The Dovekeepers - Alice Hoffman [133]
When one of the doves reappeared, our mother would become utterly absorbed. If you called to her, she would not hear your voice. If a bee lit upon her hand, she wouldn’t take notice. Unlike your father, who was satisfied, I understood that our mother yearned for something more. Still I couldn’t quite fathom her expression, not while I stood there barefoot, dressed as a boy. Only now do I understand. She was a woman in love.
Throughout the years we lived with your father, she was sending messages to another man, the one who was my father. Once I found a missive he sent back to her, written on a tiny scrap of parchment, smaller than a thumbnail. I knew then that an angel was not involved in the matter of my birth, for angels come to us in dreams and visions, not upon parchment. Our mother thought she had folded the note into her book of spells, but instead the message had dropped into my path. Perhaps the angels did indeed set it there, so I would know the truth about my origins, or perhaps a demon plucked it from between the pages. My true wife had been written. My mother had taught me the language of scholars, and because I could read Hebrew, I knew of her betrayal of your father, the man who taught me everything I knew, how to ride and how to hunt and how to be loyal to those I loved.
I tossed the parchment into the bonfire that night. As I did, it flew up like a wasp to sting me. There is a mark, beneath my left eye, that remains from that time. Because of this I can never forget what I found. Sometimes people imagine I am crying, they believe they’ve spied a tear, but they’re wrong. I spent the first part of my life without tears, as any boy would. The mark beneath my eye is made of fire. It’s the single element that can overwhelm iron.
WE STAYED until the summer when I turned fourteen. I knew that I bled even though the boys I ran with did not, but that did not change who I was, the fiercest among them, the rider with wings, Aziza, who carried both compassion and power within. I merely had to keep my blood secret, as I was to keep my body from view. The women here were not considered niddah when they bled, so I was not committing any true sin when I keep my secret and stayed among people during that time of the month. On hunting trips I insisted I was a restless sleeper and needed to make camp alone. When the others relieved themselves, I joked that I was a camel and could hold my water for days, waiting until I could sneak off on my own.
By then your father had given Adir a fine horse, the one I’d trained upon, no longer mine. Now I rode an old white stallion whose time had passed and who would never again win a race no matter how I might kick at him. Your father’s people were moving south, to Petra, giving up their traveling ways. The city that had arisen from the red rocks, taken from the edge of the deep, nearly endless ravine, had begun to call them to its great beauty and the settled life they might have there. There was a pool reputed to be larger than any lake and terraced gardens that were incomparable. It was said that every wanderer came home to this place, and that even these wild men who longed for freedom, who had spent their lives in pursuit of open grasslands, could not ignore the voice of Petra. And there was another reason—the Romans might attack our camp, despite their pledge of peace and their fear of the legendary courage of the tribesmen. There was a rumor that, should any blood be spilled upon the iron cliffs of Moab, a dozen men would spring from the blood of the first. Perhaps the men were tired from their shifting homes, their many wives, and were eager for a single residence and a life of ease.
My mother pleaded with your father to let us remain in the mountains when he and his brothers and uncles answered the call to Petra. We could camp with those who were stationed to guard against