The Dovekeepers - Alice Hoffman [178]
“Have I done well as a warrior?” Adir wanted to know.
I nodded, embarrassed to have taken so much from him. But he seemed relieved.
“Have I slain many of the enemy?”
“Only when you needed to.”
Every time the warriors went out on raids, my brother, you were among them. We attacked at night, splitting into four sections, coming to our enemies in the dark from the four corners of the world. We went to let the Romans know that they had not destroyed us and that we had not disappeared despite their presence in our valley. We went to take what we needed to survive and because our people could not be contained nor denied their right to Zion.
During the nights when you, my dear brother, rested on your pallet, I had gone into the thornbushes and held the man who was unafraid of metal, who yearned for it, as I did, as I had done all my life. Though we were but halves of people, though we had lost ourselves, together we were one, and whole. This is why I was so impatient whenever I needed to remain on the mountain. He was the only one who knew me. He told me that, if I had been a woman, he could not have had me, for he had vowed never to be with a woman other than his wife. But I was something else, a warrior, as he was. We did not have to speak, as those who fight side by side need no words, but instead we knew each other in silence. In that way it was possible for each of us to foretell what the one beside us wanted, whether it was brutal or tender, whether it lasted all night or for but a brief burst of stolen time.
On the day when we repent for our sins, I had left this man to the heartache of his past. On the eve of Yom Kippur, he disappeared into the wilderness. I did not ask to share his sorrows, for that would not have been possible. I waited in the blue night, alone, as any comrade would. When he came back to me, there were strands of thorns fitted across his chest. I offered him water and a share of my supper, and I asked not a single question and made no demands. We had enough adversaries, we did not need to defy each other.
I was grateful, my brother, that you could not see what the world was beyond these gates, as I was grateful that I could close my eyes inside the bower of the thornbushes, that I could moan and thrash as I never did in battle, for in battle, my brother, your reputation was one of silence. You never cried out as you did at night, with only the dog to overhear you as you clung to the warrior beside you. You were young, the slightest among them, but you were a fine archer, perhaps the best of all, known by the red feathers on your arrows that quickened every shot, the weapons becoming birds seeking out our enemies and bringing them to their death. No wild goat could run from you, no rabbit was quick enough.
You often stood at the rear of a skirmish because your vision was so clear you could observe attackers from a distance and fell them before they came upon our men. Because of your skill, several warriors who might have been murdered lived. Amram was once stunned by the rock cast at him by a slingshot, and you, my brother, leapt out to slay his attacker from the hillock you stood upon, your armor burning hot in the sun, leaving red marks along your tender skin.
Afterward Amram came to give you thanks. He called you his little brother and offered you his loyalty. You merely lowered your eyes, as though too impressed by the honor he gave to you to speak, when the truth was you did not want him to see the color of your eyes, or guess at what was beneath the metal and silver scales you wore. All the same, you accepted the gift of his amulet, a silver disk of Solomon fighting a demon on the Temple floor, so as not to offend him. “I owe you protection,” he said on that day when you, younger and slighter, had saved him from the Angel of Death that had hovered so near. “My life is yours.”
You wore his amulet, so as not to offend him on the battlefield, but you hid it beneath a scarf at all other times. You hadn’t the heart to