“You two are so weird,” said Naomi.
“You understand, now, right, sweetheart?” asked Shulamit, rocking Ilana gently. “We’re sharing because some people don’t have what we have. We work really hard for our people, but it wouldn’t be fair if we had lots of things and they didn’t have anything, right? Especially if there’s enough to go around?”
“Yes, Ima,” said Naomi.
“Bring your plate to the counter, please.”
Naomi hopped off her seat and did as she was told.
“You’re training a good queen,” Isaac told Shulamit in his native language, which the children didn’t understand, not wanting Naomi to start imagining she was already perfect.
“I try.” Shulamit smile-grimaced, happy that her near-father recognized her efforts but sad that her real one would never know his grandchildren.
♡ ✡ ♡
Later, in Shulamit’s salon—
“But,” Farzin said with breakneck excitement, “when they actually built the fence, they realized they’d forgotten to take into account how much water they’d need to keep the mud pliable while they were working, so it actually—”
“I thought you said there was a pump!” Shulamit exclaimed.
“The pump—”
“Wait, wait.” Shulamit held up one hand, the one that wasn’t holding a copy of the script. “We’ll never learn our lines if we keep getting distracted like this.”
“Sorry!” Farzin grinned sheepishly and peered at his script. “Um… something about…”
“Just take it from the beginning again.”
“All right, all right.” Farzin stuck his tongue out at her. “Wait, the beginning, beginning? Or after—”
“No, after Vashti leaves. The beginning of our scene.”
“Vashti’s one of our names,” Farzin mused. “If any of this really happened, it was probably over near our city.”
“Yeah, that’s what the scholars think,” said Shulamit animatedly. “And Esther’s one of your names too, technically. She’s really Hadassah.”
“How old are all of these stories?”
“Oh, shoot,” said Shulamit. “Hundreds… thousands… of years.”
“Every once in a while when we’re tilling a new field on the vineyard, we turn up some bits of broken jars from something that was there back in the day.”
“That’s so exciting!” Shulamit’s eyes sparkled with interest. “Any idea how old it is?”
“Going by legend and records, probably between eight hundred to a thousand years.”
“Wow,” she breathed. “So was there another farm there or was it something else?”
“Well, back then, there was actually a whole village, but at some point, there was a plague, and then everyone who survived just sort of drained into the City of Red Clay,” Farzin explained. “It went back to nature for a while, but the soil’s too fertile not to attract attention. So, eventually, here we are.”
“You’re making me want to hire some sort of state expedition to find the real Esther.” Shulamit’s mind was only half in her salon now; images of organized rows of workers examining the dirt on the empty lands between Perach and the City of Clay flashed through her mind. She imagined one of them standing up, holding a crown in a trembling hand, brushing the dirt off with the other—Majesty! Look what we’ve found! “I wonder if King Jahandar would let me look at the state records or if he thinks I’ll contaminate them with my deviance.” Her face was a sarcastic knot.
“I bet he has nightmares about little Shulamit sneaking into his bedroom window at night and infecting him with love and acceptance,” Farzin teased. “But, hey, what about my mother?”
“That’s perfect,” said Shulamit. She clapped her hands in excitement, hopping a little. “I’ll study our records and then tell her what I’m looking for.”
“Hey, aren’t we supposed to be practicing lines?”
“Arrgh! Now you’ve got me doing it!” Shulamit’s hands worked aimlessly at the fringed edges of her decorative scarf. “Look, let’s just skip to the exciting part. Maybe that’ll keep our minds on the play so we can work backward to the rest of it.”
“Where should I start?”
“From the part about ‘I will give you anything you want.’”
Farzin puffed out his chest and spoke in his idea of the booming voice of a king. “I will give you anything you want, my Queen Esther. Because you have a sexy husband,” he added in his normal voice.
Shulamit burst into giggles. “Oh my God.”
“You already changed the Vashti part, right?” said Farzin. “You could change this too.”
“I changed the Vashti part because he—you—wanted her to dance naked in front of random men and that’s why she got kicked out. I don’t like that part.”
“I am so all right with girls not wanting to dance naked for me. Look how all right I am.” Farzin held out an arm to either side.
“You look devastated,” said Shulamit dryly.
“In fact, think of the scandal if the kingdom knew the queen was alone in her salon with her husband’s lover!” Farzin was already laughing at his own joke by the time he finished his sentence.
“Think of the scandal if the queen’s heart-brother forgot all of his lines in the Purim play in front of everyone,” Shulamit teased.
“My Queen Esther!” Farzin had resumed his pompous tone. “You may have whatever you want, except of course pita, and chicken, and that cardboard stuff from the other holiday, and—”
“Stooop,” she said through more giggles.
“You may have whatever you want, even including your hairstyle remaining as smooth as you want it for an entire day!” He emphasized these words with a pointing finger.
“You know what, I like your version. We should do this in front of everyone.”
“Oh boy,” said Farzin, taken aback. “I don’t know if I could do it on command!”
“My King,” said Shulamit, her skin growing a little hot at the idea that she was pretending to be that beautiful and brave queen who’d been her childhood crush, “it has been commanded that my people are to die, and I beg you to have compassion and save us.”
There was a pause. “Wait, what’s next?”
“You ask me who said.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Farzin. “Who is behind these orders?”
“Our enemy is Haman, who stands there!” Shulamit pointed dramatically.
“That lime tree?” Farzin was over to the big clay pot in three bounds. “Say the word, and I’ll knock it over!” He swung a fist “at” the tree, wide enough to miss. “I shoulda known. Look how sour he looks.”
“I’m going to cry myself to sleep over how nobody will ever see this version. It’s comedy gold.”
“I shall ban all lime trees,” Farzin continued, “and—hey!”
“Why are we banning lime trees?” Kaveh stood in the doorway cradling a squirmy, mewling Princess Ilana.
“They’re not as sweet as you,” Farzin quipped.
Kaveh beamed, and handed the baby over to Shulamit. “Sorry to interrupt, but she’s hungry and Aviva’s already nursing Aram.”
“No, it’s fine!” Shulamit scooped her baby into her arms. “I guess we’ll have to finish this sitting down.”
“It’s really only the lines we have to practice, anyway, not the moving-around bits,” said Farzin.
“Kaveh, can you hang around and keep us on task?” Now on the sofa, Shulamit maneuvered Ilana around her chest so that she could latch.
“Yeah, we keep getting off topic talking about inventions and discoveries,” Farzin explained.
“For you two, science is the real holiday,” Kaveh observed.
“Ooh, that’s a great idea!” Shulamit exclaimed. “I should look into creating a holiday to celebrate science.” Kaveh smiled at her, and she realized she was still finding new tangents. “I can’t help it, Kaveh, I’m just so happy to see you guys.”
“We love you too.” Kaveh
grinned.
“We’ll both try harder to stay on task,” Shulamit resolved, concentrating on the soothing vibes coming from her nursing infant. “So, at the beginning of my part, when Mordecai brings me in…”
♡ ✡ ♡
Torches lit up the palace courtyard so that everyone in the audience could see Farzin’s face clearly against the night air as he delivered his lines. “Since Vashti and I could not get along, I will seek a new wife.”
“Shulamit changed it,” Aviva whispered to Kaveh. They sat in the front row, each with a baby on their lap. Ilana was a banana and Aram a pod of garden peas, each in a costume made by Aviva’s father the tailor.
“I know,” said Kaveh. “She told me. The original version is weird.”
“Well, it’s weird, but it’s ours,” said Aviva. “But growing with the times is also ours.” She adjusted Aram against her ample chest.
“Your Majesty,” said Rivka, who was supposed to be Mordecai, “may I suggest my cousin?”
“Wait ’til you see this dress she asked from my father for Queen Esther,” Aviva murmured. “She’s a pineapple.”
Kaveh looked like he didn’t know what to make of that, so they continued watching the play. He would see soon enough!
The crowd gasped into oohs and ahhs as Queen Shulamit took the stage in her exotic costume. It was a gown of gold with brown accents, made in the fashion of the court of Imbrio with their enormous skirts. She walked slowly, and since the dress was so long they couldn’t see her legs, she seemed to glide by magic. “Whoa,” said Kaveh.
“I know!” Aviva grinned happily. “I’m glad she finally came up with an excuse to get one of those northern-style dresses.”
Isaac stalked around the stage in a big black pirate hat as the evil Haman, and every time the actors said his name, the crowd shook their noisemakers—groggers, in Rivka’s language—to block out the word. Aviva pressed her noisemaker into Ilana’s hand and showed her how to shake it, but this proved to be a shortsighted idea because she didn’t know when to stop. “I guess she’s too young for that!” the amused mother said as she took back the noisemaker.
“You have to do it only when they say his name,” Naomi explained to her little sister. Ilana looked up at her with big brown eyes as if she understood, but then reached for Naomi’s noisemaker and tried to shake it while Shulamit was saying one of her lines. “No, not now!”
“Shh,” said Aviva.
“Our enemy is Haman, who stands there!” Shulamit flung her pointing finger in Isaac’s direction, and he looked at Shulamit and Farzin in mock fear.
“But, Your Majesty—” he began.
“Quiet, you!” Rivka, as Mordecai, burst on to the stage with her sword out.
“Oh, is that how it is, eh?” Isaac drew his own sword with his left hand.
“This is just our version, right?” said Kaveh under his breath.
Aviva nodded. “She’s playing to our strengths.”
The crowd went wild as Rivka and Isaac’s blades clanged together back and forth across the stage, with Shulamit and Farzin clinging together in a show of mutual terror and solace in each other. Isaac had dropped the pretense of being an evil mass murderer and grinned like he’d already won, his face glowing.
Naomi’s clear voice rose over the cheers. “If there was a real person like that I’d be so scared of him and I’d fight him and put him in jail, but that’s just Zayde in a hat, so it’s fun to watch him do things.”
“Yes,” Aviva agreed. “Bad people can be a little bit fun when they’re only make-believe.”
“How come when Riv and Zayde play-fight it’s like when you and Ima kiss and cuddle?”
Aviva met Kaveh’s eyes, and he chuckled. “That’s how God made them,” she told Naomi, “just like you’re made to like cheese and Aba likes lamb. People like different things, and their minds work in different ways. We match, and they match.” She nodded to the couple on the stage.
“Like when Baba makes a joke and Aba gets all smiley?”
Kaveh reacted to this by “getting all smiley” and ruffling her hair. “Smart kid.”
“I don’t always get Baba’s jokes.”
“Then you can look forward to something to grow into,” said Aviva.
♡ ✡ ♡
The Purimspiel was over and the palace’s inner courtyard rested quietly under the full moon’s benevolent glow. Even the third-shifters who busily cleaned up all the fuss and confetti from the crowd were long done. Rivka stood at her post, on guard duty tonight in front of the sleeping queen’s door. She’d be here for another few hours, but that was okay—the little Crown Princess had a room to herself now, just next door, and Isaac was there standing guard.
Moonlight glinted off the gray winding through his thick hair and turned the whiter strands silver. He answered her gaze with a heavy-lidded smile. “Here we are, like something out of one of those legends,” he commented. “A dragon, guarding a princess.”
“You’re cute, for a cliché.” Rivka waggled her eyebrows at him.
“I have an important job!” Isaac retorted. “I’m on guard against danger. You never know when a brave, muscular warrior might appear and… attack my pants.”
“Oh, so you’ve added foretelling the future to your magical talents, wizard?” Rivka shot back, her body tingling pleasantly.
“Maybe it was foolish to spar in public.” Knowing exactly what he was doing, he parted his lips slightly and lifted one eyebrow. It was all very subtle and small, and yet Rivka felt starved for him.
“When we get off duty—”
“Tell me, Mighty One.”
Rivka took a deep breath but in that silence she heard whimpering. “Wait.”
Isaac heard it too. He leaned his head to Princess Naomi’s door. “Kindeleh? Are you all right?”
There was a thump and running footsteps, and then the door flung open. Naomi, in her nightgown and her dark hair a thoroughly messy cloud of curls, rushed out and clung to Isaac’s leg. “I don’t want to give anybody away,” she bawled, and buried her crying face in his clothes.
Rivka leaned against the wall in front of the queen’s room and watched as Isaac bent down to wipe first one of her tiny eyelids, then the other, clean of tears. “What’s wrong, Princess? That’s quite the crying fit.”
“Ina wanna wahhhhhh.” She hiccuped and put her arms around his neck as he lifted her into his arms. They stood like that for a moment as she exhausted her crying. When she was calm enough to speak, she asked, “Can you be a dragon?”
Isaac transformed and curled up like a cat, still cradling the little girl. “Tell me what’s bothering you and I’ll see if I can fix it.”
“I don’t want to give them away,” said Naomi.
“Give who away?”
The new tears resting in her eyes reflected moonlight. “I’m the princess and I have more of everything than the other kids. I have more mothers and more fathers too. And some of the kids we visited have no mothers or fathers at all. I’m supposed to give them mine. But I don’t want to say good-bye!” She burrowed into his scales and shivered, even though it wasn’t cold.
Rivka couldn’t help smiling, even as she felt sorry for her.
“Shayna maydeleh,” said Isaac, holding both the princess’ tiny hands in one of his heavy paws, “one of the most valuable lessons a future queen can learn is that people aren’t things.” Naomi listened intently. “It’s good to give some of your things away when you have more things than everyone else, and that includes food, clothing, and toys. But people aren’t things. You don’t have to give anyone away.”
“You promise?”
“With all my heart,” said Isaac. “Aba and Baba will be your fathers forever, and your mothers will always be your mothers. That doesn’t mean they’ll be around forever, but they’ll always be yours, and nobody can take that away.”
“And you and Riv too?”
“We’ll be here too.”
“What about those kids? There
were so many of them and they had no mothers or fathers, just two old ladies and a young one, and one of the old ladies looked mean.”
“Maybe you and your mothers can help people without children or who want more children offer to be their parents,” Isaac suggested.
“That sounds like helping.” Naomi considered the idea. “I like helping.”
“Good,” said Isaac. “That’s a big part of what being queen is about. At least, for your Ima.”
“I wish Aba and Baba were here more often,” said Naomi. “They’re really fun.”
“They wish they could see you more too,” said Isaac. “They have to take care of the vineyard though.”
“I know,” said Naomi. “Baba said if he didn’t go to work every day, the vines wouldn’t know they were supposed to grow grapes and would start growing watermelons instead!”
“Your Baba is a joke factory.”
“I know, I got that one.” Naomi grinned.
“Glad to see that smile.”
That made Naomi smile even wider.
“You ready to go back to sleep, kindeleh?”
“Can you sing to me first?”
Through the clear, dark courtyard, Rivka listened to her husband sing to Naomi the song he’d first serenaded her with over ten years ago, on the night they’d first spoken openly of their love. It was also the song that Shulamit’s father sung her as a lullaby when she herself was a child, and now it was Isaac’s song for his beloved little princess.
Jeweled stars, pearl stars
Silver coins in olive jars
Glittering deep within the dark
See them flicker, see them spark
Press the olives, pool the oil
Golden sunlight, golden royal
Press so olive oil will run
Press the night, collect the sun…
Tales from Outer Lands
by Shira Glassman
In memory of Shippo the Lizard, 2004-2014
Rivka in Port Saltspray
With grateful thanks to Nicole, Dr. Caroti, Leigh Alanna, and my mother for their assistance.
The dark man with the earring shook his head. “I don’t care how big of a sword you’re carrying; I’m not letting horses on my ship.” He folded his arms across his chest and leaned back against one of the posts on the dock. Behind him, seagulls swooped through the air in both directions over his vessel as it lay anchored in the water.
Tales from Perach (Mangoverse Book 5) Page 6