for Kenai, it had been the most magnificent time of my life, and I sometimes felt there was nothing left for me to look forward to.

  But my mind often went to the moonflowers I had found floating in the river. I had only seen them that once.

  I reminded myself how Gideon had not intervened when my unit teased and persecuted me. He had stood back and let me fight my own battles. To make me strong. To make me sure of myself. And I thought with tentative hope that maybe there could be something left for me. Maybe I could win this battle in my heart.

  Kenai and I both noticed when Muloki came up beside Melia and rested a hand at her waist. She looked up at him with sparkling eyes. She had been so disillusioned when we had met, and it was good to see her happy now. I was glad that she had found her father at long last, and from the looks of her and Muloki lately, she had found her husband as well.

  “Doesn’t that make you mad?” Kenai asked quietly, his eyes already back on the weapons before us.

  “No,” I said, surprised that his thoughts had gone in a completely different direction than mine had.

  “He came here to find you because he thought he was in love with you, and now he’s in love with her.”

  I shook my head. “He came here because he felt the Spirit when he met me, and it compelled him to find the gospel and a new life here.”

  Kenai grunted.

  “You don’t like him.”

  He snorted. “Am I so transparent?”

  “I like him a great deal. So does everyone else.”

  “Yeah, well no one else, including you, watched him for weeks in Antiparah. Ket, why do you think I sent you in on a day he was at the gate? He liked the pretty girls, and I knew he’d overlook your foreign dress and speech because of it.”

  “You know that what a soldier does in war does not indicate how he would act in real life.”

  “No, but it marks his character.”

  I thought of how Muloki had lost his five brothers in the war, and of what effect that might have on a man. When we were subjected to great trials, we either humbled ourselves or became hard-hearted. Muloki had been humbled enough to feel the Spirit I carried with me as I walked past him. Of Muloki and Kenai, it surprised me which one had hardened his heart.

  I glanced at Muloki and lowered my voice. “And God can change the hearts of those who will let Him.”

  Kenai made no reply.

  Instead, he reached into his satchel and withdrew some coins. “Get me the barbed one,” he said and dropped the coins into my hand. He left before I could say anything, and I watched as he
shouldered his way through the crowds.

  I made the purchase and tucked the arrowhead into my own satchel. As I walked along with Muloki and Melia and pretended to admire her new bracelet, I thought about my brother and how he was aching and broken.

  I wished I could help him, but I knew that I couldn’t. I prayed that God would send him someone who could.

  When I returned home from the market, I found Kenai in his hammock staring at the thatched roof of the dim hut.

  “Here,” I said and handed over the arrowhead I had purchased for him, very aware that the reason he hadn’t made the purchase himself was because he didn’t want to talk to Pontus. He didn’t want to talk to anyone anymore.

  “Thanks,” he said, taking it from me without looking at me or the arrowhead.

  “I’m going to the falls. Do you want to go?”

  “No thanks,” he replied blandly.

  “We could go hunting instead.”

  “No.”

  “Kenai, I really think…”

  He looked at me then, and it was worse than when he hadn’t looked at me.

  “Okay,” I acquiesced, and I left him alone.

  As I ran through the forest dodging limbs and branches, I wondered how long I could keep going out to work with my weapons. Surely soon Micah would tell me he had made arrangements with Hemni, and when Zeke came home, I would have neither the time nor the freedom to practice.

  But Micah hadn’t said anything. I seldom saw him, and when I did see him, he looked like he might approach me with news, but he always turned and walked away instead.

  When I came into the meadow, I was surprised to see Muloki sitting on the log above the falls, because I had left him with Melia in the market just an hour before. I smiled and waved to him. He motioned me up, but I laughed and shook my head.

  “No!” I called. I wasn’t falling for that again.

  “I won’t push you in!” he called back down to me.

  I hesitated, but after dropping my gear on the bank of the river, I climbed up and balanced along the log to sit next to him. I gave him a warning glance.

  “I promise,” he repeated, his accent melting my heart and sealing the deal.

  When I was settled, he handed me a wrapped package.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  He might have turned a little red. “I bought them for you a while back and never had the right moment to give them to you. And then I met Melia.” He paused uncomfortably. “And, well, I wanted you to have them anyway.” He gestured to the package. “Open it.”

  I untied the twine that bound the little bundle and pulled back the cloth wrapping.

  Obsidian arrowheads.

  I sold them to an overconfident, swaggering young man who said he needed them to shoot rabbits.

  “Leah said you gave most of your arrows away, and she knows you’ve been using the few you have. I’ll attach them to shafts for you.”

  I could do that, but not as well as he could. I nodded, my eyes still on the beautiful arrowheads, my thoughts on all they might have meant.

  If you let your shield down, something like this might happen.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I love them.”

  “I knew you would.”

  The gift was not a beautiful bracelet like Melia’s, but it meant so much more because it wasn’t. I wrapped the arrowheads back up.

  “Where is Melia?” I asked him.

  “She has gone to weave with the women. She makes friends easily.” The note of pride in his voice made me smile.

  “One of her many talents,” I agreed. “She made friends with me, and I was a soldier of the conquering army.”

  “Could it be that you make friends easily too?” he asked.

  “More like push friends away.”

  He frowned. “You are still too much alone.”

  Being alone was not my problem. Loneliness was my problem, and I didn’t want to talk to Muloki about how lonely I was. I waved his comment off.

  “It’s better that way. I make people uncomfortable. They think I’m strange, which I am. They don’t know what to say to me, and we always end up having miscommunications. It’s just better when I keep to myself.”

  “Is there no one you can talk to?”

  “Is that why you’re here? To talk about my lack of friends?”

  He crossed his arms. “Yes.”

  My eyes met his, but I shook my head again slowly. “Let’s not talk about that. Tell me, what is this I hear about your betrothal? When will it become official?”

  I could see he did not want to change the subject, but he said, “We will have the ceremony next month when the weather is better. We did not want to encroach upon Kalem and Leah’s enjoyment of their own marriage.”

  I nodded. “How long will your betrothal last?”

  “We are determined to wait the full year,” he said.

  “Mother and Kalem did not wait half that long.”

  “No. But they both have homes and property, household possessions. They didn’t need time to acquire these things.”

  The conversation trailed off. It was funny but when Muloki was not flirting with me, it seemed we didn’t have much to say to each other.

  “Keturah, I’m worried about you,” Muloki said after a long silence.

  “Me? But I’m fine, Muloki.”

  He shook his head. “You should be betrothed. It is your brother’s responsibility to see that this happens for you. I do not think he is fulfilling his duty to you.”

  “Oh, Muloki, that’s sweet, but I’m sure Micah is having a difficult time finding someone who—”

  “Do not speak that way about yourself!”

  I felt my eyes widen at the harshness in his voice. “I only meant that Micah—”

  “And do not make excuses for your brother.”

  “I don’t even want to marry, Muloki. I’ll be so bad at it. I don’t think I could ever be happy keeping a home for some man.”

  He turned to me in surprise. “Some man? Your husband will not be just some man. And even if Micah married you to someone you didn’t love, you would come to love him in time. You will keep a home for a man you love. It is a way you will show him that you love him, and your distaste for it will make that much stronger the testament of your love for him.”

  He bent a little to catch my eye. “Hmm?” he asked.

  “I guess so.” Why did he have to learn Nephite so well?

  “It’s like with fighting,” he continued. “Those men who hate fighting must give so much more of themselves in war than those who enjoy it. Take Kenai.”

  “Kenai—”

  “Hates fighting. He has given so much of himself away, he has lost himself.”

  “And that’s just the problem!” I exclaimed. “I will lose myself if I—”

  “That’s not what I’m saying at all.” He shook his head. “Those who lose their lives for God’s sake will find their lives.”

  “But it wouldn’t be for God’s sake. It would be for Micah’s, and Zeke’s, and everybody’s but my own.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Is there no honor then in raising up a righteous family?”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “Raising a righteous family is not done for God’s sake?”

  He had me there. I twisted my lips into a frown.

  “What man could you do this for?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Whose home could you keep with your love? Who do you love enough? Zeke?”

  I looked away again.

  “Not Zeke then.” I could hear a smile in his voice. “Hmm. Not Jarom.”

  I couldn’t help a smile at his gentle teasing, but only because I was sure he wouldn’t see it with my face turned.

  “Leah told me of your true love.”

  I slowly turned toward him. What had Mother said to him?

  His smile sparkled in his eyes. “Ah, I see she was right. You have given your heart, but not to your Ezekiel.”

  Melia
must have been talking about it too. She was the only one who called Zeke my Ezekiel.

  “Is everyone talking about me like this?” I complained.

  “Everyone but the two men who should be.”

  “He’s gone.” That was the first time in the year I had been home that I had admitted there was someone besides Zeke in my heart. Though, apparently, everyone knew it anyway.

  “I will go get him for you. Kenai says he is in Judea now.”

  Even Kenai?

  I laughed nervously. “No. Don’t do that.”

  If anyone went for him, it should be me.

  “It will be easy. I will bring him here so we can settle it.”

  “It’s not your job to settle it,” I pointed out.

  “But Kalem has married your mother, and when I marry Kalem’s daughter, I will be your brother. So you see, it is my job to settle it.”

  I laughed. “Well, it would not be easy. He wants to be in the army. He doesn’t want to come here, and he obviously doesn’t want me. You’d have to fight him.”

  He grinned. “I would gladly fight him for you.”

  I shrugged. “You’d lose.”

  Whether it was more absurd to think that Muloki would fight Gideon and drag him here for me, or that he would lose to Gideon, I wasn’t sure, but we both burst into laughter, and in the next instant I noticed someone standing on the bank.

  “Hello, Ket.”

  Chapter 21

  It didn’t matter that I grimaced at how our conversation must have sounded. When I looked up at him, he wasn’t even looking at me.

  He was exchanging a look with Muloki as if he was trying to place where he had seen him before, and a big part of me hoped he didn’t figure it out.

  He was the only other person who would possibly recognize Muloki from the battle of Cumeni.

  “Zeke!” I exclaimed.

  He turned his attention to me and smiled.

  “When did you get back?”

  “This morning. Midday.” He couldn’t contain another suspicious glance at Muloki. “Have you been here all day?”

  “No. Sit,” I invited. As he stepped out onto the log, I said, “I was shopping in the market with my friend Melia, Muloki’s betrothed.” I gestured to Muloki by way of informal introduction.