A Light on the Hill

by Connilyn Cossette

  I’d been told my whole life of Yaakov’s beloved son, of the coat he’d been given to denote the power he would have over his brothers in spite of their birth order, and the jealousy that had driven those men to trade their brother for silver.

  My father had been present when Yosef’s bones had finally been laid to rest in Shechem only three years ago, the same bones that had traveled from Egypt upon the shoulders of the Levites. How strange to think that our trail from Shechem may have been the same Yosef walked all those years ago, on his way to meet with the brothers who’d been plotting against him, and that this cave was likely only an hour’s walk from where his long journey to Egypt began.

  I brushed my finger along the squiggling river on his drawing. “And you are sure this leads to the Jordan River Valley?”

  “I am. We traveled through this area in the spring.”

  A memory sparked from the night in the vineyard. “Oh! You told me about purple flowers on a mountain. Was it this one?”

  “Yes,” he crinkled his brow. “I am surprised you remember.”

  “Of course I remember, I was enthralled—” I stopped before my lips betrayed me by saying “by you” and instead stammered “by . . . by your descriptions of the land.”

  Silent for a moment, he searched my eyes and then cleared his throat. “The whole side of this mountain was covered with those stately purple flowers,” he said with such haste it seemed as though he were trying to smother the desire to say something else.

  “It sounds lovely.”

  “It was.”

  Our conversation snuffed out like a wick between moistened fingers, both of us turned our attention back to the opening of the cave. The deepening silence was broken only by Yuval’s soft snoring behind us. Warring desires fought for supremacy inside me. My body somehow longed to move closer to him, yet my mind screamed that I should flee from the man who had every right to kill me—and, judging by his display of skill this morning, could do so with little effort.

  “Why have you not done what Raviv sent you to do?” My tone was flat, unaffected, as I had meant for it to be.

  Shock widened his eyes. “Are you asking me to kill you?”

  “I’m asking what has stopped you from doing so.” His statement from earlier, about the Canaanites shedding innocent blood, had been cycling again and again in my head all evening.

  “I told you. I have no desire to kill you. I only want justice for my nephews.”

  “So you still believe I purposefully murdered them?” Indignation whisked up my spine and I sat up straighter, lifting my chin. Did he truly think I was no different from the vicious tribes around us that offered their children up to bloodthirsty gods?

  “Regardless of what I believe, I do not take the spilling of blood lightly, Moriyah.” He folded his arms across his chest, the blue of my linen bandage bright against his dark brown tunic. “My own mother was murdered.”

  I restrained a gasp. “How?”

  He squirmed, adjusting his position on the ground. “She was stoned to death.”

  “Oh . . .” I covered my mouth over the veil.

  He was quiet for a long while, staring out of the cave until I was not sure he would speak again, but then he continued, his voice hushed and weighted with sorrow. “I was only six years old. But I remember everything about that day. I’d been watching her bake manna cakes next to the fire.” He sniffed, then paused, turning to me. “I can still smell it, can’t you? The manna?”

  I nodded. “I can still taste that honey-spiced sweetness in my mouth.”

  “Yes. Me too. And that day I’d begged my mother to let me help her. Raviv was off with my father hunting in the hills. In fact, it was his first trip out with the other men since he’d turned thirteen and was considered a man himself.”

  Darek paused again, looking off into the twilight that had begun to drape itself around the cave. The rain had stopped, and the fire behind me had disappeared to mere embers. He and Yuval had decided against tending the fire during the night, to discourage unwelcome visitors. I shivered and ran my hand up and down my arms to brush away the chill.

  “When she asked me to run down to a neighbor’s tent and retrieve a jug of goat milk, I was proud that she’d trusted me with such a task, especially since it was getting dark.” He stretched his neck upward, looking into the distance as if it were a door to the past. “That jug was so heavy, but I was determined to make my ima proud.”

  His shoulders slumped, and the way his eyes went blank made me cringe. “Our tent was on the outskirts, at the very northern edge of the congregation, being of the tribe of Naftali. When I returned, ready to prove to my mother that I was big enough, I was surprised that she was not by the fire anymore. And sounds . . .” He stopped, as if gathering the courage to continue. “Sounds came from the tent that confused me even more. Muffled sounds, as if someone’s hand was over my mother’s mouth and a man’s low voice—”

  “No” dropped from my lips.

  “Of course as a child I could not fathom what the man who emerged from our tent had done to my mother, and since I was hiding nearby I could not even see his face when he left. When she emerged from the tent she saw me and did her best to act normal, so as not to frighten me.” The cave had grown darker, and I could barely make out the shape of his face and the way his shoulders slumped forward as he spoke. “It was most likely the very thing that sealed her fate, made her seem complicit in the act. Before my father even returned from the hunt, she’d already been taken to the elders and accused of adultery. Even though I was too young to understand what was happening, I’ll never forget the way she looked as they took her away, her chin high, back straight, knowing that she’d done no wrong.”

  “But didn’t your father object?” I could not see Pekah, who’d seemed kind, accusing a woman of such a thing without proof.

  “He did. But there must have been more than one witness to accuse her, as the law requires, perhaps three or four.”

  “They did not allow her to speak for herself?”

  “I don’t know. I only gathered a few details from scattered conversations I listened in on, although I did not fully comprehend them until I was older. Too friendly, I’d heard someone say. Flirted with all the men. Took advantage of my father’s absence.”

  I shook my head, the move futile in the darkness. “But that gave that man no right . . .”

  “Of course not. But it made her look guilty, I am sure. She was so kind, always going out of her way to help anyone, even strangers. I remember her laughter. Her stories were like pictures drawn in my mind.” Much like Darek’s had been for me that night in the vineyard. From the way he described her, there seemed to be many similarities between them.

  “It was not until my father explained why she had died that I truly understood just how much I’d failed her.” His words choked to a stop, but the anguish beneath them echoed inside me.

  I folded my hands together to prevent them from searching his out. “No. Darek, you did not fail her. You were a child, with little comprehension of the situation.”

  His tone solidified, hard as flint. “She received no mercy, and the man who’d violated her was never found or accused. She alone bore the consequence of his evil. There was no justice for my mother. And no matter how much . . . no matter how much I wish . . .” His hard swallow was audible. “Justice must be done for my nephews as well.”

  My heart jolted, the twin images of Darek’s sword pointed toward me and his welcome smile at the festival, yanking it in disparate directions.

  “My brother is relentless, Moriyah. I fought alongside him for the past five years. He is not a bad man, but once his mind is fixated on a plan of action, there is no dissuading him. It was not only me who saw the injustice in our mother’s destruction. Bitterness has been a friend to Raviv since that day, and the death of his own wife merely deepened it. He will never be content until you pay for what happened. Never.”

  Fear was a living, breathing thing
stretched along my shoulders, weighing me down as I stared at Darek in spite of my inability to read his eyes in the dark. “Why are you helping me then? If you consider what I did even close to the atrocity your mother endured?”

  I heard him lean forward, felt the space between us diminish. A long beat of silence highlighted Yuval’s heavy breaths as he slept behind us, ignorant of the conversation that filled this now-black cave with thick tension.

  “Don’t you guess?” He lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper. “Moriyah?” My fingertips, my toes, even my scalp tingled at the softness with which he spoke my name.

  He continued, his tone just as hushed. “I’d been so busy with my duties, I hadn’t seen Raviv since we’d returned from surveying the land, knew nothing of you, or what had been decided in my absence. I went to that festival not to find a wife, by any means, but as I told you, only as a favor to Aron so he could search out that girl he had his eye on.” He released a low, short laugh. “And then I turned around, and there you were . . . smiling with those eyes that seemed to call my name. . . . and you were so kind to Rimona, even after she was so malicious to you. You reminded me of her . . . of my mother and the way she’d stood that day, with her head high, even as those men dragged her away to accuse her of such vile things.” He paused, his words dissolving into a soft rasp. “You can’t think that I went to your home that night purely out of concern for that awful girl.”

  My breath felt trapped within my chest. “Why did you come then?”

  “Because from the moment those liquid silver eyes pierced me through, I wanted nothing more than to know who you were.” His voice dipped low. “If I could have made that walk through the vineyard last until sunrise, I would have done so.”

  The revelation made my rebellious heart sing. It had not been my imagination then—something intangible and rare had passed between the two of us that night among the vines.

  “And then the next morning, I had to walk away, before I insisted aloud that my father must be mistaken, that you could not be promised to Raviv. . . .” The sound of his groan came from lower down, as if he’d dropped his head into his hands. “And even though, as you said, it cannot matter . . . it does.”

  Those two small words exploded inside my head. “But you . . . you have never seen my face. And surely by now you know what happened to me in Jericho. How could . . . ?” I could not complete that thought.

  The sound of his breath catching seemed to echo in the stillness. “What happened to you there? In Jericho?”

  I flinched. “Don’t you know?”

  “I know what I’ve heard from people who don’t care about you. From Rimona and her friends, as I walked them home that night. From my brother who explained later what his reasoning was for marrying you.”

  “The vineyard.”

  His silence confirmed my assumption. And the reminder that the vineyard was at the heart of all that had transpired over the past few days—Raviv, the boys, this flight through an untamed land—reemphasized that truth. There were only two destinations at the end of this journey. Either I lived out my life in Kedesh, or Raviv killed me. Nothing could ever come of whatever seeds had been planted that night in the vineyard.

  I waited, hoping he’d forgotten what he’d asked me before. But the way he continued to wait, his silence imploring, yet patient, made it plain he had not. And truly he’d been more open with me than I could ever have imagined, as if darkness dissolved boundaries that daylight outlined in stark detail.

  With a bracing breath I turned toward the black night outside that had become one with the cave. The cloak of shadows gave me courage, so I told him the story of my journey to Jericho—from the moment Alanah and I were snatched by Midianite traders to the never-ending shaking as the walls of Jericho fell around us. I left nothing out.

  By the time my words dwindled into silence, I decided he had fallen asleep during my story. Exhausted, body and mind, I laid down, tucking my hands beneath my cheek, and closed my eyes, wondering how long I had been talking to myself in the dark.

  Just before sleep dragged me into its soothing embrace, a whisper reached across the distance between us, as soft as a caress. “Thank you . . . Moriyah.”

  The sound of his lips forming my name murmured again and again in my heart until I faded away.

  CHAPTER

  Seventeen

  Standing at the entrance of the cave before the sun arose, I gestured toward the scattered points of light dotting the valley near the foot of our mountain, barely visible through the misty dim. “What is that? An army?”

  Coming to stand next to me, Darek scrubbed his brow with his knuckles and then pulled back the unruly hair that swept into his eyes with an exacerbated puff of air from his lips. “I don’t think so. I would guess a large caravan of traders coming from Yaffa on their way to Megiddo or Beit She’an. Must have gotten caught in the storm and camped overnight.” He leaned forward to get a better look. “From the looks of those fires and the tents they have set up, I would guess they are staying for a while. At least until the sun rises.”

  “If they are foreign traders, they won’t pay us any mind,” said Yuval.

  The memory of the Midianite trader who’d kidnapped me, along with his giant friend Kothar, flashed through my mind. It was that moment, when I’d been taken, that started the events that led to my branding in the first place. I braced a hand against the cool wall of the cave to prevent myself from sagging.

  “Moriyah?” Darek stepped closer, as if sensing the swirl of fear cycling through my body. Did he remember what I’d told him about that horrific experience? Had our conversation last night in the dark even been real? Perhaps I had imagined the quiet words, the way he’d whispered my name.

  “We should not . . .” I turned to him, my tone beseeching him to remember. “We cannot go near them.”

  “We’ll go around them, it’ll be fine,” said Yuval.

  “No, she’s right.” Darek’s eyes were on me, full of understanding. “We’ll go back the way we came and around the southern end of the mountain instead.”

  “That will undo a day’s worth of progress toward Kedesh!” said Yuval. “We need to get back into Hebrew lands before we are discovered!”

  “We’ll just have to hope that your men have led Raviv sufficiently off course. It’ll be at least a day or two before we are in friendly territory, whichever way we go.”

  “I have an idea,” I said, a smile curling on my lips as I remembered the way Alanah and I had cut our hair and dressed as boys to allay suspicion as we fled our captors. “You both need to shave.”

  Both men’s eyes went wide. “No,” they said in tandem.

  “You know most Canaanites don’t wear their facial hair like that.” I gestured between the two full-bearded men. “If we encounter someone, you might as well hang yourselves from the ramparts. The best thing would be to shave your beards and trim your tzitzit.”

  “I won’t trim my tzitzit,” said Yuval, squaring his shoulders.

  “So you would put Moriyah in more danger to wear them?” Darek said, surprising me again by taking my side.

  “It is the law that I wear these.” Yuval gestured to the knotted tassels that dangled from the seams of his tunic. “I have always obeyed the law, since your father taught me of its goodness. I will not disobey.”

  Darek gestured at me. “And does not the law encourage us to protect and care for life?”

  Yuval nodded.

  “Will you forget the law if the tzitzit are in the pouch around your neck rather than on your garments until we deliver Moriyah to Kedesh?”

  Yuval sighed in defeat. “No.”

  “I have no desire to shave my beard either, but she’s right. We’ll have a better chance of talking our way out of a dangerous situation if our appearance does not trumpet our heritage. A good plan.” An impish smile teased Darek’s mouth as he looked at me. “Perhaps you would make a good spy.”

  Yuval glanced between Darek and me, eyes narro
wed, and then made a noise in the back of his throat. “We’d best get this done, before I change my mind.”

  The men took turns with the razor-edged obsidian dagger, trimming their beards down to a swatch around their lips and chins. Darek even went one step further and cut his hair short, trimming it no longer than the width of two fingers. The change was startling; the long hair that had flopped into his eyes was gone, giving him a leaner look, one with a sharp edge that unsettled me. He now looked more like the terrifying warrior I’d glimpsed in the clearing with those two bandits and less like the man who’d told me of his mother in a dark cave and spoken my name as if his lips enjoyed forming the sounds.

  I too did my best to change my appearance. I altered the round neckline of my tunic by cutting a slit in it; not enough to reveal anything, but enough to suggest the thought. The result was not truly Canaanite, nothing like the brightly-striped one-shoulder dress I’d worn in Rahab’s house back in Jericho. But I hoped strangers would assume the Egyptian half of my heritage was the whole.

  Then, using some of the ash from the fire, a small twig, and the reflection of Yuval’s bronze kopesh, I smudged kohl across my eyelids, above and below, curving the line out past my lashes in a semblance of the style Rahab wore in her former life as a prostitute.

  After ensuring my veil was tight and well-placed, I turned toward the men.

  Yuval’s brows lifted high, his tone disapproving. “Why did you do that?”

  “The two of you look Canaanite, except perhaps the lack of any tattoos or markings on your arms. I needed to do something to change my appearance as well.”

  Darek said nothing but turned to riffle inside the bag he’d found on Rossim’s body. With a flourish he held out two gold armlets and a beautiful necklace made of carnelian pieces fashioned to look like tiny pomegranates and interspersed with tiny gold beads. “To complete the disguise.”

  I accepted the jewelry. After pushing the armlets over my wrists and pressing them in place at the top of my arms, I settled the necklace in place, with the largest pomegranate in the center of my chest. I’d never worn jewelry, and the weight of the cool metal and polished stones felt strange against my skin.