Wings of the Wind

by Connilyn Cossette

  “No. He was forcibly removed from the altar and taken outside the camp to be stoned.”

  I spun around to face him. “Why?”

  “He was a murderer. There were plenty of witnesses to testify that he killed a man over a woman.”

  “A woman?”

  “The victim had made advances on the man’s wife. The man murdered him over it. He attempted to make it seem that it was unplanned—only a fight gone bad. But witnesses testified that the man ambushed the other in a wadi.”

  “So he was stoned to death? Just like that?”

  “Our laws are very clear, Alanah. A murderer cannot be allowed to live among us or they would stain the entire camp with guilt.”

  “No second chance? Perhaps the man deserved to be killed.”

  He shook his head. “Our God values life too much.”

  “Yet the life of the murderer is forfeit?”

  “Yahweh will not allow his people to treat life with such disdain. This nation is unique. If we allow men to murder each other, we will be no different than the depraved nations around us—” He stopped with a chastened expression. “I mean no offense to you personally. But the spies we sent into Canaan years ago told of vicious tribes, where murder is not only sanctioned, but celebrated. Where babies are offered to vile gods, where women—children really—are sold to be used until their bodies are broken and they are left for dead.” His face was stone, as if he could see these horrors in his mind.

  I had seen them with my own eyes.

  “I can only assume”—he lifted his brows—“that in the past forty years, it has only gotten worse.”

  Of that there is no doubt. My brothers’ reputations had not been for nothing. The scars on their arms, the marks of pride for the men they had killed, were all too clear in my mind. And the war tattoos, dark marks that covered their chests and backs, testified to the many tribal clashes they’d engaged in—marks that had expanded yearly, as did the boastful stories of the brutality they employed in their warfare.

  “Can you not see the difference here, Alanah? Among us, murderers are immediately cut off. Our children are cherished. Our women protected. The laws Mosheh has given us are for our protection. To keep us from the taint of the vile nations around us. To ensure that we are a holy, separate nation. A reflection of the holy God we serve.”

  “Are you all so perfect?”

  “No.” He dropped his shoulders. “We are not. I am not. But that is why we were gifted with the priests and the Mishkan, where our sins can be atoned for with the blood of sacrifice.”

  “But why would a God who values life so much be so bent on the destruction of Canaan?”

  “I cannot explain the mind of Elohim, the Creator. But I will say this: The people of this land have known we were coming for forty years. Most have left, haven’t they?”

  They had. Between war with Egypt a generation ago, constant fighting between city-states, plagues that had decimated villages, and fear of the Israelites, many of the people of Canaan had vanished. My brothers spoke of empty villages, some with plows still in the fields and crops ready for harvest, the people having simply taken up their belongings to flee north toward Tyre and Sidon, return to eastern ancestral lands, or migrate to Egypt to fill the empty place Israel had left behind.

  “There are still thriving cities,” I said. Since word had gone out that the Hebrews were encroaching on our territory, the city of Arad had overflowed with people desperate for the protection the king offered behind high walls.

  “And they have been warned.”

  The words of a wandering prophet filtered through my memories. The old man had stood near the well in our small village, his eyes full of fire and his tattered clothing flapping in the wind.

  “A nation of slaves will overcome you . . . Your sin, your hatred for life . . . This land will vomit you out . . . Those who refuse to go will be decimated.”

  At the time I, like most others, had laughed at the man. Cursed him for his traitorous words and brushed them off as the incoherent babble of a senile old man.

  Then someone had beaten the prophet to death two days later. I had walked on the other side of the street and trained my eyes on my feet to avoid the sight of his broken body and bloodied head in the dirt. His body lay in the street like refuse until someone had dragged the carcass away to be burned. It was not the first body I’d seen discarded like waste, and certainly not the last. His words—hatred for life—had proven themselves with the loss of his own.

  “Yahweh warned the people, through his prophet Noach, a hundred years before the Great Flood. Yahweh warned the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, before fire rained down on their heads. Yahweh warned Egypt through nine plagues before inflicting final judgment by killing every Egyptian firstborn. Yahweh has warned the people of Canaan. And like you, they will be given the opportunity to join this nation, destroy their idols, and worship Yahweh, or to flee.”

  Although I was not a witness to Egypt’s fall, I’d heard the horrific tales of Sodom’s fiery obliteration and had seen its remnants on the barren shore of the Salt Sea. Had that been a warning to the people of my land? “And if they refuse?” I asked.

  Tobiah said nothing, but a haunted look crossed his face.

  “Yahweh does not force anyone to believe and obey. He offers the freedom of such a choice. But . . .” His words dropped low. “The alternative will be destruction.”

  “You would destroy the people who remain?”

  “Those who refuse to go, and who take up arms against us, just as the king of Arad did, will soon find that their destruction will be absolute. They all have the same choice to make as you do. Stay? Run? Or fight?”

  Tobiah

  She’s hiding in the tent again. I glanced at the door flap, willing Alanah to appear with that glint of audacity in her eyes that I’d come to crave.

  She’d been quiet since we’d returned to the campsite this afternoon. Giving me the excuse that she was tired after the exercises I’d forced her to do with her arm, she’d ducked inside, face drawn, to hide out with her cats. Although my instinct had been to entice her out to sit with me at the evening meal, she needed some time alone with her thoughts.

  I stared into my bowl with a sour stomach. One more day. Although the thought of her going away left me wretched, I would not force her to stay. But the idea of my wife—for that’s what she had become in my mind—turning her back, walking away from me, was almost unimaginable.

  It would be foolish, reckless, to leave the protection of this camp. Although I had every confidence in her ability to survive in the wilderness, I did not trust the Canaanites. Perhaps, even if she did not choose to stay married to me, I would convince her to stay here and live with Nita, where I could at least watch over her from afar.

  I plunked my full bowl onto the ground, where the stew sloshed over into the sand. Afar? Ridiculous. How would I ever stay away from her?

  “Sick of it too, eh, Tobiah?” Simcha wiped stew from his chin with one palm.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The manna,” he said. “Even in stew I can taste it. Not sure how much more I can stand.”

  I shrugged. “Doesn’t bother me.”

  “Bothers me. If we don’t move north, we will miss the early harvest. I’ve had enough of manna and gristly desert animals. Did you try some of those dates the traders brought in from Moab last week? They weren’t even that fresh, but I’ve never tasted anything so delicious. Can you imagine what they will be like right off the trees?” He held up a fist. “Some were nearly this big!”

  “Hold your tongue, Simcha,” said Noach from across the fire. “You’ll get your dates soon enough.”

  Simcha glared at his brother. “No, we have waited long enough! We are more than ready to move in. What is Yehoshua afraid of?”

  “Yehoshua is afraid of nothing. He obeys the orders given by his own commander, Mosheh,” I said. “Just as we obey him.”

  “Mosheh was old when ou
r parents left Egypt.” Simcha scoffed. “He led a group of ragged, browbeaten slaves into the desert. This is war.”

  “Have you forgotten that Mosheh was a general?”

  Simcha waved a hand. “Different time. Different circumstances.”

  Tzipi emerged from her tent, and behind her was Keziah. Suddenly I was more than grateful Alanah was hiding, nursing her sore muscles.

  “What are you three growling about out here? We were trying to have a conversation.” Tzipi’s glance flicked to me for a brief moment. What was she doing?

  “Oh, Simcha is bellowing about not being able to run in and crack Canaanite heads together this very moment.” Noach guffawed.

  The two women sat down next to me. Keziah gave me a smile, a shy one, but one that made me hopeful she had forgiven me for letting her down.

  “Why must we trek all the way around Edom? It will add months to this journey,” said Simcha. “Those savages are on the run now. Terrified after that victory at Arad. If we wait too long, their fear will have melted away.”

  Liyam squealed from nearby, a victim of Mahan and Yonel’s too-rough wrestling. My sister sprang up to stop the fight. As Noach and Simcha kept up their argument over whether or not we should forge ahead, Keziah scooted closer to me.

  Every nerve in my body went tense. Had Tzipi purposefully left us alone? I restrained myself from edging away, pretending that Keziah’s presence to my right did not bother me. I had known her most of my life, had spent the last few months preparing myself to ask for her hand, as my mother had expected me to do.

  “Those boys.” Keziah laughed softly, placing a gentle hand on my forearm. “They remind me so much of you and Shimon as boys. Always wrestling and challenging each other. They are growing up so fast. Liyam is five now, is he not?”

  Lifting my arm and pretending to scratch my head in thought, I dislodged her hand. “I believe so. My sister will have her hands full with that one. He never shrinks back from a fight.”

  “He is so like Shimon.”

  “That he is.” Everything about Liyam was a miniature of Shimon, from his black hair to the humor in his light gray eyes, to the way he pestered his brothers until they wrestled him to the ground. The boy had Shimon’s persistence for sure. Shimon had always taken it as a personal challenge to provoke me until my blood raced and my hands shook. Shimon was the only person to ever get under my skin, other than the fiery woman in the tent behind me.

  Having broken up the squalling threesome, Tzipi turned around with a look of frustration on her face that somehow transformed into a smirk when she saw Keziah sitting next to me on the ground. With a little lift of her brows, she sat down near Noach instead. I nearly rolled my eyes at my meddling twin and her last effort to push Keziah at me before the thirty days were complete.

  “I agree with Simcha,” Tzipi said. “I am sick of this wilderness. I am ready to have a home with four brick walls that don’t move. I am dreading having to pack up this tent yet again.”

  Simcha nodded. “And just think, if we go in now, all those crops are just sitting there waiting for us. All we have to do is harvest them.”

  “Are you a farmer now, Simcha?” Noach laughed again. “I’d like to see you behind a plow.”

  “Can’t be so hard. You plant things, they grow, you pick them.”

  “You have no idea what you are talking about!” Alanah’s voice made me whip my head around. She’d emerged from the tent, fire in her eyes and both fists at her hips. She strode into our circle to address Simcha. “You walk outside every morning and have the most delicious food in the world readily available and you moan about wanting to farm? My father spent every single day of his life working his farm, dragging huge rocks up the hills to build the terraces, hours and hours in the hot sun behind a plow, and sleepless nights when the storms would rage through and knock every stalk of wheat to the ground. You Hebrews are spoiled.” She jerked her chin northward. “You sit out here acting as though the fiercest tribes aren’t waiting for you, armed to the teeth and ready to grind you all to dust. You may think you are warriors, and perhaps you’ve had a victory or two, but I have seen men the size of trees in my village. Bloodthirsty men—men without conscience. You have no idea what you are up against.”

  “Perhaps not.” Tzipi smiled as if she had not heard a word Alanah had just said. “But bloodthirsty or not, Yahweh’s soldiers will drive them into the ground. And we will make our homes in Canaan and raise our families there in the knowledge of the One True God. Isn’t that right, Keziah?”

  Alanah’s head snapped toward me, her narrowed eyes taking in the sight of Keziah, who was leaning around me to stare back at my wife with a surprised expression. Alanah’s mouth twitched as if she had more to say, but instead she whirled around and stalked back into Nita’s tent, back straight and head high, one of her sand cats trotting at her heels.

  “Enough,” I said.

  Tzipi’s narrowed eyes remained pinned on the place where Alanah had delivered her speech with such passion. No one else in the campsite said a word. Even the young boys went still, their eyes wide.

  I stood and moved to stand in front of her, forcing her to look at me and lowering my voice so only she could hear. “I said, enough.”

  The granite set of my sister’s jaw did not waver.

  “I have given you grace because of Shimon. Because I understand and share your pain and anger. I have not intervened, hoping that the sister I love would come to accept the commitment I have made to Alanah. She is my wife. If you cannot embrace her, you will at least respect me by treating her with the hospitality you would give a stranger. Your incivility dishonors me. It dishonors you.”

  I strode away without a glance behind me, my blood racing, both with indignation at my sister and at the thought that, after tomorrow, Alanah—that intelligent, fascinating, and vivid woman—would be mine.

  21

  Alanah

  15 IYAR

  1407 BC

  I jerked awake, the dregs of a bad dream still swirling in my veins. How long had it been since I had slept the whole night? Bodo nuzzled my leg, curling into my warmth. The darkness of the tent told me I had awoken before the sun on this last day of my unconventional betrothal. The jealousy that had exploded in my chest last night had left splinters behind. Although I had only seen the woman for a few moments before I had intruded on the argument between the cousins, I had watched her smile at Tobiah, her wide-set brown eyes full of innocent invitation, her dainty hand brushing his arm as she laughed at something he said. Everything about her screamed feminine grace. When Tzipi had announced that it was Keziah practically sitting in my husband’s lap—

  It had been a good thing my quiver was empty or that lovely girl might have a hole in her perfect head this morning.

  Turning onto my side, a flutter of nerves gathered in my stomach as I caught a glimpse of Tobiah sleeping across the doorway, his chest rising and falling in steady rhythm. Only one more day until I would be sleeping next to him. Unless I refused, or he changed his mind and chose her.

  Tobiah’s challenge—Stay? Run? Or fight?—still echoed in my head. I had weighed all three, time and again, a circle of never-ending doubts trailing each one. If I submitted to this marriage, I was turning my back on everything I knew. If I escaped, I would be leaving Tobiah to marry Keziah. If I did what I came to do and slaughtered Hebrews, my life would be forfeit—an option that had become less desirable every day.

  Everything I knew of the Hebrews a few weeks ago had been turned inside out. Instead of a mob of faceless slaves, I found admirable warriors and loving families. Instead of a horde of rabid battle-mongers, I found an organized multitude that would go months out of their way to avoid fighting their cousins in Edom. Instead of the vicious tribal warfare that defined my people, I found a nation united beneath one God and united in purpose like nothing I’d ever experienced. A nation willing to accept outsiders as one of them, beneath the protective banner of their Torah laws.

&nbs
p; Yes, I had lost my hair. But it was already growing back. Yes, I had given up my gods, but I had little use for them anyhow. Yes, I had submitted to a new way of life, but the differences I saw among these people were fascinating, almost alluring. Babies were not slaughtered on the altar at the Mishkan or burned at the feet of their God. There were no temple prostitutes selling their wares in the courtyard.

  And when I considered the battle that had stolen my family, I was forced to admit that it was the king of Arad who had attacked first, vowing to crush the wanderers before they set foot on his lands—the same ruthless king who had a reputation for leaving a long, bloody trail of rivals all the way to his throne, and expanding his territory in the same savage manner.

  If the Torah of the Hebrews ruled the land of Canaan, would such a thing be celebrated? I suspected not. I’d walked onto that battlefield desperate to die, tossing my life away like refuse and willing to do so in order to avenge the men of my family—men who had thought nothing of murdering and raping.

  How had everything I’d ever known been so wrong? So repugnant?

  Would I want my own daughter someday to be raised among such atrocities? To be in danger of being tossed on the burning heap at the feet of stone gods? A shiver ran the length of me as I blinked away the awful vision.

  I’d never even considered the thought of children. Never given myself the luxury of doing so. But on the threshold of marriage to Tobiah, I found the idea strangely enticing. The image of a small girl, with red curls like mine, and a tiny boy riding atop his father’s broad shoulders filled my mind. A smile meandered across my lips. A mother? Me?

  I reached down to pet Capo, who always slept near my hip. He’d seemed listless last night and hadn’t wanted any milk. I skimmed my hand across his soft fur but he did not press into me like he usually did, even in his sleep. I patted his head, my heart beating faster. Still, he did not move. With trembling fingers, I placed my hand on his body, holding my breath to gauge the rise and fall of the little animal’s chest. There was none. He was still and cold.