The Dovekeepers - Alice Hoffman [66]
I fell asleep on the rocks, sprawled out on a dark ledge where the thorn trees grew. When I awoke it was almost morning. Sia had been in my dreams all through the night. She was with a lion in the desert, beneath a willow tree. She had taken him back from me, as she deserved to, but unlike me, she was not a thief. She left me what was mine. I felt the child move within me and wept with joy. I was not a demon or a leopard, only a woman with red hair. Now, as light split apart the sky, turning the desert pink, I slipped on my tunic. My body felt raw and bruised. I saw the marks I had made long ago on my leg, pale, like the arc of the moon. They seemed to belong to someone else, but I was the one who would have to carry the scars.
I knelt by the fire to make certain there were no burning embers left. That was when I spied the tracks of a lion. There were only a few such beasts left in the desert, but one had come here, answering my call. He had been there all the while, watching over me, before he left me at last.
I ATTEMPTED to speak to my father to make amends, but each time I approached, he turned away. He waved at me, his signal for a dog, for that was what I still was to him. He had become an even more miserable man here at the fortress than he’d been in Jerusalem. He, who had courted invisibility, had become what he desired to be; no one could see him now. Old men were invisible in this world of war, thought of as useless. My father was no longer vital. Ben Ya’ir needed young men who could fight in hand-to-hand combat wielding axes, not assassins who hid their sharpened knives inside their robes and stalked their enemies in the dark corners of the Temple courtyard. No one honored the great Yosef bar Elhanan for his ability to slink into the houses of his enemies, at one with the darkness of the night.
He’d been assigned to keep track of the weaponry. It was a lowly job, meant for young boys and old men. Replacing the tips of arrows was beneath him, but no one would listen to him, no one valued him. He began to fold in on himself, a tangle of envy. Now when he saw my brother return with the warriors, my father was jealous rather than proud. Amram had always been the one to shine in his eyes, but lately our father had begun to look upon him with distaste. Like the teacher whose student surpasses him, my father resented my brother his victories and his youth.
It was as though he no longer had children. We were only shadows on the wall, there to mock him and betray him.
ONE EVENING my father spied Aziza with my brother, secluded beside the fountain. Everyone knew she was the witch’s daughter. She was not the wife my father wanted for his son. He turned in her direction and spat on the ground. Shedah, he hissed, as though he’d spied a serpent. He called my brother to him, and they argued with such ferocity I covered my ears.
My brother announced that he planned to wed Aziza despite my father’s claims that he wouldn’t hear of this match. Amram threatened to denounce my father, and my father made threats of his own. If Aziza’s mother was to discover her daughter’s impurity, perhaps she would see to her punishment herself, bind her in a spell of silence or cover her with boils, cut off all her hair or cast her beyond the gate. I was in a corner spinning yarn on my spindle, doing my best not to interfere, but my heart was hitting against my chest as my brother and father raged against each other. The air in the chamber was hot, charged. The more my father railed, the paler my brother appeared, turning to ice. Pale light is dangerous, reckless and cold. Amram put his hand on his knife. Perhaps he had forgotten it was our father before him. I whispered his name, hoping to wake him from his dark dream. My brother glanced at the knife he had plucked from his belt as though he were indeed a dreamer. Quickly, he let it go.
“Don’t speak to me again,” he admonished my father before he departed. “If you see me, walk by me in silence, as I’ll walk by you.”
In that instant, what little family