In All Places (Stripling Warrior)

by Misty Moncur

  Zeke relaxed a little, but I could see he was still uneasy about Muloki’s presence. He was obviously Lamanite—the age of a soldier. I could see his mind piecing the clues together.

  “You remember Melia from Manti. She is Kalem’s daughter.”

  “Oh, yes, I heard about that. Congratulations,” he said to Muloki.

  Muloki nodded as he got up to leave.

  “You don’t have to—”

  “Yes,” he said simply. “You have much to discuss with your Ezekiel.”

  Zeke watched him go, and before Muloki was even out of sight through the thick trees, Zeke asked with steady calm, “Keturah, do you know who that is?”

  “Yes,” I said. “But no one else does. Only the three of us know.”

  He took that in for a moment. “What is he doing here?” he asked. “And why are you friends with him?”

  Zeke knew I had breached the gate of Antiparah, but I told him everything again, even adding how Muloki had flirted with me at the gate and come to Melek to court me.

  He was mad at Kenai all over again for asking me to walk into the enemy stronghold, but I held firm that it had been an honor.

  “Don’t give Kenai trouble about it. He is…” How to put it? “Not the same. And besides, it was a long time ago. It was a decision he made—had to make—and it was not the wrong one.”

  “Yeah, I’ve talked to him. He’s different.”

  Kenai had known Zeke was back in the village and hadn’t told me?

  “You’re not going to get mad? You’re not going to lecture me for walking into Antiparah or reprimand me for befriending the enemy?”

  He looked at me with a kindness in his eyes I remembered from long ago. Despite my suspicion that Micah had sent for him, it was good to see him.

  “It reflects poorly on me that you think any of those things might happen,” he said.

  “I didn’t mean, I just meant… It’s been that way for a while, between us…”

  “Since I started courting you and pursuing something you were not comfortable with.”

  Oh, how I wished I was comfortable with it. I looked at my old friend, his hair the color of black ash and his eyes dark, warm, and familiar. I looked at his strong shoulders and the new lines around his lips. I looked at him with all my regret in my eyes.

  He got to his feet, balancing easily on the log over the water. “Come on,” he said with a sad smile. “Walk with me.”

  I hated that I was the cause of the sadness in his smile, but I got to my feet and followed him away from the river. We walked through the meadow silently side by side as we had many times before, but we didn’t talk or accomplish any of the things that needed to be said. After a while, Zeke bent and picked a pink flower for me, which I took and thanked him.

  He cleared his throat and said, “In Manti, when I told you Micah and Cana were to be married, you were so upset. Remember?”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “You cried.”

  I hummed softly. It was true.

  “And I said you could talk to me about the reason why, even if you thought it would hurt me.”

  “Yes, Zeke, but I didn’t know what you meant.”

  “Do you know now?”

  “Oh, Zeke,” I protested.

  “You cried because you thought…”

  “Zeke.”

  “You thought…”

  I sighed and closed my eyes. “I thought Cana was marrying someone she didn’t love.”

  “Because?”

  “Because she thought she had to, because she thought her family wanted it, because Micah asked her first, and because she didn’t know if Kenai would,” I finally blurted out.

  “Thank you,” Zeke said.

  “For?”

  “For being honest with me. For always being honest with me. You’ve always known, and I never listened to you.”

  “Zeke, what are you talking about?”

  He took a deep breath and turned to face me, drawing me to a stop. “You and I, mostly I, have been trying to make this work for a long time now.”

  “Zeke, you’re scaring me. What are you saying?”

  “What you’ve been saying all along.”

  I searched his face.

  “There was a time when you lied to yourself about your feelings for me,” he went on. “And heaven help me, I let you.”

  “But I’ve never lied to you.” I grimaced and qualified that statement. “Except about coming here sometimes. But I’ve never lied about how I felt for you.”

  “Of course you haven’t, Ket. You’ve always done your best, and I’ve made it so hard for you. You were right. Love is not jealous, as I have been. If I had truly loved you, I’d have been as noble as Seth and Lib and half the stripling army, and I wouldn’t have allowed my jealousy to affect your life and your decisions, to dampen your spirit, or make you sad for one single moment.”

  “But you were just protecting me. You had an understanding with Micah and my family, and with me, and you had every right—even a responsibility—to tell me how to act.”

  He laughed a little. “Neither of us would ever rationalize lying to another, but we are both good at lying to ourselves.”

  Suddenly, I laughed a little too.

  Soon we had circled the meadow. I checked the sky. It would be time to start toward home soon. Dinah probably had a feast prepared for the return of her eldest son.

  “Should we start back home?” I asked.

  Zeke checked the sky too and rubbed the back of his neck. “Not just yet. I want to be very clear.”

  “Clear about what?”

  “About you and me, Ket.” He paused for a moment, took a deep breath, and went on. “When I saw how it hurt you to think of Cana marrying someone she did not love—just the thought of it—all I could think was how it would break your heart if it were you who married without love. I couldn’t do that to you.”

  I frowned. “But I do love you, Zeke.”

  “You wouldn’t be marrying me because of love,” he said as his sad eyes gazed stoically into the distance. He smiled a little, though. “I know you love me. It makes it so much harder, doesn’t it?” His voice was gentle and held a note of finality.

  “To let it go, you mean?” I asked with my heart in my throat.

  He cupped my cheek with his hand and swept my hair back with his long fingers. “To let it go,” he affirmed. “I should have come here and said this long before now.”

  “Why didn’t you?” I had been lonely and confused for a long time. I could have used his help to sort it all out, but I hadn’t been ready for it, and I knew it.

  Zeke shrugged. “I thought with Gid gone, you might come to your senses, realize you loved me or something.”

  I took a breath.

  Then my heart started to pound.

  “What about our families? What about—”

  He shook his head. “No,” he said softly. “We will not marry for them. There has never been anything official between us, not even a promise. And we are lucky.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “We both have loving and understanding families.”

  “That’s true,” I said, wondering exactly what Micah had told him to bring him here. He had come to the village to end this. That was clear.

  “I will tell everyone tonight so there will be no false hopes or vain expectations. I have already spoken with Micah.”

  The words were hard for him to say, but he meant them, and I thought I loved him more in that moment when he was letting me go than I had loved him in all the past years.

  “Will you…go to Eve?” I asked. I didn’t want him to, but that was unfair. I wanted him to deny that he had even thought of it.

  He let out a breath and ran a big hand through his long, loose hair. “I saw her on market days,” he admitted. “But I didn’t really care for her that way. Her father suggested a union once, but I declined.”

  “Oh,” I said. “You should introduce her to Jarom.”<
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  He burst into laughter. “I did once! “It was a disaster.” His voice softened. “I think he really liked her.”

  “Ah,” I said. “And he thought you liked her.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Are you here to stay? Are you going back to Judea?”

  He slowly shook his head. “I will not be going back to Judea, but I have made other commitments with the army.”

  “You have?” My surprise showed. Zeke had served in Helaman’s army out of duty, not desire. The fact that he would willingly continue now that the striplings had been disbanded really caught me off guard.

  “Keturah, when I marry, I want to be in love.” He caught my eye. “And I want my wife to be in love with me, really in love with no reservations. I haven’t found that woman yet. I just can’t see it any other way. My parents are in love, and that’s what I’ve always expected for myself.”

  I thought of Dinah, how she had been so unsure of her feelings when she married Zeke’s father.

  “I do love you, Zeke,” I said, dratted tears brimming at my eyes.

  “But not enough,” he said quietly. He took me into his arms. They had become hard and strong during the war but they enveloped me so gently. “And you know I love you,” he whispered into my hair. When he pulled away he bent to kiss me.

  I was old enough by then and had been kissed enough times that kissing was no longer something to be experienced, but something to be shared. And though I loved Zeke, he was not the man I wanted to share my kisses with.

  But in the same moment I turned my face away from him, Zeke stopped himself. After a pause, he placed his kiss on my forehead like Micah always did.

  He turned toward the village. “Walk with me?” he asked, his hand outstretched.

  I looked at his hand and slowly shook my head. “No.”

  He held my gaze for a moment. Then he gave a quick nod and left, his long strides putting the distance between us.

  I stood for a time watching him until he disappeared into the trees. I was experiencing so many emotions I wasn’t sure what to feel first. Relief won out, and I fell to my knees and thanked my Lord in a brief but heartfelt prayer. I stayed on my knees until the tears were dried from my face.

  “That from Zeke?”

  I looked up from the flower in my hand. Why hadn’t I heard him? I looked around, suddenly aware that a great deal of time had passed. Evening was falling fast.

  He was the third man I had met in the meadow that day, none of them the one I wanted most to see.

  “You missed the celebration meal,” he said, taking a knee beside me. “For my amazing elder brother.”

  I ignored the slight contempt in his voice. “I lost track of time.”

  “I see that.”

  “What are you doing here?” I had never been here with Jarom, even in the company of our siblings.

  “Everyone was worried.”

  “Don’t you mean disappointed?”

  He laughed.

  “So you heard.”

  “Why do you think I came?”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “I told them I’d come find you, save you from the deep, dark forest.”

  “It’s going to be very dark if we don’t get moving. Let me just get my gear.”

  I hadn’t even used it.

  I made my way to where I had dropped my weapons on the bank of the river that afternoon before climbing up to talk with Muloki. I knelt and strapped everything on, ready to carry, ready to fight. When I rose, Jarom was standing much too close to me.

  I tilted my neck to look into his face. He had definitely gotten taller.

  “How about that kiss in the moonlight?” he said in a seductive whisper.

  I glanced at the sky. “There’s no moonlight.”

  “An insignificant detail,” he insisted softly.

  I looked him in the eye for a moment and then took a step back.

  He took a step forward, crowding me with his body. “I’m not that little kid anymore, Keturah.”

  “An insignificant detail,” I said, wincing at the flicker of pain that passed through his eyes.

  “What is this, then?” he asked. He held the stone I had given him in Manti, just a smooth stone I had taken from my bag on the spur of the moment. I hadn’t planned it, hadn’t meant anything by it.

  He had said it was a stone waiting to be slung. And he had given me a broken stone he had salvaged from the wreckage of a battle.

  “You still have the obsidian shard. I won’t believe you if you tell me you don’t.”

  “I do,” I said. I reached into the pouch in which I kept my slinging stones and felt for it. I had taken it out many times and fingered the rough edges. I withdrew it then and held it out on my hand for him to see. “But I told you that stone was not a promise.”

  “And you told Zeke you wouldn’t marry him.”

  I shook my head. “He didn’t ask me to marry him.”

  He looked at me doubtfully. “If he didn’t, then he is a bigger fool than I thought. Would you have said yes?”

  “I would have honored my brother if he had asked it of me. But no, Jarom, I would not have told Zeke yes. My heart is given elsewhere.”

  He looked at me with dawning understanding on his face.

  “I told you on the West Road, that first day you came back. Don’t pretend you didn’t know.”

  “I guess I thought you meant Zeke. I chose to ignore it.” He finally took a step away from me.

  “We all do that. Like I pretend you don’t have a girl in every city you’ve been stationed in.”

  His brief grimace turned into a mischievous smile.

  “Please,” I said with teasing exasperation. “I’ve been in the army. I’ve known a thousand men like you.”

  I saw the flicker of pain again.

  As apology settled in my eyes, we heard the sudden and close call of the margay, and both our heads snapped toward the sound.

  The shrill call was a signal my brothers and I used to communicate, to spread warnings or to indicate we were close by and didn’t want an arrow in the neck when we came through the trees. Zeke and Jarom had long ago adopted it, and during my time in the army, my unit had adopted it as well.

  We scanned the area thoroughly, but though we watched for someone, nobody came through the trees.

  We looked at each other. A warning call then.

  By silent agreement, Jarom led out, and I dropped the pink flower I had been holding into the long meadow grasses as we slipped into the forest. Jarom had learned stealth from Kenai, whose skills I had learned to trust completely, and I followed him willingly toward the place from which the warning call had come. But when we got there, we didn’t find anyone.

  “There!” I whispered and pointed to the barely noticeable broken stem on a large evergreen leaf. It was an obvious trail and we would have to track it.

  As we painstakingly followed the trail, which had been clearly set, we circled around toward the West Road, but the trail ended several hundred paces short of it. We cast around in all directions, even behind us, but we couldn’t find the way to go in the coming darkness.

  Frustrated, I sounded the margay and we both waited in silence, listening for a return. After a moment, we heard it in the distance beyond the West Road. What was going on, and who was out there?

  “Run for the striplings,” I whispered. There were enough striplings in the village and the surrounding villages to form a small patrol.

  “No. I’m not leaving you here.”

  “Just go. I’ll move toward the margay’s call in case whoever it is needs help. You can run faster than me, and I can shoot better than you.”

  He snorted, but he turned and ran silently and swiftly back through the trees without another word.

  That was one thing I did love about Jarom. He never questioned my ability to fight, and as he had claimed that morning in Cumeni, he would never try to suppress it.

  I turned to face the unknown.
I sent up a prayer and stepped into the falling darkness where the Lord led me.

  I started toward the road, but I heard movement in the underbrush, and I immediately dropped into it myself, years of training making it second nature. A heavy feeling came over me, and I had felt it so many times I knew what danger lay out there in the forest without having to see it for myself.

  Lamanites.

  It was dark enough by then that I felt safe rising to see what I would be facing. To anyone watching, I would appear to be a mere shadow in the dim forest.

  Unfortunately, my enemies appeared to be merely shadows too. When I lifted my head above the level of the underbrush, I saw that there were a lot of them. I counted quickly. Probably fifty dark shadows floated through the gray twilight.

  I couldn’t shoot them all.

  I waited for them to pass. When I was about to make a move to pursue them, a thick hand clamped over my mouth.

  “Kanina.”

  The word was so quiet as to be almost indiscernible from the light brush of the breeze through the leaves. If there hadn’t been a hand over my mouth, I’d have thought I imagined it.

  I gave a slight nod, indicating I would neither struggle nor make noise. But when he moved his hand, I whispered one word.

  His name.

  “You’ve had a busy day,” he said softly.

  Was that jealousy? Anger? Had he been spying on me?

  “So have you. What’s going on? Where are those men going?”

  “I followed them beyond the West Road. They were leaving, but they decided to return.”

  “Where were they going? Return for what?”

  “Captives.”

  I turned my head slightly. “Captives for what?”

  “Women, Keturah!” he burst out harshly, like I was too dim to understand. “Women and children,” he added more softly.

  “But, how do you—”

  “I know what I heard.”

  “I trust you.” I waited a moment. “Are you alone?”

  “Are you?” he shot back.

  “Jarom left to get the others.”

  He snorted. “Well, he can only warn them. I think the men are headed to your village.”

  Mother. Dinah. Cana. My heart dropped into my stomach. Isabel. Sarai. Chloe.

  I jerked upright. “We have to get there!”

  “That goes without saying.”