The Dovekeepers - Alice Hoffman [132]
Not yet.
It was easy to give her my promise on that day. She embraced me and called me daughter, a dangerous slip of who I had been and was no more.
I AVOIDED Nouri after that, though he was clearly hurt that I had abandoned him. I didn’t think about his handsome features, the way his face broke into a sudden smile. He wasn’t as good a rider as I anyway; he would never have kept up with me. I was the best among the boys of my age, fearless. When I unbound my breasts to bathe, I felt the wings above my shoulders, twining through the bone, the secret of my gifts, a legacy from the one who was my father, whoever and whatever he might be. I half-believed he might be an angel, for there were such luminous divine creatures, winged, gliding messengers from God, who were said to become entranced with women on earth and visited them in the night, joining themselves to human flesh.
I rode with the cry of your people in my throat as I chased down rabbits and the shy hyrax who burrow in the rocks and prowl the thickets. I practiced my skill to impress your father, killing my first ibex when I was ten. He said nothing when the ibex stumbled and fell, but I could see what he felt in his expression as I helped to butcher the animal. It was Adar, the time when ibex calves are in the grasslands, but I had killed a huge male. Your father touched my forehead in a blessing for my skill. From a man of such silence, this was high praise.
I was glad to be a boy in this world of men and to be granted a great honor when your father allowed me to ride beside him. I burst into each day, my black hair braided, my cloak the indigo blue of your father’s people. But our brother had been born, and as he grew everything changed. It was Adir our father looked upon with pride. Perhaps he really had forgotten who I was for all those many years, and only now recalled it was a girl child my mother had refused to leave behind on the first night of their marriage, before we reached the land of Moab and changed who I was meant to be.
IN THE RAINY SEASON, when there were no caravans, the men journeyed back to other villages, other wives. Your father and his kinsmen never stayed in one place but instead rolled down their tents and set off across the land, leaving their families on the Iron Mountain, visiting other wives and children far from our camp. They rode so far their shadows could hardly be seen by humankind. We stayed behind with the goats and the white-fleeced sheep. There were hundreds in the flock, all adding to your father’s wealth, and they needed tending. The acacia trees were abloom with yellow flowers, and the fields of grass were so tall we could disappear and never be seen when we ran across the meadow. At night the bats flew together in one dark cloud, dropping down to the trees to drink the juice of the figs. The air was mild, and the rain turned the air the same shade of blue as the cloaks your people wore.
Our mother did not complain that we stayed behind on the Iron Mountain when your father went off. She had other attachments. When our mother was cast out of Jerusalem, I was not her only pet. She had also brought along two doves, and she was devoted to them. They perched inside a wooden cage and were fed grain and dates. When they drank water, they lifted up their heads as though praising God. Our mother sent them out one at a time, slipping messages into bronze tubes attached to their legs. The doves lifted into the western sky as she tossed them upward, vanishing in a blink. They always returned to her. In time their children and grandchildren did so as well, following the same mysterious route.
Our mother would wait for their return as dusk fell across the mountains in blue bands. She said the color of the sky reminded her of water, and of the land where she had been a child, before she was sent to Jerusalem. She yearned for the city of Alexandria, a place where the rivers were filled with miraculous creatures and monsters alike, where her mother had sung her