The Dovekeepers - Alice Hoffman [67]
I felt pity rise within me.
“He’ll be back,” I assured him.
My father shook his head.
“I’m sure of it,” I said, though the rift between them was deep. “Amram is your son and your student.”
I followed my brother to the garrison. There I found him splitting wood. He was in a fury, grunting as he worked, like a man rending an enemy in two. But his enemy had given him life and was his father. This enemy had taught him the secrets of invisibility and had crossed the desert to find him.
“He’s an old man,” I reminded Amram.
Perhaps my heart went out to our broken father because he had been my partner in our terrible crime. “Mourning our mother has caused a poison inside him.”
“When we go to Aziza’s mother to ask for her blessing, will you stand by me, Yaya?” he asked.
He spoke to me so even though we both knew the girl who had been Yaya was no more. I nodded, then found the courage to ask if he would also stand by me, no matter where fate might lead me.
The boy he had been was gone as well, the one who had proudly announced he would become an assassin as we stood together in Jerusalem. All the same, he was still my brother.
“I found you in the wilderness,” he reminded me. “Why would I abandon you now?”
SOON AFTER, I began to dream of my mother. All my life I had been dreaming of lions and of ghosts, but no more. I could feel my mother’s presence. I longed to see her, to have a list of her virtues, to know if we were anything alike.
I went to my father early in the morning, before I lost my nerve, having awoken from a dream of my mother’s voice, the one I’d heard as I entered this world. The assassin was outside the barracks, cleaning weapons, sitting on the stump of an old olive tree. Young men and boys who passed by had no idea he had been one of the fiercest men in Jerusalem, that he had possessed the ability to conceal himself and had murdered more men than there were leaves on the willow tree.
My father was hunched over, his hair white, the lines on his face deeply etched. I had never before asked a favor of him, but I wanted one now.
I asked him to tell me the color of my mother’s hair.
“You haven’t guessed why I can’t look at you? Every time I look at you I see her in your place.”
At last I understood why each time he gazed at me grief shone in his eyes. My mother’s hair had been the same color as mine. Like her I was a flame tree. Despite everything, I still burned.
THE RAINY SEASON ended early. The harsh trail of the future was evident in the white-hot sky above us, a fire waiting to be ignited. Each day barrels swollen with water were brought up from the pools below, tied to the backs of donkeys, until at last our cisterns were full enough to last through the harsh summer months. The air seemed enraged already, the wind blowing across from the far side of the Salt Sea, sparked with heat.
We celebrated the Feast of Unleavened Bread, but this year was unlike any other, for we could no longer bring sacrifices to the Temple. We feasted when our prayers were complete, but we kept an eye on the desert as we rejoiced in our freedom. In the evenings I had begun to accompany Revka to the looms. Working there kept our minds on the task at hand. But we could not avoid the gossip of other women, and although we didn’t join in, we couldn’t help but overhear. Often the women at the looms spoke of our leader, who was our hero and our only hope. They praised him, and there were those among them who wished they were his wife. Even married women spoke of this, and hid their eyes so no one would see that, although they laughed, they were serious in their envy of the one to whom he was wed. I hadn’t known Ben Ya’ir had a wife. Revka pointed her out. A quiet, dark woman in veils who kept herself apart. I’d seen her walking through the orchards without knowing who she was.
When I wondered what it would be like